An ocean of lava4/27/2018 The image above is a composite of Jupiter's closest moon, Io, made from 6 photos taken by Voyager 1 as it passed by the moon in March of 1979. The unique features of this landscape and its painted quality are a direct result of Io's volcanic activity which releases plumes and lava flows to color its surface. Io is actually the most geologically active object in the solar system which is due to the gravitational friction generated as Io is pulled back and forth between Jupiter and the outer moons of Europa as well as Ganymede. This special position in the solar system makes Io a very inhospitable place as, in addition to the constant volcanic activity, the radiation on the moon is 1000x stronger that what would be required to kill a human. With all of this information, I still thought to ask Google: "Is there life on Io?" I was expecting the answer to be a straightforward "NO, there has never been life on Io and there never will be" and also that I would read some theories about aliens having colonies on Io or other unfounded speculation about life on this particular moon. I was a bit surprised by both erronious expectations. In regards to the former, some scientists believe that Io could have held life a long time ago and that it could still persist today beneath the surface. Computer simulations of the formation of Jupiter's moons, suggest that Io formed with a large quantity of liquid water which was evaporated and sucked into Io's lava-tubes within 10 million years after its coalescence. So the chances for life on Io are poor, but there is still a possibility that microbes inhabit the turbulent moon. Recent findings also suggest that Io may be hiding a sub-surface ocean of molten rock, caused by the gravitational friction between it and Jupiter...this does not help the claim for life on the hellish moon but it does suggest that one of Jupiter's other moons, Europa, could have a warm and habitable ocean beneath its surface. While all of this is incredibly interesting, Io is probably one of the last places where we will send a autonomous surveying robot primarily because it is not a place where finding life is likely.Europa and Enceladus are the places in our solar system most likely to harbor life so, if we choose to explore for the purpose of learning as much as possible, then we will probably send a probe to one of these two moons to maximize our research-to-expense ratio. Perhaps we will never investigate Io and instead we will use our resources for our moon, Mars and Europa. Perhaps we will never become the multi-planet species that some of us hope for. It is certainly possible that we will make a critical error before we ever reach that point in our collective history. If we ever stopped fighting among each other, perhaps we could put all of that wasted energy into searching for the truths of our planet, our solar system and beyond. By the time we are able to reach out and touch something beyond our own moon, the truth might have evaporated into the solar winds and burned up in the cosmic radiation. Is the truth still out there? Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/... https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/... https://theplanets.org/... https://www.theguardian.com/... https://www.space.com/... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/... http://www.spacedaily.com/... http://mysteriousuniverse.org/... https://www.quora.com/... http://www.dailygalaxy.com/... https://www.forbes.com/... http://journalofcosmology.com/... https://www.seeker.com/... https://gizmodo.com/... https://www.centauri-dreams.org/...
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A love letter for Hubble4/25/2018
I think we both remember that you had some problems at the beginning, it was worth it though because those first pictures you took inspired a generation of scientists, and others, to search for answers to the mysteries of the universe. In all of the years of our collective relationship, you have shown us the history of our universe and thereby, our own history. You have told us when the cosmic birthday is. You have shown us what our universe looked like when it was, relatively, a newborn. You have proved us wrong in our assumption that the expansion of the universe was slowing down, when in fact it is speeding up. We have learned about supermassive black holes and exoplanets from you. You haven't restricted your lessons to distant space either, as you have also taught us about our own solar system. You've showed us liquid water on the moons of Jupiter in Ganymede's sub-surface ocean and the liquid plumes that shoot into space from Europa. We also know how many moons Pluto has because of you and that Eris, the dwarf-planet in the Kuiper belt, even exists. Galaxy cannibalism, protoplanetary disks, and clumpy dark matter are all discoveries that we can attribute to your presence in our lives. You were not our first space-telescope, and you won't be our last, but the influence you have had on how we perceive/imagine the vastness of space, cannot be overstated. During moments when the political-climate is anti-science, the images that you have produced can still induce wonder in even the staunchest anti-expert and give reason for the expansion of our scientific knowledge. You have given humanity so much and we can never repay that service. I only hope that more people can appreciate your efforts the way that I do. Please keep doing what you do because it makes the world a better place. Love, M.P. Bronstein Sources:
http://bigthink.com/... http://www.spacetelescope.org/ (spacecraft images)... https://www.spacetelescope.org/ (28th birthday)... http://hubblesite.org/... http://mentalfloss.com/... https://news.nationalgeographic.com/... https://globalnews.ca/... https://www.space.com/... https://en.wikipedia.org/... 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/... 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/... Beneath the ice in the salty ocean4/21/2018 Meet Europa. It is the smallest of Jupiter's four moons which were discovered by Galileo. Europa is smaller than Earth's moon(~65%), but larger than Pluto. It's surface is a thick layer of smooth but scarred ice, obscuring an ocean underneath which is able to remain liquid due to the tidal flexing between the moon and the planet. Scientists think that there is an ocean of salty water located just beneath the surface due to a special magnetic field that Europa has, which was measured by the Galileo Mission. NASA's preliminary plans for reaching the saline moon, The Europa Clipper, could allow us to touch the icy surface as soon as the 2030s, at the same time that we are hopefully in the beginning stages of getting people to Mars. The reason Europa is so interesting is because that liquid ocean is very similar to sub-glacial lakes that have been found on earth and it is thought to be old enough for life to have evolved there. In the timespan of roughly 400 years, we could go from discovering a celestial body to having found life on it. That is truly amazing and a credit to all of the people who have built made it a possibility, many of them working on thankless tasks but for an amazing cumulative effect. Of course there are many people today who suggest that such missions into space are a waste of money, resources, time. We have a collective legacy as explorers, often fraught with the terrible actions of colonialism, but this is a legacy that we should continue and improve as we extend our reach into outer space. With reasonable certainty we can say that life exists outside of our planet, but without finding evidence of it we can never be absolutely certain. As we venture forth, it will be a search for more than life but for scientific discovery in general which will ultimately give us insight into our own planet, about the origins of our solar system, the galaxy and our universe. Research and development created for these ventures will also give us new technologies that could make life on Earth better and more sustainable. Trying to see, to understand and to touch ever farther beyond our planet is a heroic task that will ultimately aid the survival of our species. Is the truth still out there? Photo Of Europa taken by the Voyager 2 spacecraft and found on page 115 of Der Weltraum by Klett and located in the Bibliothek Andreas Zust. Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/... https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/... https://www.space.com/ (Life?)... https://www.space.com/ (Facts)... https://www.youtube.com/... https://www.popsci.com/ (Europa Lander)... https://www.independent.co.uk/... https://www.popsci.com/ (Seafaring robots)... https://www.outerplaces.com/... https://phys.org/... Mysteries in Roswell4/18/2018 Why do we love a mystery? The possibly unattainable goal of finding out its answers are able to absorb our search for decades and even whole lifetimes. That driving curiosity imbues a parching thirst for a solution to our quandary, which may ultimately never be reached.
The incident itself, which you can read at Wikipedia, is interesting but what is even more so, is the effect that the incident had in sparking curiosity which led off in numerous directions of imaginative speculation, fiction, tourism and citizen-detective work. But it wasn't immediate, the story gestated for some 30 years before public interest in Roswell reignited. The ambiguity and the uncertainty of the situation, led for a search for truth. In chapter 9 of 'Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order', the authors cite the Roswell Incident as the key example of how discourse can migrate from the fringes of society to the mainstream: "public preoccupation in the 1980s with "conspiracy, cover-up and repression" aligned well with the Roswell narratives as told in the "sensational books" which were being published." Though the widespread interest in Roswell diminished in the 1990's, there are still numerous believers who actively search to answer the question of whether a UFO crashed in New Mexico in 1947. The research into the incident started in 1978, by UFO researchers Stanton T. Friedman, William Moore, Karl T. Pflock, and continues to this day by many more though all of that time searching has led to nothing conclusive. Those who believe, point to the easiest answer which is that there is a conspiracy within the American Government to hide the evidence of a UFO crash. That is certainly a possibility but it would be an incredibly complicated task requiring the utmost competence of many personnel over a long period of time, even after their retirement, which seems pretty improbable... Is the truth still out there? Images from pages 48/49 of the book 'UFO' by Brookesmith located in the Bibliothek Andreas Zust. The first is supposedly the original debris recovered from the Roswell crash and the second is an artist's depiction of the "actual" crash site. Will there ever be a future?4/17/2018 Last night was the beginning of the Lyriad Metor shower, which will peak on the 22nd, with its last night on the 25th. Unfortunately it wasn't visible from nearby the 'The Z Files' Archive and Observatory because the skies were overcast but I have hope that they will clear in the coming days. Because of the beginning of this astronomical happening, I thought to look through the archives for something from the constellation Lyra and I found this image below of the Ring Nebula (M57), and its dying central star, taken by the Hubble Telescope and found on page 138 of the book .'Die Milchstrase' by Henbest in the Bibliothek Andreas Zust... The Ring Nebula used to be a star several times more massive than our sun but gives us a glimpse into the future of our solar system, about 5 billion years from now. Were there planets/beings/life which existed in the solar system before it became the Ring Nebula and, if so, what happened to them? The actual event when the star shed off its outer layers to become a red dwarf is supposed to have happened 4000 years ago and the Ring Nebula is 2000 light-years from us, meaning that we are seeing it as it was just 2000 years after the event. It will grow 50% larger in the next few thousand years before it begins to dissipate as the white dwarf at its core slowly dies. Currently we see the Ring Nebula in its past and our present...but we will not be able to see its present until far in our future (if we hold out that long). But if we were able to travel through space on a ship which could go as fast as light, in order to visit the Ring Nebula, it would already be gone by the time we arrived. Is anyone presently looking in wonder at the nebula left by our dead star, while we sit 5 billion years in the past? How can we determine the truth reality under the governance of general relativity? Some links about the Ring Nebula (M57): https://www.solarsystemquick.com/... http://stars.astro.illinois.edu/... http://www.messier-objects.com/... https://www.nasa.gov/... http://www.constellation-guide.com/... https://apod.nasa.gov/ The Metal Man of Falkville4/16/2018 The Metal Man of Falkville Alabama, shown in the picture below, is a very curious case. The image is scanned from page 301 of 'Geheimsache UFO' by Hesemann located in the Bibliothek Andreas Zust. The witness of the Metal Man, Jeff Greenhaw, was the chief of police at the time when he had the sighting that would ultimately get him fired, lead to his wife divorcing him, and his house also burned down. Most of the sources below recount the exact same story: http://www.cryptopia.us/... http://www.ufocasebook.com/... https://books.google.ch/... http://realunexplainedmysteries.com/... http://outtherewithted.com/... The third source has an interesting first person account of perpetrating hoax which is quite similar to whatever Greenhaw witnessed and then the author writes about how he tried to contact Greenhaw, who does not want anything to do with the story which was detrimental to his life. The fourth source is not special in the article itself but the comments below the article have an array of commentators who claim to know the person who created the hoax and even one who claims to be the daughter of Greenhaw... What is the most probable actual reality of this story? The context of the situation, according to the reports, would be that this rural area after 10pm would be very dark except for Greenhaw's truck lights. Some individuals likely played a prank on the man by making/finding a costume reminiscent of 1950's sci-fi movies, calling in a fake UFO sighting, and then pretending to be the metal man and running off. Greenhaw's perception of the event, during the short time when everything happened and in the darkness, looked to fill in the gaps in order to make sense of the event. Greenhaw, probably believes, or believed, what he saw to be true. However, the numerous claims that it was a prank and the Metal Man's similar appearance to the automaton in the famous sci-fi movie "The Day The Earth Stood Still", and similar alien entities of other 1950's mass media, result in the most probable truth of the situation that it was probably a prank. If there was/are aliens visiting us, they probably would not resemble how we imagine them to be and the Metal Man of Falkville Alabama is very much reminiscent of extraterrestrial visitors which remained in the American collective unconscious left over from the explosion of 1950s sci-fi fervor.
Is the truth still out there? Broken pillars4/15/2018
Each Nebula is a nursery which becomes a factory, exploding to become another nursery and so on. We don't see them as they are, we see them as they were, and so we can't see their truth, or any truth outside of our localized region of space/time. Stars go nova, planets are broken, celestial bodies are created, and perhaps life begins again but we can only see things as they were. So how do we find the truth without first hand experience? Either we devise ways of gaining first hand experience or we calculate the most probable outcome based on what we can devise with currently available knowledge, expecting that the prediction is the likely truth. ... Image from page 104 of 'Das Hubble Universum' by Fischer, located in the Bibliothek Andreas Zust. For example, take the "Pillars of Creation" from the Eagle Nebula shown in the image above. According to data from the Spitzer Telescope, the pillars may have been destroyed by an exploding supernova however the visual evidence (light) of that cosmological event will not reach us on Earth for another millennium.
Maybe we wont always be able to discover the absolute truth, but through curiosity, investigation, perseverance as well as space/time, regardless of our position on earth or in the universe, there is no reason why we cannot deduce the truth which aligns closest with reality in all facets of life. Is the truth still out there? The mystery of a flying jellyfish4/14/2018 I found the photo below, of what appears to be a giant flying jellyfish, while browsing through the archives today. It's from page ~253 of the book 'Geheimsache UFO' located in the Bibliothek Andreas Zust. The image was taken by Mr. H. Lauersen in the early morning on November 17th, 1974 while he was walking his dog in Viborg, Jutland, Denmark. According to the second source below: "the sighting was investigated by Major Hans Petersen from the Danish Air Force. Scientists concluded that the vaporizing effect as being the result of the surface of the UFO being cooler than -180 degrees Celsius, resulting that the surrounding air becomes liquid and flows toward the Earth" The third source has the same subject captured but from a different perspective. The fourth source link is the skeptical of the image, citing Ole Henningsen, of SUFOI (Scandinavian UFO Information), who investigated the case and determined the flying jellyfish to be a ring of water vapor rising from the Houlkærvænget heating center, located directly below the object in the photo. The fourth source also references one contemporary artist, Ned Kahn, who was making very similar clouds as part of his art practice. The fifth link references the flying jellyfish photo in the column on the right of the page. The text about it describes the event, the critical investigation into it and then attempts to explain the image as a possibly true event by referencing similar accounts of sightings. The simplest answer is usually the correct one so probably it is just water vapor. Is the truth still out there? Links to some sources which provide further information on the image: 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. The veil of reality4/12/2018 This diagram, showing an part of a UFO cut away, exposing its inner workings and environment is from page 143 of the book Geheimsache-UFO by Hesemann located in the Bibliothek Andreas Zust.
The diagram is based off of the UFO designs described and "documented" by George Adamski .The original story is a strange one and you can read it in the links below...the photographs were supposedly proven to be real, which doesn't mean that it is necessarily true. Truth is the act of being in accordance with reality and through we may perceive reality in different ways, there does exist an indifferent reality or a true reality which is independent of how we perceive it. Proving weather the photos taken by Adamski align with the indifferent reality, as in trying to do so with many other well-known names in the world of UFOlogy, might always be an impossible task. Believing, for the sake of belief, whether in UFOs which fly over our heads or incompetent politicians or deities which watch over us as benevolent creators, is all the same. Having a belief is tempting and easy, especially when it cannot be disproven because it protects our ego from being false. Children hold beliefs, about Santa Claus and a great many other things. As adults we "know" that there is no Santa Claus, although we cannot disprove him. With UFOs, there are examples of something like evidence, even if it is circumspect and often improbable. How do we prove that our belief is not simply that but something which is true? The only way is through scientific investigation where the act of believing is separated from the evidence. The observer needs to be independent from the results of the observed, regardless of those results. That is the only way to accurately measure those beliefs against the ruler of reality. Is the truth still out there? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Adamski http://www.adamskifoundation.com/html/AboutGA.htm http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/12/george-adamski-aliens-the-fbi-and-the-air-force/ Between skeptics and supporters4/10/2018 The photo above is by "Billy" Meier, taken from page 155 of the book 'Light Years' by Kinder located in the Bibliothek Andreas Züst.
I've Been looking into other peoples investigations into this photo, and others, taken by Meier. It seems unbelievable that one person could make so much documentation of UFOs. It seems more believable that one person could make a career out of hoaxing photos and videos. Between the skeptics and supporters, there is no definitive answer to whether Meier is a fraud or not...both seem to have some good points. Those who want to believe, find reasons to do so and those who don't, also don't. Maybe they are all right to some degree; maybe some of what Meier captured was real and some was a hoax in order to keep up appearances. Perhaps only "Billy" knows what really happened in all of the moments he captured on film and in video. Is the truth still out there? Below are many pages which provide evidence for or against the "Billy" Meier claims:
And some interviews with "Billy" Meier:
The wikipedia page states that "Some of Meier's photos are claimed by him to show prehistoric Earth scenes, extraterrestrials, and celestial objects from an alleged non-Earthly vantage point. Meier's claims are widely characterized as fraudulent by scientists, skeptics, and most ufologists, who say that his photographs and films are hoaxes.In 1997, Meier's ex-wife, Kalliope, told interviewers that his photos were of spaceship models he crafted with items like trash can lids, carpet tacks and other household objects, and that the stories he told of his adventures with the aliens were similarly fictitious. She also said that photos of purported extraterrestrial women "Asket" and "Nera" were really photos of Michelle DellaFave and Susan Lund, members of the singing and dancing troupe The Golddiggers." Archive awakened4/7/2018 Been scouring the archives looking for evidence. Piles of books on the table, scanning images from each that seem useful or important. The sound of the scanner echoes in my ears. Found this diagram of different UFO profiles in the Das Geheimnis der unbekannten Flugobjekte by Adolf Schneider and Hubert Malthaner. I will keep it in mind as I look to the skies of Appenzelland. #IsTheTruthStillOutThere?
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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