Richard Jernigan -> RE: Alien Megastructure discovered? (Aug. 2 2016 21:17:50)
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The discussion calls to mind a couple of experiences. The northern end of Namu atoll in the Marshall Islands is only 35 miles south of the southern end of Kwajalein atoll, where I lived for 18 1/2 years. But it is more like 60 miles between the navigable passes in the two atolls that allow a boat of any significant draft to enter their lagoons. Returning from a sailing trip to Namu aboard a friend's 46-foot (14-meter) sloop, we sailed all night in very light winds. While I had the helm, I noticed a brilliant light on the horizon, bearing a little north of east. Large ships are rare in that part of the ocean, but this looked to me like the masthead light of sizable vessel. As the light slowly rose above the horizon, consistent with an approaching ship, its bearing remained constant, indicating we were on a collision course. After observing for at least 15 minutes, I mentioned the light to my friend Jim, the owner of the boat. He said, "Yes, I've been watching it." The light rose higher and higher, maintaining a constant bearing. I said, "It must be a pretty big ship." Jim agreed. After nearly an hour of increasing anxiety, a thought occurred to me. "Jim," I said. "Yes?" "That's Saturn." Jim consulted the nautical almanac, confirmed my diagnosis, and we had a good laugh at our illusion-inspired anxiety, at the prospect of colliding with a distant planet. Another experience: Being on the other side of the International Date Line from the USA, we worked Tuesday through Saturday to synchronize with our contacts in the USA. One Suniday morning four of us set out on our regular diving trip. We noticed an unusual number of people out on boats, mostly rented from the marina, many of them near the same spot in the lagoon. Many people were diving near this spot. We contacted some of the boats by VHF radio, to ask if anything special was going on. "Haven't you heard?" they asked. "A satellite reentered last night and crashed into the lagoon. People are looking for the remains." "How do you know about this?" "The space trackers saw it last night, and talked about it in the dining hall at breakfast." The ALTAIR radar on our island is the leading sensor in the Space Surveillance Network, and operates 24 hours/day, seven days a week, manned by three shifts of operators. Though I was the radar boss, I would have been awakened and notified only if there was a serious problem with the radar, not just for an unusual observation by a sensor that continued to function normally. I usually ate breakfast in my apartment, so I missed the excitement at breakfast in the dining hall. We went to one of our our usual dive destinations, and returned late that afternoon. At dinner, no one reported finding any satellite wreckage. The next day, my curiosity aroused, I went to the ALTAIR radar, and started looking through the recordings of the observations. Sure enough, there was a track that passed nearly straight overhead, but only a few tens of meters above the radar. But something was inconsistent. To track something passing so close at high velocity, the antenna would have to have moved much faster than it did, faster in fact than it could have, as I had suspected the day before. ALTAIR's 150-foot dish antenna weighs more than a million pounds, and can move no more than 10 degrees per second. In fact the antenna's motion was consistent with tracking a satellite in near earth orbit. Looking more carefully at the recorded data, the apparent close range of the object was consistent with a well-known radar phenomenon called "range ambiguity." The operating software of the radar was supposed to guard against this error, but a bug had been activated (apparently for the first time) by an extremely rare set of conditions. The operators' experience would have been alarming. The display the operators looked at showed range quite graphically, but the orientation of the antenna was shown only in small digits, elsewhere on the console. A large object appeared to be approaching straight at the radar. As the satellite passed overhead, the antenna would have accelerated to several degrees per second. The "growler", the audible indicator of the antenna's rate, would have risen to a high pitch. It would have been easy to conclude that a large object was headed straight at the radar, only to end in a shattering, fiery, death-dealing crash. The operators would have breathed a hearty sigh of relief when the object passed overhead and appeared to crash into the lagoon. But there was no crashing satellite, just a software bug that made its appearance only after years of successful operation. I am not claiming these two experiences are evidence against the existence of alien space craft. I will say that these two occurrences are evidence that experienced expert observers can at times be subjected to powerful illusions. RNJ
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