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Category: alien life

Despite much speculation and conspiracy theories, the reason for the mysterious closure of New Mexico’s Sunspot Solar Observatory by the FBI earlier this month was an ongoing child pornography investigation, court documents show.

The secret behind the 11-day closure of the facility was finally explained in newly unsealed FBI records and its application for a search warrant. According to the court documents, the federal agents were investigating a janitor suspected of using the observatory’s WiFi network to download child pornography.

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Scientists don’t know exactly what fast radio bursts (FRBs) are. What they do know is that they come from a long way away. In fact, one that occurs regularly comes from a galaxy 3 billion light years away. They could form from neutron stars or they could be extraterrestrials phoning home. The other thing is — thanks to machine learning — we now know about a lot more of them. You can see a video from Berkeley, below. and find more technical information, raw data, and [Danielle Futselaar’s] killer project graphic seen above from at their site.

The first FRB came to the attention of [Duncan Lorimer] and [David Narkevic] in 2007 while sifting through data from 2001. These broadband bursts are hard to identify since they last a matter of milliseconds. Researchers at Berkeley trained software using previously known FRBs. They then gave the software 5 hours of recordings of activity from one part of the sky and found 72 previously unknown FRBs.

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The undisclosed “security issue” behind all of the activity at the National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico remains a mystery to the public.

It has been a week since the National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico, was shut down, evacuated, and visited by FBI agents—and the undisclosed “security issue” behind all this activity remains a mystery to the public.

Theories about the true reasoning behind the shutdown range from an accidental interception of military signals to captured proof of alien life.

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Speaking at a Q&A session hosted for a Madrid university’s Master’s of Business Administration students, SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell talked for nearly an hour about the launch company’s next-generation BFR rocket, the reality of long-term life on Mars, and more, revealing a number of interesting tidbits in the process.

Almost entirely led by questions from the unusually well-informed audience, the graduate students and professors predominately kept the famous SpaceX exec more or less focused on the company’s future, delving into the reasoning behind BFR. Shotwell had only praise for the next-generation launch vehicle, which is targeting initial hop tests in late 2019 and its first full launches as early as 2021, a delay of several months from previous schedule estimates targeting hops in early 2019 and orbit by 2020.

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We haven’t seen SpaceX’s BFR — the rocket that it hopes will enable trips around the world, to the Moon, and, eventually, to Mars — actually take flight yet, but the company says it has already booked a private passenger for a trip around the Moon. No one has been there since Apollo missions ended in the 70s, but now, in a “world’s first” SpaceX is apparently taking reservations. Details like who is going and “why” are to be revealed during a livestream on Monday September 17th at 9 PM ET.

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In 1960, American physicist Freeman Dyson proposed the idea that an extremely advanced—and power-hungry—alien civilization could, in theory, harness the majority of their host star’s energy by building a vast structure around it to absorb its radiation.

Scientists in the field of SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) have carried out a number of searches for such structures, known as Dyson spheres—which could be constructed using material harvested from dismantled planets—without uncovering any compelling evidence for them.

Now, in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers from Uppsala University, Sweden, and Heidelberg University, Germany, have proposed a new way to look for Dyson spheres that may have some advantages over previous attempts.

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4K — This is stunning! 🤪🤩💫 Goodnight, Earthlings! Credit video: Adrien Mauduit Films.

There’s something fascinating about our own home galaxy. Even if we still cannot look at it from above and gaze at the full span of its arms, the sideway view offers a quite a showdown. To me the central part of the milky way is the most spectacular sight of the night sky. It’s something you can clearly see with the naked eye when you are away from city lights. It’s a sight that really brings your down to Earth and lets you wonder at how small we are, while comforting you in the thought that you are part of this Earth and the Universe. I could gaze for hours at the central bulge and just contemplate its compelling beauty from where it rises till where it sets. From a photographic and scientific point of view, this part of the milky way is so interesting to capture and study because if our solar system is located in its suburbs, the downtown district of our home galaxy harbors billions upon billions of stars. They are so concentrated that the total light coming from them can be seen millions of light years away and really creates this halo of light visible when you take a picture of it, much like a fire blazing. However a thick blanket of dark hydrogen clouds shroud and block the complete view. You can even see these fine dark lanes with the naked eye and they really participate in making the whole picture something from another world. Of all of them the Pipe and Dark Horse nebulae are descending down the core obscuring the upper part of the central bulge. In addition to this celestial show many emission nebulae- reliques of previously exploded stars, pepper the disc. Among them the bright and colorful Lagoon nebula, the pink and blue Trifid nebula, the red Cat Paw, War and Peace and Prawn nebulae around Scorpius. Moreover many star clouds (like the Sagittarius star cloud) and other remarquable star clusters also participate in strewing this already full frame. Finally the closest stars (like Antares) and near planets visible during the time of shoot (Mars, Saturn, Jupiter) also give a sense of just how ridiculously big the distance between Earth the core is.

Being fascinated by the core since I started astrophotography where it was barely visible (Denmark), I started looking for the best places in the northern hemisphere where I could get a clear view. The first time I really saw it was on the beautiful island of Tenerife 4 years ago and I sincerely will remember that experience for the rest of my life. Gazing upon the center of our galaxy in its full glory is something everyone ought to try. That’s why I decided to dedicate the third opus of my astrolapse series ‘Galaxies’ exclusively to the core, assembling my best clips to date and bringing them to the public, mainly to raise awareness and to get our night sky a bit more attention. I was appalled by just how many people have never seen the milky way so maybe by showing the true beauty of the universe I could contribute in my own limited way to bringing the real dark skies to the hectic and light polluted urban jungle.

The goal once again was to use the best techniques in astrophotography and time-lapse to exploit each frame to its maximum without compromising the quality. From planning, to traveling to remote locations, to shooting with some of the best astro-gear, and eventually finding a novel post-processing workflow, I was able to get some astounding and never-seen-before sequences of the core. Traveling to very elevated and dark places allowed me to get the best signal to noise ratio as well as the best ‘contrast effect’ in the halo created by the stars in the bulge. The array of extremely sharp and bright lenses I utilized permitted to decrease shutter speed and get less motion blur while getting extremely clean shots with little aberration.

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Lowell interviews the always fascinating Professor George Church in this new podcast series about aging research. Lifespan.io will be appearing on the show soon too so watch this space bigsmile

Harvard & MIT Professor, author of Regenesis, methods for 1st genome sequence (1994) & 10M-fold improvements (NGS, nanopore), genome editing, writing and recording. In this episode, we get to talk about Genghis Khan, Woolly Mammoth, storing data in DNA, advice for people getting started, and more all in under one hour!

George is one of the most interesting and down to earth people you’ll read about (might be from the future or an alien, but cannot confirm). He is always working to make all of our lives better. Anytime you are looking for inspiration, do what I do, and learn about what he and his team are working on. I always feel like I can do anything after reading or listening to the current things he is working on. I hope to one day contribute like he does! As a side note: I am working on something that was inspired from our discussion, so we shall see how that goes. If anyone is inspired after listening to him talk, please email me and let me know. We can start a fan group around George and scientists in general. Scientists are the unsung superheros of our society! Also, scroll down to the bottom to see the breadth of his work. I felt like it should be put here in it’s entirety. Hyperlinked show notes will go up tonight for this episode and the previous ones that are lacking them!

“George Church, professor at Harvard & MIT, co-author of 480 papers, 130 patent publications & the book ”Regenesis”, developed methods used for the first genome sequence (1994) & million-fold cost reductions since (via NGS and nanopores), plus barcoding, DNA assembly from chips, genome editing, writing & recoding. He co-initiated the BRAIN Initiative (2011) & Genome Projects (1984, 2005) to provide & interpret the world’s only open-access personal precision medicine datasets.

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