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Ephemeris: 08/20/2026 – Fermi’s Paradox

August 20, 2026 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Thursday, August 20th. Today the Sun will be up for 13 hours and 49 minutes, setting at 8:40, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:52. The Moon, 1 day past first quarter, will set at 12:11 tomorrow morning.

It is said that during lunch one day in 1950 in Los Alamos New Mexico, atomic scientist Enrico Fermi asked this question: Where is everybody? Meaning why haven’t we seen any aliens from the rest of the universe? He posited that there are many stars older than the sun by billions of years, so there could be many civilizations in the Milky Way. There is sufficient time, even traveling less than the speed of light, that a single civilization would have populated the entire Milky Way Galaxy in millions of years, a short time compared to the age of the Universe. The question is known as Fermi’s Paradox. So far the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, has found nothing, though in the vast scheme of things, we’ve just started.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

Enrico Fermi, Italian-American physicist, received the 1938 Nobel Prize in physics for identifying new elements and discovering nuclear reactions by his method of nuclear irradiation and bombardment. He was born in Rome, Italy, on September 29, 1901, and died in Chicago, Illinois, on November 28, 1954.
Enrico Fermi, Italian-American physicist, received the 1938 Nobel Prize in physics for identifying new elements and discovering nuclear reactions by his method of nuclear irradiation and bombardment. He was born in Rome, Italy, on September 29, 1901, and died in Chicago, Illinois, on November 28, 1954. Source: Wikipedia.

Categories: Ephemeris Program, Life in the universe, Unexplained

Ephemeris: 03/30/2026 – Have I ever seen a UFO?

March 30, 2026 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Monday, March 30th. Today the Sun will be up for 12 hours and 40 minutes, setting at 8:08, and it will rise tomorrow at 7:25. The Moon, 2 days before full, will set at 6:42 tomorrow morning.

I’ve been asked whether I’ve ever seen a UFO. UFO stands for unidentified flying object, and based on the actual term it means that you don’t know what it is. The term UFO has come to mean alien spacecraft, but there’s no proof of that. I’ve seen things in the sky I could not immediately identify, but within a few minutes of observation or thinking about it, was able to find a plausible explanation for it. I haven’t seen anything that couldn’t be explained by being manmade or natural. The last time I saw something weird in the sky was a number of years ago during a star party at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. A solid line of light silently moved northward through the sky. After a bit it dawned on me that the previous day SpaceX launched their first batch of Starlink satellites. They hadn’t separated far yet.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EST, UT – 5 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

A comparison of naked eye versus binocular view of a SpaceX Starlink deployment about a day after launch.
A comparison of naked eye versus binocular view of a SpaceX Starlink deployment about a day after launch. This is from an actual image. The inset is reduced and blured a bit to match what I saw. Currently SpaceX launches fewer satellites at a time, because the satellites are larger and heavier. The total is under 30, where it was closer to 60 back in 2019. This will increase greatly when Starship takes over deployment from the Falcon 9 rocket. Image source: image.reimage.org.

Categories: Atmospheric Phenomena, Ephemeris Program, Unexplained Tags: