Another possible source is trace-light illumination on the bottom of a blimp. In the dark the blimp itself is hardly visible, but lights beneath it, which are normally used for advertising, can take on interesting patterns, depending on what they are programmed to do. Pale orange was the color of the lights used back then.
Other than these two suggestions, I have no further explanations to account for what you saw, given that all you have is eyewitness testimony.
Thanks for sharing your story.
Sincerely,
Neil deGrasse Tyson
End of the World
In July 2009, fifteen-year-old Kale Joyce wrote with great concern about how many people believed that the world would end in 2012, citing the internet and pop media as purveyors of these fears. Though a non-believer in any of it, she nonetheless wanted my views on the predictions of Nostradamus* and of all the mystery surrounding the end of the Mayan calendar.
Hello Kale,
The entire literature that surrounds 2012 is a hoax perpetrated by scientifically illiterate people who exploit the irrational, primal fears that lurk deep within us all.
The world will not end in 2012. Not because I am an authority and I say so. The world will not end because any sensible, scientifically literate person can assess the rampant absence of evidence and make up his or her own mind.
The galactic center, Sun, and Earth align every year on December 21. The Mayans were clueless about the laws of physics. Nostradamus was even more clueless about the laws of physics. And besides, he says nothing about the year 2012.
You are only 15, but every decade some group of people predicts the world will soon end. It has happened for the years 1973 (a comet), 1982 (a planetary alignment), 1991 (solar storms), 2000 (millennium madness), and now for 2012.
Want to live a long time? Worry about other things, like “Am I eating well,” “Do I get enough exercise,” and “Am I wearing my seatbelt?”
Sincerely,
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Time’s Up
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Dear Dr. Tyson
We saw your video clip from the Los Angeles library regarding the Sun’s alignment with the center of the Galaxy (that happens annually, which makes me feel much better). But can you explain as to why the Mayan calendar ends on that date. . . . as well as other older texts coming from the Chinese and Nostradamus. Do you think they have any validity? They say that the Mayan Calendar was even more precise than our own.
Iris Hale and son, Michael Hale
Dear Iris and Michael,
It’s the end of what Mayan scholars call the “long count,” begun on August 11, 3113 BC, the beginning of the universe according to Mayan calculations. At the end of the long count, they imagined the end of the universe.
With regard to the beginning of the universe, they were off by at least 13 billion years. So there’s no reason to think they will get the end correct.
None of them mention the year 2012. And all the doomsday comet predictions via Nostradamus apply to the year 2000. Of course, none of those apocalyptic predictions came true. Furthermore, Nostradamus writes with such poetic imprecision that for practically any event after it happens you can go back and find a passage that sort of matches what occurred, and then declare that Nostradamus had special powers to see the future.
If you instead try to use his books’ content to predict events with any accuracy before they happen, his imprecise quatrains fail badly—and do so consistently. This makes the writings of Nostradamus useless as a source of insight to the operations of the world.
Finally, the current Gregorian calendar used worldwide is accurate to a day in about 44,000 years. No other calendar comes close to this. So we’re good for now.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Defacing Mars
Friday, January 5, 2007
Dr. Tyson,
I am a big fan of yours, you are a rock star to me (kind of). I would love to get your perspective on things such as gravitics and Cydonia on Mars. If I could, I would go to Cydonia on Mars!
Also, I was reading a book by Linda Goodman and it is called Sun Signs.† I understand the science aspect that you were representing, but this lady is on to something. Most astrologers are indeed bogus. But we know how great the Egyptians were. They studied Astrology!
Thank you, Dr. Tyson
Stevie Debe
Dear Mr. Debe,
Gravitics: A delusion of its adherents, whose background in physics is meager, at best—leaving them to think they have discovered a new force of nature.
Cydonia, the location of the “face on Mars”: A passion of its adherents, who want so badly to believe that intelligent civilizations once thrived on Mars that they cannot see, or are in denial of the evidence against it.
As for ancient civilizations, if you wish to go back 5,000 years to cite behavior you wish to emulate, then consider some other baggage that comes with it—the worship of cats, the divinity of the Pharaohs, the obsession with expensive, overbuilt, triangular tombstones. And while we are at it, why not include the Aztecs? Time to rip the pulsing heart out of virgins to appease the gods. Or time to eat the flesh of those you conquer, to make you stronger. And to complete the scene, why not die of disease and pestilence before you turn 40?
Like so many other attributes, astrology was not an achievement of these civilizations, it was a cultural liability.
Keeping it real,
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Psychic Teleportation
Saturday, November 6, 2004
Neil,
This is really stupid!!!
News Headline: “Air force report calls for $7.5 million to study psychic teleportation”
James McGaha,‡ MS, FRAS
Director, Grasslands Observatory
Hi James,
At $7.5 million, this represents ten minutes of military spending, out of their $400§ billion annual budget. So perhaps we should ask, is there any fraction of the military budget that should be reserved for fringe investigations? I recently collected several pages of embarrassingly wrong quotes from people, many of whom should have known better, about what was or was not possible in the field of transportation. Here are a few examples:
“It is entirely impossible for man to rise into the air and float there. For this, you would need wings of tremendous dimensions and they would have to be moved at a speed of three feet per second. Only a fool would expect such a thing to be realized.”
—Joseph de Lalande, Mathematician of the French Academy, 1782
“What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stage-coaches?”
—The Quarterly Review, 1825
“Men might as well project a voyage to the moon as attempt to employ steam navigation against the stormy north Atlantic Ocean.”
—Astronomer Dionysius Lardner, 1838
“Man will not fly for 50 years.”
—Wilbur Wright to his brother Orville, 1901
“There is no hope for the fanciful idea of reaching the moon, because of insurmountable barriers to escaping the Earth’s gravity.”
—University of Chicago Astronomer,
Dr. F. R. Moulton, 1932
Of course, these quotes, in the end, are about perceived limits to our technology and not the laws of physics themselves, but the public (who funds the military) does not make this distinction. What would it look like for a physicist to stand up in front of the Armed Services Committee of Congress and declare: “Do not spend a dime on psychic teleportation. It will never work,” but simultaneously confess, “But yes, quantum teleportation is real.”
In contrast with the Cold War era, today’s Air Force is, by and large, frugal. They, for example, abandoned the space shuttle as a principal launch platform for their satellites, citing unreasonable costs compared with unmanned rockets. This, in spite of having influenced the original design of the shuttle itself in the service of their needs. A
nother manifestation of this frugality is that if they pay for a study, and find that some phenomenon or mechanism will not work, they will not pay for it again.
So I have no easy answer to this issue, except that dropping $7.5 million down to $0, on assertions of impossibility, comes at a social and political cost.
Neil
Parallel Universe
In the 1990s, while working backstage at a theater, Corinne experienced an unexplained phenomenon. She saw a male version of herself, looking straight at her, dressed the same, and walking in the same direction. He regarded her with no less fascination than she regarded him. Corinne assures me that she is psychiatrically stable, and in November 2008 simply wondered aloud whether she may have witnessed a portal to a parallel universe.
Dear Corinne,
Thanks for sharing this account.
I’m not much concerned about your psychiatric profile. Some famous scientists have been what many would call crazy. What matters is experiment, not eyewitness testimony.
Over the years, the methods and tools of science have shown us that, despite what some philosophers have claimed, a reality exists independent of our perception of it. We know this because, for example, the laws of gravity are there and work every time, no matter who is doing the experiment, no matter what apparatus you use to measure it, and they work whether or not you choose to believe in them.
Essentially every other claim to reality is overwhelmingly likely to be psychological rather than physical. (Ignoring, of course, hoaxes, other deceptions, or simple ignorance of natural phenomena.) This includes ghosts, apparitions, spirits, etc. None of these claims survive laboratory scrutiny. They all simply go away under controlled circumstances.
So if you really did see a parallel universe rather than have a mental apparition, then what you saw would exist independent of you, and should be measurable by everyone around you. But you do not have enough data to demonstrate this.
Next time this happens, be sure to conduct simple experiments on it:
•Can you communicate with it?
•Does it show up in a mirror?
•Did it leave fingerprints?
•Did other people see or interact with it?
•Was there a smell?
•Was there a sound?
•etc.
All of this would help to establish an existence outside of your head, if, in fact, your experience was real and not imagined.
In any case, next time, bring your camera. And perhaps a net.
Sincerely,
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Moons of Mars
In June 2005, Tom wrote from Canada asking about how the eighteenth-century English satirist Jonathan Swift could have possibly known that Mars has two moons when writing his classic Gulliver’s Travels, a full 160 years before their discovery. Swift gave details of their orbits around Mars. Might he have had access to some ancient form of knowing that we discount or ignore today?
Hello Tom,
Thanks for your inquiry.
In the days of Jonathan Swift, Venus was known to have no moons, Earth one moon, and Jupiter four moons.
If Swift were to guess a moon sequence for these planets, in order from the Sun, he would not choose zero or one or four. Those moon-counts were already taken. This leaves two or three for the yet-to-be-discovered moons for Mars, a planet that orbits between Earth and Jupiter. Given the choice, Swift chose two, as, I think, most people would.
Kepler’s¶ laws of planetary motion were well known in the day. And they applied to Jupiter’s moons in orbit around Jupiter as well as to the planets in orbit around the Sun. So Swift applied these laws to Mars’ hypothetical two moons. But Swift had to assume orbital distances for them both. Upon doing so, a simple calculation gives a corresponding period of revolution for them. If you check his calculation you can verify that Swift did his homework—correctly.
But what many people failed to check was whether he got the right distances in the first place. He did not. In fact, he was way off, indicating that he, as suspected, had no premonitional clue about the actual moons of Mars.
If you are curious, the innermost moon, Phobos, orbits at 5,800 miles from Mars as opposed to 12,300 miles (3 diameters) as Swift said, and the outermost moon, Deimos, orbits at 14,600 miles from Mars as opposed to 20,500 miles (5 diameters).
Sincerely,
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Perpetual Motion
In December 2008, Shawn wanted to run by me his ideas for a perpetual motion machine. He was confident that the laws of thermodynamics are not as sacrosanct as physicists claim, and that if oil companies find out about his idea, they will suppress the discovery. So Shawn sought my help to bring his invention forward, in ways that can change the world.
Dear Shawn,
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office no longer accepts proposals for perpetual motion machines without a working model to demonstrate the invention. Why? Perpetual Motion machines violate long-established and well-tested laws of physics.
So if you have an idea for one, you cannot realistically expect any scientifically educated person to give it attention.
This leaves you with one, and only one option: to build it and demonstrate it. If the machine works as you say, then people will beat a path to your door.
Sincerely,
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Shawn replied with some attitude, declaring that at one time everyone was sure that Earth was flat, that the atom was indivisible, and that DC current was the only option to distribute electricity. And that maybe I was stubbornly close-minded in my reply. In any case, he wished me good luck in my endeavors.
Dear Shawn,
Many or your assumptions derive from an incomplete understanding of how science works. In the era of “modern” experimental science, which is basically traceable from Galileo and Sir Francis Bacon# onward (the past 400 years), there is tested science that has achieved consensus and there is frontier science. The frontier science changes monthly, if not weekly, awaiting good enough data to resolve the controversies. The tested science, that for which consensus of observations and experiment has emerged, does not change. What can, and often does, happen is that new ideas extend the range of previously tested ideas, but it does not undo them.
In your short list above, the flat Earth and the indivisible atom predate modern science. And crude oil in lamps and DC current are not tests of scientific principles. They are technological applications of science awaiting improvements upon them. But new technologies did not violate established laws of physics. They are (and continue to be) technological innovations happening within the known laws of physics.
Most importantly, the history of scientific discovery tells us that your quest is misguided, so the burden of proof is 100% on your shoulders.
Don’t let me stop you. Like I said, go ahead and build the thing. If you succeed, you will have demonstrated a heretofore unknown law of physics. These are rare, but always welcome on the scene. And you will become rich and famous overnight.
And thanks for that “good luck,” but in truth, I’m not the one who needs the luck here.
Sincerely,
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Dogon Predictions
Monday, July 30, 2007
Dr. Tyson, my name is Phil Dabney, a teacher from Lake Taylor High School, connected to Norfolk Public Schools. I met you today at the Physics Convention in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Thank you for the outstanding delivery you made today. I was particularly impressed with the “meet the students where they are at” approach when it comes to education. This may be the main reason why your books are so popular with all age groups.
Due to time constraints, I was unable to ask you a question concerning the Dogon’s prediction of the star Sirius being a binary star before its confirmation via telescope. I believe this was well documented by two French anthropologists in the book, The Pale Fox.**
Would you comment on the veracity of this
prediction?
Thanks for listening.
All the best,
Phil Dabney
Dear Mr. Dabney,
Happy to offer some perspectives on your inquiry.
As we know, the star Sirius, the brightest in the nighttime sky, was important to the Dogon tribe of Mali in West Africa, and to other cultures as well, including the ancient Egyptians, where the rising of Sirius in the sky just before the Sun (termed the “heliacal rising”) signaled the time of year when the Nile would flood the valley bringing needed water to their desert climate. In fact, this event signified the new year of the Egyptian calendar.
Without the assistance of technology, it is physically impossible for the human eye to see the binary companion star to Sirius, known as “Sirius-B.” Sirius-B’s brightness falls below the light detection limits of the human retina. But more importantly, the huge difference in relative brightness between the two stars leaves Sirius-B lost in the glare of Sirius-A, much the way a firefly goes unnoticed in sunlight. Also, the separation between the two stars is smaller in angle than what can be resolved by the lens of the human eyeball. These limits are set by the physics of sight and not by the biology of the individual.
Sirius-B was discovered in 1862. At the time, two things were true: the event was widely publicized, with page-1 news stories all over Europe. And at that time, European missionaries, explorers, and imperialists were common all throughout Africa. Note that the French anthropologists you refer to came upon the Dogon after the discovery of Sirius B.
These are the fundamentals of the case. The Rutgers University historian and anthropologist Ivan Van Sertima has written about the Dogon†† and invokes heavy doses of speculation in his effort to credit the Dogon with Sirius-B’s discovery. This includes the specious claim that the sunlight-absorbing power of melanin in the skin of Black Africans imbued the Dogon with heightened powers of perception.
Letters from an Astrophysicist Page 3