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Area 51 Officially Confirmed by US Government

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Official US Government Map of Area 51 (Image Source:National Security Archive)

Newly declassified information actually contains the first official acknowledgement of Area 51 by the government along with information on just exactly what was going on behind closed doors. Area 51 is mentioned many times in the documentation and is also shown in a declassified map (shown above).

The primary use of Area 51 according the the newly released history was, no surprise here, to test out secret US government projects, but more interestingly, the declassified history points out the secretive development of the U-2, a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft used by the CIA and USAF to gather intelligence. The documents go into great detail and include information like the names of pilots, code names, locations, inter-govermental co-operation details, cryptonyms and more.Alien Sign

Unfortunately, for those who are awaiting acknowledgement of extraterrestrial life, you will have to wait a little longer. There are clearly no references to knowledge of alien life forms, but there is a ton of awesome, once highly secretive and classified information that’s now available to the public.

You can read the history of the U-2 project at the official National Security Archive website. The site contains many images, maps, videos and even offers up some highlights from the documentation, it’s definitely worth a look.

Voyager 1 Leaves the Solar System, Maybe?

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Voyager Spacecraft ( Source: NASA/JPL)

The Voyager 1 spacecraft is the most distant human-made object at over 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) away from our sun. The mission of the Voyager spacecraft both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, was to explore Jupiter and Saturn. After major success, the mission was extended to have Voyager 2 explore Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 1 is still operating and sending back data after more than 35 years later. The new mission of the Voyager spacecraft named, the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM), is to explore space outside of our solar system, which is all new territory for us.

We have been anticipating Voyager 1 to finally leave our solar system completely and enter interstellar space, one group thinks we have done just that. UMD research scientist Marc Swisdak,  James F. Drake and Merav Opher of Boston University believe that recent data suggests that Voyager 1 is now in interstellar  space, this conflicts with NASA’s view of the data in which they believe the spacecraft is still on the outer edge of our solar system.

It’s a somewhat controversial view, but we think Voyager has finally left the Solar System, and is truly beginning its travels through the Milky Way”

It’s all about our sun’s magnetic field and how it interacts with the magnetic field of interstellar space. The direction that the magnetic field of interstellar space is coming from is the source of controversy. As NASA writes, “Other models envision the interstellar magnetic field draped around our solar bubble and predict that the direction of the interstellar magnetic field is different from the solar magnetic field inside. By that interpretation, Voyager 1 would still be inside our solar bubble.”. This is in contrast to the view that the interstellar magnetic field direction is the same as that which originates from our sun, which would mean that Voyager 1 left our solar system back on July 27th, 2012.

This is obviously new for everyone and discussions will need to continue in order to better understand what’s going on at the edge of our solar system. The best thing we can do is continue to analyze new data as it comes in and hopefully it will provide a clearer picture.

You can read the original article from NASA about this topic and you can learn more about the Voyager spacecraft from a post we did last year.

 

Film Pitch Of A CGI Zelda Movie That Never Made It

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Here is the film pitch that was created back in 2007 by Imagi Animation Studios, producers of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Astro Boy feature films.It may not be perfect, but it was only intended to be pitched to Nintendo, and not shown as a final project. Still I think it would of been something pretty cool.

The Science of Bullets Underwater in Slow Motion

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I saw this video trending on Youtube and had to share it with you guys. In a great two part video by the theslowmoguys and smartereveryday, we get to see some amazing and unexpected things happen when a gun is fired underwater. Not only is this awesome to watch but there’s a lot of really cool science going on here.

The first video really focuses on the high speed footage while the second part explains the science in a little more detail, so it’s well worth watching both parts. Both of these channels are on my subscribe list for sure and I’m sure you’ve seen videos from one of these channels before as well, but in the odd chance you haven’t, you can get your geek fix and check out some of their most popular videos.

Earth and Moon As Seen From Saturn

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Earth as seen From Saturn, PhotoTaken by Cassini on July 19th 2013. (Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

It’s not too often that we see our world from afar but when we do it’s truly an amazing and humbling experience. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft was able to get into position next to the great planet of Saturn and take a look back at Earth from 900 million miles away. The image is in color and in high resolution, Earth is nothing but a blue dot with a small white dot next to it, that white dot is the Moon of course. Saturn’s rings reflect sunlight towards the camera and against the black backdrop of outer space, it looks truly beautiful.

Cassini’s picture reminds us how tiny our home planet is in the vastness of space, and also testifies to the ingenuity of the citizens of this tiny planet to send a robotic spacecraft so far away from home to study Saturn and take a look-back photo of Earth.” Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

As NASA points out, pictures like these are very rare because Earth appears very close to the sun at that distance and trying to take a picture could ruin the camera’s sensitive electronics with that much sunlight hitting it. This is just one section of an image that will become a mosaic of Saturn’s rings. You can read the original article and see a full-resolution version of this image from NASA.