Bug Squash posted:

I was talking about poo poo we see through telescopes and record properly, not some guy who totally met someone who saw an alien doing ftl burnouts. Eyewitness testimony has been bullshit in science for over a hundred years after the N-ray debacle.

radmonger posted:

For that to be valid reasoning, you would need to do an analysis of the properties of all possible alien civilisations, and show that they would generate unambiguous, repeatable astronomical observations.

It’s not that you are not right, it’s just that you seem excessively certain you are.

Stephen Crane posted:

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”

eXXon posted:

donut-shape things

eXXon posted:

surprisingly bright ghosts (the donut-shape things, the brightest of which is in the bottom-left corner of the top-left image, and which are internal reflections and not UFOs).

The Article posted:

More than a week after accidentally cutting off communications with the Voyager 2 probe, NASA officials heard a hopeful signal that may allow them to reestablish contact with the interstellar traveler months ahead of schedule.

With the "heartbeat" confirmed, NASA will next try and send a command back to Voyager 2 to coax the probe into angling its antenna back toward Earth. Typically, it takes about 18.5 hours for a command to reach Voyager 2, and another 18.5 hours for Earth to receive a transmission back from the probe, according to Scientific American, so we may know its fate in the next two days.

If the forced realignment fails, Voyager 2 is expected to reset its antenna to the Earth-facing position on Oct. 15, in one of a planned series of auto-resets that occur throughout the year.

Dameius posted:

NASA hears 'heartbeat' signal from Voyager 2 probe a week after losing contact

cat botherer posted:

GOAT probe

Rappaport posted:

I thought cattle mutilation alien probes assaulted cows?

cat botherer posted:

It's fun to mix up the kind of anuses you core out from time to time.

BBC posted:

India's space agency has released latest images of the Moon as its third lunar mission starts descending towards the little-explored south pole. The pictures have been taken by Vikram, Chandrayaan-3's lander, which began the last phase of its mission on Thursday. Vikram, which carries a rover in its belly, is due to land near the south pole on 23 August.


[I love the little Powerpoint arrow pointing at Earth -R]

Chandrayaan-3 and Russia's Luna-25 are among the two spacecraft headed towards the Moon's south pole and both are expected to land next week. Luna-25 - Russia's first Moon mission since 1976, when it was part of the Soviet Union - was launched last week and is expected to make history by making a soft landing on 21st or 22nd August, just days before the Indian touchdown. If it succeeds, Chandrayaan-3 will have to settle for being a close second in reaching the south pole.

India, however, will still be only the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon after the US, the former Soviet Union and China. Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) said on Friday that the lander module had begun its descent to a lower orbit.

[...]
The south pole of the Moon is still largely unexplored - the surface area that remains in shadow there is much larger than that of the Moon's north pole, and scientists say it means there is a possibility of water in areas that are permanently shadowed. One of the major goals of both Chandrayaan-3 and Luna-25 is to hunt for water ice which, scientists say, could support human habitation on the Moon in future. It could also be used for supplying propellant for spacecraft headed to Mars and other distant destinations.

BBC posted:

Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft has crashed into the Moon after spinning out of control, officials say.

Roscosmos, Russia's state space corporation, said on Sunday morning that it had lost contact with the Luna-25 shortly after 14:57pm (11:57 GMT) on Saturday.

"The apparatus moved into an unpredictable orbit and ceased to exist as a result of a collision with the surface of the Moon," it said in a statement.

Rappaport posted:

Welp, one down, badly (BBC)

BBC's live blogging posted:

Wow, that was intense! So now what? Firstly, the lander will wait a few hours for the lunar dust to quite literally settle.

After that, panels on one of its sides will open and a ramp will be deployed so that Pragyaan, the Moon rover, can slide down to the surface.

It will then roam around the rocks and craters on the Moon gathering crucial data and images to be sent back to Earth for analysis.

The lander and the rover are carrying five scientific instruments which will help find out "the physical characteristics of the surface of the Moon, the atmosphere close to the surface and the tectonic activity to study what goes on below the surface".

The landing date has also been carefully selected to coincide with the start of a lunar day - which equals 28 Earth days - because the batteries of the lander and the rover will need sunlight to be able to charge and function.

Rappaport posted:

Welp, one down, badly (BBC)

Rappaport posted:

India fared better, as they've announced that the lander made a successful touch-down on the Lunar surface.

DrSunshine posted:

That's too bad. I feel like I'm a little sad whenever any country loses a probe. On the small silver lining, we do tend to lose them more often than not. I think I recall a statistic somewhere that lander missions have the lowest success rates?

quote:

India only landed on the Moon last week, but its Chandrayaan-3 mission has already made its first scientific observations of the lunar south pole.

By shooting lasers at the surface, the onboard rover has confirmed the presence of sulfur, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has announced.

It's the first rover to ever explore the region.

"The Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) instrument onboard Chandrayaan-3 Rover has made the first-ever in-situ measurements on the elemental composition of the lunar surface near the south pole," ISRO said in a statement.

"These in-situ measurements confirm the presence of Sulphur (S) in the region unambiguously, something that was not feasible by the instruments onboard the orbiters."

Bug Squash posted:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66786611

Possible detection of dimethyl sulphide on exoplanet. It's tentative as of yet, but very exciting if true as it's currently a strong bioindicator.

quote:

Scientists in Mexico are pulling back the curtain on what some believe are aliens, and the remains of "non-human" beings were put on display.

Two small mummified specimens were presented Tuesday at Mexico's first public congressional hearing on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), also known as UFOs.

Displaying two mummified bodies he claimed to be not from Earth, journalist and UFO researcher Jaime Maussan and other experts proposed that the Mexican Chamber of Deputies recognize UAPs, to guarantee airspace security and to allow it to be studied. The shriveled bodies with shrunken, warped heads left those in the chamber aghast and quickly kicked up a social media fervor.

"It's the queen of all evidence," Maussan claimed. "That is, if the DNA is showing us that they are non-human beings and that there is nothing that looks like this in the world, we should take it as such." But he warned that he didn't want to refer to them as "extraterrestrials" just yet.

The apparently desiccated bodies date back to 2017 and were found deep underground in the sandy Peruvian coastal desert of Nazca. The area is known for gigantic enigmatic figures scraped into the earth and seen only from a birds-eye-view. Most attribute the Nazca Lines to ancient indigenous communities, but the formations have captured the imaginations of many.

DrSunshine posted:

Boris Galerkin posted:

Me after sitting through a 2 hour useless meeting

DrSunshine posted:

https://abc7.com/mexico-aliens-corpses-ufos/13776957/

Libluini posted:

This is all so wrong, I don't even know where to start

I'm not sure if those guys should be in prison for stealing archaeological artifacts or just plain old scamming

But OK, if those "bodies" have "DNA" in them, their claims should be easy to test, right?

Coldrice posted:

Bug Squash posted:

Listen buddy, they gave a sample to the university. No, the university wasn't allowed to take the sample themselves, or see the sample being taken, why do you ask?