Posted by Shirley Anne on January 21, 2011
Yesterday I clicked on the ‘Picture for today’ Astronomy link on my front page, which I do every day. It showed the beautiful Andromeda Galaxy, our nearest neighbouring galaxy if you disregard the two satellite galaxies which circle our own galaxy The Milky Way, the large and small Magellan galaxies best seen from the southern hemisphere. It stated that the Andromeda galaxy is a ‘mere’ 2.5 million light years away! Have you any idea how far even one light year is? Well light year = 5.87849981 × 1012 miles! Now multiply that by 2.5 Million! Well that would be 14. 696249525 x 10 followed by 18 noughts! And that is the NEAREST galaxy. There are millions upon millions of galaxies in the known universe and their distances away from us are staggering, too far for us to really comprehend. Some are so far away that they most probably do not exist any longer. We are only seeing them as they WERE billions upon billions of years ago. Think about it. Anything we look at we only see as it was when the light left it, even the things we see around us we only see as history. Admittedly those things near to us are only billionths of a second old but as the distance increases so we see them as they were further back in history. Take the Sun for instance; because we are approximately 93 million miles away from the Sun it appears as it WAS about 8.5 minutes ago! When we look to Pluto at the far reaches of our solar system we see it as it was more than 3.5 Hours ago! The nearest star, Proxima Centauri (revolving around Alpha Centauri) is approximately 4.3 light years away or 4.3 x 5.87849981 × 1012 miles! So you get an idea of the vastness of space. Getting back to the Andromeda Galaxy, that galaxy is twice the diameter of ours or 200,000 light years across. Just to travel from one side of our galaxy to the other, travelling at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) would take us 100,000 years! That’s big. We watch programs like Star Trek and Star Wars and our imagination runs wild thinking it all might be possible one day. Perhaps locally but when you consider the distance and the time involved it appears less likely unless we imagine that one day we could ‘Time Travel‘. Yes? No! Methinks not. Thinking about such things in connection with Alien life and the possibility that there are others out there makes us wonder if we should ever come in contact with them unless solely by chance. Fantasy or reality? Which side of the fence are you or are you just sitting atop of it for now?
Shirley Anne
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Posted in Aliens and UFO's, Astronomy, Universe | Tagged: Andromeda Galaxy, Galaxy, Light-year, Milky Way, Proxima Centauri, Star Trek, Star Wars, Time Travel | 2 Comments »
Posted by Shirley Anne on November 26, 2009
I have been browsing the various UFO sites on the Internet and have read many of the reported sightings of UFO’s. Some of them are very convincing but some are obviously not. One woman was describing two objects and their movements across the sky at different times in the same evening but in different directions. As I read her report I immediately thought about artificial satellites and the many I have seen whenever I am sky watching. I have been interested in and studied Astronomy since my youth so I have a good idea of what goes on up there. What she described fitted exactly to my experiences of viewing these satellites, a bright star-like object moving smoothly across the sky which suddenly disappears. Well most of the satellites look like stars from earth when lit by the sun. The sudden disappearance is due to them entering the Earth’s shadow! Now I am not saying that this describes all sightings nor does it explain many others but I am sure that many of them will have alternative explanations which place them as normal activity. However there are some reports which evade all reasonable explanations as to what they are and could possibly be due to Alien activity, if one believes in Aliens. It is quite plausible that Aliens do exist and equally plausible that they may have or still do pay us visits. What do you think?
Shirley Anne
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Posted by Shirley Anne on May 5, 2009
I was thinking how many people believe that aliens exsist and even visit this planet. I have given the subject much thought over the years but have never reached a decision one way or the other. The greatest threat to the possibility is of course the vastness of our own galaxy and the distances that separate individual stars and possible orbiting planets. Other galaxies it would appear, are far too distant unless one believes in the possibility of worm-hole travel or space-warp travel. Nothing is impossible until it has been proven so. Aliens have not been disproven. So you might think the possibility of aliens visiting us isn’t as daft as it first sounds. The thing is though, what respectable alien would want to visit us unless they were as hostile as we are sometimes. We are supposed to be living in a loving and caring society, or so people say but that is far from the truth. We live together in an uneasy harmonious way. We cannot get along with ourselves never mind aliens! Do you think an alien invasion would unite us? I am not sure even that would shake up the human race. We are aliens to each other.
Something to think about.
Shirley Anne x
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Posted in Aliens and UFO's | Tagged: Aliens | 8 Comments »
