Gamma-Ray Burst GRB 080319B

The following is an accurate recount of witnessing an event that happened 7.5 billion years ago.

The earth is four and a half billion years young. Think about that as I try to figure out how to tell the story…

I have always been a bit of an astronomy nut.  My heroes range from Tesla, Aristotle, Voltaire, Galileo, and the more modern folks Sagan.

Tesla was probably close to crazy, but he thought outside the box.  All of these men thought outside the box.

Einstein would be in this group, except he did not think his invention through to a logical conclusion.

I would never give ‘man’ as he exists in this time a weapon as he did.

From sticks to boulders to viruses, man will use anything as a technical advantage over their peers.  Instead of fixing what divides us, they spend time and energy to find better ways to subdue their enemy, their peers.  I digress.

7.5 Billion years ago, an event of monumental proportions was witnessed by yours truly.

March of 2008, my back was killing me, metaphorically speaking.

Switching on the hot tub, I was soon sitting outside in the cool night air soaking in a bubbling cauldron of chlorinated, heavily salted water.

As the water jets worked to soothe my spasming muscles, I allowed the steam to clear my head.

There is something magical about watching the night sky. Once while floating in the pool during a hot summer day, I witnessed an orange ball of fire with a turquoise flame at the front of it streaking toward the southwest from overhead.  There was no trail of smoke or sonic boom, so I figured it had to be pretty high up as it blazed through the earth’s outer boundary’s

Watching the shuttle chase the ISS was another one of my rare glimpses of human-made oddities in the night sky.

While binoculars are a favorite for searching the heavens, I did not have them that night in March.

Watching for satellites would be fruitless. My part of the world, including that area of space over me, was in total darkness.  It was a little after one in the morning when I switched off the jets and debated if I could get some rest or not.

Taking one last look at the heavens, a bright flash captured my attention.

For a brief second, I wondered if I had stayed in the hot tub too long, when there was another and still yet another.  A succession of flashes about the brightness of a car’s headlights on a dark road continued for a little over ten seconds.

A blast of white with a slight yellow and red color around the edges that resembled an inkspot, lit the night sky.

I sat back, watching them for a second, twiring around briefly to see if something from behind me was causing them.

No, there was nothing from the streets or in the house. There were no clouds of any kind. 

My mind quickly took me to the Marfa lights.  I researched them after I went inside to see if the conditions were right for that phenomenon.  No and no.

What did I see?

Of course, Google searches rendered nothing.

Days turned into weeks of ‘nothing.’ I let it go.

One day, I am researching material for one of my novels, and what appears but an article on Gamma-Ray Bursters.

Focusing on the date and time and the sky’s location at that time of year, I found what I saw.

“It was a whopper,” says Swift principal investigator Neil Gehrels of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “This blows away every gamma-ray burst we’ve seen so far.” *

“No other known object or type of explosion could be seen by the naked eye at such an immense distance,” says Swift science team member Stephen Holland of Goddard. “If someone just happened to be looking at the right place at the right time, they saw the most distant object ever seen by human eyes without optical aid.” *

Naked-eye Gamma Ray Burst | Science Mission Directorate (nasa.gov)  *

I remember as a kid watching the night sky. Orion is my favorite constellation.  I am sure it has to do with the horsehead nebula or Betelgeuse and its eventual demise.

Since the star is 642 light-years from here, it might already be gone. 

Much like the Gamma Ray Burster that happened 7.5 billion years ago, time marches on.

Look up, my friends.  Check out that Y-axis if you will.  There is no telling what you might see.

Much Love -TW

Time, Do we Understand it?

As a science fiction writer, I tend to think outside the box.  Sometimes, the ideas become so esoteric that I have to fall back, and re-think them.

As I read about the Parker Solar Probe, I just wonder if there is a way to run one more experiment.

The purpose of the experiment is to determine if, “Time close to the sun,” is the same as we experience on earth.

For eons, science fiction writers have gotten it wrong.  Thinking about the time machine, for instance, we see the walls build, and crumble, around our intrepid time traveler, as he goes forward and backward in time.

The authors of such novels did not take time-space, and celestial mechanics, into consideration when they wrote their novels.  Who can blame them?  The ideas are obscure, and few would try to truly understand what is going on.

If our time machine did more than twirl a huge disk and had some lights blink, we would see that in order for it to travel in time it, would necessarily jump outside of the time-space that the earth is in.

Said another way, it would become separated from the earth and this solar system.  Therefore, what would that look like and why?

It is my contention as a science fiction writer, and nerd, that this solar system is in its own time zone.  That time zone is created by mass, and how that mass actually warps space around it.

The idea came to me when there was an anomaly with one of the Voyagers. As it went further into deep space, outside of the effects of the Heliopause, they said it was slowing.  NASA reported that it was slowing down. Is it, or is it simply in a new time zone where time is perceived differently?

It is my contention that it is the latter, which means time, and light years, and so on, are not as we perceive them at all.

If our time machine left the Earth’s Space-time, celestial mechanics would move the earth in several different directions at once.  Not only is the earth rotating on its axis but also it is orbiting the sun on the X-axis.  The solar system, carried along by the Milky Way, is moving both on its X, and Y,-axis, simultaneously.

Once our friend pulled the magic lever, he might pass through the earth, or find himself in space.

As I write about this in Under Roswell, or The Saga of the Starduster, time, as we understand it is not correct.

Not many years ago, there were reports by airport personnel, including air traffic controllers, and pilots of a UFO hovering over the O’Hare airport. Like a shot, it suddenly went vertical, “faster than a speeding bullet.” Leaving holes in the clouds, on its departure.

We know from our understanding of space travel, and so forth, that the G-force would have made the occupants look worse than any bug, on any windshield.  Because we “know” that to be true, we dismissed it, as it could not have happened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_O%27Hare_International_Airport_UFO_sighting

Because of our understanding of physics, using the Abacas and slide rules, that we have. We could not make sense of it; the incident was passed off, as “swamp gas, or a hoax.”

Even though there were several that saw it, all saying the same thing, it did not happen.

Well, my feeble brained friends, and those of you who are not so feeble, what if those in that disc-shaped object, pushed their magic lever, and found themselves outside of our space-time?

If you accept that not all of the UFO sightings are hoaxes, then we must look for other answers.

If they are not hoaxes, how did they get here?

“In Under Roswell, I write about a Point in Time modulator, which of course is something I made up, as a plot device.  Unlike the infamous Flux Capacitor, I try to dig into the science, of how this could happen, without using the proverbial slide rule.

What I would love NASA to do, is devise some test, that they could perform with this sun probe, to see if the time-space around the sun is different from what it is here on earth.

I am assuming that there will be telemetry from the device.  That data stream may change in baud rate or frequency, as it gets closer to the sun.

Most will want to blame the heat from the sun, but just possibly, someone will think about shifting their algorithm to match that of the data stream, to see that there might indeed be a time change.

If correct, the way that we perceive time and distance would change.  The distance to the stars would necessarily change.

What is the time zone like in the void between galaxies, where there is no mass to create warpage of the space-time?

If you like my way of thinking, you might enjoy:

• <

li>Under Roswell

 

 

• The Saga of the Starduster

 

 

 

• Ghost Signals from Colorado Springs

 
If someone with a string of letters after their name, resembling the alphabet, comes up with this theory, remember that you read it here first.

Much Love -TW