"Prepare for a bit of disappointment."

Holes on Mars!

Keeping in mind that The Chronic is Fortean, not Freudian: holes are almost always disappointing.

Occult Significance Unknown

But posted anyway for its sheer goodness.

Spotted, as most of the best things are, at Posthuman Blues.

Wow.

At a recent astrobiology meeting I sheepishly approached veteran SETI astronomer Frank Drake about the WOW signal. I half expected him to say: “Oh that silly thing!”

Instead, Drake shared the same belief that it was a real interstellar message. (Dr. Ehman has cautiously addressed the same conclusion as a "definite maybe" after ruling out all Earth radio interference explanations.)

Drake speculates that the signal may have been crammed with a packet of information at too high a rate for the Big Ear telescope to resolve.

But why so brief? Drake suggests that an alien civilization may be pinging stars with information packets, a sort of galactic spam. Once the packet is decoded it yields information for tuning to another channel to receive a longer and more detailed message.

So, toward the end of the 20th century humankind may have received the first fleeting evidence of intelligent life off the Earth.

Link to the original article.

Via Posthuman Blues.

“You can often tell when you’re with someone who has flown in space. It’s palpable.”

“All I can suggest to the mystic and the theologian is that our gods have been too small; they fill the universe. And to the scientist all I can say is that the gods do exist; they are the eternal, connected, and aware Self experienced by all intelligent beings."

Read more of Space Euphoria: Do Our Brains Change When We Travel In Outer Space?

Phobos 2008

A recently-snapped photo of the Martian moon.

Mythologically speaking, Phobos is "the embodiment of fear and horror." No one knows where those deep scratches came from.

Via Posthuman Blues and Wikipedia.