The Black Knight

Esto no se ve (o lee) todos los días: un mensaje extra-terrestre real, supuestamente enviado por un extraño satélite de orígenes no-humanos que orbita nuestro planeta desde hace mucho más tiempo del que podríamos aceptar (12,600 años), y que por supuesto ha sido una de las cosas más encubiertas y desmentidas por la NASA desde los años 50s. No los convenceré de nada, pero aquí esta la nota completa… y el mensaje, proveniente supuestamente desde Izar, una antigua estrella doble en la constelación de Epsilon Bootis, a 210 años luz de aquí:

Start here.
Our home is epsilon bootis.
which is a double star.
we live on the 6th planet of 7 – check that, 6th of 7 –
counting outwards from the sun
which is the larger of the two.
our 6th planet has one moon,
our 4th planet has three,
our first and third planets each have one.
our probe is in the orbit of your moon
this updates the position of arcturus shown on our maps.

El mensaje es amigable y cumple una función meramente informativa (de ubicación y descripción básica del sistema de donde proviene). Pero en fin, siempre será más fácil decir que es falso. Y mas hermoso que es real…

Space is filled with many mysterious objects, many of which are on the edge of our ability to perceive the universe. However, there could also be some unexplained objects closer to home – in fact, they could be orbiting (and watching us) right now.

I’m talking about the Black Knight Satellite – an object which, according to some, has been orbiting the Earth for nearly 13,000 years. This is how the story goes:

According to most sources, the story of the Black Knight Satellite begins with the space race in the 1950s. It is claimed that in 1954, NASA discovered a large unknown satellite circling Earth on a polar orbit. Initially, they believed it was some kind of Russian space object, but it was quickly confirmed that it was not. At this point in time, neither country in the space race had the ability to launch such objects out of the atmosphere. Other reports also claimed a strange signal was broadcasting from the object…

http://bit.ly/1dani0M

The Black Knight

3753 Cruithne

Y si les dijera que nuestro planeta tiene dos lunas… ¿me creerían?
Quizás para creerme primero tengan que entrar a ver este reportaje de 1997, originalmente publicado la revista Nature…
Por cierto, se llama 3753 Cruithne, y es una luna bastante errática (será mejor que no se metan con ella). Gracias…

We all know and love the moon. We’re so assured that we only have one that we don’t even give it a specific name. It’s just The Moon. But the moon is not the Earth’s only natural satellite. Here’s what you need to know about 3753 Cruithne and what its weird orbit reveals about the solar system. As recently as 1997, we discovered that another body, 3753 Cruithne, is a quasi-orbital satellite of Earth.

This simply means that Cruithne doesn’t loop around the Earth in a nice ellipse in the same way as the moon, or indeed the artificial satellites we loft into orbit. Instead, Cruithne scuttles around the inner solar system in what’s called a “horseshoe” orbit….

http://bit.ly/1GwN0pA

3753 Cruithne

Aircraft Carrier

Un satélite de la NASA capturó esta extraña foto, de un porta-aviones vacío, que navega solo y camino hacia lo que es el retiro de estas naves: ser desensamblado. Así, sin pena ni gloria. Chulada…

This is the loneliest funeral march I’ve ever seen. This photo from November 5th was taken during a NASA mission called Operation IceBridge, the goal of which is to survey polar ice. But it also captured the aircraft carrier USS Constellation (CV-64), a Kitty Hawk-class supercarrier being towed by comparatively tiny tugboats. The Constellation is destined for demolition after41 years of commissioned service and 11 years of retirement. The huge Navy vessel will be scrapped at Brownsville, Texas, after being towed around Cape Horn on her final voyage. [NASA Goddard Space Flight Center]…

http://bit.ly/1GgcTbF

Transit Patterns

Tiny lights swarm like fireflies, representing trains, buses, and ferries shuffling people across different metropolises over the course of a day. These videos show off 24 hours of public transportation in cities such as Boston; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; Auckland, New Zealand; and Montreal.

Programmer Andrew Walker, who runs the Vancouver-based Sumus Technology, made these videos using a custom-built software program in his spare time. Because he works mostly on scientific satellites, his original idea was to design a program for satellite-tracking visualization.

“As part of the learning process for that, I started thinking about visualizations for other things,” he said. “I just happened to go a local transit meeting in Vancouver where I learned about the GTFS format.”

GTFS stands for General Transit Feed Specification, a file format for mass transit schedules that Google maps uses to calculate how to get from point A to point B when you click on the public transit option. Google gets the information from transit authorities in cities around the world and provides them to make our lives easier. Walker has thus far made visualizations for more than 40 cities and said he plans to continue uploading new ones. Eventually he hopes to include more features, such as the ability to highlight one route and real-time data rather than just transit schedules, but only two or three cities have made such data publicly available…

http://bit.ly/11JsMVC 

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Telstar 1

No conocía (o no recuedo haber visto) como era el primer satellite que existió. Parece un artefacto salido de un libro de Julio Verne, pero esta pequeña “lunita” fue la primera que hizo posible las tele-comunicaciones intercontinentales tal y como las conocemos hoy en día…

Va un artículo de wired.com sobre este satélite, con motivo del 50 aniversario de su lanzamiento…

http://bit.ly/PJ4Yh2 

Chinese desert structures

Ok: estoy intrigado… alguna explicación a esto?

This is crazy. New photos have appeared in Google Maps showing unidentified titanic structures in the middle of the Chinese desert. The first one is an intricate network of what appears to be huge metallic stripes. Is this a military experiment?

They seem to be wide lines drawn with some white material. Or maybe the dust have been dug by machinery.

It’s located in Dunhuang, Jiuquan, Gansu, north of the Shule River, which crosses the Tibetan Plateau to the west into the Kumtag Desert. It covers an area approximately one mile long by more than 3,000 feet wide.

The tracks are perfectly executed, and they seem to be designed to be seen from orbit.

Perhaps it’s some kind of targeting or calibrating grid for Chinese spy satellites? Maybe it’s a QR code for aliens? Nobody really knows.

You can check it out yourself in Google Maps here…

http://gizmo.do/sTuznf