Small stars may have stable Habitable Zones, but habitable planets might not be common there

Protoplanetary accretion disk around a new star

The previous article Limited lifespan of Habitable Zones around other stars (September 2016) covered the topic of Habitable Zones for planets around other solar systems.  However, Habitable Zones are only one of considerations for finding other stars with habitable planets.  Given the lack of data right now, sometimes science has to fall back on simulations.  These simulations do not replace actual observations.  Instead, they offer clues as to how we may be proceed in our search for hard data.

Habitable Zones appear to be more stable and longer lasting around small stars, such as Red Dwarfs.^[001]  However, what are the chances of habitable planets appearing in these small zones around these small stars?  It turns out that the chances may not be good.

According to the study A Decreased Probability Of Habitable Planet Formation Around Low-Mass Stars, multiple simulations suggest that low-mass stars are unlikely to have terrestrial planets of sufficient size within their Habitable Zones.  This is due to a several factors.  That's not to say it is impossible nor improbable; just not as common as previous thought.^[002]

Other factors

Besides Habitable Zones, another factor to consider is the Habitable Planet Mass Limit.  There is evidence that suggests that plate tectonic activity on a global level is a necessary factor for supporting life on a planet similar to Earth.  Planets must be of a particular size in order to allow for global tectonics.^[002]  The lack or presence of global tectonics seems to be a factor in the differences between Venus and Earth.  Though Venus seems to be large enough, its surface heals too quickly to allow for global tectonics.^[003]   The examples within our own solar system suggest that even when planets are large enough, there is no guarantee they will have global tectonics.

Another factor is the Protoplanetary Disk.  During the planet formation phase (accretion), there has to be enough material within the disk of matter that forms around very young stars (Protoplanetary Disk) in order produce larger planets.  Though there are a lot of unknowns regarding this factor, the "ratio of disk mass to stellar mass is roughly constant with stellar mass".  Also, planets seem to form much faster around small stars for various reasons.  With less time to form and less mass within the Protoplanetary Disk, planets around low-mass stars may typically be much smaller.  A second issue with fast forming planets is that they are much less likely to have enough time to collect enough water to support life.^[002]

Exceptions?

Nothing is absolute.  Gliese 581 is a Red Dwarf that has a number of large planets, and also has a debris disk that appears to have tens times amount of comet debris than our own Solar System.  This suggests low-mass stars can have habitable planets.  That said, Gliese 581 may be an outlier.  Other factors are obviously involved that need further study.

Primary reference:
S. N. Raymond, J. Scalo and V. S. Meadows, The Astrophysical Journal 669 (Nov., 2007) 606–614, arXiv:0707.1711 [astro-ph], A Decreased Probability of Habitable Planet Formation around Low-Mass Stars

Response:
Hacker News

Article Series:

• Limited lifespan of Habitable Zones around other stars [and a loosely held secret finally revealed about me]
• Small stars may have stable Habitable Zones, but habitable planets might not be common there
• Habitable Planets around White Dwarfs
• Habitable Worlds Around Binary Star Systems might not match Sci-fi
• How many Earth-like planets are orbiting Sun-like stars?
• First round of life in the Universe might have been possible extremely early
• Factors a planet needs for suitability of life; perhaps
• "Goldilocks zone of metallicity" on a galactic scale
• Maybe we are the first

Lack of reproducibility of scientific papers getting attention

A lack of reproducibility of published scientific studies is finally getting recognition by the corporations (that seems to me to that could lose millions from bad research).  Academia seems a bit resist.  Source article:
 Reseach uncovering unreproducibility faces backlash 

U.S. Space & Rocket Center of Huntsville, AL

On a recent trip to Huntsville, AL, I was able to squeeze enough time for myself to visit the world famous U.S. Space & Rocket Center.  When you first walk into the museum, the first couple of exhibits are a little underwhelming, given the grandeur of the purpose of the site.  There is a display of patented inventions, then a tribute to Dr. Wernher von Braun.

It is interesting, but very museum-like.  Where's the rockets?

Well, once you are thru there, you can go outside!  Rockets!  Rockets!  Rockets!  None of them blasting off, but still impressive, nonetheless.

Of course, there is a lot more than just rockets that go into space.  Without giving too much away, here's a few more photos.  This is really a place you should visit just to see the shear scale of these massive machines.

"To good to be true" - Criticism of scientific studies grows

It is almost ironic, the other day I posted this article Reason Why I'm Skeptical of Skepticism which criticized over reliance on many study conclusions without actual supporting or valid data within the studies.  Now, just a few days later, there is a new published "study of studies" which reinforces the idea of being skeptical of scientific study conclusions, Excess Success for Psychology Articles in the Journal Science.  This study exposes that many studies in Psychology have issues, where the declared conclusions are simply "to good to be true" based on the strength of the data.  The inference being that there may be a general problem with all fields of science.

"Not every experiment is methodologically sound, and some experiments (even if methodologically sound) do not clarify the status of a theoretical idea. There is little reason to publish such experimental results, whether they are statistically significant or not. Unfortunately, in day-to-day scientific practice it is quite easy to interpret an unsuccessful outcome as being irrelevant to the theory or as being methodologically flawed and therefore not worth reporting."

In other words, data is cherry-picked in support of the theory rather than attempting to take contrary results into account.  This is basically throwing out the Scientific Method when it doesn't result in data this supports a theory.  In other cases, data collection is just too imprecise to form a suitable theory.  Kind of like garage-in-garbage-out.

I have a feeling a growing criticism of the current system is going to force changes into the process of study publishing and utilization.

Reason why I'm skeptical of Skepticism

There is a plague on modern science and Skepticism.  That plague is over reliance upon research reports.  Research report is a gathering of pre-existing data (the "re" in "research"), repurposed to find patterns.  The problem is that many research reports are created to find correlations in support of predetermined conclusions (assumptions).  Research reports are often formatted as scientific studies and published in science journals along side scientific studies that use the Scientific Method.

What is the Scientific Method?  First, wonder about a phenomenon and ask a question.  Conduct research on that question.  Then, construct a hypothesis (a proposed explanation for the phenomenon). A hypothesis must be formed in such a way to be tested for being  false (falsifiability). The subsequent test must be done in such a way as to try to disprove your hypothesis.  Only after all of this can you analyze your data and form a conclusion from that data.  The final step is to share your results for others to review and check, often in the form of their own studies.  For a study to have value, its results must be replicated by others.¹

The Scientific Method is valuable because it helps eliminate incorrect explanations for a phenomenon.  For example, say someone as a hypothesis that lemons are yellow because someone paints them with yellow paint.  You can test this in any number of ways.  You can go to an orchard and watch the lemons grow, changing color as they mature.  You can buy a lemon at a store and cut it, looking for a layer of paint.  You can peel the lemon and send the skin to a lab to search for significant amounts of paint.  Any of these tests would prove the hypothesis false.  Someone else could create a new hypothesis about why lemons are yellow, knowing that the cause is not paint.

The limitation of an unscientific research report is that it only requires you to visit a grocery store to see that the lemons are yellow in order to confirm your assumption that they've been painted yellow by a person.

Research reports often lack several crucial steps compared to Scientific Method.  First, the purpose of a research report is often to collect data in support of a pre-existing assumption.  An assumption is different than a hypothesis because an assumption is not a proposed explanation for a phenomenon; rather an assumption is that there is a phenomenon ("someone is painting those lemons yellow", instead of asking "why are lemons yellow?").  Second, no test is performed in support of this assumption.  Data is unscientifically collected from different studies, reports and other sources rather than being the results of a direct test.  There is certainly no falsifiability test.  Third, the results of the collected data are often correlated to the original assumption rather than standing on their own within the conclusion.

What's wrong with correlation between data sets?  Correlation is an indicator, but it is not a identifier. The common phrase is "correlation is not causation."  It is extremely easy to correlate unrelated things.  There is a website dedicated to just this.  This is why the Scientific Method requires a falsifiability test.  It eliminates the reliance on correlation.

Now, this is not to say all research reports are bad.  A research report that uses the Scientific Method to analyze data in a way that can be demonstrated with falsifiability does have value.  But, it is very hard tell good reports apart from bad reports using quick Twitter or reddit title links.  You have to read the report to know if it has value or if it is pseudoscience.  You have to read the whole report because the report's title and conclusions often do not even match-up the data within the report.

This is where I run into issues with Skepticism.  Skepticism tends consider any conclusions of a published research report (in support of presumed consensus) to be the same as studies using the Scientific Method.  Opinions regarding concepts outside the presumed consensus are immediately rejected (even if they are published) without regard to the quality of the report or study.  I cannot count how many times I've read a promoted research report, only to find that the evidence in the report is based correlated cherry-picked data.  Blind acceptance of research report conclusions is a big problem with Skepticism, especially as it grows in popularity among Atheists and other non-religious folks.  I've seen seen sources such as "skeptic" magazines that site unscientific research reports as though they are undeniable fact.  It is a problem being exacerbated by the ease with which (mis)information flows on the Internet through various social media and various other media outlets.

Other reading

In researching this topic, I found a very interesting "study of studies" about the flaws in most studies, Why most published research findings are false. Nothing in my article here is based on this study, so take this as a completely different source.  It is worth the read, and more fuel for the fire to be skeptical, not just of Skepticism, but of anyone trying to use a "study" to promote a notion.

Sensless Sunday: Mammoth Star

1. The last pyramids in Egypt where finished before the last of the Woolly Mammoths died out.^{1 2}
2. The World as we know it was designated to end by a Viking myth on 2/22/2014³ and by a modern economist on 3/4/2014.⁴ The quote from War Games rings through my head right now about "We're still here! We're STILL HERE!".
3. Our Solar System is traveling at an average speed of 514,000 mph relative to the Milky Way galactic center.⁵

Remote Stone

Of what world we wonder true?  Our lacking nature holds fast our corporeal soul upon the bosom of thriving abodes that guise the cradled womb.  In this place stand we, me and all others, bound not in chains but yoked hereto nonetheless.  Grand thrusting spears slice through the wondrous  blue veil, floating on the currents of bent universe beyond this round realm, bringing to the helm  fleshless anthropomorphized cold creatures to cast away the dark cloak, thus revealing remote stone for stone’s sake.

Senseless Sunday: Antarctica Water Pie

1. Antarctica has two species of flowing planets: Antarctic hair grass (Deschampsia antarctica) and Antarctic pearlwort (Colobanthus quitensis).
2. Boston Cream Pie is the the official state dessert of Massachusetts.  (Go figure.)
3. Old trees can actually produce more carbon and methane than they absorb.^[1]
4. Currently, 400 species of sharks roam on the oceans of Earth.
5. The fastest recorded swimming animal is the sailfish, which can swim  up to 68 mph.

Crazy facts about Redheads

You cannot handle my superior Vitamin D producing skin!  ...and other facts that aren't so great.

http://health.yahoo.net/experts/dayinhealth/weird-facts-about-redheads

Creating Universes in the lab, yup, we've done that

MIT Technology Review reports that multiverses have actually been created using a bit of cobalt and kerosene.  

 First Toy Multiverse made in a laboratory, Physicists say 

Notion: dimensional time eliminates need for branching universes

This post is only going to be a superficial discussion and isn't going to explain anything in any real depth. I'm trying to simplify advanced quantum physics in the best way a "lay" person can.

In 1957, Hugh Everett introduced the idea of branching universes to solve a problem we encountered regarding seemingly random choices that the elements of the universe (waveforms in particular) when observed. Sometimes light appears as a wave, sometimes as a particle, and there is no way to know which a head of time. Everett suggested that the light doesn't make a choice when is it forced into one form or the other. It is always both a wave and a particle. The Universe branches into two each time the light is observed and forced to make a choice. In one Universe, you observe light beam taking on wave behavior. In the other Universe, another-you observes the light take on a particle behavior. Thus, the idea of branching Universes says that a two Universes are created every time a choice like this is made. There's a certain bit of faith required to believe this, but pure math doesn't lie, right?


The challenge
Now, I'm no physicists. I'm not going to challenge the math that goes into this notion. It's been tested many times and found to be sound. However, math is nothing more than a numeric language that we created ourselves to parse out elements of the Universe to understand it in our terms. Keywords being "our terms".

Everett's assertions about branching Universes (or Many-worlds interpretation, as it is formally called) are based on time being both linear and two dimensional at the same time. Each branching Universe is 1 dimensional, created within 2 dimensional time, like branching lines being doodled on a piece of paper. Well, that means it could be said time is 1.5 dimensional. I know many physicists will cringe at my interpretation of branching Universes. However, at least from an intellectual point of view, this seems to me to be a reasonable simplification. My point is the the concept of branching Universes offers an unnecessarily complex and convoluted explanation for something as simple as a beam of light acting one way instead of another.

Spontaneous creation of matter and energy?
Another problem I have with branching Universes is this. Where is all the infinite energy coming from to create all these infinite branches? Infinite energy is the same as infinite mass (E=mc2). If the Universe really started off with all of this infinite energy, it would have immediately collapsed back on itself, never to grow in the first place. Or, if the energy didn't exist at the Big Bang, there's no mechanism now that can continuously double the energy within a Universe to spawn new versions of itself. Thermodynamics has yet to be disproved by quantum physics.

Why is gravity so heavy?
Yet another problem. If gravity exists outside of the Universe, as current understanding quantum physics now suggests, it would be impacted by the creation of new branches of the Universe. As such, even if infinite energy is being created on the fly (as opposed to being there at the start of the Universe), gravity would weaken so rapidly, its decaying influence on this Universe could be readily measured and would likely lead each Universe to fly apart to nothingness shortly after the Big Bang. There wouldn't be enough gravity to form a single dust particle, let alone entire galaxies.

Every point in the Universe knows about every other point, 13 billion light years away?
One more problem? Sure. For entire Universes to be created instantly and constantly by the actions of a single particle or waveform in a highly localized point, every bit of energy, every particle, everything that exists would have to be instantly duplicated. These means that every bit of energy, every particle, everything in existence would have to be in instantaneous communication with every other bit of energy, particle and every object in the Universe, 13 billion light years across! This creates a new problem! If the action of every particle in the Universe has the ability to replicate the entire Universe, the information of the Universe has to be immediately available to all points within the Universe at the same time. But if the Universe is constantly branching, there is no preferred frame of reference from which the Universe can be infinitely replicated! There's no sorting mechanism to give one choice a preference over another when they happen at the same time. This leads to yet another problem.

Branching causes information bottleneck
The very act of infinitely and instantly replicating the Universe would create huge gaps in information on whatever the current state Universe is in. Things happen simultaneously all the time. How are quadrillions of simultaneous actions supposed to be instantly reconciled to instantly form quadrillion x quadrillion Universes? Some suggest that the ends of the Universe (whatever is just beyond 13 billion light years in any direction) may already be out of touch with each other. This would make the Universe impossible to instantly resolve to form all of these simultaneous branches. Even if all information about the Universe is known to all points in the Universe at any given instant, there would be a measurable bottleneck of the branching activity. Time would slow down at an increasingly observable rate.

2D Time makes branching unnecessary anyway
Here's the kicker. If the Universe is 1 dimensionally branching within 2 dimensional time, then time is already considered 2 dimensional. If time is 2 dimensional, then there's no need for the branching to take place. If the Universe is a waveform in 2 dimensional time, the objects within it are smeared across this these two time dimensions. We are simply seeing a 1 dimensional view of our Universe intersecting with 2 dimensional time.

Ball passing through a plane acts the same as our view of time
This is similar to a 3 dimensional ball that passes through 2 dimensional plane. As the ball passes through the plane, an observer on the plane simply sees a line that grows, then shrinks. He doesn't see the ball itself. Depending on where the ball intersects the plane, the observer sees a shorter or longer line (even just a point). Any measurement of the line is just as valid as any other, but only the portion that intersects the plane can be measured at any one time. So, this is also true of the Universe if time is 2 dimensions, and the Universe is a waveform that intersects it at different points.  We simply see different view points of the same event each time we make an observation. There's nothing random about the observations! We just cannot see the whole shape in our limited view!

We aren't creating new branches of the Universe when the Universe "makes a choice". We are simply observing where our Universe is intersected by 2D time!
When we observe something that forces the Universe to "make a choice", it's not random. We are simply observing which portion of our Universe (or the element being observed) is currently intersecting within the 2 dimensional time. This doesn't mean that there aren't parallel Universes that resemble our own. It just means that those Universes have been there since the Big Bang (not branching), using a measurable portion of the Big Bang's energy for their formation, just as our Universe has.

To be clear, I offer the above as a notion to point to other interpretation of Quantum Physics. It's not meant to be the final word on anything, nor does it represent a tightly held belief of my own. I certainly haven't done any math to back any of this up. However, I do believe there are physicists that are already moving along similar paths of reasoning, so I'm trying to get the word out as the concept of branching Universes has been gaining momentum in recent years with very little in the way of observations to back it up.

Senseless Sunday: skin deep lunacy

• The next leap year where Feburaury does not have a full moon is 2572¹.



• The current definition of the term "Blue Moon" dates back to March 1946, in which Sky and Telescope magizine mistakenly misinterpreted the definition of the term from 1937 Maine Farmers' Almanac. "Blue Moon" originally referred to the third Full Moon in a season which has four Full Moons².



• Atheists outnumber all but nine organized religions in the World.



• The skin of a polar bear is black. Though the fur appears white, it's actually clear.



• More often, you will use more gas making a left turn than making a right turn.

Tuesday Two: Shingles Thermometer

Tuesday Two

Dow will soon make a roof shingle that generates solar power. It's called DOW POWERHOUSE Solar Shingle. Home and business owners will soon have more options to help power their homes, businesses and occasional gazebo. Viva Sol!

CorTemp Ingestible Core Body Thermometer Pill isn't just a mouthful of words, it's actually a thermometer that you swallow! Once the pill is ingested, a quartz crystal sensor vibrates at a frequency that is relative to the body's temperature. This creates a low-level signal that can be detected outside of the body.

Tuesday Two

Exatec, LLC has developed a glazed polycarbonate material as a lightweight alternative to glass which promises to revolutionize automotive roofs and other exteriors. The material is known as Lexan GLX PC resin.

AED's have saved many lives since 1985. There is a myth that the FDA would not approve AED's because the device had to be used on an unconscious patience, which violated a rule that required patience consent. Fortunately, this is nonsense. An AED was actually approved for home use by the FDA in 2004.

Epoch-Fail

The M80 Stilletto is a high speed ship designed for special ops. It has reached over 50 knots during early tests. It represents possible leading technology in future wars. It is also under consideration by the U.S. armed services. Sounds impressive. The problem? It's being advertized. The fact that the makers of the M80 Stilletto are promoting it as a product in a public venue shows that it might not be a military game changer. If this was a serious option for the military, I'm doubtful most of us would have known about it for at least a decade.

Bode's Law

Bode's Law, or Titus-Bode Law, is a now refuted law governing planet location with our Solar System. It presumes a relationship between all of the planets in their distances from the Sun.

Formulation

The Law relates the semi-major axis, a, of each planet outward from the sun in units such that the Earth's semi-major axis = 10, with

a = n + 4

where n = 0, 3, 6, 12, 24, 48 ..., with each value of n > 3 twice the previous value. The resulting values can be divided by 10 to convert them into astronomical units (AU), which would result in the expression

a = 0.4 + 0.3 · 2 ^m

for m = − , 0, 1, 2,...^[1]

For the outer planets, each planet is 'predicted' to be roughly twice as far away from the Sun as the next inner object.

Origin

It's name comes from the fact that it was promoted by Johann Elert Bode when in 1768, he wrote the second edition of his astronomical compendium Anleitung zur Kenntniss des gestirnten Himmels, which states the following.

Let the distance from the Sun to Saturn be taken as 100, then Mercury is separated by 4 such parts from the Sun. Venus is 4+3=7. The Earth 4+6=10. Mars 4+12=16. Now comes a gap in this so orderly progression. After Mars there follows a space of 4+24=28 parts, in which no planet has yet been seen. Can one believe that the Founder of the universe had left this space empty? Certainly not. From here we come to the distance of Jupiter by 4+48=52 parts, and finally to that of Saturn by 4+96=100 parts.

History

At the time, Saturn was the farthest known planet. Bode's Law gained credibility when Uranus and then Ceres where discovered. These bodies happened to fall in line with predictions made by the formula. However, this Law become refuted when Neptune was discovered at a location from the Sun that was no where near its predicted location.

Also, to further refute Bode's Law is the fact that other systems exist in our Solar System which do not follow its formula. Although the moons around Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus do follow some sort of pattern, they do not follow Bode's Law; nor do they share patterns with each other.

Status

The discovery of Pluto and more recently other Kuiper Belt objects have proven Bode's Law to be false. It appears that Bode's Law was a misguided attempt to explain an observation that did not have enough data. Given what is known now, it seems that perhaps there is some sort of rule that applies to naturally formed orbiting body systems, but there is no formula that can predict the arraignment of such. Perhaps Bode's Law can be useful in the future, not to predict planet placement in other extrasolar systems, but maybe to point us in the direction to understand planet formation and resonance. We can see there is some sort of resonance. We can also see that a particular resonance is not shared between different systems, and only applies in a limited fashion. It is not useful for anything else. Although it really cannot be called pseudo-science, since it was based on observation and did make some predictions that panned out, it is really not useful science today. Further complicating the issue is that the definition of planet has changed. Ceres and Pluto are no longer considered planets. This means that any use of Bode's Law in the context of what is now known can be called pseudo-science.

Planet Distances from the Sun (from Wikipedia.org)

Mercury factor: 0
Bode’s Law: 0.4, Actual: 0.39

Venus factor: 1
Bode’s Law: 0.7, Actual: 0.72

Earth factor: 2
Bode’s Law: 1.0, Actual: 1.0

Mars factor: 4
Bode’s Law: 1.6, Actual: 1.52

Ceres factor: 8
Bode’s Law: 2.8, Actual: 2.77

Jupiter factor: 16
Bode’s Law: 5.2, Actual: 5.2

Saturn factor: 32
Bode’s Law: 10, Actual: 9.54

Uranus factor: 64
Bode’s Law: 19.6, Actual: 19.2

Neptune factor: 128
Bode’s Law: 38.8, Actual: 30.06

Pluto factor: 256
Bode’s Law: 77.2, Actual: 39.44

Are Aliens Really Alien?

A question I've asked myself is that what if the beings we call aliens (visitors from other planets) are really not aliens at all, but inhabitants of our own planet. There are several ways for this to be true. The idea of ultraterrestrials and metaterrestrials is not new. However, there , is one more possibility that seems just as likely from a particular perspective.

There is a possibility that we are being visited by beings from the future. This is based on two assumptions. First, the human species will continue to evolve throughout time. Second, time travel is a technology that we will eventually obtain. If these two assumptions are true, then the most likely source of "alien" encounters is actually future evolved human-descended visitors that come back in time to observe their primitive past. They would come back to study us or to see us out of curiosity.

This would be that two major class of visitations would occur: site-seeing and scientific, or tourists and scientists. Almost on a lark to describe this possibility, I coined the term Future Evolved Terrestrial Tourists and Scientists (FETTS).

This would mean that some beings either come back to observe ancients times much in the same way we visit the pyramids or other ancients sites. In fact, there are stories that every president of the U.S. in modern times has seen U.F.O.'s at some point in their life. President Carter himself is even on the record as being a person who has seen one.

This also means that some other beings comes back to experiment on their primitive ancestors, much in the same way that we modern humans experiment on great apes, including climps.

This explanation is actually more likely than others if time travel proves to be easier than space travel. According to current understanding of the Universe, there is no reason as to why time travel shouldn't be allowed; though General Relativity does demonstrate that faster-than-light travel impossible. With this fact, assuming visitations from beyond are real, it seems most likely that these visitations are from our own world.

Silent Craft Overhead

A friend of my family once told me that he had spotted dark aircraft at night flying down along the Salinas Valley. This was a couple of decades ago. He associated his sitings with military aircraft flying to and from various military bases in California. One story he told me struck me as most memorable. One night, a silent aircraft hovered a couple hundred feet from the ground over his neighborhood. He saw the aircraft beaming down a search light pointed at various places as it quietly moved overhead his location. It couldn't have been a helicopter because he would've heard and even felt it at that distance. He associated this experience with secret U.S. military aircraft. I don't know what he saw, but given my limited knowledge about aircraft, I don't know of any now or then that could hover nearly in place without making some sort of loud noise. He took this experience as evidence that UFO sightings where spotted secret military planes.

Tuesday Two: Quantum Motions

Tuesday Two

Here's motion control that doesn't require bright lights, tons of balls, or expensive high speed cameras. Instead, it uses a relatively inexpensive pulsating projector with sensors that record movement patterns at 500 times a second.

Keep those rubidium atoms separated in your quantum computer by using polarized light! Your qubits won't be the same! No longer will they interfere with each other, causing screwy quantum calculations. Quantumfy with assurance!

Epoch-Fail

Apple has had fairly high representation in the as of yet short life of the Epoch-Fail awards. Do I hate Apple? Not at all. They just make themselves such an easy target. Epoch-Fail award again goes to the iPhone 3GS for having what some claim to be broken encryption that will not be able to protect sensitive data.

My Grandfather's UFO encounter

For a time, my Grandfather was a truck driver on runs that would extend well into the night. He related to me his UFO encounter during his time as a trucker on one such night. Now, my Grandfather was man that was quick to anger, and not one to believe something unless he saw it for himself. His temperament and nature made his story all the weirder. The last person I would've expected to tell me about aliens and UFO's was him. He didn't read books and didn't seem to ever show any interest in paranormal or New Age concepts.

The year is unknown, but likely in the 1950's or 60's. The place was some lonely highway in the middle of nowhere; I don't remember which state. My Grandfather related to me that he was driving when he saw these bright lights in front of him, off in the distance. As he drove closer, he discovered it to be a gigantic UFO hovering close to ground. He described it as a huge cube that was a mile across with many lights, and glowing from underneath. Without approaching it too closely, he stopped his truck and got out to look. It was right there in front of him, blocking his way. That's when he saw them. He said he saw the aliens. Hundreds of them. When he related this story to me, his expressed his adamance to my contrarian and doubtful questions. "You didn't really see aliens!?" I asked. His emphatic response, "You better believe it! I saw them with my own eyes right there in front of me!" He described them in more detail than I can remember. I do remember him saying they where short, green and naked. I felt like that if he had the opportunity, he would've gone up and punched one of them. However, I think wisdom won the day. He never told me what they where doing or if they noticed him. Only that he decided to get the hell out of there. He drove off in a hurry. When he finally got the nerve to look back, he saw the UFO take off.

Possibilities Regarding Zeta Reticuli

A recent book that has come to my attention on the topic of aliens and Zeta Reticuli is FROM ZETA RETICULI TO EARTH. TIME, SPACE, AND THE UFO TECHNOLOGY : Scientific Frontiers of Alien Space Crafts. It's a long name for a book that is so far well reviewed by its readers. According to the publisher, it takes an objective view regarding topics ranging from time travel and UFO phenomena. It should be interesting to see what the author Maximillien De Lafayette has to say about this subject.