Strange lights on dwarf planet Ceres have scientists perplexed

originally posted by: Blue Shift
I think, too, that you have to remember how incredibly dark it is there. Like not being able to see your hand in front of your face. The images make it seem like a "bright" spot, but it's probably just a tiny bit lighter shade of black than the surrounding surface.

Doesn't make sense. Even with high light amplification of the image, you wouldn't have such a distinctively bright spot.

If I paint a circle with glowing paint on an asphalt road. It might not be visible under a covered night sky without street lights around, but if light the area with a flashlight it will reveal the circle sharply. So that means there's something peculiar there (a bright circle, much brighter than the asphalt), not just asphalt. So this logic is failed.

And yeah, sure... ice reflects light on this planet in a way it doesn't on any other planet or body in the solar system... right. You gotta have a reflective source with a very high albedo for light from the Sun to be seen so clearly, from such a distance.

Not saying "this is aliens". Just that those attempts at debunking this as some "natural phenomena" sounds as ridiculous as saying it's swamp gas...

Furthermore, there's been several observations of strange lights on the Moon already, some even admitted by the first astronauts to walk there.

a reply to: Baltazar84

Very good post, thanks!
S&F

a reply to: Baltazar84

Probably the flash of a camera from someone looking at a poster through a window.

a reply to: Baltazar84

If we were to build a base on a body like Ceres-wouldn't the safest place be down in the center of a crater?

Or even on our moon.

Wouldn't being below surface level in the crater be advantageous in some way?

a reply to: Baltazar84

In the moving image, it doesn't really look like a 'flat surface' reflection whose intensity would follow a bell curve as Ceres rotates.

Perhaps it is a prismatic/crystalline surface or perhaps it isn't reflected light at all.

I wonder what its spectrum is like? At least we'd have a better idea what we are looking at.

originally posted by: Brotherman
Those "lights" are actually just holes in the paper.

Sometimes I hate the two line rule grrrr.

It might be the Russians or Chinese have sent something out there to prove Ceres.. It seems it has some hints of artificiality. I am very interested that we zoom right on in. If it is artificial i would love for a "2001 Space Odyssey" scene where there is a flash and something fly's by the explorers. Either way natural or not, it is a real cool story.

a reply to: Baltazar84

My guess is glass. A revent impact crater of sufficient pressure may have melted the central area where pressure and heat created a large amount of glass from the silicates on the surface.

Similar to meteor crater in arizona or glass at the impact site of nukes.

a reply to: EchtelionLast night it occurred to me that, now seeing the closeups of Ceres, our moon and Ceres may actually be related to one another. Not just "Heavenly" bodies, but maybe in the same class.

Our Moon, if, in the same orbit as Ceres would also be classified as a dwarf planet, would it not?

a reply to: All Seeing Eye

Perhaps, but keep in mind that our Moon is much larger than Ceres. In fact ot would have been more fitting if Ceres was our Moon (size wise). Our Moon is the largest as compared to its host planet, in our solar system.

originally posted by: 1Providence1
a reply to: All Seeing Eye

Perhaps, but keep in mind that our Moon is much larger than Ceres. In fact ot would have been more fitting if Ceres was our Moon (size wise). Our Moon is the largest as compared to its host planet, in our solar system.

Yes true, but there are no known laws that would not allow for larger, umm, larger dwarf planets.

Yes, I see your point, if, the origin of our moon was actually this close to our sun. It seems further away from the sun you go, the planets get larger. Maybe our Moon is a escapee from the Kuiper belt. Maybe Pluto, now re-designated a dwarf planet is also of the same class.

a reply to: Soylent Green Is People


Isn't it funny that we accept there is water everywhere in Space these days.

Didn't people/scientists spend decades insisting only Earth (and a few NON-ELECTRICAL DAMMIT comets) had water? And wasn't it cited to a generation as the reason why nothing but silicon-based life could possibly be found anywhere in the Universe, because, well, water is just so anthropocentric a chemical compound!

First it was finally 'found' on the Moon ("Yeah, you were looking in the wrong places John/Barry/Archibald, it's over there..."), now it's accepted as constituting the most part of Titan (New Scientist magazine currently making a fuss about this, but the meme has been carefully built up over the past few years to keep our eyes focused on the left hand) & here we are with Ceres being totally encased in water ice.

Tomorrow we will discover water-carbon based 'gods' hiding on Saturn! (After they fled the far side of the Moon to avoid being obliterated by our secret space program...)

a reply to: FlyInTheOintment

Tomorrow we will discover water-carbon based 'gods' hiding on Saturn! (After they fled the far side of the Moon to avoid being obliterated by our secret space program...)

Well, after-all, the earth did start out FLAT,then somehow became spherical, but filled with molten lava, and you cant go there. Where did we get our scientists from????

If Saturn does have a population of scaly carbon based gods, I think it might be wise for mankind to stop fighting itself, and unite, err, all of mankind. Just sayyyyiiiinnn.

a reply to: FlyInTheOintment

Didn't people/scientists spend decades insisting only Earth (and a few NON-ELECTRICAL DAMMIT comets) had water?

Which decades in particular? But, no. Not really.

a reply to: All Seeing Eye

Where did we get our scientists from????

There were no scientists who claimed the Earth is flat.

I will just leave a comment here for future reference. Will come back on March 6th.

It's hard to speculate now but someone has to say it just for the record...

SWAMP GAS.

a reply to: IQPREREQUISITE

You are late with your cleverness.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: SkepticOverlord
Amazing you probably had this prequel vision back then, of our first contact with this alien outpost on Ceres. That's why you started all this to a point that is right now, in being the one who will be responsible for publishing this great news among us followers.
And we still don't know is coming to us soon. I feel it in the force that this is the moment we all are waiting for..

originally posted by: FlyInTheOintment
a reply to: Soylent Green Is People


Isn't it funny that we accept there is water everywhere in Space these days.

Didn't people/scientists spend decades insisting only Earth (and a few NON-ELECTRICAL DAMMIT comets) had water?

Science had speculated (and even thought it was probable) for a very long time now that water existed elsewhere other than Earth, but scientist didn't actually find other water until they had probes that could actually look. I mean, I suppose they could have said "water is everywhere" before they actually confirmed water is everywhere, but that (keeping with the scientific method) would have been speculation -- a hypothesis -- and not really "proven".

And wasn't it cited to a generation as the reason why nothing but silicon-based life could possibly be found anywhere in the Universe, because, well, water is just so anthropocentric a chemical compound!

I thunk you mean carbon-based. All life as we know it silicon-based life would be only a speculative life form.

However, science has for decades now considered the possibility of life other than carbon based. I mean, people talk about other potential forms of life, such as the silicon-based that you mentioned, but where do you think the idea of silicon-based life (and other highly-speculative idea of weird life) came from?

I'll give you a hint: it was science.

I know it's probably not artificial, but look at it from this perspective : The bright spot is in the middle of a crater, which happens to be in the middle of the dwarf planet itself.