Ahh! Abduction!

Hundreds of people have claimed to have been abducted by aliens. Victims claim a vast degree of trauma resulting from the abductions including having foreign objects implanted in them and bodily "probing." One possible explanation for these claims involves the creation of false memories.

Psychologist Stephen Jay Lynn conducted a simulated hypnosis experiment in 1994, asking patients to imagine they had seen bright lights and experienced lost time. The results of the experiment revealed that 91% of subjects who had been primed with questions about UFOs stated that they had interacted with aliens.

The implications of this experiment are illustrated by research from Harvard University professor Richard McNally. McNally found that many Americans who believed they had been abducted by aliens had important commonalties in personality traits such as New Age beliefs and episodes of sleep paralysis accompanied by hypnopompic hallucinations. The sleep paralysis and hallucinations prompted these individuals to seek therapy. In some cases, suggestion of alien abduction as the cause led the individuals to accept this as a true explanation. Subsequently, these individuals began to exhibit stress symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder.

While an individual very well may believe they have been abducted, and even experience stress symptoms, it is much more likely that the individual is suffering from a combination of afflictions including sleep paralysis, hallucinations, and false memories.

Outline for manned Mars mission

A 30-month round trip to Mars iwth a minimal crew as been planned by NASA. After following President G.W. Bush's idea of sending humans back to the Moon by 2010, they also decided to send humans to Mars. The ship for Mars would be put together in low-Earth orbit using Ares V rockets. The mission would take place in 2031 and take 6 to 7 months to make it to Mars. But before then a cargo lander and a surface habitat would be sent separatley in 2028 and 2029. When the astronauts arrive in 2031 they would spend 16 months on the surface living in their habitat using nuclear power to power it. There is small chance that supplies could be sent, but most of the astronauts would need to be self sufficient as to taking care of their habitat as well as making new parts. Air and water would be recycled in their spacecraft. Plants would be grown on board to feed the crew. The real challenge is making sure the crew makes it there okay.

Donde Esta Mars Opportunity Rover?

Here is a cool link to the Mars Institute page where you can observe where Mars Rover Opportunity is currently located. The page has image posts which are updated every 30 minutes from NASA JPL. The images are views from Opportunity “Looking Down on the Sun”, “Mars as seen from Opportunity”, “The Earth as seen from Opportunity”, “Looking down on Opportunity”, and “Looking down on Earth”.
http://www.marsinstitute.info/epo/merwhere.html

How to Beat the Ban of Humans on Mars

An interesting article written by Michael Huang of the Space Review was posted today discusses how the legislation that is being proposed to ban humans on Mars may be beat. The House of Representative version of HR 3093, the bill that determines NASA's funding for 2008 prohibits funding of any research, development, or demonstration activities related exclusively to the human exploration of Mars. The primary motivation behind the ban is the old, predictable, anti-human-spaceflight routine. The bill is still in Congress and hasn't been made into a law yet. If the bill is passed, there are still ways for NASA to continue its human spaceflight research and development without breaking the law. The law says nothing about orbiting Mars. If the law is passed, it should also include a ban on the human exploration of Mars' moons. As long as astronauts do not land on Mars, they can explore the moons as much as they want. The law also does not ban the use of a humanoid robot, or android. If NASA sent an android to Mars, the robot could be equipped with biochemical functions to test the mission's life support systems. If legislators decided to lift the ban, then NASA could simply swap the android with an actual human and immediately begin a manned mission. If this bill is passed and the government really does want to ban the human exploration of Mars, Huang believes the wording may need changing. As of right now, there are many loopholes in the legislation and this will not stop NASA from pursuing their ultimate goal of putting a man on Mars.

Moon Illusion

In addition to the illusions involving the apparent backwards movement of mars and the humanoid face in Cydonia, there is another illusion in space a little closer to home: the moon illusion. The Moon illusion is a visual illusion in which the Moon appears larger near the horizon than it does while higher up in the sky. The moon seems larger in angular size when it is near the horizon than when it is high in the sky. Some people judge it to be as much as twice as large, but the average estimate is 50% to 75% larger.This optical illusion can also occur with the Sun and star constellations.

There are some simple ways to prove that the moon is not actually changing size including photographs of the moon at the horizon and higher up reveal that they are exactly the same size (if taken with the same camera settings).

Another way of demonstrating that the effect is an illusion is to hold a small coin at arm's length with one eye closed, positioning it next to the seemingly large moon. When the Moon is higher in the sky positioning the same coin near the moon will reveal no change in size.

The moon illusion occurs primarily through visual angle illusions. Click here for a more in depth discussion with multiple approaches to explaining this phenomenon.

Prep Time for Mars

The Mars Society is making sure that people are ready when the first human mission leaves for Mars. Two Mars simulation sites have been created, one on the Devon Island in the arctic and the other in the desert in Utah. Astronauts at these sites live and study the environment as if they were on Mars. Aside from monitoring the Martian day by adding 39minutes to their routine days, astronauts abide by the following rules:

• "They cannot leave the unit without donning a simulated space suit
• They cannot communicate directly with anyone outside of the unit without a built-in time delay in the communication - the distance between Earth and Mars makes direct conversation impossible
• They can only use the equipment, tools and food available to them inside the habitat."

While some of these measures may seem extreme, it appears that people are getting serious to make the actual push for sending humans to the Martian surface.

http://fogonazos.blogspot.com/2007/11/arctic-astronauts.html

Face on Mars

One of the more famous controversies surrounding Mars was spurred in 1976, when the viking orbiter radioed back images from mars. One particular image, from the Cydonia region, depicted a rock formation that strongly resembled a human-like face.

Many cited these images as proof of life on mars and that it was undoubtedly a sculpture carved by sentient (intelligent) Martians. There were (and there probably still are) many people that believe the face is real and NASA is just trying to cover the whole thing up.

However, advances in image capturing and resolution have yielded new images of the face that, in fact, look nothing like a face at all.

Furthermore, the interpretations of the original image can be explained by Pareidolia, a type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus being perceived as something clear and distinct. Specifically,

“There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object, those qualities, with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious.” --David Hume

(this is the same reason why people "see" Jesus in a tortilla)

With the new images, it seems pretty clear that the old images were simply an optical illusion fueled by Pareidolia. But, check it out and judge for yourself!