#balloons

christophs@diaspora.glasswings.com

It’s not aliens. It’ll probably never be aliens. So stop. Please just stop. | Ars Technica

I will close this article by referencing an astronomer and a physicist. The astronomer is Carl Sagan, perhaps the most gifted science communicator of the 20th century. He once said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

Certainly, the existence of an intelligent species capable of traveling between stars would be an extraordinary thing. And while there is plenty of "evidence" of unidentified flying objects in our skies, there is no "extraordinary" evidence that proves the case. I'm sorry, there just is not. The truth is, almost every hyped alien sighting can eventually be explained by a rather pedestrian phenomenon.

The second quote is simply a tweet from an English physicist, Brian Cox, today: "I've always suspected that an advanced alien civilization with the technology to travel at close to light speed across interstellar distances would arrive in Earth orbit unobserved and proceed to dispatch a fleet of small, easily detectable balloons into our atmosphere."

Pretty much, Brian. Pretty much.

Great quotes!
#aliens #science #balloons

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/its-not-aliens-itll-probably-never-be-aliens-so-stop-please-just-stop/

gander22h@diasp.org

Biologist estimates helium balloons are ending up in Great Lakes by the hundreds of thousands - Ontario postdoctoral fellow, colleague found 380 balloons over 7-km stretch of shoreline

It is obvious that people are not getting the message that we have to stop releasing balloons:

Based on her calculations, she estimates about 2 balloons wash up on every kilometre of Lake Erie's 1,400-km shoreline each day.

"If you assume they wash up on the Lake Erie shoreline at an equal rate, it's possible that 960,000 balloons wash up on the Lake Erie shoreline every year," she said.

I think we need to just ban their sale entirely.

#balloon #balloons #trash #garbage #environment