#real science

[mysteriesoftheunknown]

Sightings - S3E06 - “S.E.T.I. Resurrected” - October 16th, 1994

“In 1992, on the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage to the new world, NASA embarked on its own voyage to deep space. They devised a program called SETI - Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Their mission? Use the world’s most powerful telescopes to search for signs of life in outer space.”

In 1992 the US government program approved funding for the Microwave Observing Program, a NASA program searching for extraterrestrial signals. Then, only a year later it was cancelled.

NASA engineer James Oberg says "the SETI project was just a sacrifical lamb, a cheap shot for the budget posers, for the deficit hawks. It's always easier to make fun of something you…don't understand." In fact funding for SETI projects had already been cut in 1981 due to the efforts of William Proxmire, whose shtick in Congress was to give out "golden fleece" awards which were largely him cutting funding for any science project he didn't immediately understand. Because let the military pork barrels flow but by god don't let a physics experiment happen if some random guy from Wisconsin can't understand it. Proxmire backtracked after Carl Sagan yelled at him, but SETI funding wouldn't survive the even more aggressive budget cutting of the 1990s. Congress simply said "you haven't found Martians after one year!" and decided it was all trash.

Meanwhile from the vantage point of 2026 it's obvious that all that "wasteful" spending was in truth extremely important. Those seemingly stupid to a layman science projects had a purpose. And as for the rest, to quote noted polisci scholar Judd Hirsch from Independence Day: "You don't actually think they spend $20,000 on a hammer, $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?"

SETI research would continue with private backing as part of Project Phoenix...

...which would complete its mission in 2004. They didn't find alien life, but the SETI Institute carries on today, as do other groups (for instance the Berkeley SETI Research Center, who were the ones behind SETI@home).

Telescope arrays were used at Arecibo, Puerto Rico (which Sightings profiled - Sightings' hiatus was just long enough that it covered the start of the government SETI program and the aftermath of its cancellation, but wasn't there for the middle part where it actually existed) and at the Goldstone Complex in California.

Anyway there's also an anonymous "aerospace engineer" who claims that SETI was cancelled because they found signals the military didn't like. Whatever

Our post-show teases:

The Sentinel, of course, is up next...

Along with something called Sci-Fi World where Sci-Fi would host marathons of different themes every day of the week. God, Sci-Fi Channel used to do that: their daytime schedule would be a marathon of some show from their archives, and their archives were deep. They would sometimes run the whole run of some one-season show from the 70s. Remember when TV channels liked being TV channels? Good times

[realsciencefiction]

The Physics Is Real. That Is the Problem.

The Death Star is not frightening because it is fictional.

It is frightening because the question underneath it is real:

How much energy does it actually take to break a planet apart?

That sounds like movie logic. It is not. It is a physics problem.

A planet is held together by gravity. Every particle pulls on every other particle. To pull the whole thing apart, you have to overcome that binding energy all at once.

And once you start thinking at that scale, the Death Star stops being the scariest idea.

A star turned into a beam is worse.

A rock moving near light speed is worse.

Antimatter converting mass directly into energy is worse.

The unsettling part is not that science fiction invents impossible weapons.

It is that some of the scariest ones do not break physics at all.

They only require enough energy, enough speed, enough time, and a civilization advanced enough to use them.

I made a full dark science documentary about the real physics behind Death Star-scale weapons, Nicoll-Dyson beams, relativistic kill vehicles, antimatter, and Kardashev civilizations.

The scariest line is not:

“This could happen tomorrow.”

It is:

“The physics works.”

Watch the full documentary here:

[mysteriesoftheunknown]

Sightings - S3E03 - “Mars Mission Cover-Up” - September 25th, 1994

“In 1976, the Viking mission to Mars sent back the first high-resolution photographs ever taken of the Martian surface. Since then two additional missions have attempted to get even closer, but both have failed. In 1990, a Russian Mars probe named Phobos disappeared. And in 1993, a US probe - the Mars Observer - met a similar fate.”

In August 1993, the Mars Observer probe suffered a malfunction. To NASA, this was a disappointing setback. To UFOlogists, this was proof of a coverup, because it happened to malfunction before it could look at Cydonia, the region of Mars where Viking photographed a supposed giant stone face.

NASA dismissed it as a trick of light and shadow. Was NASA right? Keep reading to find out...

I fucking hate this guy. Only non-psychic regular guest on the show I dislike. He's a pseudoarcheologist and we know now that he'll be a huge Ancient Aliens guy (he's appeared in multiple episodes of Ancient Aliens since my last post about him! And that post paused to marvel at him being in nearly every episode of Ancient Aliens!) but his whole vibe is trying way too hard. He WANTS a TV show so bad and he has this sleazy game show host energy about him

NIGHTMARE BLUNT ROTATION

Anyway, Childress says: “It’s quite possible that NASA knows more about anomalous structures on Mars, possible extraterrestrials, even structures on our moon that they’re not telling us about.”

Stanley McDaniel wrote a report - full title McDaniel Report: On the Failure of Executive, Congressional, and Scientific Responsibility in Investigating Possible Evidence of Artificial Structures on the Surface - analyzing the curves of the Face on Mars and the pyramids. As he says, “There is sufficient evidence that indicate some of the objects on Mars may possibly be artificial.”

To prove the Face on Mars is real no matter the lighting they create a 3D model from the photo. You can detect the flaw here: if the object doesn't really look like a face at all, then the model doesn't prove anything except that a stone face could exist if it existed

“If some people want to go far beyond what’s accepted in terms of imagery, see patterns on the rocks on Mars or on the Moon or in the rings of Saturn, my view to that is mazel tov - go ahead, do it, try it out, make your proposals," says NASA engineer James Oberg, who by comparison has wonderful energy. Oberg is a noted UFO debunker, among other cases he explained the supposed "Black Knight" satellite.

The question is asked - why *would* NASA keep structures on Mars a secret? Because if I know anything about NASA, it's that they like to hush up cool discoveries in space that they could get copious government funding to investigate.

But they say a secret Brookings report reveals fears that the government could lose its control in the societal upheaval to come after disclosure of alien life. This is surreal to read in 2026, where it's Literally The Government who are pushing UFOs aggressively while saying batshit things about UFOs being demons and the like.

Tim White comes back on: “The debate may end in 1996, when NASA plans on launching a new Mars probe. This may be the second chance UFOlogists are hoping may reveal the existence of an ancient civilization on Mars.”

They would return to Mars, successfully, with the launch of the Mars Global Surveyor in 1996 and the arrival of the Sojourner rover in 1997.

And they would kill the Face on Mars dead.

It's a geological feature. NASA was right all along: it was only a trick of the light and the low resolution of Viking. Still, it is an iconic image of Mars.

Surprisingly enough, though there were some initial denialists, it did become largely accepted that the Face on Mars was a trick of the light, and it became a niche thing in UFOlogy (really, all "there's still Martians!" theories did as beloved Earthlings Sojourner, Spirit, and Opportunity showed off more of the surface)

Our post-show teases:

A rerun of UPN show The Sentinel next (it was one of my aunt's favorite shows and I remember it begin entertaining!) and The Invisible Man - the Sci-Fi original series, which I def watched at the time and liked a lot

The original run of Sightings was a lot of me posting about inscrutable Fox flops, this run is just me going "hey, I remember that!" about random 2000s genre shows

[lowlevelkoboldadventures]

Scientists have found that kobolds ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

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[puppy-dog-housewife]

A dog bed is a magical device that turns hot girls into puppies simply by lying in it. Scientists are still working on a way to turn them back to human afterwards, personally I hope they never figure it out.

This strange but cool phenomenon has been found to work with collars aswell.

[mysteriesoftheunknown]

Sightings - S3E01 - “Black Holes” - September 11th, 1994

“If asked about the possibility of alien visitation on this planet, skeptics might argue that logistically it’s just impossible, the universe is so vast that even if life did exist in a distant galaxy it would take billions of years for them to meet us. UFOlogists on the other hand maintain that there must be a cosmic shortcut, and some suggest that shortcut is through a black hole…”

We're doing black holes again! And look who's back for his second of three appearances (according to IMDB, which sometimes leaves people out)! Two of which are devoted to black holes!

San Francisco Examiner journalist Keay Davidson! He's here to tell us about Einstein.

Physicist Roger S. Jones is here to tell us if we ever learn how to control black holes, we could move to other universes or “other space-time realms we can’t even imagine today”, because black holes could be wormholes.

We're told about imagery of a black hole in a galaxy called M87; in 2019, the first ever image of a black hole would be the one in this galaxy.

“Until next time, remember: no mystery is closed to an open mind,” Tim White says.

It may have been a year, but you can still call the Sightings tip line...

...though it's ten cents less and a different number. But it's 1994, does that mean...

YES. SIGHTINGS IS ON AOL DOT COM

Our post-show teases...

...next up? Dark Shadows! Then...

...Farscape!

Okay, so this recording is from a rerun of Sightings. The episode promoted here aired in 2001, so this is four years after the final episode of Sightings, three years after the last of the specials. Honestly had no clue it was in reruns that late, but according to Innermind's schedule archive, they spent the latter half of 2001 running a single episode of Sightings every weekday morning at 9. Only the fifth season aired new on Sci-Fi, but seasons three and four were frequently re-run (but not the half-hour seasons, it seems, given all recordings were from Fox itself). So our post-show teases can now be from all over the place, especially if some first-run syndicated recordings are thrown in. Fun!

Here's what else aired that day:

Not advertised on Sightings that day: the 9/11 telethon airing that night because this was September 2001

There was a light mystery here, because while the episode of Farscape is right, the episode of Sightings on the schedule is a different one, from the fourth season. Let's check out that episode's synopsis

Yeah okay looks like they pulled that one

[wickedyywick]

will finally gives in. maybe they are right. 👀