I read this intersting bit about Space Explorations
A secret common protocol exists that are honored by all the international space agencies. This became evident recently as China started implanting the manned lunar travel mission. Chinese engineers and aerospace scientists are reporting secretly that they just cannot do what they like. Invisible laws make their life harder. When asked, they are told that all the Space Agencies does that and China cannot be an exception either. Chinese aviation and space exploration achievements are remarkable but till this date China, it seems, never had to abide by these universal laws. But today China and Indian Space Agencies as they cross the boundary of actual Space, are told to follow protocols that are harder to follow, more expensive to implement but never the less a must for future space travel.
Many researchers say it is the extra-terrestrials in contact with the six Space-travel capable nations (US, Russia, France, Britain, China and India) set these invisible protocols and guidelines that must be “followed” by the Agencies.
If you track the use nuclear powered traction in Space, you will understand what we are talking about. Recently, China and India are going through a lot of redesign of thrust mechanisms to accommodate the same. Russian Aviation and Space Agency (RASA) and NASA both have communicated among themselves in terms of these protocols. You may guess why Americans went to Moon in 1969 and never again made a trip to land humans there? Russians gave up the idea all together? Europeans never attach a lot of importance in sending humans anywhere. And the Indians and Chinese are dancing right now. But most likely their enthusiasm will dampen once they are told by the same entities what they can do in moon. Once they understand that they will also decide – there is no use of wasting money on moon.Unmanned vehicles, probes are very common and are allowed but humans are not because human beings cannot be really sterilized in the sense made germless. That is the biggest concern of the Universe.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
The Mars Connection
We could have alien origins, say scientists who sent fossilized microscopic life-forms into space and back inside an artificial meteorite. The researchers attached the baseball-size rock to the outside of the European Space Agency's Foton M3 spacecraft to test whether biological material could survive the round-trip journey.
Sculpted from stone from the Orkney Islands in northern Scotland, the rock contained fossilized microbes and the molecular signatures of microbes.
The unmanned spacecraft was launched by rocket from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying 43 experiments. The craft landed in Kazakhstan on September 26 after orbiting the planet for 12 days.
"In the bit of rock we got back, some biological compounds have survived," said project leader John Parnell from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.
A rock measuring 2.8 inches (7 centimeters) across was fitted to the exterior of Foton M3."It was shielded when it went up into space but exposed when it came back," Parnell said.
The rock had similar properties to a type of meteorite known as a carbonaceous chondrite. Such meteorites contain water and carbon compounds, both essential to life.
"We wanted to see if a rock that was rich in carbon and water would suffer a lot of mass loss," Parnell said. "That was certainly the case. About three-quarters of the mass of our sample disappeared."
Living microbes probably wouldn't have survived in a meteorite this size because it reached temperatures of about 392 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius), the project leader said. But "if our rock was bigger, say 20 centimeters (about 8 inches) across, then we can be quite confident that [the] temperature would not penetrate to the middle, so that if anything had been living there, it would have survived."
The theory that says interplanetary organisms seeded life on different planets, such as Earth, is known as panspermia. If panspermia explains the origins of life on Earth, astrobiologists believe that Mars is the most likely source. For instance, studies suggest about 5 percent of meteorites from Mars eventually end up hitting Earth. The surface of Mars is quite inhospitable, due to dryness and low temperature, but one could conceive of subsurface life still being on Mars," he added. In the experiment, microbes were also dried onto the undersides of several artificial meteorites.
"This biological material didn't survive, but it may have been preserved, or its signatures may have been preserved," said STONE scientist Charles Cockell of the Open University in the United Kingdom. The rocks are still being analyzed, Cockell added.
"We know that life can make it from continent to continent, but what about from planet to planet?" he said. "Of course, at the moment we don't know of life on another planet, but this experiment is an intriguing test of an interplanetary version of an old ecological question."
David Morrison is a senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute in Moffett Field, California. Whether exchange of life has ever occurred following the meteorites' impact is a more complex question, but "we should be open to the possibility that there is microbial life on Mars that shares a common ancestor with Earth life," he said.
"It may not be likely, but we cannot exclude the possibility that we are, in effect, all Martians."
from National Geographic News
Sculpted from stone from the Orkney Islands in northern Scotland, the rock contained fossilized microbes and the molecular signatures of microbes.
The unmanned spacecraft was launched by rocket from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome carrying 43 experiments. The craft landed in Kazakhstan on September 26 after orbiting the planet for 12 days.
"In the bit of rock we got back, some biological compounds have survived," said project leader John Parnell from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.
A rock measuring 2.8 inches (7 centimeters) across was fitted to the exterior of Foton M3."It was shielded when it went up into space but exposed when it came back," Parnell said.
The rock had similar properties to a type of meteorite known as a carbonaceous chondrite. Such meteorites contain water and carbon compounds, both essential to life.
"We wanted to see if a rock that was rich in carbon and water would suffer a lot of mass loss," Parnell said. "That was certainly the case. About three-quarters of the mass of our sample disappeared."
Living microbes probably wouldn't have survived in a meteorite this size because it reached temperatures of about 392 degrees Fahrenheit (200 degrees Celsius), the project leader said. But "if our rock was bigger, say 20 centimeters (about 8 inches) across, then we can be quite confident that [the] temperature would not penetrate to the middle, so that if anything had been living there, it would have survived."
The theory that says interplanetary organisms seeded life on different planets, such as Earth, is known as panspermia. If panspermia explains the origins of life on Earth, astrobiologists believe that Mars is the most likely source. For instance, studies suggest about 5 percent of meteorites from Mars eventually end up hitting Earth. The surface of Mars is quite inhospitable, due to dryness and low temperature, but one could conceive of subsurface life still being on Mars," he added. In the experiment, microbes were also dried onto the undersides of several artificial meteorites.
"This biological material didn't survive, but it may have been preserved, or its signatures may have been preserved," said STONE scientist Charles Cockell of the Open University in the United Kingdom. The rocks are still being analyzed, Cockell added.
"We know that life can make it from continent to continent, but what about from planet to planet?" he said. "Of course, at the moment we don't know of life on another planet, but this experiment is an intriguing test of an interplanetary version of an old ecological question."
David Morrison is a senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute in Moffett Field, California. Whether exchange of life has ever occurred following the meteorites' impact is a more complex question, but "we should be open to the possibility that there is microbial life on Mars that shares a common ancestor with Earth life," he said.
"It may not be likely, but we cannot exclude the possibility that we are, in effect, all Martians."
from National Geographic News
UFOs: " The Pilots' version
WASHINGTON (AFP) — 12th Nov
UFOs may be fodder for comedians but there was no joking when a group of former pilots recounted seeing strange phenomena in the sky and demanded the US government reopen an investigation into unidentified flying objects.
Several pilots offered dramatic accounts of witnessing UFOs -- including a transparent flying disc and a triangular craft with mysterious markings -- as they insisted their questions needed to be taken seriously more than 30 years after the US file was closed.
"We want the US government to stop perpetuating the myth that all UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth, conventional terms," said Fife Symington, former governor of Arizona and air force pilot who says he saw a UFO in 1997.
Skeptics say UFO sightings are merely aircraft, satellites or meteors re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.
But the retired pilots spoke to a sympathetic audience of UFO "believers" who heard them recall their encounters with seemingly other-worldly objects appearing out of the sky.
"Nothing in my training prepared me for what we were witnessing," said James Penniston, a retired US Air Force pilot, as he described seeing and touching a UFO when he was stationed at a British air base in Woodbridge.
He said he saw an inexplicable triangular craft in a clearing in the woods with "blue and yellow lights swirling around the exterior."
The UFO was "warm to the touch and felt like metal," Penniston said. One side of the craft had pictorial symbols and "the largest symbol was a triangle, which was centered in the middle of the others," he said.
Then after 45 minutes the light from the object "began to intensify" and it then "shot off at an unbelievable speed" before 80 Air Force personnel, he said. "In my logbook, I wrote 'speed: impossible.'"
Rodrigo Bravo from Chile's air force said UFOs needed to be studied but lamented that the media often belittle the sightings.
"Sadly the UFO subject has been contaminated with false information, out of touch with reality, provided by unqualified people to the media," Bravo said.
"One of our most important civil aviation cases occurred in 1988, showing that unidentified flying objects can be a danger for air operations," he said.
"A Boeing 737 pilot on a final approach to the runway at the Puerto Montt airport suddenly encountered a large white light surrounded by green and red."
The pilot took a sharp turn to avoid a collision, according to Bravo.
The panel included a former Iranian fighter pilot, Parviz Jafari, who said in 1976 he tried in vain to fire from his jet at an "object which was flashing with intense red, green, orange and blue light" over Tehran.
But when he approached, "my weapons jammed and my radio communications garbled."
A former Air France captain, Jean-Charles Duboc, said in 1994 he and his crew saw "a huge flying disc" near Paris with a diameter of about 300 meters (1,000 feet) that left no sign on radar.
The disc "became transparent and disappeared in about 10 to 20 seconds," Duboc said.
A former official with the Federal Aviation Administration, John Callahan, said government agencies discourage inquiries into UFOs.
"'Who believes in UFOs?' is the kind of attitude of the FAA all the time," he said.
"However, when I asked the CIA person: 'What do you think it was,' he responded 'a UFO.'"
When Callahan suggested the government tell Americans about a UFO, the CIA official allegedly told him: "'No way, if we were to tell the American public there are UFOs they would panic.'"
UFOs may be fodder for comedians but there was no joking when a group of former pilots recounted seeing strange phenomena in the sky and demanded the US government reopen an investigation into unidentified flying objects.
Several pilots offered dramatic accounts of witnessing UFOs -- including a transparent flying disc and a triangular craft with mysterious markings -- as they insisted their questions needed to be taken seriously more than 30 years after the US file was closed.
"We want the US government to stop perpetuating the myth that all UFOs can be explained away in down-to-earth, conventional terms," said Fife Symington, former governor of Arizona and air force pilot who says he saw a UFO in 1997.
Skeptics say UFO sightings are merely aircraft, satellites or meteors re-entering the Earth's atmosphere.
But the retired pilots spoke to a sympathetic audience of UFO "believers" who heard them recall their encounters with seemingly other-worldly objects appearing out of the sky.
"Nothing in my training prepared me for what we were witnessing," said James Penniston, a retired US Air Force pilot, as he described seeing and touching a UFO when he was stationed at a British air base in Woodbridge.
He said he saw an inexplicable triangular craft in a clearing in the woods with "blue and yellow lights swirling around the exterior."
The UFO was "warm to the touch and felt like metal," Penniston said. One side of the craft had pictorial symbols and "the largest symbol was a triangle, which was centered in the middle of the others," he said.
Then after 45 minutes the light from the object "began to intensify" and it then "shot off at an unbelievable speed" before 80 Air Force personnel, he said. "In my logbook, I wrote 'speed: impossible.'"
Rodrigo Bravo from Chile's air force said UFOs needed to be studied but lamented that the media often belittle the sightings.
"Sadly the UFO subject has been contaminated with false information, out of touch with reality, provided by unqualified people to the media," Bravo said.
"One of our most important civil aviation cases occurred in 1988, showing that unidentified flying objects can be a danger for air operations," he said.
"A Boeing 737 pilot on a final approach to the runway at the Puerto Montt airport suddenly encountered a large white light surrounded by green and red."
The pilot took a sharp turn to avoid a collision, according to Bravo.
The panel included a former Iranian fighter pilot, Parviz Jafari, who said in 1976 he tried in vain to fire from his jet at an "object which was flashing with intense red, green, orange and blue light" over Tehran.
But when he approached, "my weapons jammed and my radio communications garbled."
A former Air France captain, Jean-Charles Duboc, said in 1994 he and his crew saw "a huge flying disc" near Paris with a diameter of about 300 meters (1,000 feet) that left no sign on radar.
The disc "became transparent and disappeared in about 10 to 20 seconds," Duboc said.
A former official with the Federal Aviation Administration, John Callahan, said government agencies discourage inquiries into UFOs.
"'Who believes in UFOs?' is the kind of attitude of the FAA all the time," he said.
"However, when I asked the CIA person: 'What do you think it was,' he responded 'a UFO.'"
When Callahan suggested the government tell Americans about a UFO, the CIA official allegedly told him: "'No way, if we were to tell the American public there are UFOs they would panic.'"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
