AS25005 Possible Aliens - 3I/ATLAS V01 201225

 31 ATLAS (more properly referred to as 3I/ATLAS) is an interstellar object — a body from outside our solar system that passed through it — and has been the focus of intense astronomical observation and public interest in 2025. 

🌌 What It Is

• 3I/ATLAS is classified as the third confirmed interstellar object observed entering our solar system, following ‘Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov. 

• The “ATLAS” part of the name comes from the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System — a survey telescope network that detected it in July 2025. 

• It’s called 3I/ATLAS because “3I” denotes the third interstellar object ever recorded. 

🪐 Key Scientific Details

• Origin: It came from outside the solar system on a hyperbolic trajectory, meaning it isn’t gravitationally bound to the Sun and will leave again. 

• Speed and Motion: It’s moving extremely fast — on the order of tens of kilometers per second — typical of interstellar visitors. 

• Composition and Appearance:

• Observations show it has a coma (a diffuse envelope of gas and dust) and a tail, signs it behaves like a comet. 

• Unusual features include a high proportion of carbon dioxide and trace amounts of nickel in the coma — chemistry that differs from many comets from within our solar system. 

• Size: Estimates vary, but the nucleus is likely a few kilometers across, making it larger than some known interstellar objects. 

🔭 Observations & Timeline

• It reached its closest point to the Sun (perihelion) around October 30, 2025. 

• It passed relatively near Mars in early October, enabling additional observations from spacecraft orbiting the Red Planet. 

• In December 2025, it made its closest approach to Earth (still very distant, about 168–170 million miles), giving astronomers a rare window for study. 

🧪 Why It Matters

• Interstellar objects like 3I/ATLAS offer a unique scientific opportunity to study material formed around other stars and compare it with our own solar system’s building blocks. 

• Tracking such objects improves understanding of comet behavior and informs planetary defense techniques for future encounters. 

🛸 Speculation vs. Science

• Some speculative claims, including by Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, have suggested unusual behaviors or even an artificial (alien) origin. These ideas have gained media attention but are not supported by mainstream scientific evidence. Most astronomers view 3I/ATLAS as a natural interstellar comet. 

• Space agencies like NASA and ESA have emphasized that the object poses no threat to Earth and behaves like a comet, though with interesting anomalies worth studying. 

In short: 31 ATLAS (3I/ATLAS) is a fascinating interstellar comet passing through our solar system — a rare event that is helping scientists learn about materials and conditions from other star systems, while also inspiring public curiosity and scientific debate. 

Would you like a current sky map showing where 31 ATLAS is visible from Earth right now? (I can generate one.)

AS25004 Is there a God ? V01 051025

 

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Science and religion have never been easy bedfellows. As Thomas Jefferson put it in 1820, priests “dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight”. Five centuries of scientific breakthroughs — from Galileo to Darwin to Crick and Watson — have eroded our belief in the divine.

But now, according to a new book, a “great reversal” is under way. Science, its authors argue over 580 pages, has come full circle and “forcefully put the question of the existence of a creator God back on the table”.

In a striking challenge to the academic consensus, two French authors, Michel- Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies, argue that the latest scientific theories lead to only one logical conclusion: an all-powerful deity created the universe and all life within it.

Their argument has already gained traction. The French edition of their book God, the Science, the Evidence, published in 2021, and subsequent translations in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, have sold more than 400,000 copies. The English edition, which will be published next week, has had an initial print run of 110,000.

Readers have long sought answers about their origins. Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion has sold more than three million copies. Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time has sold 25 million. The Bible is the bestselling book of all time, with an estimated seven billion copies printed.

These authors — like Dawkins and Hawking — consider themselves men of science. Bolloré, 79, from Brittany, is a computer engineer who has founded a series of successful heavy industry, engineering and mechanical firms; Bonnassies, 59, from Paris, studied science and maths before a career as an entrepreneur in the French media industry.

Both are also men of faith. Bolloré is a lifelong Catholic. Bonnassies, who did not find his Christian faith until his twenties, said he thought before his conversion that “believers were irrational people”, adding: “God, the Resurrection, the Virgin Mary — I found it crazy.” Yet it was logic, he said, that won him around: “The surprise was there were many rational reasons to believe in God.”

Despite their beliefs, they insist their book is not about spirituality. Bolloré, who has lived in west London for the past 15 years, said: “This is not a book about faith or religion. Who God is, what does he want, what does he think, what does he say: that’s very interesting, but it’s a question of religion. That’s not what this book is about.”

Instead, the authors have written a critique of materialism — the theory that all reality, including our origins, thoughts and consciousness, can be explained solely by physical matter and physical processes. The materialist narrative for the beginnings of the universe and life on earth is so full of holes, he and Bonnassies argue, that every scientific advance increases the strength of the case that a “creator” is the only rational explanation.

The authors’ ideas have received support from unexpected quarters. The renowned physicist Robert Wilson, who was jointly awarded the Nobel prize in physics for the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, agreed to write the foreword to the book. “Although the general thesis ... that a higher mind could be at the origin of the universe does not provide a satisfying explanation for me, I can accept its coherence,” he wrote. “If the universe had a beginning, then we cannot avoid the question of creation.”

Their book explores key theories such as the Big Bang, the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics and the human genome. Each detail was checked with a group of leading scientists to ensure the arguments could not be challenged on the basis of scientific inaccuracy.

Their conclusions pose a fundamental challenge to the orthodoxy underpinning modern science. For the past century, for example, scientists have known the universe is expanding. If stars and galaxies are always moving further apart, logic dictates, the universe must have started at a single point, in a state of immense density. In 1931 the Belgian theoretical physicist Georges Lemaître termed this the “primeval atom”. We now call it the Big Bang.

But if all matter originates from that single explosion, and materialism dictates there is nothing outside of matter, what caused the bang?

“The theory doesn’t work,” Bolloré said. The laws of motion, he said, lead to the conclusion that there must have been a single beginning, a starting point to all physical existence.

“Nothing is infinite,” he said. “The reasonable mind must hold that our universe has one beginning.” He argues that the only rational explanation for a single point is for something outside the material world, an external being that could have started it — a creator God.

Another key mystery that can be explained only by the existence of some universal God, the authors argue, is the start of life. “DNA appeared on earth 3.8 billion years ago, and it was a technological marvel,” said Bonnassies. “All living beings on earth: bacteria, human beings, plants, animals — they are all coded by this same DNA.”

According to the theory of evolution, this incredibly sophisticated data storage system emerged from the primordial soup by chance. The authors write: “While we still do not know how that gap was bridged, or a fortiori, how to replicate such an event, we do know enough to appreciate its infinite improbability.”

Bolloré acknowledged that the book does not present proof of God’s existence. “You cannot prove it,” he said. “You have evidence for one theory — the existence of God. And you have evidence for the other one, which is the non-existence of God. The best you can do is to compare the two sides of the scale.”

Bolloré and Bonnassies want a great debate with scientists about their ideas. Last month they held conferences with leading astrophysicists, neuroscientists and philosophers at Princeton and Berkeley in the US, and plan similar events at Oxford and Cambridge.

Bolloré insisted this is not an evangelical project; he is not trying to convert anyone: “I say again, this is not a book about faith or religion.”

But he said a debate about the origins of the universe raises questions about the meaning of life itself, adding: “I think that everybody should ask themselves, at some point in their life, ‘Are we just the result of chance and necessity? Or are we more than that?’”

God, the Science, the Evidence, by Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies, will be published by Palomar on October 14 at £22

AS25003 James Webb Telescope Discovers V01 090925

 Copyright The Times 090925

Planet close to Earth may have oceans for life

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Kaya Burgess - Science Correspondent

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A planet only 40 light years away from Earth may have an atmosphere, which means it may have oceans of water on its surface, the James Webb Space Telescope has found.

The Trappist system, which has a red dwarf star at its heart, has three Earthsized planets that orbit, as the Earth does around the sun, in the habitable zone of their star where the temperature is right for water to be liquid.

One of the planets, Trappist-1e, is considered likely to have liquid water on its surface, but only if it has an atmosphere to act as a protective blanket. The initial results from the telescope include the presence of an atmosphere as one of the possible interpretations, but it is not conclusive.

Dr Ryan MacDonald, of the University of St Andrews, said: “The most exciting possibility is that Trappist-1e could have a so-called secondary atmosphere containing heavy gases like nitrogen.”

Scientists believe it is extremely unlikely that Earth is the only place in the universe where life has developed. They are scouring the cosmos for signs of “biomarkers”, combinations of gases and compounds that may provide the tell-tale sign of living organisms.

AS25002 Reporting of Lightning Strikes V01 220725

 LightningMaps.org gets its data from a volunteer-run global lightning detection network called Blitzortung.org, which is then visualized on LightningMaps.org. Here’s how it works:

⚡ Lightning Detection & Data Collection

• VLF (Very Low Frequency) antennas (3–30 kHz) listen for the radio pulses—“sferics”—emitted by lightning strikes .

• Each antenna is precisely located via GPS and timestamps every detected pulse with microsecond accuracy .

From Reddit’s ExplainLikeI’mFive:

“Each of these antennas have their location known by GPS … and triangulates the strike” 

“They use radio waves … precisely measure the time … and use the speed of light … triangulate” 

📍 Triangulating Lightning Locations

• The time difference of signal arrival between stations creates hyperbolic curves of possible strike locations .

• Once three or more stations detect the same pulse, the system calculates the intersection point to determine the strike location .

• Blitzortung.org processes all this in real time, usually within seconds, and shares the lightning event data publicly for the last couple of hours .

🌐 Role of LightningMaps.org

• LightningMaps.org is a frontend that takes Blitzortung.org’s data and displays it on interactive maps, often with satellite overlays .

• It uses the MyBlitzortung open-source PHP application—also what users install if they want to host their own local maps .

• The site periodically polls Blitzortung.org via its API or UDP streams, updates the strike data, filters it, and renders the visual output .

🛠 Behind the Scenes: Data Format & Handling

• Raw signal data can be requested as UDP streams or JSON via Blitzortung.org .

• This raw data includes station ID, GPS position, nanosecond timestamps, and waveform samples .

• LightningMaps.org (using MyBlitzortung) fetches this data every minute or so, computes positions, and updates the maps accordingly .

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Volunteers & Accuracy

• Blitzortung runs on approximately 1,800 volunteer stations in over 80 countries .

• Stations are typically spaced 50–250 km apart, giving accuracy often within 1 km, though false readings can occur and strike types aren’t distinguished .

📝 Summary Table

Component Function

Blitzortung.org Collects VLF signals using volunteer antennas, timestamps with GPS, then computes lightning locations via TOA.

LightningMaps.org Fetches Blitzortung data, processes it with MyBlitzortung, and displays it on interactive maps with overlays.

In short:

Data originates from ground-based, GPS-synced antenna stations. Signals are timestamped, sent to central servers, located via triangulation, and then picked up by LightningMaps.org, which maps them in near real-time.

Let me know if you want details on the hardware, data flow, or how to access their raw API!

AS25001 Earth’s Formation V01 220725

Newborn planet gives glimpse into Earth’s formation

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Kaya Burgess - Science Correspondent

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The spiral arms of dust swirl around the proto-planet, circled in white

In a glimpse of what the Earth looked like 4.5 billion years ago, astronomers have spotted a newborn planet in its earliest days of infancy forming within a spiral of dust for the first time.

“We will never witness the formation of Earth but here, around a young star 440 light years away, we may be watching a planet come into existence in real time,” Francesco Maio, a researcher at the University of Florence in Italy, said.

Astronomers used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, turning its gaze on a young host star called HD 135344B.

Around the star they spotted a disc of dust that fanned out with spirallike arms, similar to the shape of the Milky Way.

Embedded at the base of one of these spiral arms they spotted a proto-planet, a bundle of rocks and dust that has started to coalesce to form a planet. It is already estimated to be twice the size of Jupiter and about the same distance from its star as Neptune is from the Sun, or about thirty times the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Such discs have been spotted around stars before and astronomers have long thought that their patterns, containing spirals, rings or gaps, were caused by nascent planets but they had never spotted an infant planet in the process of carving out patterns in the dust.

“What makes this detection potentially a turning point is that, unlike many previous observations, we are able to directly detect the signal of the protoplanet, which is still highly embedded in the disc,” said Maio, who works at the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory and led the research, which was published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal.

“This gives us a much higher level of confidence in the planet’s existence, as we’re observing the planet’s own light.”

In a second study published yesterday, astronomers have also discovered that one of the most famous stars in the night sky, Betelgeuse in the constellation of Orion, has an extremely dim “companion” star that is orbiting around it, potentially solving a millennia-old mystery over why the brightness of Betelgeuse seems to fluctuate.

In this case, astronomers used an instrument on the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii called Alopeke to examine Betelgeuse, which is one of the brightest stars in the sky.

It is only ten million years old, one 450th the age of our Sun, but it is thought to be close to the end of its life and already in its red supergiant phase, meaning that it is likely to explode in a spectacular supernova in the next few tens of thousands of years.

For millennia, stargazers have noticed that the brightness of Betelgeuse fluctuates in a regular cycle and some suggest that there may be a second, much dimmer star in orbit around Betelgeuse that periodically blocks some of its light.

This fabled second star has finally been detected by researchers at the Nasa Ames Research Center, led by Steve Howell. The study, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, found that it is about 1.5 times the mass of our Sun, but is far dimmer than Betelgeuse and likely to be spiralling inwards to collide with it in a fiery death within the next 10,000 years.

“Papers that predicted Betelgeuse’s companion believed that no one would likely ever be able to image it,” Howell said.