UFOs are for Cranks and Weirdos

Stephen Hawking's recent comments on the possibility of life beyond our planet seem to have offended a few people out there, especially these few lines.

"We don't appear to have been visited by aliens," Hawking said, adding that he discounts reports of UFOs. "Why would they only appear to cranks and weirdos?"

It's a fair comment I guess, maybe he's not into reading up on eye witness reports, though just because he said it doesn't make it fact, so why get upset, it's just his opinion, not some mathematically proven theory.

I feel his words in the article are pretty realistic if you take into account our limitations with communicating with the universe, we've traveled bugger all into it, though we can see millions of years into the past, we're really not up to date with what is really going on out there at all. Primitive life near us? maybe, intelligent life near us? maybe not, intelligent life further out there, I'd like to think hell yea.

Hawking also pointed out that "humanity must pursue a long-term effort of space exploration that would span hundreds of years in order to ensure the survival of the species"

Hundreds of years at our current capabilities is going to take us no where fast but I'll stick with the common argument of "look how far we've come in a hundred years, imagine how far we'll be in another hundred."

Maybe we will have broken all our barriers in long distance communication and travel, maybe we will be millions of light years away from earth, so why discount that another civilization out there could have been there and done that, maybe all the good stuff happened millions of years ago.

I don't know, the imagination is a powerful thing, it'll take us far beyond what we already know, I just wish proving it didn't take so dang long.

Just another rant by Rand.

Meteor Explodes over California

Well, not explode exactly, here's the description:

"Filmed March 13, 2008: Southern California - In the beginning I was convinced I was witness to a UFO, I have never seen anything like it before. Explosions was heard... More» 4-5min later. (If your are interested in purchasing the raw video please email me.)"

The videos pretty plain at first, but as it goes along it builds up into a very beautiful show of light, almost looks like something out of a movie.


Huge Meteor Explodes in Atmosphere - The best home videos are here

George Dyson on Project Orion

Never heard of Project Orion before, but the idea of a hotel sized space craft lifting off from earth is to cool.

George Dyson in the video below briefly explains the projects history and details.

Should make for some good rainy research.

Pretty Cool Meteor Video

Been awhile again I know, but I'm just having me some summer fun, water squirts with the hose. I haven't checked my feed reader in about 7 days, so that's gonna be fun trolling through.

Here's a short clip of a meteor, finding info on such clips is like trying to find an alien in Area 51.

Meteor or UFO? You decide

Meteor Showers Caught on Video

This is a great compilation of Meteors caught on video, what's amazing to me is how the flashes seem to turn night into day. I've experienced something like that but for the life of me I can't remember when, what and why, it was either a fireworks display or when the power lines went out while I was delivering papers years ago.

There seems to be a little buzz about in certain places about big flashes in the night sky, may have to look into that.

Meteor Compilation

Secret NASA Transmissions - Smoking Gun

Secret NASA Transmissions - Smoking Gun is one of those UFO films that if you're interested in the subject you should really watch, a vast majority of the NASA UFO footage comes about because of the guy interviewed in this film Martin Stubbs. Martin Stubbs is or was a cable TV station manager in Vancouver, he used the facilities to hook up to NASA transmissions and in what seems like a massive undertaking has screened through probably thousands of hours of footage looking for UFO phenomena.

From the footage compiled you get to see how painstaking that task would have been and without this guys dedication many of it may have gone unnoticed.

Tether footage featured in the film.


The film I feel is actually just a little bit to long, I watched it quite awhile ago and at the moment I'm struggling to watch it again, but it is very interesting and if you've seen the many unorganized NASA UFO clips floating around on youtube, it's nice to have them in context and to know why and how they came about.

I feel this film is a great starting point if your interested in this area of ufology and the NASA transmissions, it saves time looking for information on small clips putting them all together with a common origin.

Secret NASA Transmissions - Smoking Gun


Notes: I haven't been able to find any solid in depth info about Martin Stubbs, mostly brief mentions in relation to the film, would really like to know more about this guy. I'm also wondering if there's an official site for the film, seems like there should be.

Where Shooting Stars come from

Thought this was pretty funny and informative, I guess the man speaking is an astronaut, he's explaining how the go potty in space.

How Shooting Stars are Made

Google Moon Prize

Fancy sending a robot to the moon, fancy $30 million in prizes to be the first to complete the tasks set forth.

Well Google's forking out 30 mill in cash in partnership with the X Prize Foundation to the first two groups who successfully sends a robot to the Moon which completes a few tasks.

Sounds pretty cool, but you gotta wonder how many, if any companies will take up this challenge, 30 mill doesn't sound like much of an incentive to start a project such as this from the ground up, Also what if a lot of groups take on the challenge, could be a lot more junk left on the Moon.

Anyway if you wanna get in on it you've got till 2012 before the prize gets reduced, me? I'm working on a top secret methane based propellant, I'd better start bottling it.

GLXP Launch Highlights


Google Lunar X PRIZE Vision

Interstellar The Movie

Just saw the trailer for Interstellar a movie by Jose Escamilla who also made UFO: The Greatest Story Ever Denied
. I haven't seen either movie in full, but from the looks of the Interstellar trailer it looks pretty interesting.

As far as I can gather the images captured were taken from a modified telescope with a special apparatus, which is able to capture images of supposed space crafts in our orbit and further away.

The images are pretty and interesting and some do look a lot like space ships, but the images look kind of like strange deep sea creatures as well.

You can view the full movie by purchasing an online rental, don't know how that works, but if anyone has seen it lets us know.

Interstellar Trailer

Tonights Lunar Eclipse

NOTE: This post is about the last Eclipse, but tonights one, February 20th 2008, starts at around 8:43 EST.

So I was all set to take some photos and videos of the Lunar Eclipse tonight, was a pretty nice day, not to many clouds in the sky, but as night drew in the weather turned to arse.

It's windy now with a fair bit of cloud cover, I can still see the moon at times but nothing sustained.

I don't know why I can't remember the last eclipse to come my way, I know I've seen one though, I hope I have anyway. Hold up, yea it was a solar eclipse when I was back in school, I think I damaged my eyes and got a bad head ache, maybe that's why I can't remember it.

Anyway, would have been cool to see a blood moon for myself, but I'm sure there will be a bunch of video uploads going up overnight.

Look to the Stars with Google Earth

If Google Earth didn't make me feel smaller than I am, now it makes me feel even smaller, in the grand scheme of things anyway.

I just stumbled upon this, maybe it's old news, but I've never been one to regularly update software. Google Earth now has a feature where you can look to the stars, I just updated the software and gave it a shot and it really does make ya feel tiny.

I think it uses images from NASA and other sources to let you look at any part of space you want, it works much the same as when looking at earth. I zoomed into a little bit of the sky that looked empty and when the image updated I found it wasn't empty at all and had various info points scattered throughout.

If your much of a star gazer I think you'd have hours of fun with this update.

Explore the sky in Google Earth 4.2

The Lucifer Project, a new sun for me and you

I don't really get into talking about conspiracy theories here on MPL, mainly because for me to make any informed opinion about them I would need to spend a lot of time researching the subject.

This one is different, it has a spiffy video to show supposedly what happened a few years back.


So the conspiracy is this, the Galileo Space probe was flung into Jupiter, it had plutonium on board, it exploded and left a big black earth sized dot on Jupiter. The second part to this conspiracy theory is that NASA is planning on doing it again with the Cassini Space Probe, it is said to have about 3 times more plutonium on board than Galileo, this time however the target is Saturn. Saturn's atmosphere is almost entirely Hydrogen and the theory is that it will explode like an H-Bomb, a very big one, in effect creating a new sun.

I've only just heard about this and the above is the gist of what I know. If you want to know more about this you could attempt to read through this explanation of the Lucifer project, I didn't, please tell me if it's any good, hehe.

This also has more info about the Galileo Probe Will Galileo Make Jupiter a Star?, which attempts to debunk the theories and seeing it was written for what has already happened, I guess they were right.

Conspiracy theories aye, make great movies, I'd definitely go see this one. I now know why I don't write about them here, they seem to get wildly out of hand with so much information either way, they make for great reading and most of the time long reading.

I had another reason for posting this, I read that the youtube version of the video was taken down by request from NASA, geez more conspiracy theories.

Exosolar Google earth in Reverse

Exosolar is pretty fun, the site has info on a couple thousand stars, mostly with-in 75 lights years from us, some with planet info and is setup kind of like google earth, you can zoom in and pan around etc.

Umm that's all, dang that was brief.

Rockets or Wormholes, two new videos

I just came across a couple of videos that look pretty much identical to two other videos that I have posted before which are Video of a spiraling UFO over Russia and Vandenberg Missile Test or UFO Wormhole both those videos showed a small bright object with a big,long cloudy trail behind them and so do the two below.

Seems to be a pretty common occurrence, very spectacular to behold though.

UFO Sighting Near Area 51

UFO Sighting near Area 51

The video above is said have been shot in 2002 on a trip to Yosemite Park, the description that came with the video says it's near Area51. UFO or Rocket, well it is a UFO, it's unidentified, it's flying and it's an object. Either way it is a very beautiful piece of video.

Missile Test Or Something Else?

Missile Test Or Something Else?

This video is a little different, you don't really get a steady view of it, very shaky. The one thing that gets me is why is the trail so dang bright. It's also said to have been shot near Area51.

All in all, Rockets of UFOs, they're pretty amazing videos what ever they are.

NASA methane rocket engine Test firing Video

As i have mentioned before on MPL, I know next to nothing about rockets, but this video of NASA testing a new rocket fueled by methane was pretty cool. The gist of the write up goes into why they are exploring methane as an option, which include that's it's easier to work with than more traditional rocket fuels and that it can be sustained and created off planet, meaning that they are able to make pit stops on other planets to harvest methane and refuel.

The video is pretty brief, it shows the rocket igniting and has a very beautiful blue flame.