It was a normal day on Twitter until William Shatner did this:
@Cmdr_Hadfield Are you tweeting from space? MBB
@WilliamShatner Yes, Standard Orbit, Captain. And we’re detecting signs of life on the surface.
Intriguing video. The consistent luminous density of the objects, and lack of atmospheric distortion, suggests trickery. However, there’s a subtle separation and concretion in the pairing that seems too clever hoaxer. Or are they just planes? Judge for yourself.
This video was reported taken by “Mike Smith” in a plane over Atlanta, Georgia on June 4, 2012.
This bizarre footage comes from the SOHO (Solar & Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft. A craft launched in 1995 whose mission was to study the deep core of the sun and solar emissions. It was a join project between the ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA.
We are not as convinced as this YouTuber that the bizarre footage is a solid object. But the images are curious and worthy of further study.
In events like this, the initial reports are often the most interesting. Note that this report refers to two, yes two, separate events. This is something later reports would ignore. Many hours later NASA would claim it was “a tiny part of an asteriod”. What do you think?
A recent study by the National Research Council finds that space junk …
has reached a tipping point, with enough currently in orbit to continually collide and create even more debris, raising the risk of spacecraft failures.
Well, it was bound to happen. Us humans, despite efforts to the contrary, are messy beasts. Where we go, we inevitably leave a trail of rubbish behind us. Space, it seems, is no different. But now, as is often the case with our trash, it’s gotten dangerous. So what do we do about it?
Astronomers Seth Baum, Jacob Haqq-Misra and Shawn Domagal-Goldman, who’ve been searching for extraterrestial life most of their profession life, have just published a study warning that may have been a mistake. They argue that aliens may behave like we have when discovering a new species:
Just as we did to those beings, the extraterrestrials might proceed to kill, infect, dissect, conquer, displace or enslave us, stuff us as specimens for their museums or pickle our skulls and use us for medical research.
This study, which appeared in the journal Acta Astronautica, goes on to warn:
A core concern is that ETI will learn of our presence and quickly travel to Earth to eat or enslave us.
Eat or enslave us?!? We think these guys have been watching to many episodes of “The Twilight Zone”.
You know times are tough. Even former astronauts are forced to sell off their possession. And, worse than that, the government says they can’t.
Learn more after the jump.
Seth Shostak, in a recent column on AOL news, provides an odd argument for the nonexistence of aliens: They too nice. It seems, according to Shostak, if aliens actually existed they’d be much more violent:
It comes down to this: In the 16th century, the Americas were invaded by Europeans. If, at the time, you had asked the natives to list the consequences of this incursion, they would surely mention such noteworthy items as enslavement, decimation of the population by disease, [and] being driven off their lands …
As far as I can tell, the only unambiguous consequence of the claimed invasion of Earth by beings from another star system has been a nonstop torrent of TV specials.
In short, because aliens haven’t left a trail of destruction in their wake, they must not exist. Why? Because that’s what happened when Europeans invaded the Americas. Logic and Mr. Shostak aren’t close companions.
He also feels the aliens should be bad pilots:
All those sighted craft must be driving air traffic controllers crazy, right? Well, ask yourself how often your flight to Des Moines has been delayed because alien spacecraft are flying around without filing an FAA flight plan.
Silliness.
We understand the need of skeptics to come up with ways of ridiculing believers. But too often, as Shostak does here, their debunking just doesn’t work. He expects us to believe aliens would be as violent as 16th century Europeans. And as clueless as a pilot who hasn’t filed a flight plan. Shostak himself provides the counter argument to his claims:
Any beings advanced enough to traverse interstellar distances are at least a thousand years beyond our technical level.
True. So they wouldn’t need to be as blood thirsty as the conquistadors. And they wouldn’t need to file flight plans to avoid causing problems in our airways. Thanks, Seth, for making our argument for us.
We’re all for intelligent skepticism. It’s essential. We practice it ourselves. But this just isn’t that. Seth may be a very accomplished physicist and astronomer. And we applaud his work with SETI. But as a logician he leaves a lot to be desired.
Here SETI founder Frank Drake offers a clear explanation of why SETI has failed. This comes from the BBC documentary “The Search for Life – The Drake Equation” which aired in the UK this week.
Drake explanation offers a path forward. And would provide a good benchmark for fund-raising. It’s surprising that more haven’t used Drake’s argument.
