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I did actually, still did not make sense for me. He seems mainly into questioning those who question UFO data (flying saucers, according to him), which is fine, I do not care a great deal about that.
He does not however, adequately explain how to go around the theoretical limits of space travel.
"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?" ~ Epicurus
The theory of relativity is quite real. If you are living on a ship at .99 C, time passes very slowly indeed. It doesn't take 5 years to you to travel 5 light-years. It would be a matter of months, IIRC. He's saying that technology like that in terms of the life-span of the entities in the ship is quite tolerable.
Now if you are at 0.2 C, it's a different ballgame. It's not linear. At 0.2C, you are going to need a "generational" ship, being born, living, and dying en-route.
All that is moot if there is some way around the speed of light.
Tankie, what I meant by "show us you are there" isn't a fuzzy blob of darting light over Washington or London, I'm thinking "District 9" ships hovering over cities.
The theory of relativity is quite real. If you are living on a ship at .99 C, time passes very slowly indeed. It doesn't take 5 years to you to travel 5 light-years. It would be a matter of months, IIRC. He's saying that technology like that in terms of the life-span of the entities in the ship is quite tolerable.
Now if you are at 0.2 C, it's a different ballgame. It's not linear. At 0.2C, you are going to need a "generational" ship, being born, living, and dying en-route.
All that is moot if there is some way around the speed of light.
Tankie, what I meant by "show us you are there" isn't a fuzzy blob of darting light over Washington or London, I'm thinking "District 9" ships hovering over cities.
I know what you mean Chogy me ol froot , however that's as close as I can find ref the whitehouse n ufo's , but no'one as yet has come up with a credible explanation for them fuzzy lights , to my knowledge anyway
How do you feel with ref to this , one of your officers ,
Im following this latest mission even tho I believe is a waste of money , powers that be know we are not alone IMHO,, sighhhhhhh on with the spend spend spend .
Are we alone? Or was there life on another planet? NASA's $2.5 billion dream machine, the Mars Science Laboratory, aims to take the first steps toward finding out when it nears Mars's surface on Monday.
The planet is Earth's closest neighbor, and scientists have found signs of water there, hinting that some form of life was once likely, even though Mars is now a dry place with a thin atmosphere, extreme winters and dust storms.
NASA said it will find out if its Mars Science Laboratory and rover, Curiosity -- designed to hunt for soil-based signatures of life and send back data to prepare for a future human mission -- landed safely at 1:31 am Eastern time (0531 GMT) on Monday.
That will be about 14 minutes after the touchdown actually happens due to the time it takes for spacecraft signals to travel from Mars to Earth.
The nuclear-powered rover is the biggest ever built for planetary exploration, weighing in at one ton, about the size of a small car, and carries a complex chemistry kit to zap rocks, drill soil and test for radiation.
The landing is a daring and unprecedented maneuver that involves penetrating the atmosphere at a speed of 13,200 miles per hour (21,240 kilometers per hour), slowing down with the help of a supersonic parachute and dropping down gently with tethers from a rocket-powered sky crane.
"This is the most challenging landing we have ever attempted," said Doug McCuistion, director of NASA's Mars Exploration Program.
Two NASA orbiters will be crossing overhead as the lander approaches the surface, and a third orbiter operated by the European Space Agency will also send data back to Earth.
The Mars Science Laboratory began its journey to the Red Planet more than eight months ago when it launched from the Florida coast in late November 2011.
"It gets scarier every day," said McCuistion, noting that only about 40 percent of past attempts by global space agencies to send spacecraft to Mars have succeeded.
"Can we do this? Yeah, I think we can do this. I am confident the team has done an amazing job. We have the A-plus team on this. They have done everything possible to ensure success," he said.
"But that risk still exists. It is going to be tough."
NASA has detailed the final minutes of the complex landing in an Internet video called "Seven Minutes of Terror."
The landing site for the rover is a flat area known as Gale Crater, which lies near a mountain that scientists hope the rover will be able to climb in the search for sediment layers that could be up to a billion years old.
One potential factor of concern, the weather, appears to be cooperating after a nearby dust storm spotted days ago dissipated, deputy project scientist Ashwin Vasavada told reporters.
"Mars is playing nice and we are going to get good conditions for Sunday," he said.
Vasavada said the dust storm near the landing site has evolved into a "fairly harmless cloud of dust" that probably will not reach Gale Crater by the time of the landing.
He said it was not "expected to affect entry, descent and landing in any meaningful way."
If the landing goes according to plan, NASA hopes to have some low-resolution black and white images taken from cameras on the rear of the rover shortly afterward.
More images will follow in the coming days. Then, engineers on Earth will spend most of August remotely checking out systems on the vehicle.
The rover is carrying a chemistry kit that contains a rock-zapping laser, 17 cameras, a drill, radiation detectors, water sensors, and tools to scoop soil and check for carbon-based compounds that are the building blocks for life.
Curiosity may start to roll for its first drive in September, with its first scoop samples expected late in the month and its first drilling attempt in October or November.
If the landing fails, McCuistion vowed that NASA would continue its efforts to explore Mars.
"We will pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off. We will look at this and do something again. We will do it again, this will not be the end," he said.
"Human spirit gets driven by these kinds of challenges and these are the kinds of challenges that force us, drive us to explore.
"To explore our surroundings, to understand what is out there, and obviously look at 'Are we alone?
When It Comes To UFOs, Why Do Debunkers Do That Debunking Thing They Do?
By Regan Lee - 3 days 22 hours ago
I was asked today why I think UFO debunkers (and so-called UFO "skeptics" which really, are one and the same) do what they do. Why do they care so damn much about proving UFOs don't exist? (They've gotten lazy; they don't even bother. The subject isn't even worth their time to mock, much. But still, they have at it, as any journey into the JREF will reveal.)
After all these years, I still don't have an answer.
It's easy to say "Because they're afraid." No doubt that's true in many cases, at some level. At the same time, it's too simplistic and breezy a response; to dismiss their pathological denials with that answer. I used the example today, to my questioner, that, while I'm not a Christian (or a religious Jew or a Muslim, etc.) it's not because I'm "afraid." That's what many a believer of anything will say of the non-believer. "They're afraid." Somewhere in there these UFO deniers are afraid, I suppose, but there's more going on to their blind denials than just that.
Sometimes these crazy debunkers are paid shills. Sure that' s paranoid conspiracy talk, but we know what they say: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not watching you..." Sometimes the debunkers are deeply invested in their egos and paychecks. If they're tenured, if they want to continue getting published by peer reviewed journals, if they want to move on up in the academic and scientific world, bashing the topic of UFOs is an easy way to ensure good standing. I suspect a good number of these debunker types have an idea that there really is something to UFOs, but... but... well, they just can't bring themselves to be honest. Too much at risk. Careers, salaries, reputations.
It's also intellectually easy. Who has the time to read all of Richard Dolan's books, or delve into Vallee, or the history of, say, the Contactee era (which is not over by the way.) Who has the time to be authentic and explore even just one aspect of the whole messy, complicated, rich, confusing world of UFOs? Easier to just say "UFOs?! Feh, man, don't waste my time!"
As my questioner earlier today said, "UFOs means Unidentified Flying Object." What's so threatening about that? I see something in the sky that's unidentifiable; what, we're supposed to ignore it?
Many a UFO I've seen I decided, after reflection, that they were probably man made objects and nothing to get much excited about. But some, well, some, remain mysterious indeed. And I'm not even beginning to talk aliens yet.
The Triangle
That giant triangle I saw years ago. FACT. Hey debunkers, still with me? So let's assume it's a human made object. Okay. We don't know if that's a FACT but it could be. Either way, the reality is: frighteningly huge triangle, low in the sky, blocking out stars, having physical effects upon human witnesses. (muffled sounds, sensation of slow motion, inertia.) Then, within the literal blink of an eye, it zooms off with incredible speed, all the while soundless. FACT.
Aliens, schmaliens, what the hell was that thing???!!! Aren't you curious? Aren't you interested in what our government is doing up there, scaring the hell out of citizens? If it isn't the government and/or private industry, that's worse in many ways for the skeptics, because that means: yes, aliens. Then of course we have the good old global industrial military complex, where private industry and government meet and make cozy bedfellows. They're doing whatever the hell they want to do with our taxes and the rest of us hoi poli be damned.
So either way, Debunker-ites, we have a mystery that needs to be addressed. Are you really so damn arrogant, so positive, there' s no there there? That it's all just weather balloons? After all these decades??!! Still?
Missing Time
I've had at least two episodes of missing time -- shared, with another person -- related to UFOs. That is huge, and I am still demanding answers. Who, or what, the hell took away hours of my life and my memory???!!! That's a supremely valid question and one that does not merit derision. Yet, the UFO skeptic blithely dismisses such topics with arrogant waves of their hands. They prefer to stoop to accusations of being emotionally needy, or prone to fantasy, or high, drunk, mentally ill, a liar, etc. We all know the drill by now.
Is It Because They Are Stupid?
Maybe the answer to the question is, simply, they're stupid. One can be highly intelligent in one area; say, a genius math professor, and be boringly, stupendously stupid in other areas. So the idea that our government -- any, and all governments -- are quite capable of crimes against their own citizenry doesn't occur to them. Or if it does, with surprising naivety, such FACTS (MK ULTRA, etc.) are dismissed as no longer germane. That was then, after all, nothing going on now. The idea that strange experiences happen to far more of us than we can imagine extends far beyond their comfort level. There has to be logic involved: dream states, and terms that satisfy like "confirmation bias" and "pareidolia" and such. And when those get used up; the old "we all want to believe in something ..." nonsense to appease those of us who've seen something. Who've experienced something.
The 'No Proof' Retort
So the UFO debunker says there's no proof aliens exist. The deceitful comment often made, that "When anyone says UFOs we know they really mean aliens from space" is thrown around with the intent of immediately trivializing any possible honest discussion. And while it's true no proof exists of aliens -- although we've come damn close and there is a positively and magnificently enormous amount of evidence -- the idea is not at all ridiculous. Mind games and semantic masturbations about "why would aliens come all the way to ..." and "aliens no doubt exist, waaaaaaaay out there, but not here..." are just more of the lazy, and dishonest, empty statements from the UFO debunker and skeptic.
The report comes by way of the rover’s principal investigator, geologist John Grotzinger of Caltech, who said that Curiosity has uncovered exciting new results from a sample of Martian soil recently scooped up and placed in the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument.
“This data is gonna be one for the history books. It’s looking really good,” Grotzinger told NPR in an segment published Nov. 20. Curiosity’s SAM instrument contains a vast array of tools that can vaporize soil and rocks to analyze them and measure the abundances of certain light elements such as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen – chemicals typically associated with life.
The mystery will be revealed shortly, though. Grotzinger told Wired through e-mail that NASA would hold a press conference about the results during the 2012 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco from Dec. 3 to 7.
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