space

Ringed Shaped UFO — Interesting

This is one of the best “UFO in action” videos on Youtube right now. Whether it is legit or not is a whole nuther’ ball of wax. It is fair to note that the guy who shot this didn’t stabilize or focus correctly. Hell — if we had seen something like this, would we?

Check it out.

George knelt down and extended his rough heavy hand to help me to my feet. I stood upright and breathed in deeply, letting the thin and icy air awaken my senses. Time seemed to slow to a stop and then tentatively move forward again at half pace. Beside me, George’s breath came in abrupt gasps, in through his nose, and out through narrow pursed lips. The sun was setting and it reflected in his goggles, a soft milky orange glow, slowly fading. This was the summit of Mt. Shasta, Washington state, and my best friend and I had climbed all the way to the top, because it was still there.

I threw my arms wide to catch the last of its light, and inside I was singing at the top of my lungs. “HEEEEELLLLLLOOOOoooooo!”

I was 39 years old when they came for us at last. I was surprised that I was as surprised as I was, to be completely honest. I had always half expected we weren’t the only ones in the neighborhood, but it was still a powerful jolt to the nervous system when they revealed themselves to us en masse. It wasn’t so much the “invasion fleet” if that’s what they called it. The mobile phone video of their appearance in our atmosphere had spread rapidly, and we were all in shock, but that was nothing compared to the moment their friends on the ground revealed themselves to us simultaneously, in every human language, over every radio and TV station we had. That’s when we all started to realize that this was more then just an invasion; it was a coup.

Now much has been made of their appearance in the time since the first wave revealed itself to the world 5 years ago. It was almost as if years of bad science fiction had conditioned us to expect bug eyed reptiles with hybrid bumble bee DNA, when what we got was almost exactly the same as us, only “better” somehow. Each a near perfect humanoid specimen, strong and tall, with shining blue eyes and golden hair. Their bright smiles both mesmerized and terrified me. I know I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

The thing is: their arrival signaled a lot of things to a lot of different people. On one hand you had the “Heavens Door”; a cargo cult that worshiped a piece of aluminum foil supposedly found at the wreckage of the crash at Roswell. They were mild mannered, and mostly harmless, which – in a saner universe – might have been a compliment, but in my world it served as more of an indictment. They tended to cluster together in loose communal groups of 10-20 people, and rarely had much contact with outsiders, beyond work. They were technos and coders, and preferred short to medium term contracts with very large corporations. Outsiders weren’t shunned really, but it wasn’t easy to get them to open up about anything – especially when it came to the esoteric beliefs of the inner door.

On the flip side you had the militias. The “Sons of Thunder” and the “Ghosts of the Dawns Early Light” were two of the most well known in the months and years following first contact. They were both splinter groups formed chiefly of ex-soldiers and mercs. Many were politically well connected and held security clearances. They were friendly with the “Lupus Group”; a highly organized private army during the Iraqi Occupation and a wholly owned subsidiary of the Terrodyne Corporation, which seemed to own just about everything else already.

The Sons of Thunder didn’t care for them, any more then I did, the Ghosts of Dawns Early Light were probably working for the bastards before most of us even knew what to call our new “friends”. The human population of the planet fell into a nod for several months. Most people were zombies. There was a lot of booze and a lot of dope used up in the first year. A lot of people stopped going to work. A lot of kids basically dropped out of school. You probably think there was anarchy in the streets, and maybe there was. If it was anarchy, it was the slow motion anarchy of the blockbuster car chase. People were going through some of the motions, but there seemed to be a lot of resistance between “us” and everything we thought we had to “do” to function as a member of society.

It wasn’t long before things started to change politically. They had to, you know?  Nothing was getting done any more, and everyone was doped to the rafters on Plexo and cheap Canadian Whiskey. It took 10 months for beer to jump ahead of bottled water and soda pop on the North American top 3 beverages list. Barnhaus never had such a year before or since, I’ll wager.

I love this picture. I wonder what play lists they have on their ipod?

Higher res version:

George knelt down and extended his rough heavy hand to help me to my feet. I stood upright and breathed in deeply, letting the thin and icy air awaken my senses. Time seemed to slow to a stop and then tentatively move forward again at half pace. Beside me, George’s breath came in abrupt gasps, in through his nose, and out through narrow pursed lips. The sun was setting and it reflected in his goggles, a soft milky orange glow, slowly fading. This was the summit of Mt. Shasta, Washington state, and my best friend and I had climbed all the way to the top, because it was still there.

I threw my arms wide to catch the last of its light, and inside I was singing at the top of my lungs.

I was 39 years old when they came to us at last. I was surprised that I was as surprised as I was, to be completely honest. I had always half expected we weren’t the only ones in the neighborhood, but it was still a powerful jolt to the nervous system when they revealed themselves to us en mass. It wasn’t so much the “invasion fleet” if that’s what they called it. The mobile phone video of their appearance in our atmosphere had spread rapidly, and we were all in shock, but that was nothing compared to the moment their friends on the ground revealed themselves to us simultaneously, in every human language, over every radio and TV station we had. That’s when we all started to realize that this was more than just an invasion; it was a coup.

Now much has been made of their appearance in the time since the first wave revealed itself to the world 5 years ago. It was almost as if years of bad science fiction had conditioned us to expect bug eyed reptiles with hybrid bumble bee DNA, when what we got was almost exactly the same as us, only “better” somehow. Each a near perfect humanoid specimen, strong and tall, with shining blue eyes and golden hair. Their bright smiles both mesmerized and terrified me. I know I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

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I should remind everyone to keep an eye out for the upcoming eclipse. Should be a good one. More details found here:

More information on eclipse

I read such an interesting article on the always fascinating Scientific American’s web site today. Scientists have found another solar system about 5000 light years away. This is where planets revolve around a sun. Scientists are starting to think that solar systems may not be rare as conventional wisdom had believed. I was immediately struck. 5000 years. My mind paused for a second as my earth bound brain thought of the potentially endless grasp of space stretching out to a scale beyond human dimensions.

5000 light years is such a mind boggling distance. For example, the closest star to Earth (besides our sun) is something like 24,000,000,000,000 miles (38,000,000,000,000 kilometers) away. That’s the closest star.

Light travels at 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kilometers per second). Therefore, a light second is 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers). A light year is the distance that light can travel in a year, or:

186,000 miles/second * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 365 days/year = 5,865,696,000,000 miles/year

A light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles (9,460,800,000,000 kilometers).

So the nearest star is 24 TRILLION miles away! 38 TRILLION kilometers away! This closest star is called Proxima Centauri and is 4.2 light years away. Now consider 5000 light years away for this new solar system. Amazing isn’t it:

Scaled-Down Solar System Found 5,000 Light-Years Away

Smaller versions of Jupiter and Saturn may be the first of many

By JR Minkel -- Scientific American

Astronomers have discovered a pair of planets around a star 5,000 light-years away that resemble smaller versions of Jupiter and Saturn, hinting that solar systems like ours may be unexpectedly common. As in our own solar system, the closer of the two planets to their star is the larger one, 70 percent as massive as Jupiter; the more distant planet has 90 percent the mass of Saturn.

The star itself, dubbed OGLE-2006-BLG-109L, is dimmer than our sun and is only half its size. But the ratios between the two planets’ masses and that of their star as well as their relative orbital distances are very similar to those of Jupiter and Saturn. “Basically what we found is a scaled-down analog of our solar system,” says Scott Gaudi, an assistant professor of astronomy at The Ohio State University and lead author of the study published this week in Science.

Gaudi and his colleagues discovered the planets over a two-week period in early spring 2006, when their stellar parent crossed in front of a more distant star. Due to an effect called gravitational microlensing, the gravity of the nearer star magnified the light 500-fold from the more distant one. The motions of the planets caused periodic spikes in the brightness of the magnified light, which allowed the team to calculate the size of the planets and their distances from the star. The Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile first detected the event.

Researchers know of other multi-planet systems, but the planets are all huddled close to their stars. Microlensing events reveal planets that are more distant from their stars.

Previous to this discovery, microlensing had turned up four planets, two of them Jupiter-size. But this crossing was the first one that happened to have the right conditions to reveal the presence of smaller planets. “The first time we could find a Jupiter-Saturn analogue, we did,” Gaudis says. “And that provides us a hint … that these kind of solar system analogues might be quite common.”

External Links:
(26 nearest stars)

We have a long way to do to travel 5000 light years. (source article)

The history of space travel in 2 minutes:

There is a lunar eclipse coming in just 10 days time. I always forget these celestial events are going on, so thought I would mention it. I still remember my first eclipse. It was in the early 80’s and it happened during the day, it was quite dramatic. I remember a friend’s dad bringing out a few welding masks where I lived in Northern BC, Canada. The sky darkened and a hush fell across the land.

For more information: http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/LEmono/TLE2008Feb21/TLE2008Feb21.html

Times and Phases of the Total Lunar Eclipse of February 20/21, 2008

From start to finish, February’s lunar eclipse lasts about three hours and twenty-six minutes (not including the penumbral phases which are very difficult to see). The partial eclipse begins as the Moon’s eastern edge slowly moves into the Earth’s umbral shadow. During the partial phases, it takes just over an hour for the Moon’s orbital motion to carry it entirely within the Earth’s dark umbra. The color and brightness of the totally eclipsed Moon can vary considerably from one eclipse to another. Dark eclipses are caused by volcanic gas and dust which filters and blocks much of the Sun’s light from reaching the Moon. But since no major volcanic eruptions have taken place recently, the Moon will probably take on a vivid red or orange color during the total phase. After the total phase ends, it is once again followed by a partial eclipse as the Moon gradually leaves the umbral shadow.

The total phase of a lunar eclipse is called totality. At this time, the Moon is completely immersed within the Earth’s dark umbral shadow. During the February 20 eclipse totality will last just under 50 minutes. This is quite a bit less than the last total lunar eclipse ( August 28, 2007) which lasted 90 minutes.

The major phases of the eclipse occur as follows (all times are GMT or Greenwich Mean Time). The partial eclipse commences with first umbral contact at 01:43 GMT. Totality begins at 03:01 GMT and lasts until 03:51 GMT. The partial phases end at 05:09 GMT. Eclipse times for time zones in the United States and Canada are shown in the following table.

For more information visit this external NASA link: