Put on your nice clothes, comb your hair and spend more than two bucks on some wine … we have visitors from another solar system! Astronomers have spotted a previously unknown comet passing through the solar system and it doesn’t seem to belong to our Sun. If that’s true, this is the first known observation of an interstellar comet from another solar system.

The International Astronomical Union Minor Planet Centerannounced that astronomers using the PanSTARRS 1 telescope in Maui (nice work if you can get it) discovered C/2017 U1 on October 18th. Further investigation showed that this tiny (diameter of 160 meters or 525 feet) dim comet had already made its closest approach to the Sun on September 9th when it was 37,600,000 km (23,400,000 miles) away from it … close enough to no longer exist. And yet … there it was pulling away at an unusually high speed (16 miles /26 km per second, or 57,600 mph) peed for a comet. Dynamicist Bill Gray from the observatory observed:

“It went past the Sun really fast and may not have had time to heat up enough to break apart.”

Dynamicist? According to Collin’s English Dictionary, that’s “a person who investigates and researches dynamics. a new kind of scientist: not primarily an astronomer, not a fluid dynamicist, not an applied mathematician, but a specialist in chaos.” “A specialist in chaos” sounds more like a staff job in Washington but Gray is using his talent for a good purpose in a great location. The “chaos” he saw was a comet passing through the solar system at a very high inclination (122°) with respect to Earth’s orbit with an extreme (very narrow and tight) hyperbolic eccentricity (1.1815 ).

(credit: Sky and Telescope)

Put C/2017 U1’s speed, high inclination and eccentricity together and you have the description of excellent rock drummer … and an interstellar comet. (Throw in ‘specialist in chaos’ and you have a great rock guitarist. ) The only other comet ever observed with these characteristics was C/1980 E1, discovered by Edward L. G. Bowell in 1980. While it was later shown to be a regular comet, C/1980 E1 is now believed to be interstellar, having been kicked out of our solar system by Jupiter’s gravity.

Where did C/2017 U1 come from? While all other comets originate in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune or the Oort Cloud on the far edge of the solar system, this one appeared to be coming from the constellation Lyra, which means it could be orbiting Vega, the star of Carl Sagan’s novel and the movie Contact.

Unfortunately, Bill Gray kills his chances to be a character in the sequel.

“Once one of these objects gets kicked loose, it’ll roam the Milky Way for billions of years. Massive amounts of material were ejected from the solar system when it was formed; much of it is probably still wandering around, having gone around the galaxy over a hundred times. Other stars, we may assume, have similarly scattered bits all over the place.”

The Pan-STARRS observatory

In other words, it could have come from any star in any galaxy. Astronomers believe this is the only interstellar comet they’ll see in their lifetimes so they’re analyzing the heck out of it before it’s gone. The rest of us can see what it looked like using the JPL Small-Body Database Browser (requires Java).

If there’s one interstellar comet, there’s more. Will this finally legitimize the theory of panspermia? Will it convince more kids to become dynamicists?

Whatever the cause is, mysterious and unexplained booming noises keep rattling the skies overhead. I can’t help but feel like something larger is brewing just beneath all of these headlines lately. Mystery booms are nothing new, yet they seem to be happening with increasing regularity lately. Couple that with the many examples of government and corporate secrecy surrounding the impending space war, and it’s enough to make you want to add a new layer to your tin foil hat, dig your bunker a few feet deeper, and restock your supply of canned goods.

“Let’s see… we each need about 1500 calories a day… that’s about 3 cans of beans each…cans last five years… carry the one… Hmm. That’s only about 20,000 cans. Honey! We need another bunker for the cans! Honey!? Where are my cans?!”

The latest in unexplained explosions in the sky comes from America’s northeast, centered around southern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Residents in several counties reported hearing a massive boom in the skies and feeling a tremor on the morning of Wednesday, October 25th, yet the U.S. Geological Survey reported detecting no earthquake activity for either New Jersey or Philadelphia on that day. Military officials in the area likewise offered no explanation for the anomalous booms and said they are unaware of any military activity which could have caused the sounds.

Unless perhaps that military activity was classified or conducted by hostile forces they don’t want us to know are right over our heads.

Several NJ residents said the boom was loud enough to shake both their homes and the ground beneath their feet, saying it felt distinctly like something large hitting the ground. Others said the shaking lasted for several minutes. One New Jersey man reported military jets flying overhead in the minutes following the boom, but it’s unclear if the events are related or if he perhaps mistook other aircraft for military planes.

Naturally, the usual meteorological anomalies like atmospheric inversions have been cited as a cause of these mystery booms, but given all of the other examples of strange noises in the sky lately, I find those explanations as hard to swallow as a weather balloon in Roswell or Lee Harvey Oswald alone in the Texas Schoolbook Repository. Unless, of course, we’re beginning to witness some of the strange and unprecedented effects of runaway climate change, which the proverbial they would likewise want to dismiss or obfuscate. Keep shopping. Watch cable TV. CONSUME.

Some of these secrets are hiding in plain sight. There is likely a lot of military or paramilitary activity going on in space we don’t yet know about.

Of course, as always, there is most likely a perfectly benign and normal explanation for these booms. On the other hand, given all of the current geopolitical tensions and military buildup around the world, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that these booms are the first glimpses of a shadowy space war going on above our heads that we don’t yet know about. If current events show us anything, it’s that we might not be able to trust our government and media outlets as much as we think. Is Oceania still at war with Eurasia? I can’t remember. But hey – there’s a new iPhone out and Pumpkin Spice Lattes® are back on sale! Who needs the news?

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

If you’re one who believes that the cuneiform style of writing was brought to Earth by ancient aliens, this story is definitely for you. Even if you’re not, what researchers found recently inside clay pottery in Iraq is still pretty significant. The pottery contained 93 clay tablets covered with cuneiform script dating back to 1250 BCE. If and when this undeciphered writing is translated, will it offer clues to the alleged story of the Anunnaki coming to Earth from the planet Nibiru? Or do the tablets contain news stories about the Middle Assyrian Empire?

Whatever is written on the tablets, it’s going to take considerable effort to read, let alone decipher. In a press release, University of Tübingen archaeologist Peter Pfälzner reveals that the clay tablets were discovered in Bassetki, a small village in far northern Iraq in what is now autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. Pfälzner and his team braved the fighting going on around them to dig through layers of history revealing that ancient Bassetki was a flourishing town on the trade routes from 3000 to 600 BCE. That includes the mysterious Mitanni Kingdom in the Middle Assyrian Empire (1392–1056 BCE).

The vessels containing the tablets

(credit: Peter Pfälzner)

Why will these important and mysterious cuneiform tablets be difficult to translate? While they were protected from the elements by the pots they were sealed in (one contained 60 of them), the tablets themselves were not baked – a process used when the text was meant to be preserved for long periods. As a result, they’re extremely worn and deteriorating. Does that mean it’s not worth deciphering? Dr. Pfälzner thinks so.

“The vessels may have been hidden this way shortly after the surrounding building was destroyed. Perhaps the information inside it was meant to be protected and preserved for posterity. Our philologist Dr. Betina Faist has deciphered one small fragment of a clay tablet. It mentions a temple to the goddess Gula, suggesting that we may be looking at a religious context.”

The cuneiform tablets

(credit: Peter Pfälzner)

Gula was the goddess of healing, medicine and doctors, so there may be something more to the writing about her than just religion. Doctors and healers were very important persons because the Sumerians believed illness was a punishment from the gods. Could this be information passed down to healers from the Anunnaki? Assuming they actually existed, why would such critical guidelines from ancient astronauts who allegedly arrived 450,000 years ago be recorded on clay that barely survived a few thousand years?

The tablets are now in Germany where they will be examined from various angles under multiple lighting conditions in hopes of identifying the characters and deciphering the cuneiform script. What mysteries will they reveal?

{ http://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }