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Europe’s lights seen at night from space.
Since the first use of electric lamps in the 19th century, society hasn't looked back. Homes and streets are lit at all hours so that people can go about their business when they'd once have been asleep. Besides the obvious benefits to societies and the economy, there's growing awareness of the negative impact of artificial light.
Light pollution has been blamed for
wasting energy, disrupting
wildlife behaviour and
harming mental health. One aspect has avoided the spotlight though.
Namely, that light not only allows one to see, but also to be seen. This could well attract unwelcome attention - and not just from moths.
The innate curiosity of humans and our growing knowledge of the universe in which we live have led us inexorably to a question. Do civilisations exist on planets other than Earth? Scientists now believe that there are many places in the universe which might harbour simple lifeforms such as bacteria.
What is more speculative is the notion that such extraterrestrial life could have become technologically advanced, perhaps even well beyond our capacity. This idea has captured the imagination of the general public, giving birth to a rich collection of science fiction literature and blockbuster films. But it has also received serious attention from scientists, who have thought of ways to find and possibly contact these alien species.
In 1974, radio astronomer Frank Drake used the then most powerful radio transmitter, at Arecibo in Puerto Rico, to broadcast a message into space announcing our presence. The message will now be 45 light years away from us. While there are many stars and planets closer to us than that, they won't have been in the path of Drake's broadcast.
But impatient as scientists tend to be, more effort has gone into searching space for such signals transmitted by extraterrestrial civilisations. As more and more planets are discovered around other stars, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence - often abbreviated to SETI - is becoming more relevant, better informed and better resourced. In 2015, wealthy entrepreneurs Yuri and Julia Milner allocated US$100m to the
Breakthrough Listen SETI project, which buys time at observatories to use their powerful telescopes to detect artificial signals from outer space.
But despite the vastness and emptiness of space, scientists have started to wonder why we haven't heard from aliens yet. This puzzle is known as the Fermi Paradox, named after the physicist Enrico Fermi. Among the many solutions proposed for this problem, one really brings us down to Earth: aliens might be scared of other aliens.
Comment: We understand why people reach for the 'UFO' explanation - these things seem like they're intelligently-controlled. But it's more likely they're doing that spiralling motion because of some locally-generated electromagnetic field distortion. Which, of course, still doesn't really explain quite what they are or where they come from (it's difficult to believe, for example, that they're meteors from outer space!)...
In any event, this is the third time we've come across such a report about a 'looping fireball' at the same general location: in or near the town of Northampton in the English Midlands.
Back in June 2014, this happened:
Mysterious dancing fireball captured on camera in Northampton, UK
Then in 2015 this happened (in Brackley, about 15kms from Northampton):
There must be something about the location that facilitates this phenomenon. Truly astounding...
Elsewhere in England, this happened in Wiltshire at around 8pm on 8 September 2018: