From yesterday’s DailyMail.com:
Does ET live on Goldilocks planet? How scientists spotted ‘mysterious pulse of light’ from direction of newly-discovered ‘2nd Earth’ two years ago.
An astronomer picked up a mysterious pulse of light coming from the direction of the newly discovered Earth-like planet almost two years ago, it has emerged.
Dr Ragbir Bhathal, a scientist at the University of Western Sydney, picked up the odd signal in December 2008, long before it was announced that the star Gliese 581 has habitable planets in orbit around it.
A member of the Australian chapter of SETI, the organisation that looks for communication from distant planets, Dr Bhathal had been sweeping the skies when he discovered a ‘suspicious’ signal from an area of the galaxy that holds the newly-discovered Gliese 581g.
The remarkable coincidence adds another layer of mystery to the announcement last night that scientists had discovered another planet in the system: Gliese 581g – the most Earth-like planet ever found.
Dr Bhathal’s discovery had come just months before astronomers announced that they had found a similar, slightly less habitable planet around the same star 20 light years away. This planet was called Gliese 581e.
Thus far I have resisted opening a Twitter account, but this passage from the article may just be enough to push me over the edge:
But the discovery of Earth-like planets around Gliese 581 – both 581e and 581d, which was in the habitable zone – has also caught the public imagination.
Documentary-maker RDF and social-networking site Bebo used a radio telescope in Ukraine to send a powerful focused beam of information – 500 messages from the public in the form of radiowaves – to Gliese 581.
And the Australian science minister at the time organised 20,000 users of Twitter to send messages towards the distant solar system in the wake of the discoveries.
Okay, but we need to come up with a better name for our new planetary friend. I nominate Panoptia, or perhaps Ellanora.
From The Urantia Book:
The Lucifer rebellion was system wide. Thirty-seven seceding Planetary Princes swung their world administrations largely to the side of the archrebel. Only on Panoptia did the Planetary Prince fail to carry his people with him. On this world, under the guidance of the Melchizedeks, the people rallied to the support of Michael. Ellanora, a young woman of that mortal realm, grasped the leadership of the human races, and not a single soul on that strife-torn world enlisted under the Lucifer banner.
Definitely Ellanora. Women rock.
Meanwhile, reports that the UN had appointed a liaison for extraterrestrial contact may have been premature, though there are a number of interesting high level conferences and seminars concerning first contact issues in the works.
But perhaps this week’s most interesting development concerning ET’s was a live press conference featuring first hand accounts by retired military officers in charge of nuclear weapons of UFOs interfering with their jobs.
Heh.
Disclose.tv – Full Press Conference UFOs disabled Nukes 27-09-10 Video
Welcome Norm.
“They” are definitely here, and by “they” I lean towards the extra-dimensional theory (which in The Urantia Book would include what it calls “midway creatures”, who have quite the colorful history having been here for a half million years for the primary group; and about 37,000 years for the secondary group).
As for any comparison with Matt Taibi, that’s about as high a compliment as I can imagine. Took your advice and read his latest article at Rolling Stone Tea & Crackers: How corporate interests and Republican insiders built the Tea Party monster
After attending a Teabagger suck fest in Kentucky where Sarah Palin was a headliner (more like a headcase), he notes her “speeches are usually a tired succession of half-coherent one-liners dumped on ravenous audiences like chum to sharks.”
My favorite passage concerns his description of the rubes in attendance:
Cheers.
I just finished “UFOs” by Leslie Kean. It’s quite good. “They” are here.
Also, was reading an article about The Tea Party by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone magazine. It was great and I thought maybe one of you guys had written it. It’s 4 pages but a great read. -Norm.
http://bit.ly/9Rd3e7
Thanks Norm; but if I had a fraction of Taibbi’s tact—
“McConnell is the ultimate D.C. insider, the kind of Republican even Republicans should wonder about, a man who ranks among the top 10 senators when it comes to loading up on pork spending. With his needle nose, pursed lips, and prim reading glasses, he’s a proud wearer of the ‘I’m an intellectual, but I’m also a narrow-minded prick’ look made famous by George Will…”
—maybe I could, on an exceptional day, write something like this:
“Buried deep in the anus of the Bible Belt, in a little place called Petersburg, Kentucky, is one of the world’s most extraordinary tourist attractions: the Creation Museum, a kind of natural-history museum for people who believe the Earth is 6,000 years old. When you visit this impressively massive monument to fundamentalist Christian thought, you get a mind-blowing glimpse into the modern conservative worldview. One exhibit depicts a half-naked Adam and Eve sitting in the bush, cheerfully keeping house next to dinosaurs — which, according to creationist myth, not only lived alongside humans but were peaceful vegetarians until Adam partook of the forbidden fruit. It’s hard to imagine a more telling demonstration of this particular demographic’s unmatched ability to believe just about anything.”
But I have far too much latent snarkiness pushing through my veins, so I write stuff like this, instead: http://bit.ly/c1UUuN
So until that day rolls around, we’ll just have to settle for Matt. 😉
Thanks for the link.