That was sweet.
Defying all odds.
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
May 3, 2026
Trifid Pillars and Jets
Dust pillars are like interstellar mountains. They survive because they are more dense than their surroundings, but they are slowly being eroded away by a hostile environment. Visible in the featured picture by the Hubble Space Telescope is the end of a huge gas and dust pillar in the Trifid Nebula (M20), punctuated by a smaller pillar pointing up and an unusual jet pointing to the upper left. Many of the bright dots are newly formed stars. A star near the small pillar's end is slowly being stripped of its accreting gas by radiation from a tremendously brighter star situated off the top of the image. The jet extends nearly a light-year and would not be visible without external illumination. As gas and dust evaporate from the pillars, the hidden stellar source of this jet will likely be uncovered, possibly over the next 20,000 years.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myJkXFYHTfA
The Sun Affects Health, Weather, GDP | S0 News and frens
May.3.2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78Jb_A6aMwU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fKGGGh35h8 (Dutchsinse: 5/02/2026 – What is going on?! USA Seismic Unrest at Area 51, Navy military bases & Nuclear plants)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NuuZWw4Jm4 (Ray's Astro: LIVE - 7 Targets. One Night. Pure Celestial Energy Unleashed)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkgsetD7jv4 (On the Pulse with Silki: VIOLENT Collapse at MAYON Volcano: Lava flow collapse-fed pyroclastic density current in Philippines)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6ltwVbhuRA (Geology Hub: Mayon Volcano Update; Large Eruption Occurs, 4 KM Long Pyroclastic Flows)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EuIP2e1WJ8 (Stefan Burns: How Supergalactic Energy Streams Affect the Earth, Sun, and Cosmos…)
https://news.ssbcrack.com/tornado-watch-issued-for-disney-world-as-severe-weather-approaches/
https://x.com/StefanBurnsGeo/status/2050751825058599091
https://x.com/StefanBurnsGeo/status/2050636038750798084
https://x.com/AstronomyVibes/status/2050855859337740477
https://meteoagent.com/schumann-resonance-forecast
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquakes-volcanoes/news/301307/Volcano-earthquake-report-for-Sunday-3-May-2026.html
https://www.tornadohq.com/
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
https://spaceweather.com/
https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/nasa-documents-show-renewed-internal-planning-on-how-to-announce-discovery-of-extraterrestrial-life/
https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/nasa/26-00374-F-HQ.pdf
https://x.com/theblackvault/status/2050341698186961277
NASA Documents Show Renewed Internal Planning on How to Announce Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life
May 1, 2026
A newly released Freedom of Information Act response from NASA reveals internal discussions focused on how the agency would communicate a confirmed discovery of extraterrestrial life.
This includes details about a 2025 meeting convened to outline a formal communications protocol.
The records stem from a request seeking documents related to “agency-level planning, policy, or procedural guidance addressing the detection, reporting, analysis, or response to the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence, extraterrestrial life, or non-terrestrial technological signals.”
2025 Meeting Focused on “Definitive Discovery of ET Life”
Central to the release is a June 2025 Microsoft Teams meeting invitation and related email correspondence documenting a discussion among NASA personnel and affiliated participants.
The purpose of the meeting is described directly in the invitation: “This is a meeting to work with Linda to develop ideas toward rough outlining of how an official communications protocol for a definitive discovery of ET life might look…”
The same communication indicates the effort was not new, referencing prior internal work: “I’ll send around some materials/thoughts Mary, Jim Green, and I developed awhile back on this.”
The participants include individuals associated with NASA’s science mission and astrobiology communications efforts, including David H. Grinspoon and Linda Billings, both of whom have longstanding roles in public engagement and the societal implications of astrobiology research.
Earlier Framework Predates Recent Discussions
Supporting materials included in the release show that NASA’s work on extraterrestrial discovery communications extends back several years.
A presentation titled “Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life Communications Protocol Development,” dated July 29, 2020, outlines foundational considerations for such a scenario.
That document emphasizes that any discovery could vary significantly in nature:
“Factors about the detection/discovery may occur along a spectrum: Location: near (in our Solar System) far (exoplanets) Organism: microbial humanoid Biosignature: chemical/molecular ‘traditional’ fossil”
It also highlights the dual challenge of scientific validation and public communication, stating:
“Differences in socioeconomics, race, gender, education level, culture, faith, etc.”
“Ensure all have accurate information and support to make meaning of it”
“Cultivate a culture of celebration vs. fear”
The opening line of this section places immediate emphasis on how unevenly a discovery of extraterrestrial life could be received across society.
By explicitly listing “differences in socioeconomics, race, gender, education level, culture, faith, etc.,” the document acknowledges that public interpretation would not be uniform, but shaped by deeply rooted social and cultural frameworks.
The guidance that follows reinforces NASA’s role not simply as a source of scientific data, but as a communicator responsible for ensuring that “all have accurate information and support to make meaning of it,” coupled with an intentional effort to “cultivate a culture of celebration vs. fear.”
Taken together, this section reflects a deliberate focus on managing societal reaction as much as conveying scientific findings, with the underlying premise that public response itself would be a critical component of any confirmed discovery.
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Defined Role for NASA in a Discovery Scenario
The documents outline how NASA views its role in the event of such a discovery, emphasizing information dissemination and public engagement.
According to the presentation:
“The provision of accurate scientific information in an equitable way”
“Access to scientific expertise”
“Encouragement of healthy conversation and dialogue”
The agency also describes itself as playing a broader societal role:
“Facilitators in a co-creative, meaning-making process across diverse communities”
Redactions Limit Visibility Into Final Protocol
Portions of the material remain withheld under FOIA Exemption 5. NASA states this exemption applies to “draft documents, analyses, recommendations and/or opinions expressed by employees,” which are part of internal deliberations.
A slide labeled “Initial Guidance to Develop the Protocol” contains multiple redactions, obscuring specific recommendations and elements of the proposed communications approach.
Timing Relative to UAP Activity and Public Interest
The June 2025 meeting occurred after a period of sustained public and governmental focus on unidentified anomalous phenomena.
In 2023, NASA released the findings of its independent UAP study team, which examined how the agency could contribute to understanding unidentified objects observed in air and space.
That study concluded prior to the timeframe of the 2025 communications planning documented in this release.
The records released through this FOIA request do not reference UAP, nor do they connect the communications planning effort to any specific UAP investigation or conclusion.
However, the timing places the renewed discussion within a broader environment of increased attention to anomalous phenomena, congressional hearings, and ongoing public speculation about the possibility of future disclosures related to non-human intelligence. It should also be noted that Dr. Grinspoon was a member of NASA’s UAP study effort.
What the Documents Establish
The records confirm that NASA personnel revisited and actively discussed how to communicate a confirmed discovery of extraterrestrial life as recently as June 2025, building on earlier work conducted within the NASA Astrobiology Program.
The documents do not indicate that any such discovery has occurred, nor do they outline a finalized or approved communications protocol. Significant portions of the deliberative process remain redacted, and no operational plan is fully disclosed.
The Black Vault has filed an appeal fighting the (b)(5) redactions which completely shield the “Initial Guidance to Develop the Protocol” slide. Those results will be posted, when available.
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https://avi-loeb.medium.com/can-the-vacuum-drive-fuel-free-propulsion-e4983a86419c
https://x.com/ProfAviLoeb
other Avi Loeb and Space
https://avi-loeb.medium.com/the-government-should-not-hide-evidence-for-alien-technology-from-the-public-c5729fcdd7f4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-Gns3K15ak
https://www.wionews.com/photos/jwst-reveals-forbidden-alien-planet-toi-5205-b-that-shouldnt-exist-1777736776542
https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/photography/astrophotography/multiple-40-minute-exposures-identified-hidden-moon-that-even-nasas-voyager-2-couldnt-detect
https://www.livescience.com/space/scientists-detect-an-enormous-halo-around-the-iconic-sombrero-galaxy-space-photo-of-the-week
Can the Vacuum Drive Fuel-Free Propulsion?
May 2, 2026
The optimal propulsion of a payload to space is without fuel. Our current space rockets rely on carrying the fuel along with the payload for the ride.
Most of the fuel energy is wasted in this way, allowing the terminal speed of the payload to grow only logarithmically with increasing fuel mass.
The most elegant way out of this conundrum is to create artificially a negative mass. Adding a negative mass of equal magnitude to the payload mass would make the total mass of the system on the launch pad zero.
This means that the Earth’s gravity will not be pulling the system down. Ignoring friction with air, an infant could kick the zero-mass system from the ground into space where it will continue along its path at its initial speed without ever being slowed down by the Earth’s gravity.
This sounds like a pipe dream. But whether a negative mass can be created is a legitimate physics question.
Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, General Relativity, allows negative masses, as discussed in a seminal 1957 paper published here by the physicist Herman Bondi.
By now, we learned that the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, suggesting a form of repulsive gravity sourced by a non-zeroenergy density of the vacuum, so-called `dark energy’.
Apparently, the cosmic vacuum has a positive energy density and a negative pressure that is nearly equal in magnitude.
According to General Relativity, cosmic gravity is sourced by the sum of the energy density plus three times the pressure, yielding a negative gravitational effect for the vacuum proportional to minus twice its energy density.
Hence, the resulting gravity of the cosmic vacuum is repulsive rather than attractive.
This raises the naïve thought that all we need to do in order to create a negative mass, is to bottle up the cosmic vacuum in a container with thin walls, so that the net gravitating mass of the product will be negative.
Unfortunately, there is no way to bottle the vacuum in this way to yield a negative mass. All attempts to conceptualize a way of engineering the production of a negative mass failed.
So far, we know of no way for producing a negative mass so as to launch a payload to space without fuel.
Harold G. “Sonny” White is a mechanical aerospace engineer at NASA who claims to be working on a new thruster concept by utilizing quantum-mechanical effects, so-called “Casimir cavities”, for potential propellant-less thrusters.
According to quantum electrodynamics, the vacuum is described as a sea of virtual particles that constantly pop into and out of existence.
White claims that his thruster can “push off” these virtual particles — primarily electrons and positrons — to generate thrust without carrying traditional propellant.
The Casimir effect (as reviewed here) is a physical force acting on the macroscopic boundaries of a confined space, which arises from the quantum fluctuations of a field. It is named after the Dutch physicist Hendrik Casimir, who predicted the effect for electromagnetic systems in 1948.
After a conversation with Niels Bohr, who suggested that the effect had something to do with the vacuum zero-point energy, Casimir formulated the theory predicting a force between neutral conducting plates.
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The simplest manifestation of the effect is for electromagnetic fields in the presence of two parallel and perfectly conducting plates.
Because the electric field must vanish in a perfect conductor, the vacuum only admits fluctuations which satisfy the boundary conditions of zero electric field on the plates.
This limits the number of possible fluctuations, or virtual photons, between the plates relative to the outer space, triggering a lower vacuum pressure between the plates and a resultant attractive force between them.
Alternatively, the Casimir effect can be understood as an electromagnetic-polarization interaction between the two plates.
The Casimir effect is real. In 1997, a direct experiment by Steven K. Lamoreaux quantitatively measured the Casimir force to be within 5% of the value predicted by theory (as reported here).
White’s “Quantum Vacuum Thruster” (as described here and here) claims to be “pushing off” the quantum vacuum consisting of a dynamic sea of virtual particles — principally electrons and positrons — that constantly emerge and disappear.
White argues that the quantum thrust is generated similarly to a submarine using a propeller to push water. By using custom-designed Casimir cavities — nanoscale structures with strategically placed pillars and walls — White aims to increase the magnitude of negative vacuum energy density.
Nevertheless, the implications of the Casimir for propulsion are dubious. The Casimir force is extremely weak. It is obvious that the rest-mass energy of the conducting plates vastly exceeds the vacuum energy modification in between them.
This means that the Casimir energy has a negligible contribution to the total rest-mass energy, making it an extremely weak resource for propulsion. The thinnest and closest plates would be on the scale of an atom, yielding at best the interaction energy equivalent of chemical propellants.
Perhaps if we ever detect vehicles of extraterrestrial visitors, we might find some of them to be propelled by manipulations of spacetime.
For that reason, we must stay curious to check if there is any evidence for non-human made vehicles in the UFO videos to be released by the White House, following on President Trump’s recent directive (posted here).
As I noted yesterday to Bianca in her morning program Across the Nation on Newsmax (accessible here): “We are probably not at the top of the food chain, cosmologically speaking.”
Following that interview, I summarized on Fox 32 Chicago here the latest scientific studies within the Galileo Project in search for extraterrestrial technological artifacts, and finally — close to midnight — I explained here in Jesse Weber Live on NewsNation how much we still do not understand.
Indeed, there is a lot that we might learn from more accomplished siblings in our family of technological civilizations.
As Albert Einstein noted: “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
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https://phys.org/news/2026-05-eclipse-earth-aweinspiring-astronauts-space.html
extra Artemis
https://losalamosreporter.com/2026/05/02/peec-presents-artemis-and-the-moon-exploring-nasas-return-to-lunar-exploration-may-8-at-los-alamos-nature-center/
https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/2050594607776588059
https://x.com/AJamesMcCarthy/status/2050255056294027765
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8owHqxR37A (Jimmy Fallon: The Crew of NASA’s Artemis II Moon Mission Reveals What They Saw on the Dark Side of the Moon)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oFy3dqpl3A (CBS Mornings: Artemis crew surprises aspiring astronaut and answers students' questions on "spectacular" mission)
Seeing an eclipse from Earth is awe‑inspiring—for astronauts in space, the scene was even more grand
May 1, 2026
The astronauts on Artemis II's trip to the moon in April 2026 didn't just have an amazing journey through space. They also saw something extraordinary. They were the first humans to see a total solar eclipse from space.
A solar eclipse happens when the moon moves in front of the sun. In a total eclipse, the sun's central disk is covered completely.
From Earth, the circle of the sun is about the same size as the circle of the moon. With the bright circle blocked, you can see the undulating rays of the sun's corona, or outer atmosphere, that are normally too dim to be observed.
I'm a cultural anthropologist who studies awe-inspiring aspects of space exploration. I have been lucky enough to have seen two total solar eclipses. The first one was in Nebraska in 2017, the second in Indiana in 2024.
During my second total eclipse, the period of totality—that short span when you can remove your protective glasses and look directly at the eclipse—lasted close to 4 minutes.
I saw waves of diffuse light snaking around an ink-black hole in the sky. It looked very wrong—almost alien.
On Aug. 12, 2026, there will be another total solar eclipse, visible only from Greenland, Iceland, Spain and the Balearic Islands of the Mediterranean.
Some fortunate viewers in Spain and nearby islands may see the eclipse just before sunset, low on the horizon. The moon illusion, a phenomenon where the moon looks bigger when it's near the horizon, might make this eclipse look unusually large.
Unusual eclipse perspectives
Astronauts will occasionally also have less common eclipse experiences. I interviewed one I call by the pseudonym "Jackie" in my research about astronauts' experiences of awe.
She was part of an astronaut training group that did a flight exercise during a total solar eclipse.
Jackie and her squad flew their jets in the shadow of the moon. This lengthened their time in totality because they could follow and stay within the shadow. Jackie was most impressed with how the sun's corona seemed to shift and ripple.
"It's not static … it's alive," she told me.
On April 6, 2026, the astronauts of NASA's Artemis II mission saw another kind of unusual eclipse as they flew around the moon.
At one point during their flight, the moon and the spacecraft aligned so that the moon was directly between them and the sun, blocking the sun's disk in a way that looks very different from what we see on Earth.
Astronaut Victor Glover said it felt like they "just went sci-fi."
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The astronauts were so close to the moon that the moon looked bigger than the sun and hid more of its bright circle.
Earth was also in view, and sunlight reflected from Earth onto the moon in a phenomenon NASA calls "Earthshine." This dim light is very similar to the moonlight that shines on Earth at night.
Imagine the sun hidden behind the moon, creating a hazy halo around the moon's edges.
At the same time, faint light reflected from Earth softly illuminates the moon, revealing mountains and craters in a dim twilight. Now imagine this striking scene lasting 54 minutes.
This sight was, without a doubt, one of the most unusual eclipses ever seen by human eyes.
Although Artemis' astronauts are trained to think scientifically, this experience propelled them into a state of awe. They talked openly about how their brains were "not processing" what they observed.
While NASA kept them busy with a variety of tasks, the sound of emotion and excitement in their voices as they broadcast live from their lunar flyby was unmistakable.
The psychology of awe
Researchers have studied the effects of awe on the human brain, including awe felt during solar eclipses. Moments of wonder like these can transform how you feel and even how you think, making you more thoughtful and open-minded.
In my own work, I've found these experiences can change how astronauts understand their own place in the universe.
One astronaut said she gained an awareness of the fragility of our planet that now shapes everything she does, while another described becoming more curious after returning to Earth.
A third said the awe he experienced in lunar orbit changed his understanding of time and infinity.
Space travel creates many opportunities for awe, but a solar eclipse from behind the moon, as Mission Commander Reid Wiseman put it, required "20 new superlatives."
It's an experience most of the Earthbound eclipse-chasers heading to Greenland or Iceland or Spain this summer will only dream about.
Whether eclipses happen in space or on Earth, though, close encounters with the grandeur of our universe can make you feel profoundly human.
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