Summer Satellites and the Great Scar

Well, Summer is supposedly here, though it's not always easy to tell in Portland. Not that I'm bitching - you can have the heat and sunlight. The only thing that is sort of a downer is that sky-watching is less fun when it's cold and limits the amount of time you want to spend gazing upwards from a lawn chair. That said, last Saturday was a pretty decent night and after BBQing, my girlfriend and I pulled out the tri-fold lawn chairs and watched the sky for a couple of hours.

It may sound cliché, but it's really hard to argue against how well Dark Side of the Moon goes with watching the countless satellites drift through the salted sky, peppered with the occasional meteorite. I wasn't looking for anything in particular and had no hopes of catching anything mysterious -- that's not why I stargaze. But there was one particularly bright object that we caught in the Northwest moving speedily towards the Southeast. It had a brightness of 4 and was quite stunning. After a brief What The Fuck moment, we both realized it was the ISS. We confirmed this later by an online tracker that gave the exact time and location in which we saw the object.

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Walking the Razor Wire

Regan has a post up over at The Orange Orb called The USSR Cause for Roswell? - Muddled Disclosures, about the new book by Annie Jacobsen, Area 51 - An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base. The book's theme is that while there are indeed mysterious events taking place at Nevada's infamous base, they are not alien in nature. At one point, Regan points out that when it comes to the mainstream, the general attitude is "No, it could never be aliens."

I have posted a response (that may still be awaiting moderation, so if it's not there when you read this, that's why), which basically brings up the dreaded Occam's Razor argument -- which I'm not opposed to, depending on it's application. But our understanding of the greater universe is still a very human understanding, and is therefore definitely limited. So, when discussing these sorts of unknowns, such as possible highly advanced extra terrestrial civilizations and their capabilities, it becomes more difficult to apply Occam's Razor in those contexts. On one hand, you could say that the argument is applicable based on what seems more likely:

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The Dark Flow Mystery

Here's something interesting from space.com -- Some scientists are speculating that the rapid speed of galaxy clusters into the depths of the observable universe maybe be due to the tug of objects beyond the observable view, or possibly an object in another universe 'bubble'.

Distant galaxy clusters appear to be zooming through space at phenomenal speeds that surpass 1 million mph. The clusters were tracked to 2.5 billion light-years away – twice as far as earlier measurements.

Crazy, eh? We're at a very interesting point in our development and understanding of the universe. The last few years have been a whirlwind of new discoveries. I think we're going to be seeing some major text book changes in regards to the physical universe, soon.

And without getting into the controversial topic of String Theory, it's interesting that multi-verse dialog is beginning outside of the fringe:

The researchers think dark flow may be caused by structures that lie beyond the horizon of our own universe. As odd as that may sound, some cosmologists think that our universe is actually only a bubble of space-time that was created during a period of rapid cosmic expansion, called inflation, after the Big Bang. Other bubbles may also have been created where inflation took place at a different rate, and perhaps something in one of the other bubbles is tugging at our universe.

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Photo by Nevit Dilmen © Copyright 1999

Vatican Conference on Life in the Universe

Vatican Holds Conference on Extraterrestrial Life

Though it may seem an unlikely location to happen upon a conference on astrobiology, the Vatican recently held a "study week" of over 30 astronomers, biologists, geologists and religious leaders to discuss the question of the existence of extraterrestrials. This follows the statement made last year by the Pope's chief astronomer, Father Gabriel Funes, that the existence of extraterrestrials does not preclude a belief in God, and that it's a question to be explored by the Catholic Church. The event, put on by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, took place at the Casina Pio IV on the Vatican grounds from November 6-11.

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Galaxies Found 7 Billion Light-Years Away

Shedding Light on the Cosmic Skeleton

Astronomers have tracked down a gigantic, previously unknown assembly of galaxies located almost seven billion light-years away from us. The discovery, made possible by combining two of the most powerful ground-based telescopes in the world, is the first observation of such a prominent galaxy structure in the distant Universe, providing further insight into the cosmic web and how it formed.

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