Moontanman

22 hours ago, iNow said:

@Moontanman often has insights into the aquarium best practices which IMO includes the herpetology space so tagging him in case he’s floating around, sees this, and has a recommendation

I found little info on the specifics of UV light and the needs of birds only that they do need it and can see at least some of he UV. Lots of ads promoting various light sources for birds containing UV are available. The following article may have some relevance. I know that good quality foods and calcium carbonate sources can allow turtles to grow correctly with little direct UV but I'm not sure if that applies to birds.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159113001512

2 hours ago, MigL said:

If Russia used nukes in a war of aggression, they would lose the support of China, India, and the 'crazy' states.
I would say, even now, some of his military commanders must be questioning Putin's choices, but are afraid of pushing back for fear of getting pushed out of windows.
Once it becomes clear that Putin intends to sacrifice everyone if he can't get what he wants, they, and the population, will push back, and take him out.

Remember B Yeltsin standing on top of a tank holding a Russian flag, and the Armed Forces backing down ?
Not all Russians are crazy.

I'm not so sure about this, unless Americans are crazier than Russians! Here in the US we seem to be ok with the dear leader doing whatever he wants. Once the nukes start flying push back by the population seems a bit of a day late and a dollar short scenario.

Support of the crazy states would be immaterial at that juncture.

Does the EU or NATO have access to nukes independent of US approval?

On 9/9/2025 at 1:56 PM, John Cuthber said:

"why would you want to irradiate the land you want to occupy?"
It may be dawning on Putin that he's not going to occupy much.

How long would nuking a target deny use of that land? Neil deGrasse Tyson asserted recently that modern nukes release significantly less radioactive fallout than the original (1940s) style nukes and we can see that the only two cities ever nuked were not abandoned but were inhabited continuously to this day. I admit to less than perfect knowledge on this so I could be far off the mark.

Couldn't panspermia from another planet in the solar system skew the data if we find life anywhere else in the solar system? Unless said life is significantly different from the life we have on Earth how would we show any life detected on Mars didn't come from Earth? Or even show life on Earth couldn't have come from Mars? I'm not sure that finding life elsewhere in the solar system is a good way to plot data points.

14 hours ago, HawkII said:

I don't think so. I think those three were trailing behind to begin with.

That is possible, the vid is not exactly clear enough to be sure.

I'm going to risk being flamed and suggest some bald speculation on this, to be honest we are far from knowing if this vid is even real but...

These so called orbs make me think of an electromagnetic/plasma phenomena. Possibly something natural we are simply unfamiliar with. I see no reason to propose technology of some sort for "orbs", to me they look like a natural phenomenon, hard to explain why exactly.

2 minutes ago, swansont said:

If you don’t know what the object is, how could you possibly know what breaks off of it?

It's relatively obvious that three pieces broke off the object after impact and continued along with it, I have no idea what they were, I was asking if anyone else did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCaSBrLMLTg

7 hours ago, swansont said:

If the object is unidentified I can’t fathom how you’d identify them.

???

Does anyone have thoughts on what the three objects were that appeared to break off the UAP when the missile hit and followed it after impact?

Since when are hellfire missiles used in air to air combat?

Players only love you when they are playing!

On 8/14/2025 at 2:16 PM, swansont said:

You didn’t mention UAPs but the paper does.

But why the focus on point-like objects, as I asked. Did they look for other anomalies? Plenty of things up there now are visible, such as things described here https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/satellites/

And I saw they mention brightness specs, but did they analyze modern pictures to see how often GSO objects would show up under equivalent exposure conditions?

Another thing - they mention GSO, but only a geostationary orbit would give a point. GSOs move in a long exposure, so I don’t see why they would offer this as a solution. Any object flashing from a sufficient distance would give point-like signals, and if it were tumbling so the flashes could periodically repeat you could get several as it passed through the field of view, whether it was in orbit or not.

I've been looking at the photos until I am red in the face and I have to agree, the anomalous objects do not seem to match actual stars... to me it's obvious... but I am disappointed that UAP seems to be infiltrating into science simply by lack of better explanations of late. Sort of a UAP of the gaps.

2 hours ago, swansont said:

You should know better; the material for discussion needs to be posted.

But if the images appear on just one plate and not on another from a few hours earlier, or several days later, then you can’t say the object was in orbit, as you claimed. Geosynchronous orbit (GSO) was mentioned as one possibility, but not by you. Any other orbit wouldn’t show up as point-like, since these were long exposures, which are details you also failed to include. You just asked about objects in orbit, so my response was not a non-sequitur, as it can’t “not follow” information that was not presented.

The thing is, why would you get point-like images from anything other than GSO or a star? If it’s something else then the emission or reflection has to be bright and very brief, and likely not from anything in orbit, which would leave streaks/lines. If they are from the brief orientation of certain shapes that reflects sunlight to us, they also have to be far enough away so that little light is reflected in other orientations. Lower orbits don’t do this - e.g. you can track LEO objects across a significant arc when they’re visible.

So if it’s some other source, (UAP) one must explain why they are only seen away from earth and not close by (referring to an orbital scale). What’s not showing up is as important as what is.

At least they admit and discuss defects/contamination as a possibility.

I am aware, I am not suggesting UAP, I said that "apparently in orbit" The paper is new and was just posted a week ago or so, I did post the link to the paper, The video was not and is not evidence for this I posted it because I was impressed by the data discussed and the links to that data provided and I thought that some might be more willing to watch a short science video instead of reading the paper. Do I have to quote the paper or is posting a link to the paper discussing this enough? I can quote the paper if you want but I do not personally have any data. I apologized to @TheVat for not remembering his post but the data is new, just released.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/394040040_Aligned_multiple-transient_events_in_the_First_Palomar_Sky_Survey

For some reason I don't have a quote feature anymore.

"References (31)

Figures (8)

Abstract and Figures

Old, digitized astronomical images taken before the human spacefaring age offer a rare glimpse of the sky before the era of artificial satellites. In this paper, we present the first optical searches for artificial objects with high specular reflections near the Earth. We follow the method proposed in Villarroel et al. (2022) and use a transient sample drawn from (Solano et al. 2022). We use images from the First Palomar Sky Survey to search for multiple (within a plate exposure) transients that, in addition to being point-like, are aligned along a narrow band. We provide a shortlist of the most promising candidates, including one with ∼3.9σ statistical significance. As in previous cases (Villarroel et al. 2021, Solano et al. 2023), no known astrophysical or instrumental explanations fully account for these events. We explore remaining possibilities, including fast reflections from highly reflective objects in geosynchronous orbit, or emissions from artificial sources high above Earth's atmosphere. Notably, the ∼3.9σ candidate coincides in time with the Washington D.C. 1952 UFO flyover, and another (a ∼2.0σ candidate) falls within a day of the peak of the 1954 UFO wave (Figuet 1980). We also find a highly significant (∼22σ) deficit of transients from Solano et al. 2022 within Earth's shadow, supporting the interpretation that sunlight reflection plays a key role in producing these events. This study should be viewed as an initial exploration into the potential of archival photographic surveys to reveal transient phenomena, and we hope it motivates more systematic searches across historical data sets"

13 hours ago, swansont said:

Last year we briefly had two moons, and it happened in 1981 and 2022, so it’s not shocking to find evidence that there are other instances

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2515-5172/ad781f

“Near-Earth objects (NEOs) that follow horseshoe paths, and approach our planet at close range and low relative velocity, may undergo mini-moon events in which their geocentric energy becomes negative for hours, days or months, but without completing one revolution around Earth while bound. An example of NEO experiencing such a temporarily captured flyby is 2022 NX₁, which was a short-lived mini-moon in 1981 and 2022. Here, we show that the recently discovered small body 2024 PT₅ follows a horseshoe path and it will become a mini-moon in 2024, from September 29 until November 25.”

This is a non sequitur, the observations do not in any way match quasi moons, please see the paper I listed.

5 hours ago, exchemist said:

Oh please, not a YouTube video. Those are usually worthless. Can you summarise the points made?

I would agree but "usually worthless" doesn't mean "always worthless" but I just suggested it due to the data discussed by so far reasonably competent people and the links they provide might be easier digested by some who didn't want to bother with the paper I linked.

How ever the gist of it is that a review of photographic plates from Mt Palomar Observatory has found some unusual objects that vanished after being photographed. There is some other stuff that has been attached to it by some people but at it's core are the photographic plates. From what I understand an effort to understand these photos is ongoing, I'm sure I am not qualified to critique the process but so far the data is of interest.

7 hours ago, TheVat said:

Hi, Moon. Been a while. Hope you are well. Yeah I remember the Villarroel survey coming up here last year. I had posted something about it...here it is:

The next coupla pages in that thread are a way to catch up on this topic. IIRC, some of the transientobjects had distance estimates that were farther than Earth orbit, and no observed image elongation due to motion. Has this kind of historical survey found anything further in the past eighteen months since I posted that?

I must have forgotten your post, I apologize, as far as I know your's are the most recent update. The link I shared is from 2025 according to the date listed.

8 hours ago, TheVat said:

Hi, Moon. Been a while. Hope you are well. Yeah I remember the Villarroel survey coming up here last year. I had posted something about it...here it is:

The next coupla pages in that thread are a way to catch up on this topic. IIRC, some of the transientobjects had distance estimates that were farther than Earth orbit, and no observed image elongation due to motion. Has this kind of historical survey found anything further in the past eighteen months since I posted that?

Yes the new paper was just posted in the last few days.

6 hours ago, exchemist said:

Oh please, not a YouTube video. Those are usually worthless. Can you summarise the points made?

That was the wrong video, sorry, this one is the one I wanted to post, as before it comes with all the links to papers he is using.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbg71Q4Dclo

Is anyone else following the apparent discovery of objects in Earth orbit pre 1957 by Dr. Beatriz Villarroel while looking at old astronomical photography plates from Mt Palomar Observatory?  

It would appear that several objects were photographed by the Mt Palomar telescope in 1952 that appeared to be in Earth orbit  https://www.researchgate.net/publication/394040040_Aligned_multiple-transient_events_in_the_First_Palomar_Sky_Survey

These transient events are difficult to explain, I will post a youtube video explaining these transient events you can watch if you want. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsV9wI4J2ic

https://www.reddit.com/r/Astronomy/comments/1mjpa5k/aligned_multipletransient_events_in_the_first/

This discovery, if confirmed, seems to be quite interesting... thoughts? 

On 5/17/2025 at 7:22 AM, exchemist said:

Today, I learned there is a thing in British lakes and slow-moving rivers called the swan mussel:

I was walking yesterday on Wimbledon Common, where there is large lake that has for some months been drained for improvement works. I noticed quite a number of large, elliptical shells in the dry mud bed of the lake and picked one up to examine. The shells are quite thin and light, but large. (The picture is from the internet but is very similar to the one I picked up.) I looked it up on line this morning and was able to identify it. I had no idea there were fresh water molluscs like this in the UK. They are not rare, apparently, but being generally buried in the mud at the bottom, they escape attention.

Mmmmm clam chowder! Yum Yum!

Muskrat's new car is called the "Wankpanzer" 

On 3/8/2025 at 5:05 AM, Sensei said:

In a thread similar to this one,~ ten years ago, I calculated that there is not enough ice/water in the entire Solar System to cover the entire Earth with Himalayas.

Hmmm... I'd like to see those calculations, the ice moons of the solar system come to mind? 

I am pretty sure, debunking the Bible used to be my thing, that only animals that breathed air counted, Genesis 7:15 and Genesis 7:21 ( I am relatively sure that in at least one version it says drew the breath of life or breathed through nostrils so only vertebrate land animals counted... which of course is kinda of iffy for whales) 

My old go to was that the existence of echinoderms ad cephalopods falsified the world wide flood... IMHO!