Gateway To Hell, Giant Meteorite, Vacuum Decay, Bring Back Pluto !

Scattered across the ancient Mediterranean were alleged gateways to hell, according to Roman fables.  One such gateway remains at Hierapolis  in Turkey - Hooray ! We can throw the evil-doers (mostly high-ranking government officials) into the fiery pit from whence they came..but wait - it appears that toxic gas was responsible for the fate of sacrifices....

Ploutonion, named after the god Pluto...

Speaking of Pluto, New Horizons recently made a course correction, putting it on target for its rendezvous with Kuiper Belt object MU69 - 'Ultima Thule',  on Jan 1, 2019

Voyager 2 is nearing the beginning of interstellar space, following Voyager 1 , which left our solar system 6 years ago, and is now the farthest spacecraft from Earth, at 13 billion miles distant.

enamel pin available    Pin Alchemy @GreggB4

In the never - ending search for the elusive planet X , they have discovered an extremely distant object...personally, I just want Pluto re-instated as a planet. It's a lot closer - and we've 'been' there...just because it has an elliptical orbit is no reason to expel it from our solar system ! 

Bring Pluto Back Into The Fold...

A news report asks whether the JWST could spot alien life - the answer is possibly, but first they have to actually get the damn thing into space. Currently looking at a 2021 launch, it is running 14 years behind schedule - at this rate, you'd have a better chance taking pictures from the porthole of a Space X cruiser...

Speaking of the JWST, it appears that its predecessor is hobbling through space with stabiliser problems- down to one gyro from four...fingers crossed for the Hubble telescope, our 'eye-in-the-sky' since 1990

click here for more                 NASA/JPL/ University of Arizona

In other news we may have evidence of the first exomoon , which is great, but the current fad for deducing where something is by defining where it's NOT strikes me as possibly counter - productive*...discuss

A giant meteorite used as a doorstop in a rural farmhouse ? Sounds like the start of a science fiction...

Speaking of quantum computers, which we were not, or perhaps we were - here is a good / straight forward guide to that world of bizarreness

Another way to feel small and insignificant is to read this report on hypervelocity stars racing through our milky way...and the icing on the cake has to be this apocalyptic theory of vacuum decay ...honestly, what's the point ?

In a parting wave of cheerful news, the Ukraine has just announced plans to build a solar energy station...in Chernobyl.
If I were being crass, I'd say that every cloud has a silver lining.

Cheery Bye !


G

* I parallel this with our Anti-Social 'social' media culture, where a person is judged for what they didn't do- Person:  You didn't 'like' that anti-government joke
                 Me      :   I worry about 'humanising' the monsters.
                 Person:    So you're a nazi sympathiser, then ?
                 Me      :    WTF

Red Planet, Red Dragon And The Red KBO

Since the Pluto flypast on July 14 2015, New Horizons has been hurtling through space at approximately 32,000 mph, heading for its next rendezvous - Kuiper Belt Object MU69.
The report I linked is a tad speculative, as recent attempts to observe the object drew a blank - it remains uncertain whether it is a single object, or a cluster of smaller space rocks - all that is known for sure is that it is red.
Although which particular shade remains uncertain...

Artist impression               ©NASA/JHUAPL/SwRi

Regardless, New Horizons powers onward through the bleak vastness of space, aiming for a rendezvous on New Years day 2019
I must set my alarm...
Seriously though, I'm still trying to get my head around the sheer distance being covered.
That's another year and a half at 32,000mph.
Travelling 24 / 7
Without even a pitstop.
Damn

Speaking of things that move quickly...
Elon Musk may or may not have permission to build a hyperloop between Washington D.C. and New York.
Transporting people at 700 mph  would certainly ease the pressure of road traffic and the carbon footprint of flights...
staying with the innovative Elon Musk, his Dragon outfit are reworking their Mars landers.
This was reported widely as a complete withdrawal from commercial landings, but apparently it's just a re-design...

Meanwhile, those pesky alien signals...

The latest on the signal from Ross 128, is that it comes from a geostationary satellite.
However, there are still uncertainties .
At least it's not the microwave oven , this time...

Meanwhile, on Mars...   ©NASA/JPL

It has been asked of NASA, whether there were ancient civilisations on Mars.
Personally I hope the answer is yes, and the atmosphere vanished due to unchecked global warming...

Apologies for that outburst.
No more politics, or conspiracy theories...I promise !
Well, that's what the martians said...

  ©A mapaday.com

Mars Landings, Space Utopia, and Nightmare Wasps

Ice on Mars

Simulation of Schiaparelli landing   ©ESA

 We are mere days away from the attempt by ESA / Roskosmos to break the NASA Mars exploration monopoly , with the two- part mission to identify the chemical makeup of the atmosphere.
The attempt will be aided by the orbiting Mars Express, with its instruments that were initially to designed to aid the ill - fated Beagle 2 lander.
Since 2003 , Mars Express has been orbiting and relaying priceless data , and will now help the dual- faceted Exomars mission in its final stages of entry /descent into the Martian atmosphere.
The mission is basically an attempt to prove whether there were conditions once favourable for life on Mars.
The Trace Gas Orbiter will remain in a low orbit around Mars, with Schiaparelli attempting a surface landing.
Schiaparelli is basically a laboratory,  not a  roving explorer, so sadly no companion for Curiosity .
Don't forget though, that Opportunity still roams the martian surface, collecting information.
It's all very functional , reducing the unknown to manageable levels of ' known' and understood - which is very necessary, at least in our own ' backyard ' , especially given the revelation that there are ten times as many galaxies in the heavens than previously thought.
The latest estimates peg the figure at two trillion galaxies.
I laugh at the thought of a team of lab- coated scierntists attempting to count every single one only to reach one trillion , 6 billion, 3million and 457,000 when someone interrupts and they have to start again.
Trivial, but it tickles me.
I'm assured however, that's not how it's done.
Still, let me just say that again-
Two trillion galaxies.
My attempt to rationalise such a huge number led me down another internet  rabbit hole.
A trillion is a milion million.
Which is a lot.
And that's the number of galaxies in the observable universe at least .
Galaxies, not stars.
There are possibly 400 billion stars in our own galaxy.
Which puts our little exploration of our neighbouring world in perspective.

Dione also contains water

In our own tiny corner of space, we have a solar system teeming with watery moons with subsurface oceans.
Recent data from the Saturn system explorer Cassini tells us that the moon Dione may also harbour an underground ocean , up to 40 miles deep: the deepest part of our own oceans is  a mere 7 miles / 9 km, or so.
It joins the growing list of  Enceladus, Europa, Ganymede , and the contentious planet / dwarf planet Pluto which all seem to contain large bodies of water

On another positive note, a new initiative is announced , with the purpose of creating a nation of space - dwellers who will colonise a giant orbiting craft known as Asgardia.
The ultimate goal is to democratise space, which sounds fine, but my concern is why choose a Nordic name then , thus firmly laying claim to a specific nationality and its own mythos ?
Just saying...

Speaking of which, space brain is a potential new danger for future human travellers to the outlying worlds...


On a final, uncomfortable, note:
A prehistoric nightmare wasp* somehow conflated in my mind with the news that a virus has been disovered that contains DNA from a mosquito
Nightmare fuel.

Megalara Garuda -These specimens are dead - phew !

*Obviously I checked further, to find any living descendants of the ancient ' nightmare wasp '.
This foolish internet quest led me to the Megalara Garuda wasp, discovered in Indonesia in 2011.
The fact that no-one lives on the island where it was discovered is not really surprising...

Hell and High Water

© Flickr / SpaceX

Blimey, we've got a unifying theme this week - well , I think so - on Monday last, NASA announced the discovery of water plumes erupting from the surface of Europa
Personally, I wasn't too impressed, as we'd already heard of similar plumes on Enceladus .
Perhaps the most impressive thing is the sheer scale of the water jets - up to 125 miles / 200 km above surface level.
So, pretty darned impressive.
Enough so that we already have an illustration of a SpaceX craft there.
Of course, the elephant in the room is the fatal dose of radiation levels on Europa , courtesy of  Jupiter .
Not much chance of a quick selfie before imminent death...

Likewise, the recently mooted ocean beneath the surface of Pluto may be up to 62 miles / 99 km deep - That's a lot of sea.
The deepest part of our own oceans is a mere 7 miles / 10 km .
On the subject of oceans,  rising sea levels present a very real threat to NASA
Time to find a new launch pad !
Launch pads could be a wise investment, what with the increasing noise about the colonisation of Mars / the Moon / deep space.
The rockets currently being displayed by Elon Musks Space X and Jeff Bezos Blue Origin appear to be engaged in a ' mine is bigger than yours ' routine, with operational capabilities coming a poor second...
Still, healthy competition can only lead to better designs, surely
Speaking of designs (see what I did there?), it appears that ostrich eggs are marked with protein dna strands going back a long time.
I'm not sure what this means in the greater scheme of things , although there's probably a direct link to a Jurassic World - type scenario, where we happily watch dinosaurs with colourful feathers tearing each other apart.

 From Earth, we move inwards towards Mercury where we have been surprised to learn that there is tectonic activity happening there now - and also, it's shrinking - hardly surprising , with an average daytime temperature of 800 degrees farenheit.
Pretty hellish, then - but still active.
I find it somehow comforting knowing that worlds we previously considered geologically dead, are very much active.
We have Mercury, wilting in the sun, and Pluto with its beating heart is far from being the distant ball of windswept ice that my childhood imagination conjured...

Final frames from Rosetta    © ESA

POSTSCRIPT

Rosetta has ended its mission . After an epic 6 billion-mile journey, the Rosetta craft has descended to the surface of Comet 67P . The media is awash with words like crashlanding, and such - but at only 1 mph, it's hardly a spectacular finale.
Personally, I still wonder why it was not simply left to drift in space , perhaps locked into the comets orbit forever ?
After all, surely theft of industrial secrets isn't an issue in space ?
On the other hand, you can never trust those pesky aliens.
Perhaps we should build a Space Wall...

Gas Giants, Helium Balloons and the Arrow of Time

Apparently the hole in the ozone layer is healing, after the virtually global ban on CFCs was introduced some thirty years ago, so yay!
We did something right...
I think the end of the Eighties trend for ' big hair ' probably made a difference, too...

pic: Mary Sue.com

More Good News...

In Tanzania, they have discovered a huge underground source of Helium, so clowns making balloon animals  and stoners talking in funny voices can rejoice !
Seriously though - Helium occurs in abundance throughout the universe, but sadly it is lacking on Earth,  generally only occuring as a byproduct of radioactive decay...so the discovery of a secret stash is good news!

In other news...

Scientists have discovered a new nucleus that points to a certain place in space, which indicates that time is linear, only ever moving forward.
So, no time travel, then.
I find this oddly deflating (certainly for fans of Back To The Future) , but don't forget - it may only be true in our universe!
Which leads me to wonder whether time even exists in other universes.

Mars has Manganese   pic MSS /  NASA

Recent discovery of oxygen whch was once plentiful in the Martian atmosphere paints a picture of a more Earth-like world , especially with its evidence of ancient oceans and lakes.
Speaking of oceans , it seems there may be one beneath the surface of Pluto, following visual cues from New Horizons data ...and vying for recognition in the possible ' water-world' stakes is another dwarf planet, namely Ceres.

Soon to be at a gas giant near you...

Speaking of long distance travel ( do you like the smooth flow of links here?) , after launching way back in 2011, Juno finally arrives at Jupiter on Monday July 4th 2016 ( auspicious date for some ), to begin a survey of  the atmosphere of the gas giant, helping us better understand the mysterious world .
It's a pretty extreme and turbulent ride ahead for the little explorer, so fingers crossed...

Finally, another piece of good news is that funding has been secured for further missions for New Horizons and Dawn , as well as other craft involved in exploration of space .
Positive steps into the unknown !

Vanishing Satellites, Planetary Collisions and Nitrogen Lakes

News just in tells us that there has been a collision on Jupiter, probably involving a stray asteroid.
In a move that laughs in the face of improbability, it has been documented by not one, but two amateur astronomers - which conjures a strange image of dedicated, lonely skywatchers !
More to the point, it's bizarre that it should even be noticeable from Earth.
Let's look at the maths for a moment.
At it's closest point to Earth, Jupiter is approximately 628 million miles away.
The object which collided with the gas giant is estimated as a few hundred feet in diameter, so not exactly big.
Yet here is the footage.

Hitomi launch 17 Feb 2016            pic ©JAXA

It's great that amateur astronomers are on the case, because even professionals can mess up -  Japan have just lost their brand new orbiting telescope, barely weeks after launch.
In a blow to JAXA , the satellite named Hitomi, has broken up and is now beyond recovery.
It was designed to examine large and powerful events, such as supernovae and black holes, but the joint Japanese / NASA mission is no more.
It remains a mystery as to what exactly occured, but the 273 million dollar telescope is now so much space debris.
STOP PRESS: The satellite Hitomi has suddenly re-appeared, it has shed some debris, and is in a spin / freefall. 
Due to the uncertainty of this development, I'm not going to delete the previous article yet.
Awaiting further developments as of 30 March 2016.
Exciting !
Thank you !

The controversial (well, he is responsible for the downgrading of Pluto) , Mike Brown @plutokiller, has found another Kuiper belt object whose unusual movements corroborate his planet nine theory - note I said theory - his evidence has not yet been peer reviewed, so it's still early days - although he's probably getting lots of love from the Conspiracy / New Age Niburu contingent.
Cynical, me ?

Frozen nitrogen lake on Pluto       pic NASA/ JPL / Caltech

In other news, hawk - eyed photo scrutinisers (is there no actual name for this increasingly relevant pastime ?) have discovered a small ( 20 miles wide !) frozen lake on Pluto.
Don't book that sailing holiday just yet - it's a nitrogen lake, and without a sun to defrost the Nitrogen - on the other hand there appears to be warmth emanating from inside Pluto , hence the new geological areas, so, despite its position out on the edge of our solar system , Pluto is anything but cold and lifeless.
In a moment of serendipity, I learned today that -169°c is the temperature at which nitrogen liquifies, and nitrogen is the liquid in which proponents (clients?) of Cryonics are preserved.
How this impacts on the news from Pluto, I'm not sure, but there's probably a dystopian sci - fi in there, somewhere...

One place not to go kite flying (or probably even using light sails to harness photons as propulsion) , is the newly discovered supermassive black hole with winds of up to 200 million mph .
That's fast - infact, it's a significant percentage of the speed of light - imagine the ability to 'slingshot' a spacecraft , using the thrust to boost travel speed...

Just to boost those feelings of cosmic insignificance, our Milky Way galaxy ( of which we are a dot on the outer edge) , is part of the Laniakea Supercluster of 100,000 galaxies.

And on that note of cosmic insignificance, I say, cheerio - till next time !

From the lights of Ceres to the plains of Pluto

Ceres Occator crater - closest view yet...

The indefatigable Dawn explorer is dropping (slowly, the Ion engines are fragile) to its closest point in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, and hopefully a final solution to the true nature of those baffling lights.
We are told it will be in place for mid-December, so anytime now
From an orbit of 915 miles, it will drop to 230 miles , hopefully providing us with a final definitive moment when we can collectively nod knowingly, saying -'So that's what it is, hmmm'.
I suspect we'll still be none the wiser, but even so, it is a truly fascinating thing.
And to think it's on our nearest dwarf planet.
The closer we get, the more I am convinced that they are subsurface, molten sources, probably of intense heat, too.
If you check out the other images of Ceres, you can see many examples of similar, brightly coloured ejecta around the cratered surface.
I think it's a natural phenomenon of some kind - if it is an alien city, it's the equivalent of putting on every light in the city and shouting ' Here we are! Come and get us!'.
Which would be foolish on a cosmic scale.
Of course it could be a double bluff, and they want us to explore what appears to be a dead city...


Whilst entertaining such wild ideas, scientists have apparently proven that our reality is not a hologram, so - yeah, sorry to all the Matrix-philes and existentialists out there, but apparently reality is not an illusion.
Well, not a holographic illusion.

Meanwhile, Pluto continues to surprise with the latest high definition image downloads from New Horizons...

I'm amazed that this is a strip of land on a planet over 3 billion miles away...


Back on Earth...

'Nudol', Russian anti-satellite system

Russia has successfully tested its first anti- satellite missile.
The image above allegedly came from a Russian site - I especially like the blending of the hardline military vehicle with fluffy clouds and golden crops.
Seems almost peaceful...
This is proof that we are in a new era of space war - or at least the paranoid defence of our satellite capabilities.
This article makes for sobering reading.
For myself, I tend to think of satellites as GPS and mapping and such things - of course it's far more than that. Many nations are dependent on satellite functionality - business, military, communications, weather - so this is the beginning of overhead powerplay...groan.
Okay, so it's not the beginning - the U.S. already have ASAT, their own missile system ready - it's just that Russia and China have entered the fray.

This being the case, I just hope that the joint US / Russian Venus mission goes ahead, along with the proposed ESA/ Roskosmos moon mission - just to remind us all that we can work together and do constructive, forward looking things...

In other revelations this week, it is mooted that there was no Big Bang, and infact the Universe has existed forever . Whether I find this cheering or depressing is uncertain at present - the illustration of the man blowing up the expanding balloon / universe says it all , I think.

  So the universe expands, like a balloon - but who's inflating it - and what's out there?

Vanishing Planets , Alien Balls and Hydrogen Pi

In recent news, our closest Earth-like planetary neighbour, the snappily - named Alpha Centauri bb , a mere 4.3 light years away, has vanished.
 Conspiracy a go - go !
Not really, it was only discovered in 2012, and that was due to the wobble of a star which indicated an Earth-sized planet nearby.
The fact is that it may have never existed, just one problem when trying to determine an objects existence based on vague data.
So there we have the disappearance of something that possibly never was.
Good thing we didn't send out a probe, eh?

With the current increase in better quality telescopes free of light pollution (i.e. in orbit), it's surely only a matter of time before some entrepeneur offers unique planetary names, perhaps as gifts for the person who has everything, and whose tastes are jaded by constant indulgence and a lack of restraint , - which makes me wonder , given the proposed joint lunar mission between Europe and Russia, how are they going to negotiate all those lunar land deeds that have been sold ?

Oort cloud                                    © NASA jpg

In other news,astronomers have discovered the furthest object in the solar system , a small world known as V774104 in the Oort cloud .
If its orbit doesn't bring it closer to the sun, then apparently it will be of interest to astronomers (as a world from the beginning of the solar system) , but they're holding off until the orbit can be accurately determined - which takes a year.
Essentially they're hoping that its orbit has never been affected by Neptune.
Planetary scientist Michael Brown said :
"There's no reason to be excited yet".
Heady stuff, eh?

V774104  in all its glory...                         © S Sheppard, C Trujillo & S Tholen

Meanwhile back on Earth...
A flurry of metallic balls have dropped from the sky, four at the last count, in Spain and Turkey.
Possibly man-made and pertaining to satellites or even a hoax (check the smiling people handling the strange, possibly toxic objects...) hmmm...
Oddly though, this is news the day before the landing of the space junk known as WT1190F.
I say landing, but it's actually scheduled to crash into the ocean a few kilometres south of Sri Lanka.
That's if there is anything left after re-entry.
Interesting and odd though, that it should be flagged in advance, when so many similar incidents occur without prior information.

Cryovolcanoes on Pluto                  ©NASA/JPL/ Sci-News

In still other news, it is now believed that Pluto houses at least two cryovolcanoes, hinting at a subsurface ocean.
To reduce the scientific terms to reality : this means ice volcanoes.
The mind boggles.
Does this mean that they erupt in showers of snowballs ?
Or that, instead of molten lava slides, we have rivers of slush with dry-ice fog, for dramatic effect ?

Water is an element as much as fire, but how bizarre!
So, with Enceladus, Ganymede, possibly Europa and now Pluto, we have a slew of potential water worlds in our solar system.
Quite a change from the dry, rocky and cratered planets that were illustrated (artists depiction) in text books in my youth .
Infact, I remember being quite devastated that there was such a dissonance between tne exotic alien worlds presented in film and the likes of Star Trek, and the dull reality of our nearest neighbouring planets.

It is a thing, apparently!

Usb cable and quantum mechanics...

Bringing all this speculation down to an individual level - I read an interesting piece of conjecture which speculated that objects which are theoretically entangled - for instance, one in a black hole , and the other on the opposite side of the universe, could be conjoined by a wormhole.
Wormholes are a great sci-fi staple as a method of taking shortcuts through 'spacetime', and the idea of wormholes providing a link between two 'entwined' particles would neatly eliminate gaps in the theory of relativity, as well as giving us an example of quantum mechanics at work in our universe-
Why not? After all, the signs are already here, on an almost hum-drum level.
Seriously - a daily occurence.
For instance, say you want to insert a usb cable into your pc.
Annoyingly, it doesn't fit first time.
So you flip it, and try again. No.
Flip it again - it works .

This implies a superposition - a third state of readiness for the cable.
But we know it only has two sides...in this dimension.


Let's not stop there - a recent discovery is the presence of the equation pi in the base state of the hydrogen atom, which, if true, hints at a level of prior knowledge that defies linear time .


Until next time!

Tractor Beams and Space Junk

Did you know that we 'Earthlings' are surrounded by a 'bubble' of our own sounds / t.v. / radio transmissions?
Apparently it stretches 200 light years around us, which is pretty big, but on a cosmic scale, is tiny.
And yet no aliens have been in touch.
Perhaps they saw X Factor.

In Other News...
Scientists in the uk have successfully manipulated a physical object  using only sound waves.
Okay, so it's only a tiny bead, but it's a start.
Tractor Beams are real
The Future is now!

I was thinking of this the other day - the bewildering exponential curve of everything.
Is it me or is the curve of science and discoveries going through the (virtual) roof ?
In tihs blog, I tend to focus on a narrow band where my personal interests lie, which is mainly all things related to space travel and exploration.
In that field alone, we've seen some astonishing advances in this year - the first close up images from Pluto and its moons, ongoing examination of Mars by the Curiosity rover, now yielding details of ancient rock strata and riverbeds : we landed an explorer on a comet, whilst maintaining the benign presence of an orbiting mothership. Another explorer, (Cassini), which was tasked with mapping the moons of Saturn is now testing water plumes from Enceladus, Maven has just entered orbit around Mars, joining the Mars Express and Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter and moves are afoot to send initial human missions to Mars as well as further moon exploration  - a mooted joint venture between the ESA and Roscosmos.
'Dawn' is entering a lower orbit for final close passes of planetoid Ceres in December .
And meantime, one of our furthest explorers, New Horizons is heading for rendezvous with KBO 2014MU69
Keppler is searching for exoplanets in the 'habitable zone' of distant stars.
Voyagers one and two are heading into deep space.
It's busy out there...

  It's a busy solar system! No parking at any time...                     pic by Olaf Frohn . 

Then there's the ISS
As well as an endless band of satellites in a ring around us.
And space junk.
Officially known as 'Orbital Debris'.
At the last count 50,000 pieces orbiting planet Earth, ranging from tiny flecks of paint to objects the size of a family car

Speaking of which - did you know that an unknown object will fall to Earth on Friday 13th November ?
Unlucky for some.
Apparently it's hollow space junk, and whilst this is fairly common, this one is being monitored for reasons unknown.
It has even been given a classification : WT1190F (or WTF in popular parlance).
The 'WTF' is accurate really, as they actually don't know what it is - cue spooky music - (theremin)
Theories range from an alien vessel to the Biblical millstone cast into the sea by God, thus fulfilling Revelation 13- ahem.
Anyway, they are pretty sure it will land in the Indian Ocean, approximately 5 km south of Sri Lanka - and woe betide any local fisherman in that triangulation.

            Landing area of WT1190F  (approx 5 km)                      Pic © Bill Gray   Project Pluto

The Picture That Never Was , And Aliens That May Be

There is now an app that allows you to remove unwanted persons from your photos.
Not exactly news, but it got me thinking.
We live in a time that seems obsessed with correcting and retouching images.
I know this, because I get that twinge of discomfort whenever someone posts old photos where I'm usually looking awkward, and the ability to retouch, rendering everything just right, would be great!
Add to this, the endless variety of software to retouch images / add retro filters etc, and , voila!
When is a fake picture a real picture ?
When it's online, of course!
I remember reading a thread that discussed a black and white photo in an old magazine which had shown a group of men proudly standing around a downed pterodactyl . It was an old black and white photo, taken somewhere in the U.S.A
For years I was an avid collector of The Fortean Times and similar publications which might feature such a picture and after reading this piece, I became convinced that I had seen the actual photograph. The only question was which back issue ?
I searched through every issue, but no sign of such a picture.

One of a few photos of cowboys and pterodactyl

 Although I never found the actual photo, I am still convinced that I saw it.
Except that now I question whether I actually read such an article .
Anyway, this thread re-ignited my interest, and I promptly went online.
The resulting swathe of black/white images of old - western style images of men with a pterodactyl took me by surprise.
At first I felt vindicated.
Then came the doubt.
After all, these were surely fake.
But then why would anyone go to so much trouble posing / faking elaborate images of cowboys with a dead pterodactyl ?
By this time, my questioning mind had broken free of its real world shackles and now I was convinced that there really had been an incident out in the isolated deserts of the USA, where a group of hunters had managed to down a 'Thunderbird ', a missing link from prehistory.
It showed me how easy it is to fall for online reality.
The old adage that 'the camera never lies' is not true.
In some ways it never was, and photographic trickery is as old as the hills.

George Meliés

The difficult thing is that  we now live in the age of social media, with pictures taken as proof of places visited or deeds done - and yet, we also have increasingly sophisticated manipulation of images .
I think it's true to a degree that people are becoming more skilled at spotting photographic fakery, as 'Photoshopped' becomes a verb.
The internet has its own (n)etiquette, and linguistics - Lolcats, memes, selfies and suchlike.
On the one hand, it would seem that in the online world, people just want to be in control of their own image, but is there more to it ?
Is this all part of a merging between the worlds of human and machine?
Is our perception adjusting to fit ?

Earlier today I read of the 'self-awareness' computer being anticipated for 2049 , which sounds remarkably self-assured.
How can such a fixed date be asserted for something which is surely open to external influence ?
What if we are aided by an alien race who arrive before then, perhaps even driven by such self-aware technology, keen to impart its benefits to us ?
After all, despite being isolated in this far flung corner of the Milky Way, 6 billion living beings is a worthy sea of converts.

What if there were no such intervention and the whole thing was a promotion for a series of trashy robot overlord movies ?
That would be depressing.
Although, I'd expect robot 'movies' to have evolved by then, perhaps becoming multi-sensory VR driven 'experiences', the sort of thing depicted in 'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale'
The human mind plays tricks, and memories are easily fabricated or warped.
All it takes is a photograph.


This weeks interstellar news was the alleged discovery of what appear to be alien artefacts surrounding a star which is a mere 1500 light years distant.
It's intriguing also because it is one of 150,000 stars being examined for unusual traits by citizen scientists .
It is also the only one of the 150,000 stars which is dimming in such a strange fashion (something is occasionally obscuring 20% of light from the star)
Many have declared the object a 'Dyson' sphere , much to the consternation of the physicist responsible for the theory (and possibly the copyright holder of the bagless vacuum cleaners.)
Without getting embroiled in the theory, it could result in a visit from aliens.*

 The discovery has prompted calls for further exploratory assessment  via the Very Large Array  in Mexico, and time has been booked in January to point it in the direction of the star named VIC 8462852,in a search for the sort of radio signals which may indicate an advanced technological race of beings at work.
The next set of info should emerge in January 2016, when the requested pointing of the VLA may give us further insight.

Meanwhile, back in our own solar system...

Pluto - pits and streaks, each one is hundreds of metres long!

NASA made a recent announcement of the latest downloads from Pluto.
After what must seem like a millenia being neglected in the darkest , most distant corner of our solar system, Pluto is enjoying a moment in the spotlight!
Okay, so maybe I'm being over enthusiastic, but I am happy, as it plays into the other revelations of subsurface oceans, and dynamic geography apparent on other bodies in the solar system.
Like many others, I am guilty of being uninspired by memories of crudely drawn and dull coloured images of planets from childhood text books.
Infact, the only planetary information which I found interesting tended to be about the comparative scale of the worlds, and the incredible distances involved in any attempt to travel there, so the current glut of space exploration is pure joy!

* Hardcore trivia for conspiracy believers: the physicist who came up with the theory of Dyson spheres was Freeman Dyson. 
Freeman is the surname of the scientist / protagonist in the popular computer game Half-Life, involved in battling with a race of aliens who enter this world through a space portal...
Dyson is a popular bagless vacuum cleaner brand.
Thank you.

Postscript Addendum: 

Apologies for the 'scrappy' nature of this posting, it's been giving me technical headaches for some obscure reason, with whole swathes of material vanishing without even backup to refer to, requiring tedious rewrites and guesswork. 
Hopefully issues will be resolved - also, please feel free to send feedback on any aspect of this blog. It's lonely out here!

Blank Wall

I've really hit the virtual wall now.
A big blank.
The dread writers block.
Not that I'm really a writer -
I mean, we are all citizen writers now, surely ?
I scan the news for anything that might stimulate the flow of neurons in the brain.

The Pope is touring the U.S.
That's news.

Dogs representative on Earth ?     pic ©Foxylauralou

The marketing machine is already in full swing.

Meanwhile...
Here in the uk, the prime minister is suddenly quiet.
Ahem.
Or 'oink ', as they say.

But nothing is really firing the synapses.

Been like this for days now.

Could be the weather, a great u.k. standby.
As we head into Autumn, we are promised a brief flurry of late summer:
A season we almost entirely missed this year.
As I write, this weekend (Sept 27-28th) the world has (apparently) survived a total of six 'apocalyptic' asteroid collisions.
The nearest one skimming past at a mere 110,000 km.
Not terribly close then - infact, further away than the moon .
Yeah, it's that exciting.
And on Sunday , the rare treat of a bloodmoon and a lunar eclipse - (alleged harbingers of doom)
To admire at its fullest you are advised to go outside at three a.m. GMT.
In my neck of the woods, there is too much light pollution, and that time of night is generally spent snoring.
Beyond that, nothing new.

Detail on Pluto- needs a banana for scale    ©NASA/JPL/Caltech

Oh, the latest pics from the ongoing Pluto downloads are amazing, with all sorts of weird and wonderful.
Which depresses me, as we no longer have a craft orbiting Pluto which is capable of taking more detailed closeups of sites which are now appearing in the downloads..
New Horizons is already some 5 million km away from Pluto, on its way to a rendezvous in the Kuiper Belt.

Note to NASA, should funding permit, how about a relay satellite for future outer solar system missions ?
A craft capable of reaching and orbiting the outer worlds for the purpose of follow up reconnaisance work ?

Just a thought.

It could also serve as a galactic 'buoy', hovering in space, with a lone red light flickering;
'Welcome to our Solar System, Earth Welcomes Careful Drivers'
You know the sort of thing.

Oh, N.A.S.A. are doing a big reveal with regard to a discovery on Mars on Monday 28th.
Tabloid news have already declared Aliens, and tiresome wags have made the comparison to the ongoing migrant situation.

So, there we have it.
In lieu of anything eventful, I've been a bit of a news / trivia aggregate.
Horribly topical, too.
I will update following the NASA reveal on Monday-


Lo! By the magic of the interwebs, it is now  Monday 28th September 2015!
The big news is - they found evidence of flowing water on Mars.
Not such a world-shattering reveal, then - but where there is water, generally there is life.
The flow appears to be seasonal, and the source is within mountains.
Speculation abounds!


I have to keep my virtual eye on the ball.
It always seems to be a red ball, too.
You know the one - an aid to focus and meditation.
Don't drop the ball, suspended a short distance in front of you.


I always get distracted.
Or I picture Yoda in a swamp
Teaching me the zen of the Force.
And I drop the ball.
This whole thread reminds me of a sequence in the Midwich Cuckoos (originally filmed as Village of The Damned).

Village of The Damned 1960

A prolonged and very tense scene, where a teacher has to think of a blank wall,
In order to stop the precocious psychic alien children from reading his thoughts...

Blank Wall.

Which is where I began.

Alien Finds On Distant Worlds.

In the news this week, we learn that scientists are preparing to awaken the mollivirus, a super-virus discovered in 30,000 year old Permafrost in Siberia.
Apparently they will first check that it will not affect humans or animals.
So that's alright, then.
Seriously though - if that's the case, why bother waking it up anyway?
Have they never heard the phrase 'Let Sleeping Dogs Lie?'
Not that it's a dog...
...except further conjecture is that some of the complex super-virus genus might conceivably be lifeforms in stasis. Or gestating...haven't they seen 'The Thing' ?

Ahem.
I remove my protective but highly - sensitive tin-foil helmet...

Meanwhile, back on Ceres
Well, strictly speaking, above Ceres...
The image above is a view of the 'Occator' crater, alias 'spot 2'. The crater walls are some two miles high, and very steep.

Personally, the more I see, the more I think it may be some subsurface, molten activity - for instance , it seems as though much of Plutos shifting surface landscape is altered through some form of internal heat, so why not.
The latest images from the Dawn mission, taken from a height of  915 miles, also show detail of a crater with the ubiqitous 'reflective' material on the crater walls.
This lends weight to the idea that it is some form of highly reflective material, possibly a form of salt crystal / magnesium sulfate?
It appears to be a very recent crater, and further imaging indicates some form of ongoing modification happening.
That's right, the dwarf planet is self-repairing !
Although, I'm sure there are better, more accurate, scientific terms available...
I'm just highly excited!
It's all happening!
After a fallow period, we're getting images thick and fast from the solar system!

Pluto with better resolution

Thanks to artefacts hampering the quality of previous images from Pluto, we are now get stunning full resolution versions, and Ceres continues to impress and puzzle.
There's even a fine 3-d anaglyph, for those with red / blue viewing specs.
I'm not going to waste time with conjecture, I'll just create links to the sites with the best images.
All I will say is this (dons tin-foil helmet);
although the latest images of the Occator and Haulani craters on Ceres (the craters with the most reflective 'lights') are taken from a much closer point , we still don't see clear definition.
There are images which clearly show light coloured ejecta around craters, which seems to indicate that this is subsurface material which has been displaced.
However, we have to wait until December for the final, closest, yet probably still ambiguous images...

A new Ceres crater with light streaks on the wall...

Watch The Skies

I'm getting all fired up with astronomy here, thanks to the recent Pluto flypast.
One piece of trivia that excited me was the fact that the brain of New Horizons is powered by the same CPU as the Playstation1*

The mind boggles - this might explain why its  download rate is a mere 1kb / second.
Apparently it will take up to 16 months to completely download the info from Pluto / Charon, etc.
Don't forget though, the transmission point is over 3 billion miles away - and getting more distant all the time.

Ps One Evan Amos CC Licensed

Even so, we already have a wealth of stuff to mull over about this distant corner of our solar system.
We learned that there are mountains of water ice some 11,000 feet high on Pluto.
We even got a 3D gif ...

The icy mountains of Pluto...*

We have discovered a mountain in a weird moat - like depression on Charon, and evidence of chasms up to seven miles deep.
Also the relatively youthful geology of both Pluto and Charon indicate that they are very much active - this in itself, despite the lack of any obvious heat source, is peculiar.

Before I plunge headlong into the depths of tinfoil helmet - land...

* I mentioned the CPU of the PS one which powers the brain of New Horizons. - well, the thruster controls etc...
The craft itself is powered by an RTG, specifically Plutonium, an element named after - guess.

As well as the gadgetry for readings and suchlike, New Horizons also contains some of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the American astronomer who discovered Pluto.
Enroute to the Kuiper Belt now, he becomes  the first human whose mortal remains have travelled beyond our solar system.

 Clyde Tombaugh was also one of the highest profile astronomers to report a ufo sighting.

Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930

Not only that , but he spotted unusual activity on the surface of Mars in 1941, in the form of bright flashes of light.

Curious ?

How about the bright lights recently spotted in craters on Ceres , which even NASA are puzzled over?

The mysterious lights of Ceres...

Yes, Ceres, remember that little blip of excitement ?

Another dwarf planet, some 250 million miles away, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

It's gone oddly quiet on that front lately , and the only real news which I could glean was that in early August the Dawn craft should get closer, as it enters an orbit of around 900 miles above the surface for hopefully more  in - depth photos.

Speculation already abounds - not least because we are seemingly being teased with almost but not quite detailed closeups.

The previous link above leads to a piece on the mysterious hazes which occasionally appear above the reflective patches.
there is debate as to whether these patches are composed of ice or salt - more importantly why don't we have Spectrometer analysis ?

Apparently the Spectrometer is otherwise engaged ...

Speaking of which, an animation of Ceres rotation has been released, which has missing footage.
Footage which may reveal the true nature of the lights...

Some say the haze is linked to an area of 'mini - atmosphere'...

Another theory is that it is an abandoned space base.

As the Dawn probe spirals closer, we can only wait.

Watch The Skies





* Pluto mountains GIF by MattiasMalmer , all other images Creative commons educational please thank you