Mysterious planet-sized object spotted near mercury

[Caligulove]

Oh oh oh! [a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia"]I know what it is![/a]

Seriously, when it comes to the choices for explanations here, I'm gonna go with the NASA rep who seems like he spent more than 5 seconds on his answer and actually explained his reasoning, along with how the shape occurred. That and he's someone working in this field. I would like to think this is something like [a href="http://operatorchan.org/r/src/r21966_ancient-aliens-guy.jpg"]aliens[/a] but once again it can be explained quite thoroughly. Disappointed in the guy for jumping to conclusions like "obviously" it's manufactured, not to mention failing to think of anything else that it might be.

Also, I have a hard time believing a guy checking out the SECCHI feed is the first one to bring attention to this.

 

[Jingle Fett]

Seriously though, I don't think it's Mercury's wake. If it was, I would think it'd be leaving a long trail that would fade off, or that would stem from the planet itself. In either case, it shouldn't have such an irregular shape; this one looks like two cylinders connected in the middle. And if it was a natural object like a comet or asteroid or something, it should be appearing before the blast hits it.

Just throwing this out there, if aliens have indeed been around for a very long time (and if they're capable of interstellar travel that would appear to be the case), why would they be incapable of building a massive ship the size of a planet? Time would be the main barrier. It'd take a long time sure (maybe even a thousand years), but not necessarily physically impossible.

Hmm, reminds me of Rendezvous with Rama...

 

[pearcinator]

It's clearly the starship enterprise...

 

[Realitycrash]

If it WAS a ship, even by Star Trek design, wouldn't it be toast after getting hit with that much radiation from the solar-eruption? Being that close to the Sun and with no magnetic field to protect it..

 

[Proverbial Jon]

I don't know a ship that is even a mile long.

So just how many alien races do you know?

Although I highly doubt this has anything to do with cloaked spaceships, how can we be sure that mile long alien space craft do not exist?

...there is no reason for a ship to be orbiting mercury.

What do you know of the aliens' motives?!

 

[Mythrignoc]

There's a possibility it could be SOMETHING, but no one can really say for certain.

I'm more concerned about the youtube video narrator claiming the small pixellated dot next to the bigger pixellated dot is cylindrical in shape and a "manufactured object." I know people will tend to see what they want to see but....damn. It's like subliminal messaging about our political system in the novel The Catcher in the Rye, it's just not there.

 

[Anthony Wells]

The zentradi are invading! Someone create veritech fighters!

haha! i get the reference lol.


OT: huh....im siding with Nasa

 

[Tarmon'gaidin]

Okay so first of all I think this is just an asteroid.

1. Really guys a spaceship one third the size of mercury? this is not star wars you know.
2. They cloacked their ship so we wouldn't see them? Yeah if aliens are so advanced that they can travel to another solar system I'm pretty sure they would know about solar radiation.
3. Does anyone realize just how hot it is so close to the sun? Hint, it's pretty hot.

Now I'm not saying life in the universe besides us doesn't exist but I think it's highly unlikely that this is it. Like some people already said probably just a massive asteroid getting hit by radiation from the sun.

 

[Snotnarok]

There's a hundred different explanations for that and it's ALWAYS the most crazy. There's a TON of things it could be.

 

[red the fister]

If it was an Alien craft, they got pretty fucking fried.

It was probably space debris(like asteroids) being irradiated by the solar flare.

That is pretty close to my first impression. Maybe one of Mercury's moons got in the way and the flash is the solar flare blowing a cloud of burning irradiated dust off of it.

mercury doesn't have any moons

That's just the HMS Bounty.

well, that's what he was talking about? ffs, simplest answer is usually the correct one and here is it: That's a clump of Coronal Mass.

i was focusing on the darkness between that and Mercury. no wonder i thought the twat was hallucinating... OGM!!!! i just noticed!!! above the "a" in "whales" up at the top of the pic!! there's another one and it's even bigger!!!!!

If it WAS a ship, even by Star Trek design, wouldn't it be toast after getting hit with that much radiation from the solar-eruption? Being that close to the Sun and with no magnetic field to protect it..

don't forget that the star trek ships have a "magic" shield for protection from cosmic debris and another "magic" shield to handle the background cosmic radiation.

...but then, a bunch of 6' tall, sentient bacteria once kidnapped Kirk and his bridge crew. using a transformable ship. it was in a book. it's cannon.

on a related note to some of posts i didn't get around to quoting, Extra Credits covered good and bad Sci-Fi this week.

 

[Skoldpadda]

OMG it's the Babylonian Brotherhood !!!!!! quick someone call David Icke!!!! we must stop those damn blood-drinking, shape-shifting reptilian humanoids from the Alpha Draconis star system who are the force behind a worldwide conspiracy directed at controlling humanity.

"You can't believe everything you see on the internet" -George Washington

"80% of the quotes on the internet are made up" - Abraham Lincoln

60% of the time, quotes on the internet are wrong all of the time - Winston Churchill

"Hey guys! Let's have a space adventure, then lie on the internet!" - Vladimir Iljitsj Lenin

 

[teebeeohh]

even if it is a spaceship maybe they just needed to fix their toilets and preferred to stay in a solar system instead of in empty space.

 

[TimeLord]

It's not a ship. The Nasa explanation looks reasonable, and there is no reason for a ship to be orbiting mercury.

You can't possibly know that. If (and I stress if) it was as ship then it could be there for any number of reasons. Just because we can't survive in those temperatures maybe they can. They could be mining resources from the surface. Planning an invasion of Earth. Or even harvesting the suns energy for fuel.

Just because Mercury is a lump of useless rock to us doesn't mean it is to "them". You're thinking like it's a ship full of humans.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

Oh gods, please, alien technology!
deliver us from our non-spacewarping ways!
let's colonise the universe like intergalactic brothers, it can only end well.

-overpopulation can be solved through migration.
-there is something sentient besides human beings, so mankind grows closer (somewhat)
-the sharing of tech and philosophy among different races.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Anyone got a bone handy?

Although, it's far more likely to be this:

She's gained a bit of weight at her age.

 

[giggetygooo]

Soak it in a vat of negative evidence, chop it up with Occam's Razor, then tell me you have something more than a deformed, soggy mess.

 

[Skoldpadda]

People of Earth, your attention, please,

This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.


There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now.


What do you mean, you've never been to Alpha Centauri? For heaven's sake, mankind, it's only four light-years away, you know. I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that's your own lookout.
Energize the demolition beams.

I don't know. Apathetic bloody planet. I've no sympathy at all.

 

[Cenequus]

I remember since I was a kid it was explained to me that when I look to a star in the sky I actually see it how it looked milions of years ago and by our time that star might even be dead. So to a lesser extent it's pretty easy to apply the same reasoning here and be accurate when they say the filmed results photograph an area where the planet was a day ago.

As for UFOs this isn't more far fetched than people that thought the moon was empty inside and aliens spy on us.

 

[funguy2121]

this is the story (from yahoo)




i have to say, im kinda leaning more to the "its a ship" side

Well, this would hold more interest if I heard what some actual journalists had to say. Yahoo's not as bad as MSN, but I still take what I hear there with a grain of salt. And that goes double for youtube video creators.

It is very unlikely, given what we know (epistemology being a ***** and all), that another sentient life form will encounter humanity while we're around. I suppose if they were much more advanced (I'm being conservative with my adjectives here), which is a tremendously big if, and if we gained their interest for one reason or another, they might be here to surveil us. But that's a hypothetical, and not a fact.

Our knowledge of astrophysics is incredibly limited. We still haven't landed a person on another planet, for chrissakes. So I doubt it. It would be either incredibly scary or incredibly cool if there were aliens hanging out in the solar system on a planet-sized ship, but we should remember that the Death Star and Star Trek cloaking devices are fictional. Believing this without skepticism isn't too far off from expecting a zombie apocalypse.

 

[tofulove]

I actually clicked the video so I could view YouTube's comments section and a poster her a VERY valid point.
Why would you cloak your vessel next to an uninhabited planet?
Furthermore, I ask... Why the hell would you park next to the sun.\
p.s. I think this video is total bullshit. I'm just sayin'.

not saying its aliens, but if it were aliens why would aliens be close to sun and cloaked, well for one they don't want us to see em, and 2 sun = power, maybe they needed to recharge there space ship ;p