Are UFOs Stalking Mars Rover Curiosity?

By Asrokhel
in It's a Conspiracy!

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Asrokhel

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Ever since we launched planetary spacecraft beginning in the late 1950s, UFO-spotters have eagerly anticipated our running across alien spaceships flitting around. Rather than just accidentally crossing at a cosmic intersection, the legend is that extraterrestrials are watching us explore the solar system.

Based on the long history of supposed close encounters, I anticipated that not long after NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) landed, folks would begin reporting "strange things" in Martian skies. And sure enough, several reports of UFOs buzzing the Gale crater landing site have surfaced in the past few weeks following the celebrated touchdown of Mars rover Curiosity.

The MSL images of interest reportedly show UFOs in the sky near the landing site. In reality these are all bad pixels, other data artifacts on the rover?s solid-state cameras or dust. However, amateur sleuths over-processed the data to death (as seen in the video below) and this makes the noise look like something more than, well, just noise.

Several years ago I was sent an hour-long videotape that had been edited from NASA downlink video of the Hubble Space Telescope astronaut servicing missions showing white dots coming and going in the background. This too is simply noise or data dropout in the television transmission. There are many other similar examples on Youtube of alleged UFOs hanging around other shuttle missions.

A number of purported UFO sightings -- far too numerous to debunk here -- surround the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing. Neil Armstrong categorically denied these. Several years ago Buzz Aldrin gave CNN host, Larry King, a long shaggy dog story about being trailed by "UFOs." Aldrin finally said that the UFOs where likely pieces of the Saturn V third stage that was flying on the same lunar trajectory as the Apollo capsule.

Astronomical images are also pawed off as UFOs, but are really images of planets or bright stars. Venus is so bright that it can produce a "bleed" in a camera CCD detector that looks like it sprouted wings.

My favorite is a photo of a bizarre x-shaped pattern (a video of which is shown below) that the Hubble Space Telescope photographed. It was produced by the collision of two asteroids. Nevertheless, I received several emails insisting that it is some sort of spaceship. A joke among my colleagues was that it was "decloaking." One person Photoshopped the image and turned it into a frowning alien face.

These anecdotes are just a small sample of a seemingly endless Rorschach of alien signatures embedded in the photo tapestry of the surfaces numerous solar system bodies. The legendary face on Mars, first photographed in 1976, is the grandfather of all this nonsense. In 2001, the folks at NASA finally got around to re-photographing the feature in high-resolution and at a different sun angle and, guess what, it's simply a mesa -- though some "true believers" still hang onto the idea it is artificial.

More recently, a UFO group claimed to have found a crashed spaceship on the asteroid Vesta, as photographed by NASA?s Dawn mission. The white splat looks a little interesting, except it is fundamentally no different from gazillions of natural objects that have plowed into the ancient body.

This whole UFO photo sleuth cottage industry on the Internet underscores my admonition that one man?s noise is another man?s data. All kinds of interpretations are thrown at mundane and vastly unconvincing images. Simply show me just one photo of a starship that unequivocally looks like an extraordinary example of far advanced engineering.

When the space images fail to be taken as proof, UFO believers frequently fall back on allegations of government cover-ups of the really good pictures, and conspiracies to censor astronauts. This is symptomatic of a pseudoscience. Never mind that supposed evidence for pyramids, forts, bridges, bases, excavation sites and other alien constructions are extracted from thousands of photos that are openly available online from a fleet of NASA planetary orbiters.

The barrage of anemic or bogus evidence for UFOs aside, there is also a gaping hole in logic when alleging there are snoopy aliens. For starters, no advanced forms of life would make the long and expensive journey here to watch such comparatively mundane activities as humans walking on a moon, or an insect-brain robot rolling a few miles across a barren red planet. This is simple a terribly na?ve projection of how we think aliens would think. What's more, it's pretty nonsensical to imagine that aliens would zoom across many light-years only to be hapless enough to have a head-on collision with the asteroid Vesta! Who's at the steering wheel? The cartoon alien Roger form the TV show "American Dad"?

The scenario of eavesdropping aliens would only likely be remotely possible in a wide binary system where planets in the habitable zones about each of the stars roughly co-evolve technological civilizations. One can imagine an interplanetary Cold War where suspicious aliens keep an eye on the sister planet?s technological advances, lest they come and be colonized by space invaders. The star system might literally have a battle in space, straight out of Star Wars.

This is all great stuff for science fiction stories, but not the seemingly mundane worlds of our solar system. If we ever do stumble across a true alien artifact among the planets, it will be pretty pedestrian looking as compared to what?s reported in the UFO tall tales. Rather than a snoopy alien, it will more likely be some kind of debris left behind from a brief extraterrestrial survey mission visit that took place millions of years ago.

http://news.discovery.com/space/are-ufos-stalking-the-mars-lander-120917.html

Grand Master

Hum

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Do you see how many posts Hum has, you could've easily been able to tell I am not Hum, also, in a bunch of my posts I've said I was from Canada, and Hum is not from here.

Hum is from Mars. :shifty: Asrokhel is one of our alien bots.

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      Sihoo Doro C300 Pro V2 Ergonomic Office Chair review: The Ikea of chairs by Steven Parker I've reviewed a few gaming chairs over the past three years or so and generally found them to score well in our reviews. SIHOO reached out asking if I was interested in taking a look at their flagship chair, the Doro C300 Pro V2. I never got the chance to check out its predecessor, but the V2 is described as an "Adaptive Ergonomic Chair." It became available to buy in April of this year. Let's get things rolling with a closer look at the specifications and features. Specifications Doro C300 Pro V2 Model Ergonomic Materials Mesh Back and Seat; Soft PU Coated Armrests Height adjustability 45.5 - 53 cm / 17.5" - 20.9" Seat (w+d) 52 x 43 - 47 cm / 20.5" x 16.9" - 18.5" (adjustable) Backrest 52 – 60 cm / 20.5" - 23.6" (adjustable) Lumbar support Mesh built-in (adjustable) Armrest adjustability 8D Bionic Armrests Rocking angle 105°, 120°, 135° (fixed) Neck support Mesh built-in (adjustable) Net weight 27.3 kg / 59.64 lbs Weight support 150 kg / 330 lbs Colors Black, White Warranty 5 years (upon registering) Price $499.99, $539.99 Introduction At first glance, it looks like a chair that in another life wants to be a Herman Miller; It certainly looks like my Aeron Remastered, but the Doro C300 Pro V2 has quite a few more features and costs quite a bit less. SIHOO says that it is made up of a "DynaCore" system that tracks your movement and synchronizes the headrest, backrest, lumbar support, and armrests as you shift, twist, or recline. They also say that the "SyncroFlex Backrest" molds to your spine, which kind of describes how the mesh fabric works in most ergonomic chairs, but anyway. Below are the meat and potatoes measurements for the chair. Here is the same tech sheet, but in inches. Durability I would be remiss to not talk about the various durability testing this chair underwent before coming to market, as this is claimed on the product page. First of all, the chair is BIFMA-, SGS-, and TÜV-certified. As for durability, the tests undergone were: 100,000 Castor cycles tested 120,000 Armrest cycles tested 120,000 Recline cycles tested 120,000 Gas lift cycles tested 60,000 Armrest durability cycles tested 120,000 Rotation cycles tested Nothing about weights testing, though. Now that's all disclosed, now onto my own personal findings. Assembly The Doro C300 Pro V2 came in two large boxes (1) (2), and everything was packed very well, protecting the different parts of the chair. In the box, there is a folded sheet that explains the 12 steps to assemble it; they are: Remove the bottom cover on the aluminum base; Insert the five legs into the aluminum base and use ten screws to fasten them; Insert the castors into the legs; Replace the bottom cover on the bottom of the aluminum base; Place the Class 4 Hydraulics gas cylinder into the aluminum base; Screw the bottom part of the arm rests, taking care of the orientation using two screws on each side; Use three torx screws to fasten the footrest to the bottom of the seat; Fasten the backrest to the seat using four torx bolts; Fasten the armrests to the backrest using four Torx bolts (two on each side), taking care to note the orientation; Place the chair onto the Class 4 Hydraulics gas cylinder; Insert the headrest into the top of the backrest; Use two torx screws to fasten the headrest to the backrest. There's also an online guide you can refer to. Carefully unpacking the two boxes took around 15 minutes because almost everything is wrapped in plastic and protective foam; the chair assembly itself took around an hour. I say in the above assembly steps to take note of the orientation, because it's not obvious which way around the bottom portion of the armrests go, and although there is an L and R on the bottom of the armrests, it also wasn't clear from the instructions which was actually left or right, facing the chair, or in the seated down orientation? Anyway, I ended up putting the bottom portions on the wrong sides, and after securing one of the armrests, I discovered that although it was on the correct side, the armrest base could rotate a full 360°, but not when bolted to the chair, so I had to remove it, rotate it, and then bolt it back on. Truly an Ikea experience! Also, to complicate things further, although all the parts are labeled from A to X (yes, that's 24 parts) unhelpfully, these letters do not appear on the parts themselves or the package with the bolts, screws, and washers. There's also a pair of protective gloves in the box, but I think they were made for much smaller hands than I have. Even my friend, who is 5.1, had difficulty putting them on. Once assembled, I needed to sit down. Anyway, as I said, it looks quite similar to my Herman Miller. And here is the back of it. If you look at the product page and on Amazon, it seems like a lot of thought has gone into the chair itself and what it's capable of, but there is no mention at all about the castors, and this is an area where I think the chair trips up quite quickly. I found it difficult to move the chair in any direction. I asked a friend who came to visit me earlier this week to test my findings, and she said that the wheels were "no good," so it definitely isn't just me. I am 6'2 myself and a big guy, I work from home and gained a few pounds from mostly staying in and the hell away from other people. However, the Doro C300 Pro V2 is rated for up to 150kg (330lbs), which in my case is used well within its max rating. Ergonomics The number of adjustments you can make, right up to setting it in nap mode — which I haven't fully tested yet — is what you'd expect from a premium chair. Yes, you can go up and down (max 7.5 cm adjustment), rock back and forth (with tilt adjustment), and lock the chair between three stages of 105°, 120°, 135°, which is not quite as flat as the AndaSeat I tested at 160°. Some thought has also gone into the "8D" armrests, too, which are cushioned but quite firm; you'll only know it if you press hard into the PU-covered tops, which give about half a centimeter, but it's enough to ensure your skin won't get awkwardly stuck to it in warmer (or sweatier) conditions. It almost feels like plastic and is very easy to keep clean. However, the armrest positions move far too easily, and I am not sure what that "elbow" function is. Maybe it is good for a short person with short arms, anyway, I never used it and kept it flat at all times. There are eight levels of adjustment for the armrests, they are: backwards, forwards, swing left/right, height up and down, tilt, and 360° rotation, which can be handy for desk clearance. As I said, the armrest pads shift far too easily, which could give off an ergonomic vibe, but who wants the armrest sliding when you are shifting weight? The height adjustability does lock into place when lifting and adjusting. Comfort This is ultimately what it boils down to at the end of the day, right? Quite a lot of reviews praise the comfort of this chair, and I don't disagree that the mesh seating is quite comfortable. I am used to the material from my daily Herman Miller. However, the backrest cannot be locked into place, and this is actually a feature; as you shift or recline yourself on the chair, the backrest moves with your body. It took some getting used to. The lumbar gives ample support, but I would have preferred an adjustable one built into the seat base, as this causes the backrest to move up and down at will. Again, as with my previous chair review, this chair is also rated for tall people, but nowhere in the product documentation does it say how tall. Being 6'2 myself, I'm happy to say that the backrest is tall and wide enough, and thought has been given to being able to adjust the neck rest, but as others have mentioned in their reviews, people as tall as 6.2ft is about the limit for the neckrest. Conclusion What I didn't like The footrest is rated for 15kg (33 lbs), which to me seems a bit light, and after looking online, it seems like a chair footrest for adults must be at least twice that rating. In all honesty, they are just hollow metal tubes, so it is not recommended to let a kid sit on them. I also feel like it doesn't really go out far enough for my height, so that kind of puts the dampener on me being able to use it regularly. I'll just have to continue to use my subwoofer as a footrest! I do not like the armrests being able to shift around as easily as they can, and they are a little too forward-positioned in the chair to comfortably sit close to my desk, because even in the lowest height position, they don't allow me to go under the desk like is possible with my Herman Miller. I also feel like this chair could have been delivered partially constructed, especially the armrests on the seat, and why the aluminum base wasn't already pre-constructed (without the castors) is baffling, considering it would have fit in one of the two boxes that way. The instructions also need to be clearer. On the pamphlet, there's an A to X listing (which is also used in the steps), but none of the physical parts use this lettering system! What I did like I'll be honest, I haven't used it for very long, just one week, and seating comfort is subjective after all! Any spills wiped straight off it, the stitching, and the lines look great, not a fray to be seen or stitch out of place. It looks kind of cool, too. My favorite feature of these seats is the nap mode. While you're not lying completely flat, it leans far back enough to make you easily doze off after a heavy gaming or working session. Overall, this chair offers plenty of comfort features. The MSRP does vary quite a bit depending on the region, at £549.99 in the UK, and €580 in Europe, and $599 before tax in the U.S. However, shipping is free, which is a bonus for such a heavy item. Is it worth it, though? At three years' warranty, I think it's a decent deal. Another firm out of Germany sent me a free replacement hydraulic gas spring for a chair that failed after almost four years, so it was well outside its two-year warranty. My advice is to always try, as you might have the same luck I did. If I could fault it at all, it would be the constant shifting of the armrests and backrest. Where to buy Although the footrest variant normally costs $539.99, it has been discounted to $469.99 on the official website in Black or White. In fact, the non-footrest variant is only $40 cheaper. On Amazon, it currently costs more at $499.99 links below. Sihoo Doro C300 Pro V2 for $469.99 (official website) Sihoo Doro C300 Pro V2 for $499.99 at Amazon US SIHOO provided a free sample without any review or pre-approval. Good to know This Amazon link is U.S. specific, and not available in other regions unless specified. We only use first-party seller links (at the time of article publishing); ensure that you purchase from a first-party seller link only. Check out Today's Deals on Amazon | or our recent tech deals. Become a Prime member (for Students or SNAP) via Neowin Get Prime Access - Prime for half price (for qualifying Medicaid, EBT, SNAP) Subscribe to Prime Video, Audible Plus, Music Unlimited or Kindle Unlimited via Neowin As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

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