Is a giant, cloaked spaceship orbiting around Mercury? That's been the speculation from some corners aftera camera onboard NASA's STEREO spacecraft caught a wave of electronically charged material shooting out from the sun and hitting Mercury. Theorists have seized on the images captured from the "coronal mass ejection" (CME) last week as suggestive of alien life hanging out in our own cosmic backyard. Specifically, the solar flare washing over Mercury appears to hit another object of comparable size. "It's cylindrical on either side and has a shape in the middle. It definitely looks like a ship to me, and very obviously, it's cloaked," YouTube-user siniXster said in his video commentary on the footage, which has generated hundreds of thousands of views this week. Now, how this user was able to determine that the object was "obviously" a cloaked spaceship with no other natural explanation remains as much a mystery as the object itself. Of course, there's another scientifically sanctioned explanation for the curious images, though we're not certain that skeptics and UFO enthusiasts such as SiniXster will endorse it. Natalie Wolchover of Life's Little Mysteries put the question to scientists in the solar physics branch at the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). They're the people who analyze data from the Heliospheric Imager-1 (HI-1)--better known in this context as the camera that shot the footage in question. Head NRL group scientist Russ Howard and lead ground systems engineer Nathan Rich say the mysterious object is in fact Mercury itself. And what we're seeing in the footage is the equivalent of Mercury's wake, "where the planet was on the previous day," as it travels through the solar system on its natural gravitational path: To make the relatively faint glow of a coronal mass ejection stand out against the bright glare of space—caused by interplanetary dust and the stellar/galactic background—the NRL scientists must remove as much background light as possible. They explained that they determine what light is background light, and thus can be subtracted out, by calculating the average amount of light that entered each camera pixel on the day of the CME event and on the previous day. Light appearing in the pixels on both days is considered to be background light and is removed from the footage of the CME. The remaining light is then enhanced. The analysts say the practice works even better when applied to far-off objects such as stars, which don't move much relative to the sun. But for moving objects, especially planets, the process is a little more complicated. And making matters even trickier is Mercury's staus as the closest planet to the sun. "When [this averaging process] is done between the previous day and the current day and there is a feature like a planet, this introduces dark (negative) artifacts in the background where the planet was on the previous day, which then show up as bright areas in the enhanced image," Rich explained in an email. here is the link if you want to see the pic:http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sidesho...ed-object-spotted-near-mercury-154443870.html
On a serious note though, that's pretty crazy. What is that ? No way is it just a naturally shaped object, it has clear structure to it. And as for the cloaking, wtf ? I generally believe there is the possibility that it is a alien object.
they explain fully what your seeing in the image..no big mystery. the system they use is designed for stars that have moved very little in the image..mercury moves A LOT compared to stars. So the images shows a wake like structure. geez
While this is pretty much explained there are a lot of things out there even more odd then this that make you question weather or not we are alone. I believe there has to be life somewhere. It's just a matter of intelligent life. Small life forms such as bacteria and what is believed to be small plants have already been found on mars so thats nothing new, but to find some other being that passes are intelligence would be amazing
Dear obviously cloaked spaceship, Please take the entire cast of the Jersey Shore back with you. <3, USA
It's really quite arrogant of us to assume we're the only ones out there. If I were an alien life form, and I heard some human spouting off at the mouth about how he's the sole proprietor of the entire universe, I'd squash him.
la la la No-one's assuming we're the only ones out there, this is just not the aliens you're looking for.
for sure..there has to be life out there in that infinite expanse. But being infinite..the chance of us ever meeting other life is almost non-existent. once we leave this planet..colonize a few hundred thousand galaxies..then the odds will be infinitesimally larger. ie i refer to life we can converse with..life that will recognize us as intelligent. I think there is life in this solar system or once was. Mars..Europa
I believe you're misunderstanding something about these plants and bacteria on Mars that you speak of. Nasa announced that they are trying to design plants that can survive on Mars; not that they found plants there. You can read Nasa's article from 2005 titled "Designer Plants on Mars" at http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2005/mars_plants.html Edit: As for bacteria, you may be thinking of the evidence found in a Martian meteorite indicating that bacteria was present on Mars billions of years ago. Nasa's report on this can be found at http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2002/02-150.txt