'Wild speculation': Scientist who found mystery space object dismisses alien theory

'Wild speculation': Scientist who found mystery space object dismisses alien theory

Posted November 14, 2018 11:35:31 The scientist who discovered a mysterious cigar-shaped space object says suggestions by Harvard astronomers it is an alien probe are "wild speculation". When 'Oumuamua - a Hawaiian word meaning "a messenger from afar arriving first" - was detected last year, it became the first object originating beyond our solar system to be observed in our vicinity.

Interstellar message of ‘Oumuamua

Mysterious traveller from afar highlights a seasonal greeting.

In October, a group of wise women and men spotted a mysterious light in the sky. There has been much excited chatter since about what it might mean. A space rock has come travelling. And as December draws to a close, the unusual visitor is heading away again, its brief message to Earth seemingly delivered. Our interstellar guest is from another star system entirely, one it was bundled out of perhaps even billions of years ago. Long-predicted, this is the first confirmed visit of an object from so far away. We are probably its first company in some time. And already it has seen enough.
A bright light shone around it. Long-term exposure to cosmic rays has created an insulating organic-rich layer on its surface (A. Fitzsimmons et al. Nature Astron. http://doi.org/chks; 2017). This coating — more pink than silver — could have protected an ice-rich interior from being vaporized during its passage close to the Sun. And it could help to explain some of the initial confusion over the visitor’s true nature. Sky-watchers scanning for interstellar objects tend to be on the look-out for a comet. These are expected to produce a distinctive haze as their outer layers of ice sublimate, making them much easier to spot as they pass close to the Sun.


The absence of a tail saw the object reassigned instead as a rocky asteroid, which it could be. But its organic shield protects the unlikely possibility that it could be a comet after all — models suggest ice might be hidden underneath, undisturbed by the body’s flirtation with the Sun.


It could come from a planet a long way from here. If it is not a comet, a paper posted to the arXiv server this month speculates, it might be a fragment of a distant planet ripped apart by a process of gravitational vandalism known as tidal disruption (M. Ćuk preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.01823; 2017).


Despite the best listening efforts of telescopes on Earth, the object has remained silent. And to the disappointment of alien-hunters across the planet, there is no sign of technology. (It was always a long shot, but the unusual cigar-shape boosted hopes that it was built and not formed.) Nonetheless, astronomers have called it ‘Oumuamua, a Hawaiian term for scout. In Nature this week, its discoverers (who spotted it using the Pan-STARRS telescope on Hawaii’s Maui island) say the object seems to be a “messenger sent from the distant past to reach out to us”.


‘Oumuamua might not be talking but it could still be listening. At this time of year, it’s traditional for many radio stations across the United States to play the 1949 Hawaiian tune ‘Mele Kalikimaka’, which offers a greeting of love, peace, joy and compassion. As ‘Oumuamua speeds away there are worse impressions for it to take from Earth — even if, like most souvenirs, the significance is lost on many of the planet’s locals.

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Species New to Science: [PaleoEntomology • 2016] Alienoptera – A New Insect Order in the Roach - Mantodean Twilight Zone

Species New to Science: [PaleoEntomology • 2016] Alienoptera – A New Insec...: Alienopterus brachyelytrus  Bai, Beutel, Klass, Wipfler et Zhang, 2016 DOI :  10.1016/j.gr.2016.02.002   Highlights • A new insect

Opabinia the Alien

Opabinia is one of the rarest fossils found in today’s world. There are less than twenty quality specimens of the creature, and archaeologists hope to discover more in time. The known fossils were mostly found in the Burgess Shale of British Columbia. Opabinia isn’t what you’d expect when you think about prehistoric ages. This species, known to live on the seafloor, had a soft body that was about seven centimeters long. They had a head with five eyes and a mouth underneath that was backwards. The backwards mouth is said to coincide with the fact that the creature had a proboscis, which was more than likely used to pass food to the mouth, as its length indicates. The creature also had a segmented body that was finished off by a fan-shaped tail.

Opabinia regalis is an extinct stem-arthropod found in the Middle Cambrian Burgess Shale Lagerstätte of British Columbia, Canada. Fewer than twenty good specimens have been described; 3 specimens of Opabinia are known from the Greater Phyllopod bed, where they comprise less than 0.1% of the community. Opabinia was a soft-bodied animal of modest size, and its segmented body had lobes along the sides and a fan-shaped tail. The head shows unusual features: five eyes, a mouth under the head and facing backwards, and a proboscis that probably passed food to the mouth. Opabinia probably lived on the seafloor, using the proboscis to seek out small, soft food.

When the first thorough examination of Opabinia in 1975 revealed its unusual features, it was thought to be unrelated to any known phylum, although possibly related to a hypothetical ancestor of arthropods and of annelid worms. However other finds, most notably Anomalocaris, suggested that it belonged to a group of animals that were closely related to the ancestors of arthropods and of which the living animals onychophorans and tardigrades may also be members.

In the 1970s there was an ongoing debate about whether multi-celled animals appeared suddenly during the Early Cambrian, in an event called the Cambrian explosion, or had arisen earlier but without leaving fossils. At first Opabinia was regarded as strong evidence for the "explosive" hypothesis. Later the discovery of a whole series of similar lobopod animals, some with closer resemblances to arthropods, and the development of the idea of stem groups suggested that the Early Cambrian was a time of relatively fast evolution but one that could be understood without assuming any unique evolutionary processes.


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'Dark Matter Disc' Discovered Over The Equator?

A disc of dark matter might have just been found hanging over the Equator of the Earth. But don't panic.

The startling claim has been made by a scientist examining why the Earth appears to be slightly heavier than previously thought.

Dark matter is the almost-theoretical substance which helps explain why there is nowhere near enough visible matter in the universe to account for the way it's developed since the Big Bang.

But while most models of the universe suggest dark matter is abundant, experiments have tried (and so far mostly failed) to find direct evidence of it.

Now one scientist says it might have been hanging above our heads the entire time.

Ben Harris, from the University of Texas, said at the American Geophysical Union that GPS data implies the Earth is heavier than it 'should' be.

The difference between the number he's calculated, and that taken as read by the International Astronomical Union, could be caused by the presence of nearby Dark Matter, he thinks.

In his study, Harris used data from the European Galileo, U.S., GPS, GLONASS and Russian satellite groups, and measured the weight of the Earth. His result is 0.005-0.008 percent bigger than current estimates. A disc of dark matter over the equator could account for the difference, he said - being picked up by satellites overhead while being missed by regular methods used to weigh our planet.
This disc would be 191 kilometres thick and 70,000 km wide, he suggests.

However, we have to add a hefty load of caveats here. First, there are potential flaws with the methodology. New Scientist points out that the study doesn't account for subtle changes in the orbit of satellites caused by relativity and the gravity of the sun and moon. It's also pretty much conjecture, even if the data is accurate - there is no direct evidence of dark matter above our Earth, and much more study would be needed to get it.

On the other hand, if 80% of our universe really is dark matter, it wouldn't be crazy to think there would be some nearby. If only it wasn't so - well - dark, we might just be able to see it in plain sight very close to home indeed.

War of the Worlds

Shortly after 8 p.m. on the Halloween Eve, 1938, the voice of a panicked radio announcer broke in with a news bulletin reporting strange explosions taking place on the planet Mars, followed minutes later by a report that Martians had landed in the tiny town of Grovers Mill, New Jersey. Although most listeners understood that the program was a radio drama, the next day's headlines reported that thousands of others plunged into panic, convinced that America was under a deadly Martian attack. It turned out to be H.G. Wells' classic The War of the Worlds, performed by 23-year-old Orson Welles.

The night began as any other peaceful Sunday evening, with millions of listeners tuned to their radios. Yet the outward calm hid a nation tense with apprehension: the Great Depression refused to let up, and the threat of war in Europe loomed larger every day. Then, at 8:15 p.m., there was a report on the radio that Martians had landed in New Jersey. Almost instantly, people listening in responded to the shocking news. Newspapers were flooded with calls from worried listeners; many feared that New Jersey had been laid to waste and that the Martians were heading west. In cities and towns throughout the country, people stopped a moment to pray-- then grabbed their loved ones and fled into the night. What began as a broadcast performance of H.G. Wells's fantasy, The War of the Worlds, turned into one of the biggest mass hysteria events in U.S. history. AMERICAN EXPERIENCE examines the elements that together created this frenzy, including our longtime fascination with life on Mars; the emergence of radio as a powerful new medium; and the creative wunderkind Orson Welles, the twenty-three-year-old director of the drama and mischief-maker supreme. 

Part of meteor that hit Russia in February pulled from lake in Urals



Divers have pulled a half-tonne suspected meteorite from a Russian lake, said to have been part of a meteor whose ground-shaking shockwave hurt 1,200 people in February.

 

The dramatic recovery operation came eight months after a piercing streak of light lit up the morning sky in the central Russian region of Chelyabinsk, in scenes some locals said made them think of the onset of a nuclear war.

The meteor broke up into myriad pieces, some no bigger than the size of a fingernail, that scientists are still finding across the remote region.

Much of the debris landed in a local lake called Chebarkul that the divers entered on Wednesday, in an operation covered live on national television.

Broadcasts showed a team pull out a 1.5-metre long rock from the lake, after first wrapping it in a special casing while it was still underwater.

The boulder was then pulled ashore and placed on top of a massive scale for the all-important weighing, an operation that quickly went partially wrong.

The rock crumbled into several chunks as scientists began lifting it from the ground with the help of levers and ropes.

Video: YouTube: Meteorite crash in Russia

"The rock had a fracture when we found it," one unnamed scientist told the lifenews.ru website in a live broadcast.

"It weighed 570 kilograms before the pieces fell off. And then the scale broke.

"We think the whole thing weighs more than 600 kilograms."

Experts warned it will take time before scientists can certify that the rock they pulled from the lake did indeed come from outer space.

But Sergei Zamozdra, a lecturer at Chelyabinsk State University, told the Interfax news agency he is confident in the find.

"Based on our initial observations... this is a part of the Chelyabinsk meteor," he said.

"This is the largest fragment of that meteor, and most likely, it will be one of the 10 largest meteorites ever found."

The meteor weighed a whopping 10,000 tonnes when it exploded a few kilometres up in the air with the force equivalent to 30 of the nuclear bombs dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War II.

United States scientists said an object that large usually approaches Earth only once every four decades.

AFP

Religions, UFO

A subculture now exists in every country, based on the idea that humanity has a higher destiny. You will find people . . . who have literally dropped out of city life . . . because they had received messages from space instructing them to do so. . . .Their lives have been changed by what they consider to be genuine extraterrestrial communication. . . .We are not here dealing with escapism-we are dealing with the next form of religion.

-Jacques Vallee 

In H. G. Wells's story "Jimmy Goggles the God" a diver stomps onto the shore of a Pacific island in his diving suit (nicknamed "Jimmy Goggles"). The natives, seeing this unearthly being coming to them from the sea, unhesitatingly assume he is a god and proceed to worship him accordingly. In our time, otherworldly beings are allegedly visiting our planet in considerable numbers. It tells us something about human nature that-almost from the first moment the flying saucers were reported-there were those who saw beyond the nuts and bolts of the surface phenomenon to its profounder and more spiritual dimensions. What seemed to most people simply a mirror of our own tentative ventures into space-manifestations of alien technology-carried for these others implications of a supernal reality.

At the basis of every religion is a story, generally focused on a particular individual: Buddha, Confucius, Muhammad. The most elaborate and arguably the least implausible of these stories is that of Jesus, whose career while incarnate on earth involves wonders of all kinds-after an immaculate conception and virgin birth, the hero is visited by three kings bearing symbolic gifts, and he grows up to perform miracles and enunciate teachings, finally giving himself up voluntarily as a sacrifice to redeem humanity's sins, then ascending back to heaven. 

The flying-saucer religions have nothing to offer to compare with this-but they do not set out to do that. If traditional texts that are the very basis of the world's leading religions are today widely relegated to the realm of folklore, it is understandable that many regard them as an inadequate foundation for the most important spiritual commitment of their lives. Still, the promoters of the established religions offer their potential customers a product so defective yet find so many takers, which tells us something about human nature; fewer and fewer are choosing to swallow the sales pitch, which tells us that a growing number of people are learning to back their own judgment rather than take on trust what they are instructed to believe.

The flying-saucer story, by contrast, is eminently suited to a space-age awareness. As we humans make our own first tentative ventures beyond the atmosphere of our planet, it is natural to imagine the reverse process-other inhabitants of the universe coming to visit us. Stories of otherworldly visitors have been told throughout history, but they have mostly come from heaven, hell, or other such fantasy places. What has enabled today's otherworldly visitors to get the edge over their predecessors is that they claim to come from worlds more or less like our own-not a pie-in-the- sky heaven, but a planet that would be acceptable to the most skeptical astronomer. That proposition that we should be visited by the inhabitants of such places is scientifically plausible, even to be expected.

What can be said, though, is why this type of religious belief attracts people today. Robert Ellwood has written: "The UFO experience has seemed for many fraught with spiritual or religious meaning. This is understandable, for the sense of wonder evoked by the thought of otherworldly visitants flows easily, for persons of a certain susceptibility, into those feelings of the presence of the numinous and the transcendent which characterizes religious experience." This has been adumbrated through this essay. To summarize, we can say that UFO sects offer a plausible story that conforms, superficially at least, with our knowledge of life in space. They do not require belief in traditional myths such as virgin birth or bread changing into flesh and wine into blood; their marvels are space-age marvels and not inconsistent with scientific possibility. At the same time, it must be said that even though the stories are scientifically credible there is as yet no evidence for them that could be considered scientifically valid. The new URGs require just as much a suspension of disbelief, just as venturesome an act of faith, as any of the old religions.

Major asteroid site found in Aussie outback

The impact crater was caused by an asteroid slamming into Earth between 298 and 360 million years ago, which places it in the same epoch as the Late Devonian mass extinction(Source: Fredrik/WikiMedia)

Stuart Gary
ABC

One of the largest ancient asteroid impact zones on Earth has been discovered in outback Australia.
The impact zone, which centres on the East Warburton Basin in north-eastern South Australia, was caused by an asteroid up to 20 kilometres-wide that slammed into the planet between 298 and 360 million years ago, report scientists from the Australian National University and University of Queensland.

Terrain around the impact site shows evidence of changes caused by shock-wave related deformation and heating of the ground by an impact event, says study co-author, Dr Andrew Glikson from the Australian National University.

"This shock metamorphic terrain covers an area of over 30,000 square kilometres making it the third-largest site of its kind ever discovered on Earth," says Glikson.

The team report their discovery in the journal Tectonophysics.

To confirm the area was an impact zone, Glikson and colleagues studied quartz grains retrieved from drill holes.

Optical and electron microscopic examination revealed tiny fractures, which indicate the quartz grains had been shocked by an asteroid or meteor impact.

"This is the only way these features are formed," says Glikson.

Follow up observations detected deep seismic anomalies below the terrain where the samples were taken.

"This allowed us to determine the scale of the impact site which is buried under four kilometers of younger sediments," he says.

Multiple hits

Glikson believes there is a link between this impact site and three or four other large impact sites of the same age scattered around Australia.

"Asteroid impacts commonly occur in clusters of two or more projectiles," he says.

"Where impacts are near-contemporaneous they're usually fragments of a larger body broken apart by the gravitational effect of the Earth-Moon system."

"This new discovery is a twin for one we reported on last year in the Eromanga Basin in south-western Queensland called the Tookoonooka Crater.

"It looks like both impacted at the same time."

He also believes there is a link between this site and a nearby potential impact site on the South Australian/Northern Territory border known as the West Warburton geophysical anomaly, and another site at Woodleigh in Western Australia.

Past and future

Glikson says the discovery shows that research into past asteroid impacts is essential if we are to prepare for future asteroid encounters and their effects.

"The 280 to 360 million years old impact window places this in the same epoch as the late Devonian mass extinction event".

The late Devonian mass extinction was one of five major extinction events in Earth's history, wiping out large groups of marine species.

"There are indications of mass extinction at this time caused by an impact winter, with the huge flash of the asteroid, major fires and seismic events with magnitudes of 10, 11 and 12, which would have disrupted habitats," says Glikson.

Astronomers detect nearest Earth-like neighbour

Photo: Artist's impression: five planets orbit the star Tau Ceti, which is just 11.9 light-years from Earth. (J Pinfield/RoPACS network/University of Hertfordshire)

By Science Online's Stuart Gary and wires

Scientists have been surprised by the unexpected discovery of a nearby planetary system using a new experimental technique.

The system of five planets - ranging in size from two to six times the Earth's mass - orbit the Sun-like star Tau Ceti, just 12 light years away.

The discovery, reported in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, will make it easier to find smaller, more Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.

As well as being the nearest system to the Earth with a Sun-like star, it includes one planet with a mass about five times that of the Earth that is orbiting in the star's habitable zone, where liquid water could exist on the surface.

The new planetary system was discovered using the radial velocity method, which detects the wobble in a star caused by the gravitational pull of an orbiting planet.

Since 1995, more than 800 exoplanets have been discovered orbiting stars other than the Sun.
But most are either uninhabitable gas giants or big rocky worlds that swing so close to their star that they are literally roasted.

The Tau Ceti finding was made by astronomers from Australia, Britain, Chile and the United States.
One of the paper's authors, University of New South Wales astronomer Jonti Horner, says the discovery was serendipity.

"Mikko Tuomi, from the University of Hertfordshire, was looking at new ways to model data to remove unwanted interference and noise generating false signals in our equipment," Dr Horner said.
"This noise can be caused by vibrations in the star due to effects like starquakes and turbulence, as well as instabilities in the equipment itself."

Valuable target

Tau Ceti was selected to calibrate the new technique because it is a very stable star, which after 14 years of study showed no signs of a planetary system.

"Because it's so close, bright and similar to the Sun, it's a particularly valuable target for study," Dr Horner said.

Once all the noise had been accounted for using the new modelling techniques, astronomers detected a signal indicating the presence of a planetary system.

University of NSW astronomer Chris Tinny, a co-author on the paper, says the new technique doubles the sensitivity of detecting planets using the radial velocity method.

Astronomers believe the proximity and brightness of Tau Ceti will allow them to eventually study the atmospheres of the planets in the system.

Gliese 667C

The radial velocity technique has also been used in the discovery of three new planets orbiting in the habitable zone of a red dwarf star called Gliese 667C.

The research by University of British Columbia astronomer Philip Gregory includes a planet just over twice the mass of the Earth.

That makes it the lowest mass planet ever detected in a habitable zone.
Gliese 667C is part of a triple star system about 22 light years from Earth in the constellation of Scorpius.

Professor Gregory discovered six planets orbiting the red dwarf, which circles about 30 billion kilometres out from a pair of larger Sun-like stars named Gliese 667A and B.

 

Mars rover finds evidence of stream

NASA's Mars rover, Curiosity, has discovered gravel once carried by the waters of an ancient stream that "ran vigorously" through the area.

Scientists had previously found other evidence of the one-time presence of water on the Red Planet, but the US space agency says this is the first time stream-bed gravels have been discovered.

Project scientist John Grotzinger says the rocky outcrop, called Hottah, "looks like someone jack-hammered up a slab of city sidewalk, but it's really a tilted block of an ancient stream bed".
Curiosity also investigated a second outcrop, called "Link".

The pictures transmitted by Curiosity show the pebbles have been cemented into layers of conglomerate rock at a site between the north rim of the Gale Crater and the base of Mount Sharp - where Curiosity is heading.

Curiosity science co-investigator Rebecca Williams says the sizes and the shapes of the rocks give an idea of the speed and the depth of the stream.

"The shapes tell you they were transported, and the sizes tell you they couldn't be transported by wind," she said.

"They were transported by water flow."

The scientists estimate the water was moving briskly at one metre per second and ran somewhere between ankle and hip deep.

The high number of channels between the rim and the newly discovered rock bed suggests the stream was not a one-time occurrence but that many streams flowed or repeated over a long time.

Curiosity is on a two-year mission to investigate whether it is possible to live on Mars and to learn whether conditions there might have been able to support life in the past.

Green aliens are so passé.

On other worlds, plants could be red, blue, even black. RED EARTH, GREEN EARTH, BLUE EARTH: Type M stars (red dwarfs) are feeble, so plants on an orbiting Earth-like world might need to be black to absorb all the available light (first panel). Young M stars fry planetary surfaces with ultraviolet flares, so any organisms must be aquatic (second). Our sun is type G (third). Around F stars, plants might get too much light and need to reflect much of it (fourth).

The prospect of finding extraterrestrial life is no longer the domain of science fiction or UFO hunters. Rather than waiting for aliens to come to us, we are looking for them. We may not find technologically advanced civilizations, but we can look for the physical and chemical signs of fundamental life processes: “biosignatures.” Beyond the solar system, astronomers have discovered more than 200 worlds orbiting other stars, socalled extrasolar planets. Although we have not been able to tell whether these planets harbor life, it is only a matter of time now. Last July astronomers confirmed the presence of water vapor on an extrasolar planet by observing the passage of starlight through the planet’s atmosphere. The world’s space agencies are now developing telescopes that will search for signs of life on Earth-size planets by observing the planets’ light spectra.

Photosynthesis, in particular, could produce very conspicuous biosignatures. How plausible is it for photosynthesis to arise on another planet? Very. On Earth, the process is so successful that it is the foundation for nearly all life. Although some organisms live off the heat and methane of oceanic hydrothermal vents, the rich ecosystems on the planet’s surface all depend on sunlight.

Photosynthetic biosignatures could be of two kinds: biologically generated atmospheric gases such as oxygen and its product, ozone; and surface colors that indicate the presence of specialized pigments such as green chlorophyll. The idea of looking for such pigments has a long history. A century ago astronomers sought to attribute the seasonal darkening of Mars to the growth of vegetation. They studied the spectrum of light reflected off the surface for signs of green plants. One difficulty with this strategy was evident to writer H. G. Wells, who imagined a different scenario in The War of the Worlds: “The vegetable kingdom in Mars, instead of having green for a dominant colour, is of a vivid blood-red tint.” Although we now know that Mars has no surface vegetation (the darkening is caused by dust storms), Wells was prescient in speculating that photosynthetic organisms on another planet might not be green. 

Even Earth has a diversity of photosynthetic organisms besides green plants. Some land plants have red leaves, and underwater algae and photosynthetic bacteria come in a rainbow of colors. Purple bacteria soak up solar infrared radiation as well as visible light. So what will dominate on another planet? And how will we know when we see it? The answers depend on the details of how alien photosynthesis adapts to light from a parent star of a different type than our sun, filtered through an atmosphere that may not have the same composition as Earth’s.