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A Strange Streak Imaged in Australia
Koyaanisqatsi writes "Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day presents a challenge worthy of a large audience: as it says, "Meteor experts don't think it's a meteor. Atmospheric scientists don't think it's lightning". An intriguing dark streak and bright flash that defies explanation showed up on some cloud monitoring pictures. The forumsetup to discuss it is currently hosed, so perhaps fellow slashdotters can shed some light over the mystery?"
That tiny rocket from Krypton preparing to crash land on that old coot Kent's farm!
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
, or is it a plane.....no its superman
and hes going back in time to develop stem cell research.
Don't be alarmed. Okay, panic a little if your get your water from there.
Heh, this should have been a slashdot poll... What is the mysterious object in the picture?
1) part of the ISS that fell off.
2) a meteor
3) a meteorite (to troll the astronomy experts who will have to chime in and explain the difference)
4) the opening salvo of an alien invasion
5) Santa's sleigh
6) Cowboyneal's private jet
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
it's underdog
Weird! I could see the streak until I wiped my screen with a Kleenex and the streak vanished!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
That was me.
I was trying out my new death-ray. I had it miscalibrated so that you could see it.
Don't worry about it. When death comes and strikes from the heavens for real, it'll be completely invisible.
-Ming the Merciless
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Photoshop something that ends up on the slashdot main page - difficulty astronomical! Still no cure for cancer.
If you zoom in on the "impact" you can clearly see Gen. Ackbar's head.
Ummm...yeah... A solution to a totally different question. You didn't read EITHER article, impressive.
Geez...
There was no alien. The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a UFO. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.
Nothing to see here, move along folks.
J
> I, for one, welcome our new streaking overlords...
As long as they are hot attractive females, I got no problem with that.
While his explanation seems plausible that does not account for:
1) the slight gray streak of what appears to be smoke in the picutre
2) why the light no longer works
The answer to the second issue could simply be one of those quirks where the bulb had reached its end of life at approximately the same time the picture was taken.
While the author is certainly more knowledgable in the area he talks about than I am, I can't say I can agree with his conclusion. The flash as shown in the photo appears to be more consistent with the effect a lightning strike has (i.e. a bright flash).
Further, if you look closely at the picture, you can distinctly see what appears to be a puff of whitish-grey smoke surrounding the light pole in question. This would also be consistent with a lightning strike. I know this because I observed the after-effect of a transformer outside my parents home getting hit by a lightning strike years ago. Even though I looked out the window seconds after the strike there was still a bit of smoke hanging about.
The fact that there is no noticable damage to the pole can be explained by using the electrocuted pickle example (get out your CSI DVD in case you're wondering what I'm talking about).
Finally, there is no rainbow effect noticeable in the photo compared to his example.
Just some food for thought (or beer if you like).
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Obligatory Red Dwarf Quote:
"Oh god, aliens? Your explanation for anything slightly peculiar is aliens, isn't it? You lose your keys - it's aliens. A picture falls off the wall - it's aliens. That time we used up a whole bog-roll in a day - you thought that was aliens as well."
-- Lister to Rimmer about the Garbage Pod that Holly brought aboard to mess with Rimmer.
I enjoy when people feel they need to supply an explanation for why there was kleenex next to their computer. "They're, um, for if I have a runny nose. Yeah, that's it! Nothing else at all..."
Dude, there are lots of good reasons for sigs. Announcing to slashdot that you're interested in anal kinks with asians is not one of them.
Look...I told you fools earlier...its MICROMAN using his hypersonic power of flight to dive into the water to fight the evil of Dr. Atlantcus and his submerged menions!
Jezz!
My god, that shit beats Nostradamus hands down.
They got the lamppost and everything.
Yes, an ancient, alien artifact, pregnant with long-dormant, world-ravaging evil, which will no doubt unleash terrible plague and death and destruction the world over, consuming the entire human race in an unimaginable apocalypse, only possibly averted by some unlikely everyman hero who has heretofore been overlooked by society but who will, no doubt, be immortalized by his deeds on the day the evil is returned to this artifact and banished forever.
Clear as day. It's right there in the photo.
Actually, additional analysis here shows a slightly more energetic explosion than the original image suggests.
Ok, it's really simple.
1) It's bright.
Bright things moving though the atmosphere tend to be very very hot.
2) It's durable.
Things that make it this far down tend to be be fairly substantial in nature.
So now we supposively have a bright, hot, durable object impacting a body of water at high speeds... THAT LEAVES NO TRACE AFTER IMPACT. Steam maybe? A ripple or two? Honestly, would somebody like to run a simulation on a superheated baseball sized rock slamming into the ocean at close to mach? Maybe a golfball to be conservative? Heck, I'm speculating the damn thing might explode just in temperature differential alone when it touches the water, if not angerly boil for a good long time.
The only conclusion I can specuate where it may have been any substantial object falling from the sky is that one in a billion chance it actually fully vaporized a second before impact. Even so, you'd still have some sort of audio event at those speeds, I'm imagining.
I'm going for visual artifact or an environmental lighting glitch myself.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Ah, but this was in Australia. In the Southern Hemisphere clocks run counter-clockwise (well, still clockwise to them), so time runs opposite of what it does in the Northern Hemisphere.
Just curious, how do you decide when to use a question mark and when not to?
Hey, near the flash...I...am I the only one that can see a faint outline of....ELVIS! The king HAS returned!
I read the headline and eagerly hoped for a picture of another lady running across a test match cricket pitch .... alas, it wasn't.
I think that one came from the George Lucas expanded edition of the original.
They welcomed our dark streaking, flashing non-terrestial overlords 2 years ago ... In Japan!
In Soviet Russia, dark streaking, flashing non-terrestial overlords welcome YOU!
In Korea, only Old People welcome dark streaking, flashing non-terrestial overlords
These aren't the dark streaking, flashing non-terrestial overlords you're looking for...
[/me waves goodbye to karma]
Required reading for internet skeptics