An Earthling's Guide to Outer Space

by Bob McDonald

  On July 8, 1947, the military issued a press release saying it was in possession of a flying saucer. On July 9, General Roger Ramey issued another press release saying that the remains were not a flying saucer but a secret weather balloon that had landed unexpectedly.

  That was the end of the story. Or was it? The public is not allowed into Area 51, and the military certainly doesn’t want people poking around in there and asking questions. The military is involved in all kinds of secret projects. They’re working on experimental new planes and vehicles they don’t want anyone to see. They might fly them at night, which would lead sky watchers to say, “Hey, I just saw something really weird in the sky!” to which the military might reply, “It wasn’t us.” The military may cover up their own experimental airplanes, but could they and would they cover up an alien spaceship?

  There are also no clear pictures of alien spaceships flying through the skies. Photos that exist are always blurry, and videos are so shaky and out of focus that you can’t tell what is being filmed. It’s suspicious that no one has been able to take a proper photo of a UFO when we all carry phones that have cameras in them. If alien spaceships are flying around, why can’t we just get some good, clear pictures? Maybe you will be the first to capture a good image of a real UFO.

  SPACE PLACES

  In the desert of Peru in South America, near the town of Nazca, are hundreds of long lines in the ground that run perfectly straight, sometimes for more than thirty kilometers. Some of those lines form giant drawings of animals, such as a hummingbird, a spider, and a monkey. The unusual part of these drawings is their size. They’re so big, you can’t see the shape of the animal they make from the ground. That picture can only be seen by flying over them in an airplane.

  Most scientists—not to mention most of the public—agree that the lines were built by the Nazca people, who lived in the desert about two thousand years ago. But one small group of people who were not scientists believed these lines were made by ancient alien astronauts who came to Earth. This group claimed that the alien astronauts used the animal drawings as signs of where to land on Earth, claiming the long straight lines were landing strips. (Why aliens who were capable of traveling across vast distances of space would need landing strips was never addressed.) The argument was that because the ancient Nazcans had no flying machines, they could never make such large drawings from the ground alone.

  Scientists who have studied the lines and drawings do not know exactly why they were drawn. Perhaps they’re a giant calendar, pointing to constellations in the sky. Some of the lines do point to where certain stars appear on the horizon during the equinox. The animal figures can actually be seen from the ground if you climb nearby hills. Most scientists believe they were made for religious purposes, or built for the gods in the sky to see, especially the ones who bring water. The Nazca desert is one of the driest places on Earth, so water was a scarce and valuable resource to those people. The spider was a symbol of water, the hummingbird a symbol of fertility, and the monkey is associated with the Amazon jungle, which has a lot of water.

  The Nazcans knew mathematics and how to build cities. They were talented at measuring distances and figuring out how to make something so large it could only be seen clearly from above. To this day, there is no credible evidence that their drawings were made by or for aliens who visited the Earth thousands of years ago.

  Some people claim to have been kidnapped by aliens when they were asleep. They go so far as to say they had experiments done on their bodies before being returned to their beds. But so far, no one has been able to prove these claims.

  Sleep paralysis may explain some so-called alien abductions. It’s a condition that makes you feel like someone has taken control of your body. It’s perfectly natural, and it happens all the time. When you go to sleep, the part of your brain that controls your muscles is partly shut down so your body will lie still. As you come out of sleep, the muscle control center in your brain is turned back on so you can move again. Once in a while, you can partly wake up during a dream while your control center is disconnected. It feels like paralysis because you can’t move, even though you want to. It’s as though someone or something else has taken control of your body. The experience can be very scary—so scary, in fact, that in your dreamlike state you might believe aliens abducted you.

  Beyond abduction reports, there have been many famous UFO hoaxes and elaborate practical jokes staged to fool the public. Some of them involve “alien” markings on the ground, such as crop circles. It turns out most of those were made by low-flying helicopters. Other hoaxes involve trick photography. Sometimes an object like a hat or a flying disc is thrown into the air and photographed in front of distant trees so that it looks like a UFO is flying above them.

  What does all this amount to in our search for UFOs? Until we lay hands on an actual, verifiable piece of an alien spaceship or a real alien body, there’s simply no proof that aliens have reached our world. For every sighting that could be an alien spaceship, there’s almost always an alternate explanation—a secret military aircraft, a fireball meteor, a hoax, or a bad dream. And for those sightings that remain unexplained, there isn’t enough evidence to say exactly what they are.

  Speaking of the military, many organizations around the world are constantly watching space for unusual objects. They can see missiles being launched, satellites orbiting the Earth, or pieces of space junk as small as the size of your fist. At the same time, astronomers are scanning the skies looking for new comets or asteroids. It would be very hard, then, for an alien spaceship to approach Earth without a lot of people seeing it. And if one were spotted, why would it be covered up? It would be the news story of the century!

  Let’s not close our minds to the possibility of alien spaceships quite yet. We know the odds of intelligent life existing in the universe are pretty good. Some life-forms, like us, could develop spaceships—even faster spaceships than we have—and come to our planet. It’s possible, just not provable… yet.

  YOU TRY IT! Make Your Own “UFO” Video

  WHAT YOU NEED

  A toy spaceship

  Invisible thread

  A camera

  Proximity to a parking lot

  WHAT TO DO

  Set up the camera so you can see lots of cars in the parking lot.

  Tie the toy spaceship to the end of the thread and hang it close to the camera so it looks huge and is hovering over the cars. Make sure the toy is at the top of the image so less thread shows.

  Take several photos until you get one that looks real.

  Post it online and see if people can guess how you got the photo to look real.

  Remember: Don’t try to fool the experts. Always post a follow-up shot revealing your trick and how you did it. Don’t let anyone take you seriously.

  7 Why Are Black Holes Black?

  If light does not reflect off an object or if no light comes out of it, we see it as black. So if something is totally black, and it’s out in black space, how do you see it at all? You can’t. But you can tell it’s there by watching things fall into it. Anything that gets close to a black hole is torn apart so violently by the black hole’s super-high gravity, it heats up and shines brightly as it falls in, so we can see it through telescopes. That’s what gives the black hole away.

  What we do know is that a black hole is not really a hole; it’s actually a solid object. If you could touch one, it would be the hardest, smoothest ball imaginable. But don’t try it, because as soon as you get close, the black hole’s gravity will suck you in and that will be the end of you. Some black holes have partners—ordinary stars that orbit around them. Because the stars are close to the black holes, the powerful gravity of the hole pulls material off the star and sucks it in. The black hole eats the star!

  Have you ever noticed the shape that water takes as it goes down the drain of your sink? It swirls around and around, forming a hole in the center. You can see the same thing after flushing a toilet
if you care to look. This shape, called a vortex, occurs over and over again in nature. Stuff gets caught and pulled in, and is never seen again. In April 2019, the first-ever image of a black hole was captured. It looked like an orange donut with a black spot in the center. That donut was the swirling disc of gas, and the black spot was the hole where it disappeared from our universe.

  We see material constantly swirling around in space—gas and dust twirling around new stars; stars spinning around the center of the galaxy; galaxies circling around each other in big clusters. Close to a black hole, where gravity is extremely strong, everything that falls in spins around faster and faster until it disappears like water down a drain. Where all that material ends up, no one knows, which makes black holes one of the most mysterious objects in the universe.

  And here’s where the analogy to water in a drain falls short. We know that the water running down the drain doesn’t really disappear; it just goes somewhere else. But not so in space. There’s no plumbing or pipes up there, no tubes concealing what gets sucked in. When a black hole grabs something, it spins it around faster and faster until it reaches the speed of light, which (as far as we know) is the fastest anything in the universe can travel. Go faster than the speed of light and no one knows what happens because matter disappears from this universe as we know it.

  Black holes don’t come out of nowhere. They used to be stars, something like our sun, but much, much bigger and much heavier. All stars are balls of hot hydrogen gas that are trying to blow themselves apart. Stars want to explode outward, but they don’t fly apart because their own gravity is pulling everything toward the star’s center. As long as the outward push of explosive nuclear fusion and the inward pull of gravity have the same strength, the forces are completely balanced, and the star shines happily.

  Stars come in many different sizes. Some are smaller than our sun, some are bigger… and a few are enormous—hundreds of times more massive than the sun. These are the stars that become black holes. Why? Because they have a lot more gravity.

  Eventually, as all stars do, even the biggest stars stop burning on the inside. They run out of gas. When that happens, gravity takes over and the star is squeezed into a smaller and smaller ball. The smaller the ball becomes, the stronger its gravity gets, until something even stranger happens. The gravity becomes so strong that the light shining from the star can’t escape, and the star turns black, disappearing from sight. But even though we can no longer see it, the black star is still there, and so is its super-powerful gravity. And it’s that gravity that pulls in everything around it, including light itself. That’s why black holes are black.

  THE FUTURE IS NOW

  What would happen if you fell into a black hole?

  It would not be a pleasant experience, and it would be the last trip you ever made. The closer you get to it, the faster you fall. The point of no return in a black hole is called the event horizon. As you approach it, the powerful gravity would pull on your feet more than on your head, stretching you out into a long, thin string, like a piece of spaghetti. Then your body would be wound into a spiral and heated up until you were glowing white-hot.

  Faster and faster you would spin until you reached the speed of light. The universe as you know it would disappear, and you’d be crushed to an incredibly tiny point in a place where time no longer exists. Some scientists think you’d end up in another universe, or perhaps pop out in another part of this universe. No one really knows.

  If you want to look at a black hole, you can—well, kind of. If you’re outside on a clear summer’s night, look straight up over your head. You should see a big group of stars in the shape of a cross. This constellation is sometimes called the Northern Cross, but its true name is Cygnus the Swan. The star at the bottom of the cross is the swan’s head. The star at the top is its tail. In between, the three stars making up the crosspiece form the wings. If you look carefully, almost exactly halfway from the head of the swan to the center of the wings, you’ll find the spot where we discovered a black hole, Cygnus X-1, for the first time. Of course, you can’t see the black hole because it’s black (and really far away), but that is where it is located.

  And if you look to the south, where the Milky Way widens as it touches the horizon, there’s another group of stars shaped like a teapot. That’s Sagittarius, and just to the right, or west, of the teapot, deep inside the Milky Way, is the galactic center—the home of the biggest black hole of them all. That super-giant hole is a million times more massive than the sun, and it’s lying at the very heart of our Milky Way Galaxy. It’s a good thing that one’s really far away, because if it weren’t, we wouldn’t be here. Where would we be? Your guess is as good as mine.

  YOU TRY IT! Bottled Black Hole

  WHAT YOU NEED

  Two clear plastic bottles with their caps (two-liter size works best)

  A sharp knife or pair of scissors

  Strong tape (black electrical tape is best)

  Water

  WHAT TO DO

  Remove the labels from both bottles.

  Using the knife or scissors, carefully cut a hole through each of the plastic caps, including the soft liners on the inside. The holes should be large enough so you can poke your little finger through them.

  Hold the two caps so their tops are touching. Check to see that the holes are lined up so you can put your finger through both of them.

  Wrap the tape tightly around the edges so the two caps are joined (don’t cover the parts that screw into the bottle!). Make sure to wrap the tape around several times to attach the caps tightly.

  Screw the joined caps tightly onto one of the bottles.

  Fill the second bottle three-quarters full of water.

  Screw the empty bottle tightly onto the one filled with water so the two bottles are joined together end to end.

  Carefully pick up the bottle containing the water, making sure you don’t twist or bend the joint between them. Then flip the bottles over so the one filled with water is now on top.

  Swirl the bottles around in a circular motion to get the water spinning, and watch what happens as the water drains from the top bottle to the bottom one. You should see a long silver funnel appear in the water as it drains out. Once the funnel appears, stop swirling—the funnel will remain in place until all of the water is gone from the top bottle.

  Once all the water has flowed into the bottom bottle, turn them over and repeat the action. You will see the same formation again. You can repeat this as often as you like.

  You just made a model of a black hole! The funnel shape the water takes as it drains from one bottle to the other is a vortex. And remember: we can see that the water in your black hole model goes from one space into another, but we still don’t know what happens to matter that falls into a black hole.

  8 Why Do Some Planets Have Rings?

  Whenever we draw pictures of planets, there is usually at least one with a ring around it. This is actually the way it is in space—some planets have rings; others don’t. Alas, only the four biggest planets in our solar system—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—have rings. The four small planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—are ringless.

  Why some planets have rings and others don’t is a mystery. Perhaps rings are made when a moon comes too close to a planet and is torn apart by the planet’s gravity. Perhaps two moons ran into each other and both were blown to bits, forming a ring of debris. Or maybe the rings are leftover stuff that never became a moon when the planet was first forming.

  The planet with the most spectacular set of rings is Saturn, a planet that is dramatically different from ours. Earth is solid—it’s made of rock. Saturn, though, is a big ball of hydrogen and helium, which are incredibly light gases. We use helium to fill party balloons. In fact, Saturn’s the only planet in the solar system with a density less than that of water. That means if you had a bathtub big enough, Saturn would float. It would, of course, leave a ring.

  The first person to see S
aturn’s rings was the amazing Galileo. He pointed a fairly small telescope at Saturn in the year 1610. And what he saw were what looked like handles sticking out either side of the planet. What was even stranger was that a couple months later, Galileo pointed his telescope at Saturn again, and the handles had disappeared. Galileo apparently said, “My glass has deceived me!”

  What really happened is that Saturn had changed its position so that the flat rings had tilted up and Galileo was seeing them from the edge, like looking at a dinner plate from the side. Saturn’s rings were so thin that they seemed to disappear when viewed with Galileo’s small telescope. What could they possibly be made of?

  As it turns out, the rings of Saturn are made of snowballs, ranging from about the size of your fist or your head to the size of a house. Billions of ice particles float around Saturn like the aftermath of a big snowball fight. They’re spread out around the planet in a thin sheet that’s hundreds of thousands of kilometers across but less than a kilometer thick.

  The rings of Saturn are the most organized snowstorm in the solar system. Up close, you can see right through them. And if you were floating among all those snowballs, it would be easy to stick your head above them and see right across the whole system. What a sight that would be!