A gigantic jet caught on camera: A spritacular moment for NASA astronaut
science.nasa.gov394 points by acossta 6 days ago
394 points by acossta 6 days ago
Pilot had been reporting things like that for years but nobody would believe them because they weren't "trained observers", until a pilot caught it on film in the 80's.
Same with sailors, who've been repairing rogue waves for centuries, but it wasn't until it was recorded scientifically on an oil rig that scientists took it seriously.
Still an awesome picture.
In 1995 or 1997, can't remember which, I flew from Belo Horizonte to Miami (if the former) or NYC (latter). When we were flying over what I think is the Caribbean, I recall seeing "upward lightnings". They were absolutely majestic. I was absolutely awaken. I don't remember much else as I was a kid but seeing this text made me come back to this beautiful memory.
Upward lightnings happen frequently enough, there is a guy called Tom Warner that has done pretty extensive research into this including high speed photography.
Here is his website[0] very cool stuff indeed.
0. https://ztresearch.blog/2014/07/03/unique-image-showing-ligh...
I was shooting time lapse during a thunder storm and caught a ground to sky lightning bolt. I assumed that if I had an image of one that it must be a fairly common kind of thing, because I know I don't have that kind of luck. Then again, I also had a time lapse of the Milky Way that someone point out something I had caught being a meteor coming straight at camera recognizable by the ionized trail it left behind which took minutes to dissipate. It definitely helps to have a shutter open. You'll miss 100% of the shots you don't take (to borrow a sports phrase).
My favorite variant of that kind of story: https://blog.nature.org/2018/01/12/australian-firehawk-rapto...
As Adam Savage famously said (though I'm sure he was far from the first):
"Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down."
I saw something weird on a red-eye recently that maybe someone can explain:
We were going over a pretty rural area. I saw what looked like the fan of headlights but in these large marbleized shapes like large lightning-crackles. They just sort of moved across the ground and then fizzled out. The movement patterns would be kind of like clouds dissipating but it definitely looked like lights? Very weird.
> In ensuing decades, high altitude electrical discharges were reported by aircraft pilots and discounted by meteorologists until the first direct visual evidence was documented in 1989.
From your link.
[flagged]
It was in response to your original, unedited comment: "Pretty well understood" or something to that effect.
My point is that discounting historical accounts with a link to current information is neither particularly useful nor interesting.
IMO it is much more interesting to understand how our understanding has changed over time.
The link also contains information of the history of the current understanding? And is a direct summary of current understanding? I guess that contains your constraints for an interesting article (as it includes historical and current references that cover said history). So, what am I missing?
Also, I didn't edit the main premise of the comment, as it still contains the phrase "Pretty well understood today", unedited, but whatever.
EDIT: I have now removed that phrase as my comment was flagged. I mean, "fuck off" to whoever did that. My original comment had "Pretty well understood today" with the wikpedia link.
Stupid shit, imo
Community here continually becomes less "don't be a dick" from 2009 and more "fuck you, toe the line"
> Community here continually becomes less "don't be a dick" from 2009 and more "fuck you, toe the line"
No idea what this conversation is about in general, but these two statements you contrast here are identical. It's just with different values.
I feel you are undermining the Science!
Just because some common folks think they seen something, it does not mean it exists! It was probanly gas leak explosion, or something!
Classism in higher education, science, etc is sadly all too common. Even those in the 'correct' class have uphill battles as science very much is vulnerable to ego, politics, etc and reform can be difficult, or in some cases impossible, regardless of merit.
It makes you wonder what obvious thing is being ignored right now due to these politics. I would not be 100% surprised if people in the future accepted things like 'ghost experiences' as normal things. There's just way too many stories and experiences to entirely write it off, but who knows. I feel like hand wavey excuses like third-man, carbon monoxide suddenly everywhere, thought experiments about brains releasing chemicals, calling everything a hallucination, intuition impossible to know conventionally just called luck, etc is the system trying hard to deny this.
> It makes you wonder what obvious thing is being ignored right now
Not really, 40% of the US believes they were created (or are descendant of) by a divine being (creationism), in spite of all evidence, so pass that hurdle first
> I would not be 100% surprised if people in the future accepted things like 'ghost experiences' as normal things.
Like 20%-66% of the US believes this today? No one is experiencing the reality you are, ever, something to keep in mind, IMO.
To be exact a little under 40% believe in special creation - the mainstream Christian position (and more common even in the US) is that evolution is part of God's creation.
The US is very odd, not only in having large numbers of members of creationist churches, but also in tat a lot of members of churches that oppose creationism and Biblical literalism are quite often creationist.
The good news is that there is a downward trend in creationism.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/210956/belief-creationist-view-...
That's not so odd if you take into account that a lot of US citizens trace their origins back to people that left Europe because their beliefs were conflicting with those of the established churches. And because the established churches did not have a strong presence in the United States (or actually, its predecessor) these suddenly found themselves to be the dominant religion in sometimes much larger regions than they ever could have hoped for back in the home country. And when the population boomed so did their numbers.
It explains how it came about but not entirely why it persisted. It is also interesting that it has influenced the views of members of the established churches in the US.
I am not saying its unexplained, just that I do not understand it personally (I really do not understand the American culture and society at all well).
There are people that believe in flat-earth. Not entirely sure why it persists.
There's a difference of holding firm in one's existing belief/understanding and not just changing the beliefs as the winds change, but only with strong compelling evidence. It's entirely different when that evidence is presented in multiple forms and yet one still chooses to ignore it.
Flat-earthers are very few. You only really see them on social media where rage bait and fake stupidity get engagement.
A close family member does not believe in evolution. No amount of evidence will suffice. People can get closed minded around the weirdest things.
I think that background also helped entrench outspoken religiosity in US culture.
There's also the dynamics of having lots of variants of Christianity competing for attention (perfect for the age of televangelism) versus Europeans losing faith in established churches
Lack of evidence is not the same as contradictory evidence.
Could you point to any literature on evidence that refutes creationism? I'm not saying there isn't any. I'm just admitting my ignorance of it. Please enlighten me.
Falsifiability is pretty important here. What evidence could, in theory, refute creationism?
> No one is experiencing the reality you are.
This is a common sentiment, but it is also a declaration of epistemic bankruptcy, thus incompatible with the scientific method.
No, people don't experience the same reality, but it can still be observed and measured, which was pretty much resolved in the 1700s (Hume, others), so you might want to delve into that first.
I think you might be conflating "experience" and "interpret." If we can all measure reality and come up with the same values, we are experiencing the same one. How we interpret that is another question. Keep in mind the philosophers who came before had great contributions to the big thought-experiment we call existence, but many of them argued from emotionally or socioeconomically tainted positions and nobody has gotten it 100% right yet, or we would not be having this discussion.
Back to the original point of this thread, science doubts until certainty, or as close to certainty as our current capabilities will allow, is achieved. That doubt is what allows it to change with the introduction of new information. This is why the religious hold on to what they do, the paranormal believers cling to what seems like misunderstood phenomenon to the rest of us; they don't doubt, and are thus barred from discovery of the truth.
> or we would not be having this discussion.
Or those who aren't students of philosophy, just never read everything they said, seems more likely, no?
> Keep in mind the philosophers who came before had great contributions to the big thought-experiment we call existence, but many of them argued from emotionally or socioeconomically tainted positions and nobody has gotten it 100% right yet, or we would not be having this discussion.
Okay? What does that mean? We have 300 years of society embracing this perspective of Hume and the (at least) tens of thousands of scholars that followed him. I think it is well established that we believe this, even if you have some special knowledge or something enqueued.
Are you going to debunk all philosophy of the 18th century because they were arguing from an "emotionally or socioeconomically" stance (whatever that means)? It seems like an argument from an extremely weak position rhetorically, and I am being generous.
Your replies indicate that you are not able to have this discussion as you are too steeped in your field of study, which I assume you consider to be objectively correct. I respect the time and effort you've put into it, but Philosophy, though useful at times, is conjecture, not science. It does not have a place in a discussion about the inherent truth of measurable natural phenomenon if one is not able to cast doubt on it. I shall move on.
Science is philosophy, though what one might describe as applied philosophy. The point being: science (the scientific method) cannot exist outside the context of some epistemic system.
I saw your 'recommendation' to read about Hume further up the comment chain. Respectfully, I know more than you. Take your own suggestion. But don't just read about Hume; get a broader intro to the subject so you can understand how ontology, epistemology, ethics, and politics tie into one another.