Sgt. Clifford Stone of the US Army explains how 57 varieties of alien beings had been catalogued by 1989.

Here’s Betelgeuse. It’s a star. A really big, prominent one. If you go outside and take a look at the constellation Orion, it’s his right shoulder.

That might not look like much, but it is. There are only about a dozen stars in the universe that can be imaged as a disc, instead of a point, on even the largest telescopes. We can see sunspots on it. This star is staggeringly enormous, it’s about 1000 times the diameter of the sun. If you took Betelgeuse and overlaid it on the Sun, the outer edge of the star would be somewhere out by the orbit of Saturn. It is the ninth-largest star in the observable universe.

It’s also old. Not in absolute terms, it’s only about 8.5 million years old. But in terms of stellar lifetimes, it’s a doddering old fart. It’s a red supergiant and is way off the main sequence. That means that it’s already burned up its supply of hydrogen, and is currently burning helium and heavier elements, working its way up to iron. And when stars start accumulating iron in their cores, they’re not long for this universe; the fusion of iron is endothermic, so once iron starts building up there’s no more internal outward pressure to counter gravitational collapse, and when that happens we get a nice big Type II supernova, with a neutron star or black hole left over.

It’s been suspected for a while that Betelgeuse is an excellent candidate for a supernova at some time within the next few thousand years. Supergiants don’t last long, because they’re so huge. More gravitational pressure means the fusion reaction runs at a higher rate, so the most massive supergiants can burn through their hydrogen in under a million years. So 8.5 million years is pretty old for a supergiant. And Betelgeuse has been *shrinking*, which is a death throe. It’s been shrinking, in fact, since 1993; in June of last year, it was only 85% as big as it was back then. And the rate of shrink has been accelerating.

Well, now there’s a new rumor, supposedly from the Mauna Kea observatory, that the rate of shrinkage has gotten so fast that the star isn’t round anymore. Since a star spins, conservation of angular momentum means that when it undergoes gravitational collapse, it’ll happen faster along the polar axis than along an equatorial one. But it would have to be *very* fast for this to show up as a distinct oblateness.

If this rumor is true, then it’s likely that that time frame changes from “within the next few thousand years” to “within the next few months. Or weeks.” You could walk outside tonight and see a star in the very final stages of still being a star (well, if you’re in the right hemisphere). And if it blows, it will be spectacular; the best-observed supernova in history occurred back in 1054, and that one was visible, *in broad daylight*, for 23 days, and visible at night for about two years. And that star was 6300 light years away, and Betelgeuse is only 600. At the very outside, this could be twice as bright as a full moon.

Don’t worry, it’s too far away to hurt anything. But man, would that be incredible to witness.

-Phanatic

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Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, blasted NASA’s new plans for future space exploration Wednesday, adding that President Barack Obama was poorly advised when he canceled the space agency’s previous course for U.S. human spaceflight earlier this year.

“A plan that was invisible to so many was likely contrived by a very small group in secret who persuaded the President that this was a unique opportunity to put his stamp on a new and innovative program,” Armstrong, 79, said in a statement to a Senate subcommittee reviewing NASA’s new space plan. “I believe the President was poorly advised.”

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The shape of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to change with the movement of the waters. The latest NASA visible satellite image of the slick on May 11 at 18:55 UTC (2:55 p.m. EDT) resembles a swan. The satellite image was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer Instrument that flies aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite. The oil slick appears as a dull gray on the water’s surface.

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Space is full of sound. All of the planets and stars generate radio waves that can be reproduced as sound. Contrary to popular belief, space is not a silent void. There is a lot going on that we cannot see. Some of the stars have beautiful voices. Some of them are not so pleasant. It is no surprise that the ancients gave each of the planets, constellations,and stars names and personality traits. The question is, how did they know?..they didn’t have radio technology or a way to receive these transmissions. Or did they…)

Mitchell Gibson MD

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As we approach 2012 – the peak of solar storm cycle , there is evidence that the sun is already starting to experience major new activity this week:
(Also – is it no co-incidence NASA is to launch the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) tomorrow ? – an urgent attempt to study the sun as we approach 2012? ).

A new group of spots is traversing the face of the sun. Sunspot group 1045 is an active region that has produced moderate (M-class) solar flares.
The spots could unleash a major (X-class) flare, though that probability is low, according to the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center.

Sunspots are areas of intense magnetic activity, cooler than the surrounding solar surface. They act like caps on a soda bottle, and when things are shaken up sufficiently, the caps blow and a flare of radiation is released, often along with a cloud of charged particles called a coronal mass ejection.

Such space weather can pound Earth’s protective magnetic field, with the most severe X-class storms crippling satellites and having the potential to knock out power grids on Earth.
Each of the new spot in the group is about twice the diameter of Earth, according to Spaceweather.com.

Experienced backyard astronomers with properly outfitted telescopes can easily see the spots. However, looking at the sun through a telescope without a proper safety lens can permanently damage your eyes. Continue reading – space

Source: Real UFO’s