The National Solar Observatory is located, appropriately, in Sunspot, New Mexico, on Sacramento Peak. It was closed by the FBI on September 6 and the employees told to stay home until further notice. Even the Otero County Sheriff doesn’t know what’s going on.
James McAteer, a New Mexico State University professor who is also the director of the Sunspot Solar Observatory said the “telescope did not see aliens. All data will be made public in its unaltered form. Nothing is hidden or kept secret.” (Source)
The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, which runs the observatory, issued a statement saying
The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) is addressing a security issue at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) facility at Sacramento Peak, New Mexico and has decided to temporarily vacate the facility as a precautionary measure until further notice. All other NSO facilities are open and operating normally. AURA, which manages Sacramento Peak with funding from the National Science Foundation, is working with the proper authorities on this issue.
The FBI is not commenting.
My guess is that someone has made a threat against the observatory or its personnel. That person may be inside or outside the observatory community. But not aliens or a sunspot that will destroy the Earth.
Photo from Space.com.
And Open Thread!
TenguPhule
That’s what the Sunspots want you to believe!
The Midnight Lurker
Bullshit! It’s aliens!
TenguPhule
This is a suspiciously specific denial.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Deep state! Deep state!
raven
Huh, it almost looks like Angelfire.
Betty Cracker
Reminds me of “Knowing” — the movie about aliens and the heat-death of the earth starring Nicholas Cage. IIRC, scientists kept everyone in the dark as long as possible to prevent mass panic! ☀️??
Keith P.
WITCH HUNT!
germy
My wife’s cardiologist prescribed a weird monitor that she has to wear on her chest for a month. It connects wirelessly to a smartphone that records whatever info it’s picking up.
The monitor has a continuous flashing blue light.
Last night, during a moment of intimacy, I told her I felt like I was making love to a light house.
Her laughter woke the cat, who came upstairs to see what was going on, saw us, and then returned downstairs shaking her head.
NotMax
Resolution clear enough to see Helios’ chariot pulling the Sun across the sky finally achieved.
raven
@germy: tmi
Chip Daniels
“Please, space aliens- You’re our only hope!”
Major Major Major Major
You’re no fun!
Open thread? I got a job offer in New York I’ll probably take.
Antonius
Who got to you, Cheryl? :)
The Midnight Lurker
@germy: Now that’s what I call a ‘blue light special’!
Cheryl Rofer
@Major Major Major Major: Whoa! Bouncing from one coast to the other!
Schlemazel
I hate being late to the party! the best joke, “I’m not saying aliens . . . but aliens” is already taken. Dang it!
Also late to the last thread but an important note. Dump was whining how Muller had spent $17 million on his witch hunt (when in fact it was much less than that). Well, just today Mueller enrichd the Federal coffers to the tune of $46 million thanks to the confiscation from Manafool. That is winning I would not get tired of
Anonymous At Work
@Major Major Major Major: They didn’t mention sunspots in their denial…
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: Cool. New York is different that SF, you know.
West of the Rockies
@germy:
LOL!
J R in WV
To me, this specific denial is proof positive that they did indeed see aliens, or something so extraordinary, so profoundly strange, that it might be calming if it was just aliens. All accusations are projections, right?
Gin & Tonic
“That’ = “than”.
Maybe you can take a couple of weeks off between jobs and fix the goddamn edit function.
Schlemazel
@Chip Daniels:
You are not wrong. I am sort of hoping it is aliens. Even if they are the “Independence Day” or “Mars Attacks” type. Would not do as much damage as hair furor
raven
@Gin & Tonic: Ease up yanqui.
Schlemazel
@Major Major Major Major:
The city of NY? I would have loved to work/live there when I was a bit younger. It would still be an interesting place to live if I had the money. The State, however if Kentucky with better P.R. Did some work for the government & 60 miles from the gravity of the city it is shocking how backward the place is.
Good luck however you decide.
Major Major Major Major
@Cheryl Rofer: @Gin & Tonic: that’s rather the point, SF is an unpleasant place to live.
Luthe
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE
NotMax
@Major Major Major Major:
Excellent.
Good-bye Rice-a-Roni, hello kugel.
NDD
Seriously — I am going with FISA warrant.
It explains the silence of the Observatory and the local sheriffs’ office, and sending everybody home until the FBI gets done with its sweep. That the FBI apparently inspected a telescope itself makes me think that it involves the receiving or sending of SigInt and involves an employee or contractor.
Fernando Bueno
I’ll bet Art Bell is at this very moment trying to claw his way out of his grave. “Gimme that mike! I told you they’re coming!”
trollhattan
“Observatory detects honest Republican, immediately taken off line until the obvious fault is corrected.”
trollhattan
@Major Major Major Major:
Congrats! Options are nice.
Doug R
Don’t worry, the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory has been monitoring the sun CONTINUOUSLY longer than anywhere else on earth.
http://www.spaceweather.gc.ca/index-en.php
Luthe
@Major Major Major Major: What does Mr. M^4 think of this switch?
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: Contests, man.
SFAW
@The Midnight Lurker:
Congress better provide the funds to build that big, BEAUTIFUL
Mini Dyson Spherewall, STAT.Baud
@Baud: I meant congrats.
Schlemazel
@Major Major Major Major:
My grandparents moved to SF in the 50’s (lived in the Height!) and I fell in love with the city. I visited in the 60s (pre-68) and again in the 80s & 90s. I would have moved there in a heartbeat if the Mrs would have considered it (she has an unnatural fear of earthquakes – would not even consider vacationing there). But returning several times since 2000 & I would not want to live there now. The whole town has changed & not for the better. It is not a good place anymore I am afraid.
BTW – I convinced her to come with me on a business trip 3 years ago so, of course, there was an earthquake while we were there. A tiny one but I am sure it was just for her benefit :)
Mike in NC
Putin’s cyberwarfare in action again.
Anne Laurie
@Major Major Major Major:
Congratulations!
Lee Hartmann
I have visited that observatory several times. It’s a beautiful place. And it did (and maybe still does) good work.
Major Major Major Major
@Luthe: he’s been wanting to move there for a while actually. But now of course it just dawned on him that it’s a logistical nightmare.
And thanks everyone who said/says congrats!
MattF
Wonder if we’re gonna build a wall to keep out the aliens. That would mean sending all the ICE agents out into space, right? Hmm.
dmsilev
Space Force!
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
I thought it was something like “Plastics!” in The Graduate. “Contests!”
PhoenixRising
You know you are too deep in your state’s state politics when your first thought is: whose district is that in?
Aliens. Or some weirdo threatening the federal facility because it’s federal.
The Dangerman
I’m guessing the SMOD Twitter page is on fire right now.
Seriously, if there were an asteroid coming a wee bit too close, would this place pick it up? I have no idea how far out they look (time, not distance). For example, if we are doomed before the 2020 election, will we have to listen to Trump claiming to be the last and best President until, ya know, SMOD smokes us?
jl
Sunspots? What Sunspots? We are at one of the minimum sunspot periods in recorded history.
Clearly, The Fearsome Four Horsemen and a Apocalypse, Obama, Biden, H Clinton and John Kerry and taken over the observatory to shut down sunspots, to kill the sun and destroy the earth. Why? Because they are evil and they hate our freedoms, and Mueller is about to shut them down.
QAnon will give the scoop. Not sure I trust Rofer any more.
James E Powell
Okay, so not aliens, but maybe a meteor or a stray asteroid?
Anotherlurker
@Major Major Major Major: Moving, in general, is a logistical nightmare. I’m in the process of moving from Florida to California and the process of selecting what comes with me, what gets given away and what gets trashed is exhausting.
I’m single and not too attached to objects. Everything I’m taking me has to fit on a roof rack or a bumper mounted carrier bag, on my Prius. I can’t imagine how a family could execute such a move.
TenguPhule
Republicans still tormenting the children.
Warning FTFNYT link.
I hate these Nazis so fucking much.
dmsilev
@The Dangerman: This observatory is dedicated to looking at the Sun. The sorts of instruments that you need in order to usefully study a massively bright object that follows a well understood track in the sky are basically exactly what you don’t want to use to do survey searches for dim asteroids.
Bill Arnold
Will comment on the OP later (it’s catnip for me. :-)
Good piece in The Atlantic on hurricanes and rainfall:
Florence Will Drop an Inconceivable Amount of Water (Robinson Meyer, 2018/09/14)
…
Any news yet on coal ash dumps and manure lagooons?
(Story: my father claimed to be the first to use the word “lagoon” for this sort of pond (the milder version, more like catchbasins), in the 1950s, big construction industry, probably inspired by “Creature From the Black Lagoon”)
JPL
@Major Major Major Major: That is exciting news! I was hoping for Roger Stone’s arrest, but still that’s the second best thing.
Stone is my pick for a game I play in my mind, titled Which witch.
Patricia Kayden
Fake news!!
If it exists at all, it’s a creation of Trump’s superior mind. Or so Rudy told me.
TenguPhule
Trump tweet warns against spreading false news about hurricanes — a day after he tweeted false news about Hurricane Maria
Sadly, not the Onion.
We are truly living in the dumbest timeline.
Calouste
@TenguPhule: But all the stuff Manafort did doesn’t count because it was so long ago, like 8 years or so, right?
JPL
@Major Major Major Major: My niece did the coastal jump, and she is happy living in NYC.
Yutsano
@Major Major Major Major: MAZEL TOV! Gonna blame this for my desire to make rugelach.
@Keith P.:
That’s one thread down.
TenguPhule
@Bill Arnold:
Fairly certain they’re all overrunniing and are now part of the general landscape.
Schlemazel
@dmsilev:
STOP TRYING TO CHEER ME UP!
We are not going to be ‘saved’ by a giant meteor.
kindness
Rats! I was rooting for aliens. The nice ones.
Van Buren
Coming on the heels of the creation of the Space Force, it’s obvious that something is up.
PS I am not a crank.
Ninedragonspot
@Schlemazel: Well, I live in SF, and I still like it just fine. The city faces a number of challenges, to be sure, but what city doesn’t?
TenguPhule
Its official, Berkeley’s police are worse then the crooks.
Can’t say they did Nazi this coming.
TenguPhule
@kindness:
Those are precisely the ones we have to worry about dropping the asteroids on us to prevent us from leaving the planet.
TenguPhule
@Schlemazel:
It’ll be an asteroid.
dmsilev
@kindness: It’s a cookbook!
TenguPhule
Making a splash: American town launches Uranus Examiner newspaper
Schlemazel
@Ninedragonspot:
Maybe it is the change. I love NYC and it has its problems. Maybe I am just comparing now to 30 years ago. But somehow SF just has a hostile feel that is different than the indifferent quasi-hostility of new York.
dmsilev
@TenguPhule: Klaatu Barada Nikto.
Schlemazel
@TenguPhule:
That would be acceptable assuming it is large enough to do the job.
Seriously though I do not think it would be the FBI locking the place down. Much more likely (In my mind anyway) that it was a threat. Either internal or external
FlyingToaster
Honestly, it sounds like a contamination problem, either digital or meatspace, where having NOBODY IN THE BUILDING while they figure out how it got there is the first priority. Hence having the sherriff “stand by”, in case it’s something that was brought in by an employee. Otherwise, it won’t actually be anything that can be addressed except by hazmat or ‘net security boffins.
JGabriel
TenguPhule:
I suppose it might be a little on the nose for a corrupt southern gov’t to um … digest?
Origuy
The post office in Sunspot, NM has also been closed. It does sound like someone sent in a threat.
Ninedragonspot
@Schlemazel: I’m sorry you’ve had bad experiences here, but I can’t say that I’ve felt any hostility above what might be considered the baseline you’d see in any large city.*
*(Caveat: middle-aged, white males such as myself usually encounter less random hostility).
The Midnight Lurker
It’s aliens. Trust me.
satby
@germy: @raven: hysterical!
BruceJ
@Dangerman
No. We have The Planetary Defense Coordination Office at NASA for that, at least until the Orange Twatwaffle defunds it to hire more
GestapoICE agents. I suspect serious threat to the facility by an earthbound antigovernment nutcase.Fair Economist
I adore the Bay Area and SF in particular. People there are so smart, educated, and interesting. Nowhere else have I experienced things like going out with a group for dinner and having the discussion naturally turn to Byzantine politics. But there’s no work for my sweetie there and house prices are well beyond nuts, so in Orange County I stay.
BruceJ
@TenguPhule: Honestly does the mayor comprehend that you really couldn’t put the town’s name up for any more ridicule?
japa21
The “town” of Uranus, MO has an interesting back history. It is unincorporated, has a total of 25 residents and is situated on land purchased by the Mayor mentioned in the article. It is right next to St. Robert, MO which is where Fort Leonard Wood is. The so called mayor had wanted to open a gentlemen’s club in St. Robert and was refused permission to do so. He then purchased the land and develop a touristy shopping center. He chose Uranus simply because of the jokes that could be made about the name. There is a fudge shop and a large billboard on I-44 which proclaims “The Best Fudge Comes From Uranus”. Because the land he bought was in an unincorporated area, the proud folks of St. Robert could do nothing about it.
chris
Someone here will know, what’s the big white tower? The telescope is in the smaller cone in the foreground so the tower… a giant laser cannon?
?BillinGlendaleCA
Hmmm, it’s not too far from Roswell, just saying.
Mnemosyne
I was actually able to run a couple of errands after my PT today, and now I’m pooped. The nice young man at our neighborhood (mini) Target basically forced me to use their electric cart, but he was right and I was a lot happier. And spent more, which didn’t hurt them. Now I’m home again and laying down with ice on my knee.
NotMax
@BruceJ
Also too, legions of amateur astronomers, often the first to report sightings in our very local neighborhood.
Can easily see from the back yard the observatory for the world’s largest solar telescope, on schedule to receive first light in 2019.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@chris: Don’t know, but the solar observatory on Mt. Wilson has one too.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Yay! Hopefully winter won’t be too extreme for your hubby. Didn’t you say he’s a California native?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax:
They been keeping it in a box up to this point?
NotMax
What can go awry? With this crowd, plenty.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: we’ll find out!
Martin
@chris: That’s the main observatory, actually. There are 5 telescopes there. The heliostat on top of the tower reflects light down the tower into an underground space where it’s imaged. It’s able to track the sun throughout the day.
kindness
I can certainly believe aliens don’t want us out in the galaxy at our current state of development. We aren’t a very principled species at the moment. Creatures of chaos is how we would no doubt be seen. No, we aren’t ready for their worlds yet. Yet.
Martin
@NotMax: Not enough views on Twitter I guess.
Fair Economist
@Major Major Major Major:A friend of mine from California who went to college in Chicago said it wasn’t too bad. Just wear more layers than the natives and eat a lot.
JPL
Geez since he can’t tweet about Manafort we are once again tweeting about Puerto Rico. When exactly did those folks die?
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
He’ll probably be fine. I did have a friend whose marriage broke up over weather, but he tried to move his California native wife from Los Angeles to rural Illinois where she didn’t know anyone other than his family. Even if he doesn’t like the cold weather, Mr. M^4 shouldn’t end up feeling as isolated in NYC as my friend’s wife did.
Also, make sure to talk to your vet about moving Samwise. He may need a certificate of health since you’re taking him across state lines.
chris
@Martin: Thank you.
Jay C
@trollhattan:
Probably not: I don’t think there’s any instrument in the world with that fine a resolution…..
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: vet said in May that you need a certification to fly, but nothing about state lines…
chris
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Thank you, too. Went down the google rabbit hole and now I want to go there.
chris
@chris: Forgot link. From the Mt. Wilson page
http://obs.astro.ucla.edu/150_tele.html
TenguPhule
@JPL:
Stop defiling Irony’s corpse.
Uncle Cosmo
@J R in WV: Um, just for shitzengoogols, anyone here read Heinlein’s “The Year of the Jackpot” recently enough to remember the ending? (For those who haven’t, here’s a rather raggedly OCR’d PDF for your literary pleasure. It’ll take yinz awhile; enjoy.)
(And with that I’ll tippytoe right on out of here…)
John Revolta
It would be illogical not to speculate.
Haroldo
@Major Major Major Major:
Congratulations to you both. I moved to Boston’s North Shore from the Bay Area 17 years ago because I couldn’t stand the fuckin’ place (the Bay Area, that is).
I hope you job offer has the sort of moving benefits that will mitigate some of the nightmares.
Uncle Cosmo
@JGabriel:
Suppositorily speaking, sounds holey plausible…
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
If you think you might drive with Samwise instead, buy a leash and harness like the ones Cheryl has and start getting him used to them now. You will all be a lot happier if he can stretch his legs a bit at the rest stops in a safe way. It also gives you a better way to grab him if he panics with the car door open and tries to bolt.
I’m pretty sure he needs a health certificate if you’re moving him to a new state regardless of whether you fly or drive, but check with your vet. At a minimum, you’ll need his vaccination records and may want to make sure he’s up to date on those before you leave.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: zero interest in driving. Might take a train (without the cat) though. They’re actually headquartered in SF so there’s some flexibility around a ‘slow move’, it’s not as much of a logistical nightmare as it could be!
Cheryl Rofer
@Uncle Cosmo: Can’t recall, even though I read it many times. I think that a giant sunspot eats the earth, but that could have been another story.
NMgal
@Origuy: Yep, I think this is key. Probably something suspicious–or, considering the length of the closure, something that turned out to be genuinely hazardous requiring decontamination of some sort–was mailed to the facility and came through that post office.
Mart
I was up all night making play dough from flour, water, salt, and food coloring; feverishly sculpting. Reading this I realize I had created a near replica of Sunspot. Don’t know how, but now I find myself on an Amtrak train passing by Uranus on my way to New Mexico…
Cheryl Rofer
It’s in the Washington Post now. They say that only the post office at the facility was closed, not the town post office.
NotMax
@Mart
Ridin’ on the City of
New OrleansUranus…:)
Bill Arnold
@The Midnight Lurker:
He said it wasn’t aliens.
So the observatory must have seen a single alien, perhaps one that arguably looked like some natural object. Logic!
The post office closure is an interesting twist. You all recall Men in Black II where Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) had self-exiled (using a neuralizer) to a position as a town postmaster?
@Van Buren:
I was pretty amused by Trump’s announcement of the space force. Reasons, including (not exclusively) that the timing and content was weirder than usual even for Trump.
Also, The Internet’s Six Wildest Theories on the New Mexico Observatory Mystery
There are other theories, considerably wilder. I will not type them here. :-)
Bill Arnold
@Cheryl Rofer:
Oh dang. There goes the Agent K theory. :-)
Procopius
@Schlemazel: Actually, if it were aliens it might be a good thing. Since Hillary was Secretary of State I’ve been worried about the excessive belligerence toward Russia. I think some of the neocons have decided we can “win” a nuclear war and have been pushing for that since 2009. As Paul Krugman pointed out, space aliens might force us to set aside our differences here and unite in the face of the external threat. What kind of “security threat” would have them close the facility for nine days (so far) and not make any kind of announcement? That causes panic, doesn’t prevent it.
Tehanu
I’ve been hoping for the Lylmik, Atoning Unifex.
Procopius
@The Midnight Lurker:
Guy is sound asleep at home, 3:00 AM, when his phone rings. Still half asleep, he answers.
Woman Caller: Hey, can I speak to Myrtle, please?
Guy: There ain’t no Myrtle here. You gotta wrong number.
Woman Caller: Oh, come on, let me talk to Myrtle.
Guy: Lady, I’m tellin’ ya, there ain’t no Myrtle here. There ain’t no woman here, I live alone.
Woman Caller: Aw, are you sure?
Guy: Lady, have I ever lied to you before?
Bemused senior
@Uncle Cosmo: Love that story. Love all of his early stories.
Matt McIrvin
@The Dangerman: JPL’s Sentry program works up to 100 years out. They keep the page updated with potential threats–the monitoring is good enough that by this point there’s pretty high confidence of no real extinction-level impact threats over the next century. Lots of potential city-busters are likely still going unseen, but those don’t cause a lot of damage unless they hit just the right spot–the Earth can be a surprisingly big place.
Dan Yurman
This comment adds to Cheryl Rofer’s analysis and was prepared independently of it. We agree in some areas and probably have different ideas in others. All of my comments are scenarios and none offer any evidence other than logical plausibility.
Recall that there has been a dust up on the Internet over the closure of a solar astronomy facility in NM. Here are two good reports.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a-solar-observatory-in-new-mexico-is-evacuated-for-a-week-and-the-fbi-is-investigating-no-one-will-say-why/2018/09/14/ea006a96-b78b-11e8-a2c5-3187f427e253_story.html
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/remote-solar-observatory-remains-closed-after-mysterious-evacuation
The Internet predictably filled the airwaves with theories about aliens being detected in outer space. I believe this is nonsense. That said like everyone else I have a couple of theories or scenarios about the closures. None involve aliens.
1. Hacking – China, Iran, North, Korea, Russia, former communist bloc countries, hack everything. Any government or quasi government facility in New Mexico is a target. Many are interconnected by high speed networks. The Chinese once hacked an air conditioning system at the US Chamber of Commerce. HVAC is actually significant as a target. More on this below.
Follow me here on the connection issue – recall that the infamous hack of Target’s credit card system was accomplished by hackers who got into it via the network that also controlled HVAC in its stores. Like many big box stores, Target controlled ALL of the HVAC in all of its stores via a central location operated by a contractor. The hackers got into the poorly defended HVAC systems and from there into the credit card computers which were on the same network.
It follows that if you are a hostile foreign power intent on getting US secrets from govt labs in NM, you go looking for the weakest link on the network. A low profile astronomy facility, with no national security secrets of its own, makes a perfect target. It most likely has back haul network connections for high end computer processing of its data to Sandia or other national labs or other National Science Foundation labs with super computing power. All of these connections makes the solar facility a terrific portal to much more valuable targets.
The “security issue” in this scenario is that the hackers got into the solar facility and were attacking other govt labs in NM when they were detected. The spooks traced the attacks back to the solar facility which was being used as a “base station” for fanning out throughout the DOE/DOD complex in NM. It is also possible that one or more staff at the solar facility are being checked to see if they are complicit, e.g., to answer the plausible question of whether it was an inside job.
If this is the case a forensic review of all computers in the facility will take some time. If hacked machines are found, they will have to be replaced. The big risk is that science data will also be lost.
2. Contamination – someone, perhaps a disgruntled employee, sent an envelope with ricin, or a harmless white powder, to the facility, which was opened by an employee. The intent would be to disrupt operations or maybe some overworked staffer just snapped and decided sending the plant an envelope full of his wife’s talcum powder would be a good way to get a few days off.
Note that news media coverage included interviews with two staff from the local post offices one of which is also now closed. This is the basis for my “envelope” theory. The “security issue” is to determine whether there are any other “letters” or packages in either post office or in the facility that could contain harmful substances or stuff pretending to be the same.. In any case, next step is complete investigation and decontamination of all works spaces which means an extended closure.
3. Theft and or diversion of equipment and facility capabilities for private gain. This one is more of a stretch. What if one or more of the staff were running some kind of side hustle with the facility, for whatever purpose, and hit a trip wire of some kind sending messages to their “customers.” Could have been something as mundane as a sports betting pool or football spread gambling that got out of hand.
In all three case the investigation could become a criminal case which would lead to indefinite closure as the site would now become a crime scene.
No aliens in any of these scenarios.