Bright flash on Australian mountain 19 Jun 2009 A bright flash has occurred near Gin Gin in Queensland, followed by a fire on the mountain. Authorities are not saying what it was, but the locals have come up with the most likely explanation: space junk, rubbish that has re-entered. About ten years ago I was driving my kids and wife back from central Victoria at about 3am, when the sky lit up like a very large lightning flash, on a cloudless night. And then falling fire in front of me, for all the world like melting metal, slowly faded. It was, by my estimation, about 20km in front and at about 3km high or so. Nothing on the news the next day, so I was possibly the only person who saw it. In town it would have looked like a plane light or something. My family were, of course, asleep. But I am still convinced that it was a re-entering booster or something, that exploded after being heated to the right temperature on re-entry. Great fun. General Science
Creationism and Intelligent Design Does science lead to atheism? Not really 2 Jul 2009 Occasionally one’s sole impact on things is the ability to get other people to do good work by threatening to do it badly. I was set to do a review of survey’s on scientists and religious belief, but the literature got out of hand rather quickly, so I emailed Matt… Read More
Administrative Icon for Blogging Peer Reviewed research 15 Aug 2007 Dear readers, Dave Munger of Cognitive Daily has suggested that we have a universally available icon to indicate that the blogger is blogging about peer reviewed research, and he has created a discussion blog at BPR3. Please go make suggestions and add to the discussion. Muggins here will implement it… Read More
General Science Magnetic anomaly map finished 4 Nov 200718 Sep 2017 [A guest post by palentologist and geologist Chris Nedin] It’s taken the best part of 50 years but it’s finally here! 50 years after the International Geophysical Year (1957-8) that took a global geophysical view of the globe, one of the outcomes of that global geophysical view has just been… Read More
About four years ago in Pennsylvania, I witnessed a gigantic green fireball that lit up the entire sky for about five seconds. It was the most incredible astronomical thing I’ve ever seen, but not reported anywhere on the news that I could find. Probably just a meteor, but you never know. Where I am right now, in the US West at 10,000 ft, it’s hard to look up at the night sky without seeing a meteor. And at that altitude on a clear moonless night, the milky way is a spectacular, living, glowing thing.
I saw something similar to what jeff describes (green and all) camping on the beach with some friends along the south pacific coast of Mexico, about 18 years ago. We were drinking by the fire. We all stood up and cheer as it disintegrated. It was great.