S26E94: Voyager 2's Return // Tectonic Shifts // ISS Resupply: Unraveling Space Mysteries
SpaceTime: Astronomy & Science NewsAugust 07, 2023x
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00:36:3733.58 MB

S26E94: Voyager 2's Return // Tectonic Shifts // ISS Resupply: Unraveling Space Mysteries

  1. **Voyager 2's Intergalactic Journey Continues:** Despite a brief loss of contact, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft, currently journeying through the vast expanse of interstellar space, approximately twenty billion kilometers away, has been confirmed to be fully operational.
  2. **Revolution in Earth's Plate Tectonics:** A groundbreaking study suggests a recent transformation in Earth's plate tectonics system, which was previously divided into two unique layers.
  3. **Successful Supply Mission to the ISS:** Northrop Grumman's Cygnus ND-19 cargo ship, loaded with approximately 3800 kilograms of essential supplies, has accomplished a successful docking at the International Space Station.
  4. **The Science Report:** - **Australia's Rocket System Contribution:** Australia is set to provide the US with cutting-edge guided multiple launch rocket systems, marking a significant advancement in international defense cooperation. - **DNA Sequencing for Australian Newborns:** The potential for DNA sequencing of every newborn in Australia is being explored, a move that could revolutionize healthcare and disease prevention. - **COVID-19 and Genetic Variants:** A gene variant prevalent among individuals who remain asymptomatic despite contracting COVID-19 has been identified, offering new insights into the virus's behavior and potential treatments. - **Alien Craft Sightings Debunked:** Claims of alien spacecraft sightings over Washington have been refuted by skeptics, underscoring the importance of critical thinking in the face of extraordinary claims.


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This is Spacetime Series twenty six, episode ninety four, for broadcast on the seventh of August twenty twenty three. Coming up on Spacetime, Voyager two loses contact with Earth, claims that plate tectonics on Earth recently underwent a fundamental change and a new mission to the International Space Station. All that and more coming up on Spacetime Welcome to Spacetime with Stewart Gary. NASA mission managers have confirmed that the Voyager two spacecraft is alive and well. Officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Passinga, California lost contact with the probe almost twenty billion kilometers away, well beyond our Solar System and traveling through interstellar space. It appears of forty command sent up two weeks ago, caused an accidental deviation of the spacecraft's antenna by two degrees away from a direct line of sight to Earth, cutting communications. The loss of signal cut all contact with the Voyager two, preventing the spacecraft from receiving commands or transmitting data back to Earth. Mission managers are still traded to determine exactly how the problem originated. Voyager just simply disappeared off the screens, but then NASA's camera Deep Space Communications Network seventy meter dish detected the heartbeat signal of the forty six year old spacecraft, determining it was still alive and well and operating nominally. The camera tracking station then bombarded Voyager twos vicinity with the correct command in the hopes that it would hit the mark, triggering the spacecraft to move its antenna back into the correct position towards the Earth. Traveling at the speed of light. It still took the signal some eighteen and a half hours to reach the probe, but it worked successfully, instracting Voyager two to reoint itself and turned its antenna back to Earth. Voyager two then began returning science telemetry data indicating its operating nominally and that it remains on its expected trajectory. Had the attempt failed, mission managers would have been forced to word until October. That's when an automatic spacecraft reset was planned to take place, which would have seen the probe reorentos antenna towards the Earth automatically. Voyager two was launched on a grand tour of the Outer Solar System back in nineteen seventy seven, along with its identical twin probe Voyager one. It was a rare alignment of the outer planets at the time, which meant this journey could be undertaken, taking the probes first to Jupiter and then allowing the spacecraft to use the gas giant's gravity to slingshot themselves towards the ringboard of Saturn. From the Voyager one headed out of the Solar System in a northerly direction, but Voyager two continued on visiting Urinus and then using the gravity assists of the ice chiant to slingshot it to Neptune before it two moved out of the Solar System southerly direction. Vort You two reach the Drivin System in nineteen seventy nine, the Saturnian System in nineteen eighty one, Urinus in nineteen eighty six, and Neptune in nineteen eighty nine. The probe met its historic entry into interstellar space on November the fifth, twenty eighteen, at a distance of one hundred nineteen point seven astronomical units or seventeen point nine billion kilometers from the Sun, moving at a velocity of fifteen point three four one kilometers per second relative to the Sun. An astronomical unit is the average distance between the Sun and the Earth, which equates to approximately one hundred and fifty kilometers. Who vot you Two's twin spacecraft, Voyager one, is still communicating and working fine as it travels through interstellar space in a different direction. Boger one is now some twenty four billion kilometers from the Earth, making it the most distant spacecraft consequently the most distant man made object in existence. The CSROS Glen Nagel from NASA's Canberra Deep Space Tracking Station says the silence from Voyager two is a stark reminder of the colossal distances that separate the spacecraft from their home planet. Yeah. So, back on the twenty first of July, we relayed up to the Voyager two spacecraft a series of planned command and is not quite sure yet. It could have been something in the command sequence. It could have been when it was received and can something on the spacecraft causing normally. It could have been a flip bit from a cosmic ray strike on the magnetic tape that it uses to record its commands and data, and it could have been any number of things. Tell us about Voyager two and its sistership Voyager one. So Voyager one and Voyager two were launched in world Vorger two August twentieth, nineteen seventy seven, and just a few weeks later, on September fifth, ninety seventy seven, Voyager one headed away from the Earth. And it sounds funny to launch the second spacecraft before the first one, but because a few weeks later we're a little bit closer in our path around the Sun to get to Jupiter, Voyager one could actually get to Jupiter first, and so it arrived there and did it study son. A few months later, in nineteen seventy nine, the Voyager two spacecraft came along and did its encounter, and then Voyager one off to Saturn. Voyager two files close behind. But then Voyager one headed northward out of the Solar System above the ecliptic plane that the planets orbit on, and Voyager two was then able to continue on to go to Urinus and then Neptune in nineteen eighty nine, and then it headed southward out of the Solar System, so they're both generally heading in the same direction, just north and south of the ecliptic planements to the planet's orbit on and then now I put on what they called the Millennium mission, and that was to continue their journey outward to reach the inner boundaries of an edge of our solar system, the heliosphere and the Hilo's fear. Think of it being like going through water. It's a bow shock wave in front of it. So as the Solar system travels through the galaxy, the outward rushing energy of our son collides with the inward rushing energy of all the other stars out there, the interstellar wind meeting the solar wind. And so the Voyager spacecraft ended that wave, traveled through it, learned a lot about that outer edge of our solar system and its role in surrounding our entire Solar system, and then got ahead of the wave. And that was an exciting moment for the science team where we saw a dramatic change in the signal. Sort of the outward rushing energy of the Sun wasn't there anymore, and we're for the first time looking at the clean air of interstellar space. And that was quite a remarkable moment. Voyager two passed that boundary in two and eighteen, and we were with it on that day when that signal came through and we saw the change, and I can tell you it was a very excited science team at such a propulsion labs that saw that. And of course they followed on from the Pioneer ten and eleven spacecraft which sort of tested the waters, didn't they. Yeah, they headed off a number of years earlier. They also visited Jupiter and Satin, but with less instrumentation and had lower quality cameras. And we're talking we're talking cameras, not talking digital at that time. They're talking about television cameras, TV tubes, vacuum tubes for to take those amazing images. And they go to those first clips of those two giant wealth close up, and that really paved the path for the voyages to head off with all their huge suite of instruments and their better quality cameras to take these close up views not only the planets and those planets ring structures, but also the many many moons around those worlds, which in some ways have become far more intriguing than the planets themselves because some of the moons, particularly Jupiter and Satin, have water in their environments under their icy surfaces, and we've learned that those could be environments that could support life somewhere else in our Solar system. So yeah, they've got a grand story to tell, both the Pioneers and the Void. And the pioneers were important because they were the ones that warned us the high radiation levels around Jupiter and that allowed the voyages to be built to handle that. Yeah, we always knew that the Jupiter, with its very strong magnetic field, would create this high radiation environment, and it really wasn't until the Pioneers gone out there that we realized just how intense that radiation is and how the moons interact in that environment and literally create loops of magnetic energy and radiation a doughnut around Jupiter, particularly Io, which spews out sulfur from its volcanoes on its surface which were first spotted by Voyager, and that creates a very dynamic environment. So yeah, we were able to pioneer spacecraft to make the voyages more hardy, and then of course from the voider information we could make missions like Galileo and Juno a Jupiter and the Cassina missionment SAT be quite toughest about to handle those environments for not just quick fly buys, but for years orbiting and studying those wells space now an interstellar space. Where are they going? So for Voyager two, twenty billion kilometers away at the present time, traveling at about one point four million kilometers a day, it's headed off to a distance star with well just a serial number. It won't reach that star for another two hundred and ninety six thousand years. But for Voyager one, heading on its fire paths, it will fly within the light year of the star series in just another forty thousand years from now. We'll lose contact with them long before that happens. So if all goes well, we get contact with Voyager two constantly in contact with Voyager one, we should still have at least a radio signal coming back from them that we can detect into the mid twenty thirties. But eventually they'll get so far away and their signals so small, but not even our dishes will detect them anymore. The signal will be lost in the background noise generated by the rest of the universe in radio frequencies, and then they'll just keep going. Eventually, those two spacecraft traveling through our galaxy will leave our whole system well behind, leave the stars of our able behind. They'll be the last reminder actually that we ever existed. They'll outlast the Earth and outlast the Sun, and the last reminder of humanity's placed in the universe, which is why the great science seems. Back At that time, particularly Carl Sagan and John Calliffe created the Golden Records on board both Voyager spacecraft with a record of music and literature and languages, cultures, and a little time capsule a story about humanity. And it was sort of a hopeful thing, promising thing that we're sending a message in a little tiny spacecraft bottle often too, the universe, that vast ocean of space, in a hopeful port that maybe if there is somebody out there, they'll find it and learn a little bit about us. Even if we're already long gone and the Pioneers are, we still able to talk to them at all. I know they were being used for a little while to test receivers ability to pick up faded signals. What's happening there for the Pioneer spacecraft, they have long since gone silent, much smaller spacecraft, less powerful transmitters than the voyages. The last contact we had with the Pioneer ten was back in two thousand and two. So that was the last whisper for that spacecraft. I'm sure it's probably still out there. We're certainly still out there, and maybe even still a faint amount of power for its radio transmitter, but we simply cannot detect it anymore. So if they also carry on board plat with a little bit of information about who built them, where they came from, and our understandings of science and mathematics, so maybe another little hopeful message out to anybody that might be there in the universe. Are they heading for interstellar space as well? They will eventually in a sour space, but they don't quite have the speed the Voyager spacecraft, which are traveling at about nearly seventeen kilometers per second, so they won't reach escape velocity for the ultimately for the entire Solar System, so they will stay massive soul or for many buildings of years to come. Okay, and I guess the only other one then we'll be new horizons. Yeah, for the New Horizon spacecraft which visited Pluto back in twenty fifteen, and then the hyper vault jac Aracost in twenty nineteen. It has certainly the kvelocity of the Solars so one day we'll reach the inner Edge and travel through the Hilio Sheath boundary the magnetisphere in our Solar System and ultimately enter interstellar space. But whether that mission is still operable by that time, and it's taken the Voyager spacecraft, you know, more than forty years, in forty six years now to reach into stellar space, we've still got a long way to go for the new Horizon spacecraft, which is only launched in two thousand and six, so it's still got a long way to go to reach that malster. You guys are constantly preparing for new missions. What's on your horizon? So coming up actually later in August, we've got the landing of the Indian Space Agencies changed around three spacecraft making their latest attempt to land on the surface of the Moon, and we'll be directly involved in the landing as we have been right throughout the mission since launched. In September, we've got the return of NASA's Osiris REX mission, returning samples from the asteroid Benu, which will be very exciting to add to our knowledge of those little space wanderers out there, and Benu's of particular interest to scientists and understand more about its composition, because Benu has an orbit which actually crosses the Earth's orbit from time to time, so knowing more about it's and its structure and composition, all of us understand a bit more than what we might need to do if that object one day might actually come our way. And then October a big mission for the year, and that's the launch of the Psyche mission from NASA, heading off to the asteroid known as Psyche, which the science team believes it's the remains of the core of a planet that was once forming in our soul system a long time ago, but effectively an object that ran out of material to grow to become a larger world, and then successive bombardments of that surface with smaller objects have blasted away a sort of outer surface and left behind just the metal iron core. So this is going to be a really unique mission. We can't get to the core of a planet, we can't drill thousands of kilometers into the Earth, so getting to have a sort of his one we made it earlier out there in the space. The asteroid Psyche gives us a chance to go and have a look at these objects and understand more about the formation of planet. That's the CSIROS Glen Nagle from NASA's caberra At Deep space tracking station and this space Time still to come claims Earth's plate tectonics have recently undergone a fundamental change and a new mission to the International Space Station. Oh that and more still to come on space time. A new study claims that planet Earth's system of plate tectonics was until recently stratified into two distinct layers. The revolutionary new findings were reported in the journal Nature. Suggests the planet originally had separate upper and lower mantle regions that were isolated from each other. The Earth is truly unique among our Solar Systems planets. It has vast oceans and abundant life. But Earth's also unique because it's the only planet with plate tectonics, and that not only shaped its geology, its climate, and atmosphere, but possibly it also influenced the evolution of life. Plate tectonics describes the movement, interaction, and subduction of tectonic plates on the Earth's surface. That movement is driven by the very slow creeping motion of the Earth's mattle called convection, which carries heat from the interior of the planet to its surface. Researchers believe that convection in the mantle, started shortly after the Earth's formation four point five billion years ago, occurs at the scale of the entire mantle, so when plates collide on the Earth's surface, one gives way and sinks into the hot mantle, ending up in a sort of plate graveyard on the top of Earth's metallic core. However, a new study suggest that this style of plate tectonics may actually be a more recent feature in earths geologic history than previously thought. One of the studies authors, Martin Schillett, from the University of Copenhagen, says the new research suggests that foremost of Earth's history, convection in the mantle was stratified into two distinct layers, namely upper and lower mantle regions, that were virtually isolated from each other. This transition between the upper and lower mantle occurs at about six hundred and sixty kilometers below the Earth's surface. Now, at this depth, certain minerals undergo phase transition, and Schiller and colleagues believe that this phase transition may well be the reason and why the upper and lower mantle origins remain mostly isolated. The findings indicate that in the past, recycling and mixing of the subductive plates into the mattle was restricted to just the upper matal where there is strong convection, and this is very different from how the authors believe plate technonics operates today, where subducting plates can sink all the way down in the lower matle, just above the core metal boundary. Chiller and colleagues reach their conclusions after developing a new method to produce ultra high precision measurements of the isotopic composition of the element titanium in various rocks. Isotobes are versions of the same element that have slightly different masses, and the isotopic composition of titanium is modified when crust is formed on the Earth, and this mixed titanium isotobes useful to trace how surface material like the crust is recycled into themantle through geologic time. Using this new technique, the authors were able to determine the composition of mantle rocks that formed the earliest three point eight billion years ago all the way through to modern day lavas. If the recycling and mixing of tectonic plates was restricted to just the upper mantle. As postulated in this new study, it means that the lower mantle could contain undisturbed primordial material. The concept of a primordial mantle refers to a reservoir of mantle material that's remained relatively unchanged and therefore preserved since the very early days of Earth's formation four point five billion years ago. That's when the even earlier proto Earth, which formed four point six billion years ago, was hit by a Mars sized planet called Thea, which turned the whole thing back into a magma ocean, resetting the clock for differentiation and eventually separation of the planet. It's a separate outer and inner cause, mantle and crust. Now, the very idea of a primordial reservoir existing deep in the Earth isn't new. It's been suggested previously based on the isotopic composition of rare gases trapped in lavas from modern day deep seated volcanoes. However, the interpretation of this state has always been ambiguous, and some have suggested the isotopic signal comes all the way from the Earth's core as opposed to the deep mantle. But because we know titanium isn't present in the Earth's core. It therefore provides a fresh perspective on this long standing debate. It's an interesting result this space time still to come a new mission to the International Space Station, and later in the science report, Australia to supply the United States military with a new generation of guided missile. All that and more store to come on spacetime. The Northrop grumm Signus ND nineteen cargo ship carrying some three thousand kilograms of supplies as successfully docked to the International Space Station. The mission, which launched from NASA's Wallops Island flight facility on the Virginian mid Atlantic Coast, was Northrop Grumman's nineteenth cargo flight to the Space station and it's eighth under its second commercial resupply services contract with NASA four three two one DOT and Terry's Invent ninety falls Tip Authority ferries taking north of Grumman's commercial resupply mission nineteen into urban to the International Space Station remains. Flight controllers reporting a nominal ascent for in Terry's at a prenominal humber pressure stations no remain as rust steady is on TVC is on at are nominal GLAD to be the main phenomenal hundred powers nominal a vehicle passing improved magical good without passing through MAXCU. MAXCU is the maximum dynamic pressure experienced on terries. Corp pressure reization valves are nominal. Engines are main nominal stay LCA, your co cut speed in Terris, Thank you LA. Half through the burn one hundred seconds to MIKO passing through thirty thousand feet attitude nominal attitude rains nominal engine remains nominal SAT eight hundred percent passing through five thousand feet per second. Corp pressurization remains nominal. Electrical powers nominal TVC remains nominal. Engines remain nominal for proximity. Forty seconds from MICA flow throttled down has begun. Attitude nominal TBC pre set down SLEW has started. Three minutes into the flight of terries. We had about fifteen seconds until main engine cutoff down STADA fifty five percent thrust and we have main engine cutoff. Elvis is taking care of business. We have stage separation confirmed Stage separation as we lose terries into the clouds on this hazy evenings. Stage two agmission time expected at mission time tooty. Stage two ignition expected and approximate ten seconds varying is separated and Terry's currently in a coast phase. Stage two ignition and TVC batteries nominal. Second stage solid rocket motor has ignited. Remains normal. The stage will burn for two minutes and forty four seconds. The castor thirty XL will burn from approximate two point five minutes. Power remains nominal. Stage two TVC is nominal. Fly controllers report reporting good performance on the second stage. Power remains nominal. TVC remains nominal in stage two and power approximate one hundred seconds from stage two burnout at a troop phil nominal power remains nominal. Stage two TVC remains nominal. Fifty seconds to stage two burno TBC elect for power remain nominal. Beginning to see tailoff and motor pressure and we have stage two burnout six minutes fifty five seconds into the flight. The second stage solid rocket motor has burned out. As enabled. They will enabled now entering about approximately a two minute coast phase is an orbit and will coast for roughly one hundred seconds prior to biload separation seven minutes forty five seconds into the flight of Entries. After spacecraft separation, it will take approximately two hours thirty minutes until the solar arrays are unfurled to start collecting power for the Signus vehicle. Spacecraft separation is coming up on thirty seconds continuous to coast prior to biload seperation, and we have baiload separation and the flight control teams confirmed Signus has separated from the Entries second second stage, flying free and beginning its journey to the International Space Station. All right, launch team, I'll see on countdown that we're going to go ahead and proceed with our post launch checklist. We've confirmed that we've had SIGNS separation. Congratulations to the SIGNA team. This mission also marked the final flight for the Entire's two thirty rocket, originally developed by Obital Science as the Tourists too. A new version of the rocket, to be known as the Entirees three third using a Firefly Aerospace first stage, was expected to launch next year, but the LEAs in development have now pushed that launch date back to the twenty three mission in twenty twenty five, so to fill the gap, at least three Signals missions will be launched aboard SpaceX Falcon nine rockets instead. That means that, as well as launching its own Dragon cargo ships to the International Space Station, the Dragon crew capsules transporting astronauts, SpaceX will also be firing at least three missions for its competitor Northrop Grumman. As to what happens with the other two teams contracted to fly to the International Space Station, namely Boeing Starline A transporting crews aboard an Atlas now Vulcan rocket and Sierra Nevada's Cream Chaser reusable lifting body space plane, well there both will behind schedule, although birth are still expected to fly sometime. We'll have updates on both those projects next week. The supply is being brought to the space station aboard the NG nineteen signals will support dozens of research experiments now being undertaken by the Expedition sixty nine crew. These include new gene therapy tests designed to demonstrate the formation of three dimensional neuron cell cultures in microgravity and to test a neuron specific gene therapy. Also aboard is the sixth spacecraft fire experiment that's the last in a series to test flammability of different oxygen levels and to demonstrate fire detection and monitoring, as well as post fire cleanup capabilities. That's an experiment that will take place aboard the Sigma's cargo ship after that spacecraft is departed from the International Space Station. Another experimental measure atmospheric density using a multi needle aMule probe to monitor plasma densities in the ionosphere that's where the Earth's atmosphere meat space. The flights also delivered a new improved water sterilization and sanitation unit. It'll reduce microbial growth in stored water supplies and can also provide heartwater for crew consumption and for food pre operation. And there's also an old friend return of the space station, a little cube shaped robotic helper called astrob. It's been sent back into orbit after some modifications in order to help out with routine tasks. Signals has also delivered a condensation module and heat transfer system for a flow boiling condensation experiment that will help scientists better understand heat distribution and fluid space. And there's also an upgrade Banessa's colde Atom Lab quantum physics facility, which makes use of the microagravity environment of the space station to study quantum phenomena in ways which simply at possible on Earth. The upgrade will give scientists more data in a wider variety of experimental conditions. Once it's all unloaded, the Signal spacecraft will be loaded with space station refuse and in October it'll depart the space station loaded with several thousand kilograms of trash and will then burn up in the atmosphere this space time and time. How to take a brief look at some of the other stories making news and science this week with a science report. Australia has entered into a new deal with the United States just apply the US military with a new generation of guided missiles and multiple rocket launch systems. Under the agreement, Australia will need to begin manufacturing the missiles within two years. The Australian government recently set a side two point seven billion dollars to acquire a long range strike capability, which would bolster Australian stockpiles and could also be exported to the United States and other friendly nations. The announcement comes as Western nations continue to deplete their own munitions and logistics reserves in the ongoing conflict again Russian invasion of Ukraine that war is exposing weaknesses in many Western military supply chains, which are now starting to run low on ammunition and missiles. The missile announcement was made during a two day Australian US meeting held in the shadows of the vast Talisman Saber Joint military exercise in Northern Australia. Talisman Sabers see the deployment of over thirty thousand military personnel from Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea and several Pacific island nations. It comes as Australia is forced to embark on its own armed forces overhaul and build up, moving towards long range strike capabilities in an effort to keep China at arms length. Beijing's undertaken a massive expansion of its military, both in terms of conventional firepower and in nuclear weapons. China now operates the world's largest military and aggressively targets any nation entering the South China Sea, which it now claims to have taken possession of country to international law. As part of the new deal between Camera and Washington, Australia's agreed to an American request to expand to military bases in the strategically important north end of the country, thereby allowing them to host more training exercises and increased rotations of American troops and warships. Both nations will also continue working towards using Australia as a safe forward base for the storage, maintenance, repair, an overhaul of critical US source munitions and weapons systems. The meeting also discussed progress on the Orcus Security treaty between Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom that'll see Australia built its own nuclear submarines and purchase at least three US never Virginia class subs Congress permitting. As part of the deal, Australia will share its hypersonic rocket and missile technology with the United States. A world first for ability study conducted in Australia through a joint public private sector collaboration has realized the potential of DNA sequencing to expand and improve population newborn screening. The findings are reported in the journal Critical Chemistry. Examine the feasibility of targeted gene sequencing by screening all newborns at or shortly after birth for multiple genetic conditions in a single test. The technology is based on next generation GENA sequencing tools, allowing hundreds of genes to be simultaneously analyzed for variations that cause genetic diseases. Scientists have identified a gene variant common in people who experience no symptoms when they get COVID nineteen. The findings are reported in the journal Nature. Looked at one hundred and thirty six people who reported no COVID symptoms, finding one in five carried a gene variant named hla b star fifteen zero one, which is involved in immune responses. In a separate arm of the study, Situs found T cells that reacted to some fragments of COVID nineteen in people with the gene variant who had never had COVID nineteen, suggesting they may have developed some form of immunity to COVID nineteen through previous exposure to other infections. Almost seven million people have now been killed by the COVID nineteen coronavirus since it was first detected near China's Wuhan Institute of Virology around September twenty nineteen. The World Health Organization estimates the true death toiles likely to be around eighteen million, with some seven hundred and seventy million confirmed cases globally, that's ten percent of the world's population. Well, with all the talk of unexplained anomalous phenomena across the United States at the moment, a Washington State resident can almost be forgiven for thinking she saw what must have been a U foe one morning. Instead, however, she's discovered a new level of embarrassment in public humiliation after posting a video online of what she claimed was an alien spacecraft. The rather bulbous rocket shaped unidentified flying object was spotted hovering silently above the tree line in the golden morning sunlight. The woman filming the incident described the object as enormous, very fat, and appearing to have fins coming out of the bottom. Possibly it's an alien mothership, timentum from a Straian skeptic says, In reality, it was a hot air balloon shaped like a comical fat rocket. It's been operated for the past sixteen years by a local hot air balloon company. Well, actually usists. They actually started Bend Washington, didn't they. Of course, yes, the Arnold flying source of things. They started up in brand Washington near Mount Rainier. Again, this is sort of silly stories you get all the time people who film something, and people can film everything all the time these days, so they're carrying the camera in their pocket and they'll film something and they'll instantly put it up on Facebook or wherever there for them and say, look, this is mysterious. It cannot be explained. And some of them can't be explained because you just don't have any detail, and therefore you have to leave it as unexplained. It's a lot of people don't understand what that means. In newfos, it's unidentified for a reason you can't explain. It doesn't mean it's the flying ser but anyway, that's a different issue. But people keep putting up these videos of things they've seen, and of course instantly everyone goes, oh, well, the flying scer. Someone saw this shape that looked to be a huge round dish elongated shape floating in the sky and they seem to have fins off it, and someone said that looks like an alien rocket, and someone pointed out, it's not an alien rocket. It's a balloon that looks like a rocket with fin Someone designed it that way and they's you've seen these hot air balloons and things like that. They often designed to look at the most amazing shapes, and this one someone had designed it to look like a rocketship vertical, the fins coming out the side, and someone had filmed that. And because they instantly assume, I don't know what it is there for it must be a flying sorcer for an alien of some sort, they put it up and everyone believes it. And these things take about oh ten seconds to debunk. And if a person who had put it up thought about it for ten seconds, they might have hesitated. But if you're the sort of person who believes in UFOs, and this was described as a mothership UFOs. Mothership's a good term to use because it's big rather than a little thing whizzing ran and it was very strange, very silly, very jumped to conclusions, and a lot of pilpa who would believe it because it's just strange that therefore they instantly say strange alien rather than strange funny looking balloon. That's timendum from Australian skeptics. And you can see a picture of the hot air balloon. Come you have a mothership on our website. Just go to the Spacetime Tumbler blog and that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple podcast, iTunes, Sti, Google Podcast, pocket Casts, Spotify, Acast, Amazon Music, bytes dot com, SoundCloud YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from Spacetime with Stewart Gary dot com. 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