The first reported attempted extraterrestrial abduction of a human being occurred in Stockton, United States of America in 1896. On November 27, 1896, it was reported within the Stockton version of the Daily Mail news publication that while driving within the Californian countryside through Lodi, United States of America, Colonel Henry Gould Shaw stumbled upon a landed extraterrestrial spacecraft with intelligent life. Shaw claims he was approached by 3 slender humanoid creatures, each nearly 7′ tall, with “large lustrious” eyes, small and slender hands with no nails, narrow ape like feet which could grasp objects, who emitted a strange “warbling noise” like a “guttural, monotonous chant”, and who wore no discernible clothing, instead covered in a fine, downy like fuzz which was neither hair nor feather and had a soft feel. Shaw attempted to pick one of the individuals up by the elbow when directly interacting and accounts that the being weighed less than 1 gram. Peculiarly, these individuals possessed small mouths with no teeth as it appeared the mouths of these beings were not used for eating and/or drinking due to the fact that Shaw states they sustained themselves with gas ported within a satchel with a hose to extract the gas from. Shaw describes these creatures as having a “strange and indescribable beauty” and accounts that they emitted a bright light, not so bright that it could not be directly viewed, but rather a comfortable, warm light. The beings migrated back to their craft in a strange, swaying motion, not at all alike to walking, with their feet only touching the ground in intervals of 15′. Prior to departure, Shaw attempted to throw a rock at the craft but reports it made no sound upon impact. Shaw accounts that these beings initially attempted to force him aboard the craft but gave up once they had realized the strength and resistance of Shaw due to the fear he experienced. Shaw describes the craft as completely without features aside from a rudder and pointed edges and estimates this craft to be 20′ in diameter and 150′ in total length
Category: Aeronautics
How Ocean Wind Turbines Produce Electrical Energy
Wind turbines run upon a simple engineering principle which is that of wind causing the blades to turn which rotates a shift within the turbine, with this shaft producing energy for the electrical generator. This electrical energy is pumped downward, 300’ below the water surface, and into cables buried below the seabed which connect to offshore substations which then connect to onshore power stations and finally residential homes and industrial and commercial buildings. Ocean wind turbines are typically 600’ high in altitude, with spinning fiberglass blades which are approximately 240’ long, with each blade weighing up to 30 tonnes. Because of this immense size, measurements (e.g. angle of blades etc.) are crucial during the construction phase to maximize efficiency and energy output. A single revolution of a wind turbine can generate enough electricity to power an entire family home for 24 hours
American Theoretical Physicist Robert Oppenheimer’s Reaction to the First Successful Nuclear Weapon Detonation
After the Trinity nuclear launch test which occurred on July 16, 1945, the first nuclear detonation in human history, when Manhattan Project lead Julius Robert Oppenheimer was asked about the reaction of himself and others on that fateful day Oppenheimer responded, “we knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multiarmed form and says, Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. I suppose we all thought that one way or another” (this phrasing/sentence structure while confusing in English, is the correct direct translation from Sanskrit)
The First Person to Weigh the Atmosphere
Italian Jesuit Evangelista Torricelli was able to definitively prove that the atmosphere has a specific weight by designing an experiment in which a tube is filled with mercury and then placed into a dish of mercury. Torricelli disovered that when performing this experiment, half of the mercury runs down into the dish and the other half stays within the tubing. Until this point, it was believed impossible to create a negative or empty space as the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle once stated, “nature abhors a vacuum” believing that nature would forever fight against the creation of true and pure nothingness. This is the same reason that an object (e.g. plastic straw or an oil drum barrel etc.) crumbles when all of the air within is extracted. Torricelli was able to overcome this phenomena by using the exteme weight of mercury within a ridged glass tube. The level of mercury left within the tube was a measurement of the weight of the atmosphere, a balancing act between the weight of the mercury and the weight of air pressing down upon this mercury, balancing each other out like scales. Torricelli famously stated, “noi viviamo sommersi nel fondo d’un pelago d’aria” which means “we live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of air” in Italian, and his findings made scientists realize that air was a substance for the first time. Torricelli became the first person to invent the barometer because of his understanding of atmospheric pressure. Despite Aristotle being believed to be correct for millennia, Torricelli definitively proved that air does have weight
The First Successful Flight Machine
Paper makers Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier (pronounced “jha-ack ee-tee-yen mon-go-fee-yay”) and his brother Joseph-Michel Montgolfier (pronounced “zho-seef mee-shell mon-go-fee-yay”) created the hot air balloon after noticing that paper in their factory would be lifted by warm currents of air. This discovery lead to the innovation of hot air being confined within a bag which birthed the modern hot air ballon, an overall design which has remained relatively unchanged since its advent in 1783 despite advances in technology. As hot air is filled into a sack, the sack becomes less dense than the air which surrounds it, allowing the sack to rise in its altitude, be it 1 meter or 10,000 meters. The first successful untethered flight with passengers occurred on September 19, 1783. This initial flight was completed by a sheep, duck, and rooster. The first flight with humans occurred just 2 months later, with the hot air balloon raising 3000’ into the air and traveled a distance of 8 kilometers. The Age of Flight was born during this event as it was the first time in human history that a person or group had successfully lifted off the ground and remained in control of their flight path trajectory
The Features of Air Force One and the Wireless Telecommunication Produced Because of It
The United States of America presidential aircraft referred to as “Air Force One” is capable of inflight refueling from secondary aircraft, infrared missile jamming, radio detection and ranging jamming, also referred to as “RADAR jamming”, and a top secret anti-nuclear weaponry defense system as the main engines are designed to throw chaff into the air to confuse and divert heat seeking as well as other smart missiles. The skin of the aircraft has an electromagnetic shielding designed to ward off impulses in the event of a nuclear attack. The codename for Air Force One used by the Secret Service and major intelligence agencies is “Angel”. Because Air Force One has no offensive measures, pilots of military fighter jets in the vicinity of where Air Force One is traveling are on alert to be ready at any time to be up in the air and escorting as well as defending the president’s aircraft. Fighter jets do not typically escort Air Force One because it is a safety hazard being that a path must be cleared for both Air Force One and the fighter pilots which can cause confusion and discord upon the ground with airports and other agencies which work with the U.S. government when the president is transported. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, then President George W. Bush demanded that live television and internet capability be implemented on board Air Force One, a fairly reasonable task during the modern day but a monumental hurtle to overcome in 2001. It was because of this request that modern day smartphones have easy access to telecommunication towers and satellites which can provide internet access. Had Bush not made this request, the technology to do so may have been pushed back by 5 – 10 years resulting in a very different modern day in respect to wireless communication
The Usage of 5D Crystals as a Means of Computational Storage
Quartz is being used to create the most powerful data storage device ever developed, the 5D Superman Memory Crystal, a technology which could store data for up to 13,800,000,000 (13.8 billion) years, the calculated age of the universe. The 5D quartz crystal is a method of ensuring a large density of data can be saved within a relatively small object. This is an incredibly secure and long lasting method of saving data as the information is physically encoded into the crystal itself, remaining indefinitely until the quartz itself is destroyed, a very difficult task in and of itself. In 2018, technology entrepreneur Nova Spivack used a 5D crystal to create a permanent space library, sending it to the International Space Station aboard the SpaceX Heavy Falcon rocket. Quartz is highly stable because it is a crystal, remaining unchanged for billions of years meaning if data is inserted, theoretically it could survive for billions of years. For a quartz crystal approximately 2.5 centimeters by 2.5 centimeters in diameter and 5 millimeters thick, 30 terabytes of data can be held, which is 30,000 gigabytes or 800 Blu-ray discs or 600 smartphones worth of information. This means that the entire British library could be fit into 1000 5D crystal slides, a small enough volume to fit within a single shoebox. A traditional storage medium like a compact disc, stores data in individual pixels, with 1 pixel able to hold the equivalent of 1 bit or 8 bytes of information. In a quartz drive however, each voxel can hold 8 bits or 64 bytes of information. The technology required to achieve this feat however is still in its infancy with scientists still discovering new ways to refine manufacturing, the writing and reading of data, and storage capabilities
The Mathematics Behind Why Rockets Can Escape The Gravitational Pull of the Earth
Robert Goddard’s liquid rocket never reached the 3 kilometer mark because of Tsiolkovsky’s Rocket Equation named after Soviet scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (pronounced “con-stan-tyin tsel-kov-skee”). This equation states that as fuel increases for faster and further voyages, so too does the weight, becoming increasingly heavy as more and more fuel is added. Tsiolkovsky took into account the velocity of a rocket alongside its mass of payload, mass of fuel, and the mass of the rocket itself. The longer the engine burns, the more velocity the rocket will have, however longer burning means more fuel which adds weight and makes it more difficult to push upwards. To travel fast enough to deliver a rocket to space, most of the craft must be fuel. Scientists have battled with this question for decades and although mathematical constructs have been developed to explain the relationship between weight and thrust, no one has yet to develop an idea to get around this problem with currently available technologies. The equation developed to explain this limitation of space travel is △V^R = V^E x log^e (M^P + M^F + M^R / M^P + M^R). This effectively states that only a tiny portion of a rocket can be used to deliver payload, with notable cases being the Apollo missions which employed enormous rockets to carry just a few small astronauts and the things they needed into space. Tsiolkovsky theorized this in the beginning of the 20th century as his calculations demonstrated that kerosine wouldn’t be enough to go from the Earth to the moon with a single craft
The Odds of Hitting a Hole in One During a Game of Golf
The odds of hitting a hole in one during a game of golf are 1 in 12,000
Robert Goddard’s Liquid Fueled Rocket Concept
Robert Goddard devised the idea of liquid kerosene and liquid oxygen being mixed together to create a fierce, but most importantly, a controllable flame for propulsion. When kerosine reacts with oxygen, the result is an incredibly hot, rapidly expanding gas which when channeled through a nozzle, creates enormous thrust. On March 16, 1926, Goddard launched the world’s first liquid fuel rocket bearing this concept. This rocket did not travel fast nor far but it did demonstrate a proof of concept making space flight theoretically possible for the first time in human history