The curious case of Triton4/23/2018 This is Neptune's moon Triton. It was first discovered by William Lassell in 1846. It was found just 17 days after Neptune and the first of Neptune's moons to be discovered. It is one of only 5 moons in the solar system though to be geologically active, it has the coldest surface temperature in our solar system (at-235c/-391f) and is the only moon in our solar system with a retrograde orbit (traveling in an opposite rotation to its planet). The reason Triton travels in a rotation contrary to Neptune is because it did not form with the planet. It originally belonged in the Kuiper Belt (like Pluto) and was captured by the planet. Though it looks like a dirty snowball left over at the end of winter, Triton is a pretty interesting place...actually it was considered one of the most interesting satellites in the solar system until we discovered that the moons of Jupiter as well as Saturn had sub-surface oceans and then Triton was overshadowed by an abundance of water-worlds. Terry Hurford, planetary Scientist at NASA, examined Triton and believes that it is also hiding a sub-surface ocean. Hurford is hopeful that we will revisit Triton with our scientific instruments in the near future. Much of this information about Triton comes from the Voyager 2 spacecraft which did a quick flyby of the moon in 1989. The New Horizons spacecraft did a flyby of Neptune and Triton exactly 25 years later, on its way to Pluto, but didn't get close enough to get much data. Aside from those short lived and near-by visitations, we have only been able to get to know Triton from our Earth based telescopes.
They see things beyond that which exists in the evidence. Connections are drawn between ink blots, as the inventor formulates an image that isn't there. This ability to create a basis for believing without a reason, or perhaps without the faculty of reason, reminds me of the Dunning-Kruger Effect which is a cognitive bias where below-average individuals mistake their intelligence as being above-average because of how little they actually know. When there is so little data on a place, just some old photos taken in the dark of space on a 1980s digital camera and some basic qualitative data, it is possible to infer but improbable to do so accurately. Certainly there could be life on Triton but probably it is not intelligent and we have no reason to presuppose so. If there were evidence of intelligent aliens, or whatever, on Triton, or wherever, how would you separate the truth from the speculation which saturates the environment? is the truth still out there? Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/ (Triton)... https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/... http://www.seasky.org/... http://www.astronomy.com/... https://www.space.com/... https://www.astrobio.net/... http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/... https://www.nasa.gov/... https://gizmodo.com/... https://science.nasa.gov/... https://www.youtube.com/ (Proof of alien life)... https://www.youtube.com/ (Triton is inhabited)... https://www.youtube.com/ (Massive structures on triton)... http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/... https://www.metimeforthemind.com/... http://mysteriousuniverse.org/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ (Dunning-Kruger)... http://www.patheos.com/...
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Astounding stories & more...4/22/2018
Believing what we want or expect true rather than what we can prove is no different than any other religious zeal. Carl Sagan, an active searcher for intelligent extraterrestrial life, once made famous the phrase "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".
If, for example, we believe that intelligent aliens do exist and are visiting us, then we will go looking for evidence of that with an innate bias towards finding it while ignoring contrary evidence. We may search through manlyy sources but we will find those which corroborate our initial feelings. Our ego refuses to acknowledge that our past beliefs were always fallacies as this would cause our emotional investment to be in vain. To support this situation, we stubbornly propagate misinformation as we enable others in the same situation. Conspiracy theories, fake news, hoaxes and events perceived incorrectly within a culture looking to escape reality creates a situation where large swathes of the population believe in things which do are not true. If we started fact-checking all of our sources of information, what would it be like to live in the unbiased reality? Is the truth still out there? Sources:
http://time.com/... https://www.theguardian.com/... https://www.scientificamerican.com/... https://www.youtube.com/... https://www.nationalgeographic.com/... https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/... http://nationalpost.com/... http://www.pbs.org/... https://www.livescience.com/... http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/... https://sputniknews.com/... http://discovermagazine.com/... From the vaccum of space4/13/2018 The photo is from page 192 of 'The History of Rocketry and Space Travel' found in the Bibliothek Andreas Zust and added to the Z Files archives. The picture depicts a alien, floating above our planet and using a compressed air gun to propel himself through the vacuum.
We can assume this photo is real, because we trust the source that it comes from. Our understanding of the indifferent truth is reliant on the trustworthiness of experts and witnesses to it. Truth and trust are therefor deeply intertwined as the former is defined by the later. Trustworthy sources come as unbiased and without ulterior motive. For example, the majority of scientists have concluded that human induced climate change is the truth however there are some which deny this truth who do so because it benefits them to hold that position. Ulterior motives can come in many forms; keeping one's job or funding, pushing one's agenda, spectacle and attention, political benefit and so on. So when we look for the truth in order to try to understand reality, we not only have to understand what is being presented to us but to be aware of what is behind that presentation. The relationship between the two is how we can determine the trustworthiness of the source and therefor the truth of reality. I want to believe, but...4/9/2018 Been splitting time between the archive and social media as well as between science and pseudoscience in these days. Looking for overlapping material, looking for facts, cross-referencing content. Much of the materials, even in the archive, are presented as truthful but are ultimately false, speculative and/or sensationalist. Sometimes the beliefs we hold blind us to reality while other times people create misleading content to take advantage of people who believe. This practice harms the believability of any real observations that have arisen or which will arise.
M.P.BronsteinA scientist who exists outside of the time-space continuum, looking for the truth, but unsure if it still exists or if it has become extinct. ArchivesCategories
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