TYB
Happy 250!
God Bless America, and all those who defend her.
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day
July 4, 2026
Pathfinder on Mars
On July 4th, 1997, using its own array of fireworks, a parachute, and a cocoon of airbags, the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft bounced like a giant beach ball at least 15 times before it came to rest on the surface of Mars at 10:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time. After its then novel airbag-assisted landing sequence was completed, Pathfinder transmitted this color mosaic to mission operators on Earth. In the scene from another world, the Mars Sojourner robot rover is visible in the foreground, crouched on top of the unfolded Pathfinder. About the size of a large house cat, the six-wheeled, solar-powered Sojourner became the first successful Martian rover. Surrounding Pathfinder are deflated airbags and the rock-strewn terrain of the Ares Vallis floodplain. In the distance Martian hills appear against a dusty brownish sky. The Pathfinder lander was subsequently renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqlJwxojEpQ
kinda sloppy there, NASA
G3 Solar Storm, Auroral Outbreak, Galactic Shape | S0 News and patriotic frens
July.4.2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=732wz8f2B7c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S0FeupaH4o (On the Pulse with Silki: ALERT LEVEL RAISED TO 3 !!! Dangerous Tsunami Volcano raises FEAR of another Catastrophe)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSurtZiMwNk (EarthMaster: Big Solar Storm underway… Aurora activity kicking up. Swarms of Earthquakes Philippines…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW0oKOG5odk (Mr Weatherman: Tropical Wave then Really Thick Dust…)
https://watchers.news/2026/07/04/g3-strong-geomagnetic-storm-observed-aurora-as-low-as-new-mexico-after-june-30-cme-impacts-earth/
https://www.weatherbug.com/news/Friday-s-Weather-Outlook
https://www.akses.co.id/en/severe-storms-power-outages-canada
https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/2257369/magnitude-5-3-quake-jolts-waters-off-sarangani-phivolcs
https://www.deccanherald.com/world/rest-of-world/magnitude-55-earthquake-hits-near-coast-of-central-chile-gfz-says-4061781
https://www.yahoo.com/news/videos/sos-venezuela-projected-christ-redeemer-025112884.html
https://meteoagent.com/schumann-resonance-forecast
https://www.tornadohq.com/
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/
https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/earthquakes-volcanoes/news/318874/Volcano-earthquake-report-for-Saturday-4-Jul-2026.html
https://www.spaceweather.gov/
https://www.solarham.com/
https://www.spaceweather.gov/products/aurora-viewline-tonight-and-tomorrow-night-experimental
https://spaceweather.com/
MASSIVE FIREBALLS — SOMETHING CHANGED
Jul 4, 2026
Something is happening with fireballs — and the data backs it up.
In the first quarter of 2026, the American Meteor Society logged 2,322 fireball events — the highest total on record. But the raw count isn't the strange part.
What changed is the number of high-witness events: 40 fireballs drew 50+ reports (versus an average of ~20), and 16 drew 100+ (versus ~8). Long-duration sighting reports hit 1,693 — more than 2.5x the previous record of 651 set in 2021.
In this video I go through the CNEOS (NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies) fireball database event by event — checking the size, speed, and energy of these incoming objects, cross-referencing the eyewitness reports, and looking at the footage people captured across the US and Europe.
Some are tiny airbursts. Some are earth-grazers trying to escape the atmosphere. And a few of them still don't have an easy explanation.
AMS points to one likely factor — AI assistants sending more people to report — but that alone doesn't account for the elevated sonic booms or the recovered meteorite falls. So what's actually going on? Let's look at the data together.
Happy July 4th, Rayliens. This is my way of showing you the fireworks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvfbwhd8ujY
NASA Armstrong
@NASAArmstrong
In honor of @Freedom250, two of our most iconic aircraft are getting a fresh coat of red, white, and blue! ✈️🇺🇸
NASA Armstrong’s F-18 and F-15 were repainted in the colors that represent the legacy of determination, service, and unity that define America. It’s more than paint, it’s a tribute to the past and a salute to the future.
🔗: https://go.nasa.gov/4p2lQTv
9:00 AM · Jul 3, 2026
https://x.com/NASAArmstrong/status/2073074339151311262
moar social media NASA
https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/2073120924753113295
https://x.com/NASA/status/2073142236838048092
https://x.com/NASA_Events/status/2073120592102924650
https://x.com/NASA/status/2073078061499617543
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman
@NASAAdmin
Happy 250th birthday America!
As a nation, we have so much history to celebrate, and at @NASA, we are just getting started.
God bless the USA 🇺🇸
5:59 AM · Jul 4, 2026
https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2073111772333047944
extra social media NASA Isaacman
https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2073433662167597241
https://x.com/NASAAdmin/status/2073111772333047944
https://x.com/SeanParnellASW/status/2073389261982674986
https://x.com/johnkrausphotos/status/2073397107000475841
>Army Golden Knights
General Chance Saltzman
@SpaceForceCSO
==Today, we honor the generations of Americans who have defended our freedom and our way of life. =
Space Force Guardians carry that legacy forward by securing the space capabilities our Nation depends on.
Happy Fourth of July! 🇺🇸
6:39 AM · Jul 4, 2026
https://x.com/SpaceForceCSO/status/2073401223709954083
moar General Saltzman and Space Force
https://x.com/USSpaceForce/status/2073407111480938899
https://x.com/SpaceForceCSO/status/2073397233983123615
https://www.space.com/entertainment/space-movies-shows/30-years-on-independence-day-still-proves-the-versatility-of-the-original-the-war-of-the-worlds
https://www.space.com/entertainment/space-movies-shows/independence-day-at-30-roland-emmerich-and-dean-devlin-talk-blowing-up-the-white-house-and-crafting-a-true-sci-fi-classic-interview
30 years on, "Independence Day" still proves the versatility of the original "The War of the Worlds"
July 4, 2026
"Independence Day" definitely isn't "The War of the Worlds". The characters are all new, the alien invaders don't come from Mars, and HG Wells sure as hell didn't write about spaceships engaging in "Star Wars"-esque dogfights over Victorian England.
But here's the contradiction. "Independence Day" totally is "The War of the Worlds". It's about Earth being hopelessly outgunned by aliens from outer space and a human resistance fighting back against impossible odds.
It also has, more or less, the same ending — the extra-terrestrials' demise by computer virus is a cunning update of the original book's microbial final twist.
Director Roland Emmerich's genius, however, was reinventing Wells' sci-fi classic for the blockbuster age. His aliens had Hollywood in their blood, their entire plan built around delivering the perfect money shot.
Let's be honest, there has to be a more practical way of flattening entire cities than blasting famous landmarks with a Death Star-scale super-lasers, but it wouldn't have been quite so popcorn- — or movie poster- — friendly.
Besides, nobody was going to believe that humanity's nemesis hailed from Mars after the Viking landers had sent back photos of a barren, dead world.
Reinventing the aliens' origin story — as nomadic, resource-hungry scavengers — just made sense in the cynical '90s.
"The War of the Worlds" is cut from the same cloth as fellow genre pioneers "Frankenstein" and "Dracula" (the latter was, coincidentally, originally published the same year as Wells' alien invasion classic).
Each story is so versatile that it can be reimagined again and again to reflect the hopes and fears of any time period.
You can change a few names here and there — as "Nosferatu" famously did with Bram Stoker's vampire page-turner — but these plotlines have become archetypes within our collective consciousness.
More than a century later, we still can't get enough. They're also — to use that hoary old sci-fi/fantasy cliché — a brilliant way of pointing a mirror back at the time they were made.
"The War of the Worlds" was less than 40 years old (and still in copyright) when a 20-something Orson Welles turned it into a radio drama in 1938.
The cinematic immortality of "Citizen Kane" was still three years away when the Hollywood wunderkind went looking for a story to adapt as a fake newscast for Halloween.
Writer Howard Koch shifted the action from 19th-century London to contemporary New Jersey (coincidentally, also the location of Steven Spielberg's 2005 "War of the Worlds"), and the resulting broadcast became one of the most famous — and definitely most infamous — radio dramas in history.
Indeed, it was so far ahead of its time that "Ghostwatch", the BBC's spooky primetime mockumentary, got itself into trouble for a similar, knowingly 'fake news' stunt over half a century later.
Welles and co designed the adaptation to sound like a news bulletin — complete with weather reports and 'expert' analysis — as the aliens made their move on New York.
And even though subsequent reports about the mass panic the broadcast generated in the real world were almost definitely exaggerated, some listeners who came to the show late really did believe that it was time to start welcoming their Martian overlords.
Welles' "War of the Worlds" was perfectly timed to capitalize on fears about the escalating threat of war in Europe.
But the first blockbuster movie adaptation arrived in a very different political climate, when the Cold War was driving fears about the rise of communism and the threat of nuclear war.
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When the Martians attack in George Pal's 1953 movie, the US army — unsurprisingly — drop an atomic bomb on their invasion fleet, but they're left unscathed thanks to their powerful forcefields.
A powerful statement about the pointlessness of nuclear war, or simply an excuse to keep the story's common cold conclusion intact?
The movie is probably more important, however, as a precursor of the sci-fi blockbusters that would follow.
Filmed in Technicolor, its visual effects were truly groundbreaking, as the movie imagined alien terrors that, before then, had only been possible on the page or on radio.
Anyone who's read the original book will note that Pal's floating Martian war machines don't quite match Wells' tripods, though the movie does subtly point out that — despite appearances — they're actually walking on invisible forcefield legs. Yes, really…
Wells' story got an unlikely new lease of life in the late 1970s when an American composer made a concept album that found its way into millions of record collections in the UK.
The snappily titled "Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of the War of the Worlds" reimagined the alien invasion as a prog rock opus, with Richard Burton as the journalist recounting the story, and '70s music stars Justin Hayward, David Essex, Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy) and Julie Covington (who'd had a number one with "Don't Cry for Me Argentina") popping up on the soundtrack. Nearly 50 years later, Wayne is still touring his masterwork, finding new stage effects and guest stars (Liam Neeson has replaced Burton in later versions) to bring the invasion to life.
But even though the names were changed, "Independence Day" may just be the "War of the Worlds" that's had the biggest cultural impact of all.
It was everywhere in 1996, with its superlative marketing campaign propelling it to the top of that year's box office chart. It was 1996's "Jurassic Park", the sci-fi epic that everybody went to see.
It arguably changed the rules of engagement for subsequent adaptations of Wells' novel, as any set-pieces featuring flying saucers flattening cities would now be judged against Emmerich's highly lucrative carnage.
Spielberg's "War of the Worlds", released nearly a decade later, wisely took a very different route, keeping Wells' tripods and noxious red weed, and loading the invasion with powerful post-9/11 subtext.
In 2019, the BBC went down a path it had with many classic novels and adapted "The War of the Worlds" as a three-part period piece.
The same year, another, longer-running TV version focused on the story of survivors after an alien apocalypse that had wiped out most of the Earth's population.
And then, in 2025, Wells' text finally met its match in the universally panned version that pitted a desk-bound Ice Cube against invaders who want us for our data.
This was a "War of the Worlds" for the digital age, built on sledgehammer-subtle allegories for privacy and surveillance.
It wasn't the sci-fi classic's finest hour, but it did at least continue to prove the remarkable malleability of a 129-year-old novel.
Like "Independence Day," it wasn't Wells' "War of the Worlds", but it also was, all at the same time.
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