Hyperactive Comets Hint at Origins of Earth’s Oceans

Nola Taylor
Scientific American

A new study suggests primordial seawater may lurk hidden at the hearts of many comets

The mysterious source of Earth’s water has intrigued generations of scientists. Learning how this liquid—the cornerstone of life as we know it—made its way to our planet has sweeping implications, for the possibility of alien biospheres not only elsewhere in the solar system but also on worlds orbiting other stars. But understanding how water arrived on Earth has proven surprisingly difficult.

After the sun formed from a cloud of dust and gas, the remaining protoplanetary disk of material was probably rich in water’s raw ingredients, hydrogen and oxygen. But conventional wisdom holds that the newborn star’s radiance boiled away much of those volatile gases from the inner solar system, leaving mostly dry material from which to build Earth and the other rocky planets. The majority of Earth’s moisture must have arrived later, by some other means.

For decades, scientists considered icy comets of the outer solar system as the most likely suspects, until observations revealed that most comets’ compositions did not quite match that of Earth’s oceans. And so consensus shifted toward asteroids as the source of Earth’s seas, since these rocky bodies also contain nontrivial amounts of water and are conveniently located close by, where they could have easily rained down on the young Earth. Now, however, an investigation of comet 46P/Wirtanen suggests that the bulk of Earth’s water may have come from comets after all, even though asteroids likely still played an important role.

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The Newest AI-Enabled Weapon: ‘Deep-Faking’ Photos of the Earth

Defense One

 

Step 1: Use AI to make undetectable changes to outdoor photos. Step 2: release them into the open-source world and enjoy the chaos. 

 

Worries about deep fakes — machine-manipulated videos of celebrities and world leaders purportedly saying or doing things that they really didn’t — are quaint compared to a new threat: doctored images of the Earth itself.

China is the acknowledged leader in using an emerging technique called generative adversarial networks to trick computers into seeing objects in landscapes or in satellite images that aren’t there, says Todd Myers, automation lead and Chief Information Officer in the Office of the Director of Technology at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

“The Chinese are well ahead of us. This is not classified info,” Myers said Thursday at the second annual Genius Machines summit, hosted by Defense One and Nextgov. “The Chinese have already designed; they’re already doing it right now, using GANs—which are generative adversarial networks—to manipulate scenes and pixels to create things for nefarious reasons.”

For example, Myers said, an adversary might fool your computer-assisted imagery analysts into reporting that a bridge crosses an important river at a given point. 

“So from a tactical perspective or mission planning, you train your forces to go a certain route, toward a bridge, but it’s not there. Then there’s a big surprise waiting for you,” he said.

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This Is What A Massive X9 Class Solar Flare Looks Like

Zero Hedge

Not all solar flares are Earth-facing, but it is only a matter of time before the next big one cripples modern society. Then what?

Scientists from Caltech Astronomy examined the great solar flare of 1990 that occurred in active region NOAA 6063. The eruption and subsequent shockwave were so massive that scientist decided to write a report on their findings titled “Tangential Field Changes in the Great Flare of 1990 May 24.”

The region on the sun gave rise to a dangerous X9.3 flare, which was visible in white light. The flare was observed by several observatories, including the Big Bear Solar Observatory at Caltech.

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That Time the U.S. Air Force Proposed Using Rockets to Stop the Earth’s Rotation

Daily Grail

he Cold War and resulting arms race between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R led each country to consider some rather crazy ideas through the decades, not least the idea that they could perhaps nuke the Moon. But in his 2017 book The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner, Daniel Ellsberg tells of a plan that was perhaps even crazier.

In 1960, Ellsberg – in his role as a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation – was asked by the U.S. Air Force to assess a classified proposal on how to deal with a surprise nuclear attack by the Soviets attempting to take out America’s nuclear arsenal. Titled ‘Project Retro’, the proposal had “already gone through a number of Air Force offices”, with a routing chart showing that it had been seen and acted on by their Research and Development, and Science and Technology departments, among others.

This surprised Ellsberg, as in reading the proposal it became apparent that it was a rather crackpot idea: the scheme proposed, in some detail, that the U.S. should assemble “a huge rectangular array of one thousand first-stage Atlas engines” – the largest rocket propulsion engine available – “to be fastened securely to the earth in a horizontal position”, facing opposite to the direct of the Earth’s rotation.

For what reason, you might be asking?

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Earth’s Atmosphere Can be Turned into Massive Surveillance System Using LASERS, Scientists Discover

Comment: This is old news to the Deep State. Such technology has targeted the global populace for decades. Although surveillance of this kind is a reality, it is the ionosphere used as a mass mind director which forms it's most potent use.

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TheSun.co.uk

 

EARTH’S atmosphere can now be turned into a massive spy lens using cutting edge technology.

BAE Systems are designing a directed energy laser system that could allow military commanders to spy on enemy activities from space.

BAE believe that within 50 years, one of their aircraft could use an “atmospheric lens” to observe people from very long distances using the Earth’s atmosphere as a tool.

The lasers temporarily change the Earth’s atmosphere into magnifying glass structures which can alter light and radio signals.

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True size map shows a more accurate vision of the earth's spatial layout

Suzy Strutner
Huffington Post

Did you know that California is more than four times the size of Portugal? Or that you could fit China, the U.S. and India into the continent of Africa, with room to spare?

Prepare yourself for a whole new kind of geography lesson.

The True Size Map shows countries as many travelers would say they are meant to be seen: in their "true," relative sizes. The inventors of the handy online tool point out that most maps are based on the Mercator projection, a schema that distorts the scale of many countries because it enlarges nations as they get farther from the Equator. While helpful in some cases, this doesn't give travelers a totally accurate vision of the Earth's spatial layout. True Size's answer to map-making, however, will seriously put your trip into perspective.

Visit TheTrueSize.com to toggle The True Size Map. 

Another great flood: time to build an ark?

Andrei Kislyakov
Sputnik

The world geological community is warning that today's seismic activity on our planet is nothing compared with what's to come.

Over the past three years, Pakistan, for example, has been hit by dozens of earthquakes. In March 2005, 80,000 people died under the rubble there. On October 30, the last time nature went on the rampage, there were hundreds of victims. Tens of thousands of people drowned during an overwhelming Asian tsunami at the end of 2004. China and Afghanistan have been rocked by quakes again more recently.

These natural disasters, which have swept our planet in recent years, indicate that the world has entered an era not only of a political, but also of climatic instability. Most scientists - biologists and environmentalists - tend to blame the human race for the catastrophic climate change on the Earth. No doubt, the greenhouse effect due to industrial activity plays a considerable role in global warming, but there are other reasons worth considering. The Earth is rotating around its own axis slower. The International Earth Rotation Service has regularly added a second or two to the length of a 24-hour day in recent years.

This is the main reason, according to Igor Kopylov, professor at Moscow Energy Institute, why the planet - a gigantic electrical machine - has had its energy balance upset. He expressed this viewpoint in 2004. Kopylov is convinced that the Earth has entered the first phase of a global change. A weakening of the Earth's magnetic field was first registered early in the 20th century, and a consistent drop in the speed of rotation, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It has been established that when the Earth's rotation slows by one second a year, it releases a tremendous amount of heat, hundreds of times the volume of energy released by human industrial activity.

If we accept that all processes on Earth run according to cosmic cycles, which, in turn, depend on the Solar System's position in our Galaxy, then humankind may be facing another Great Flood.

The Solar System, including the Earth, travels through the Galaxy in spiraling elliptic paths. The cycle time for the larger spiral is 200-210 million years, and for the smaller one, which determines minor galactic cycles, 26,000 years. Correspondingly, half a cycle lasts 130 centuries. This period almost exactly coincides with the date of the last Flood, the occurrence of which was real. The myths and legends of many peoples including that of the Bible recorded the event.

The Flood has been dated rather precisely: at 11,100 BC. If we accept that the civilized society on Earth has been developing for 400,000 years, then this period saw 30 great floods, and we are witnessing the beginnings of the thirty-first flood.

The cosmic cycles are so gigantically long by human standards that they have little impact on the life of people, but the active initial phase of the galactic cycle is of vital importance for the development of civilization. In the view of Russian scientists, the Earth currently finds itself at precisely this point in the cycle.

The transitional process in the electrical machine "planet Earth" can be divided into three phases. During the first - lasting 300 to 500 years - a relatively quick change in the direction of cross current (according to the law of electric machines) will alter the Earth's magnetic field, with the Northern magnetic pole shifting to the eastern part of the Arctic Ocean. 


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Earth 2.0: What we know about Kepler 452b, the most Earth-like planet ever discovered

The Independent 

Nasa scientists have announced the discovery of Kepler 452b, also known as 'Earth 2.0', an earth-like planet in our galaxy. 

Over the course of years of data-gathering by the Kepler space telescope and even more analysis and work here on Earth, scientists confirmed the existence of the distant exoplanet, which is the most earth-like planet ever discovered.

Although the planet is far too far away to photograph, advanced Nasa technology means we know a surprising amount about this 'New Earth'.

[...] 

It's the most similar planet to Earth that has ever been discovered

Beginning the conference, John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for Nasa's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said: "Today we're announcing the discovery of an exoplanet that as far as we can tell is a pretty close cousin of Earth. It's the closest so far. It's Earth 2.0." 

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Here's More Proof Earth Is in Its 6th Mass Extinction

Comment: Nothing like being prepared...

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Live Science

Diverse animals across the globe are slipping away and dying as Earth enters its sixth mass extinction, a new study finds.

Over the last century, species of vertebrates are dying out up to 114 times faster than they would have without human activity, said the researchers, who used the most conservative estimates to assess extinction rates. That means the number of species that went extinct in the past 100 years would have taken 11,400 years to go extinct under natural extinction rates, the researchers said.

Much of the extinction is due to human activities that lead to pollution, habitat loss, the introduction of invasive species and increased carbon emissions that drive climate change and ocean acidification, the researchers said. [7 Iconic Animals Humans Are Driving to Extinction] 

"Our activities are causing a massive loss of species that has no precedent in the history of humanity and few precedents in the history of life on Earth," said lead researcher Gerardo Ceballos, a professor of conservation ecology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and a visiting professor at Stanford University.


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See also: Reality Change I: 16 Ignition Points

NASA acknowledging Electric Universe?: New NASA model gives glimpse into the invisible world of electric asteroids

phys.org

Space may appear empty - a soundless vacuum, but it's not an absolute void. It flows with electric activity that is not visible to our eyes. NASA is developing plans to send humans to an asteroid, and wants to know more about the electrical environment explorers will encounter there.

A solar wind blown from the surface of the sun at about a million miles per hour flows around all solar system objects, forming swirling eddies and vortices in its wake. Magnetic fields carried by the solar wind warp, twist, and snap as they slam into the magnetic fields around other objects in our solar system, blasting particles to millions of miles per hour and sending electric currents surging in magnetic storms that, around Earth, can damage sensitive technology like satellites and power grids.

On airless objects like moons and asteroids, sunlight ejects negatively charged electrons from matter, giving sunlit areas a strong positive electric charge. The solar wind is an electrically conducting gas called plasma where matter has been torn apart into electrons, which are relatively light, and positively charged ions, which are thousands of times more massive. While areas in sunlight can charge positive, areas in shadow get a strong negative charge when electrons in the solar wind rush in ahead of heavier ions to fill voids created as the solar wind flows by.

The surface of Earth is shielded from the direct effects of this activity by our planet's magnetic field, but airless objects without strong repelling magnetic fields, like small asteroids, have no protection from electrical activity in space.

NASA-sponsored researchers funded by the Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) (formerly the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI)) have developed a new computer model that can predict and visualize the interaction between the solar wind, solar radiation, and the surface of asteroids in unprecedented detail.

"Our model is the first to provide detailed, two-dimensional views of the complex interaction between solar activity and small objects like asteroids, using an adaptive computational technique that makes these simulations highly efficient," said Michael Zimmerman, project lead at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

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New evidence for 'oceans' of water deep in Earth: Water bound in mantle rock alters view of Earth's composition

Science Daily

Researchers from Northwestern University and the University of New Mexico report evidence for potentially oceans worth of water deep beneath the United States. Though not in the familiar liquid form -- the ingredients for water are bound up in rock deep in the Earth's mantle -- the discovery may represent the planet's largest water reservoir.

The presence of liquid water on the surface is what makes our "blue planet" habitable, and scientists have long been trying to figure out just how much water may be cycling between Earth's surface and interior reservoirs through plate tectonics.

Northwestern geophysicist Steve Jacobsen and University of New Mexico seismologist Brandon Schmandt have found deep pockets of magma located about 400 miles beneath North America, a likely signature of the presence of water at these depths. The discovery suggests water from the Earth's surface can be driven to such great depths by plate tectonics, eventually causing partial melting of the rocks found deep in the mantle.

The findings, to be published June 13 in the journal Science, will aid scientists in understanding how the Earth formed, what its current composition and inner workings are and how much water is trapped in mantle rock.

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Earth-like planets may be quite common, relatively close, study says

Los Angeles Times
Amina Khan

November 4, 2013

Is the Earth a “cosmic freak” or a planetary average Joe around our galactic neighborhood? UC Berkeley astronomer Geoff Marcy says we’re in good company.

With some clever sleight of hand, scientists using Kepler data have calculated that a whopping one in five Sun-like stars has an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone – and, if they have the right chemical ingredients on board, could be capable of supporting life.

The kicker? The nearest one may lie just 12 light-years away.

The results, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also add 603 exoplanet candidates to Kepler’s tally, including 10 Earth-sized ones in the habitable zone.
“If we ever get star travel, we’d probably see a lot of traffic jams,” said William Borucki, Kepler’s lead scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.


Since its launch in 2009, the Kepler space telescope has uncovered a strange menagerie of alien worlds, some utterly unlike the inhabitants of our own solar system. Scientists have picked out what Borucki called a “bewildering variety” of planets, from mini-Neptunes to super-Earths. Some may be composed entirely of water; others have densities greater than iron or lower than Styrofoam. Some are smaller than Mercury and others are many times bigger than Jupiter.

For this study, the scientists had one driving question, said UC Berkeley astronomer and lead author Erik Petigura: Among all these different types of planets, how common were the ones that were sized like Earth?

The problem with answering that question is that it’s not easy to find such planets, Petigura said. A transit-watching telescope like Kepler waits for dips in brightness as a planet travels in front of its star and blocks a tiny fraction of its light. But that only works if we’re properly aligned and can catch them in the act of transiting.

Of those stars whose planetary transits we manage to see, many are simply too noisy, with their light patterns changing, to pick out a tiny dip in starlight from a transiting planet. (To put it in perspective, an Earth-sized planet would cause a 0.01% blip in its star’s light.)

The researchers decided to see if they could figure out how many planets they were missing. They injected synthetic planets into the starlight data, then ran the software that searched for those signals. Not all of them were found. Since they already knew how many fake planets they’d had to start with, the scientists now knew about how many planets were missing.

Based on that analysis, the researchers surmised that about 22% of stars like our sun have planets in the habitable zone that are just one to two Earth radii.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that these planets will actually be habitable – that depends on whether they’re made of rock and iron, have protective atmospheres and ingredients like water and other chemical building blocks for life as we know it.

But the researchers said they were encouraged by the discovery of Kepler-78b – an Earth-sized planet with an Earth-like density that also appears to be made of iron and rock. Though it was far too close to its star to be habitable, scientists said it was a sign that more promising discoveries would be on the way, as astronomers analyze the fourth and final year of data from Kepler, which suffered a malfunction this spring.

Nasa discovers 'new Earth' Kepler 22b

 
Telegraph

Kepler 22b contains both land and water and has temperatures which average around 72 degrees (22 Celsius). It also contains the right atmosphere to potentially support life.It is, however, 600 light years from Earth.The planet, where a year lasts 290 days, was first spotted two years ago. 
 

However, Nasa scientists using the agency’s Kepler space telescope have now concluded that it offers the best hope yet for future human habitation outside the Solar System.