The Hill Star Map and Exoplanets

Blue Shift
So my guess is that the biggest dot is Earth. The second biggest dot is the Moon.

The "biggest dots" are the Zeta Reticuli stars. Our sun is in the upper right corner:

That's one interpretation of it only, and the relatively "short" distance between Zeta Reticuli 1 and 2 are wildly exaggerated to make it look more
like the drawn map. The more I think about it, why would a 3-D map on a starship NOT shift according to the perspective of the traveler, like
current GPS maps? Did they get it from a gas station?

The two stars of the Zeta Reticuli system are apparently very similar in mass to the Sun. This should mean that they can be expected to grow more
luminous over time, in a similar manner. We read that the Sun, currently about 4.6 billion years old, will partially deplete its hydrogen fuel, and
so grow brighter over the next billion years. This is expected to make the Earth hot, and uninhabitable.
If the Zeta Reticuli stars are 6 to 8 billion years old, it seems that any planets in their habitable zones would already be unlivable, or nearly so.
If this is not the case, then some other factor has presumably intervened.
We read that the Zeta Reticuli stars are low in luminosity for their age. MIght this be another piece of evidence that these stars could have been
modified by astro-engineering technology of this system's inhabitants? Preventing the increase in luminosity, and extending the time that planets
would be habitable, perhaps tenfold, seems a worthy goal.
This would involve mixing hydrogen from the outer layers of the stars into their cores, where it would be available for fusion. This may seem an
impossible task, but so did damming up a major river or flying to the Moon seem to our ancestors. Given a additional million years for technology to
advance, who can say what might be possible?

Blue Shift
So my guess is that the biggest dot is Earth. The second biggest dot is the Moon.

The "biggest dots" are the Zeta Reticuli stars. Our sun is in the upper right corner:

That's one interpretation of it only, and the relatively "short" distance between Zeta Reticuli 1 and 2 are wildly exaggerated to make it look more
like the drawn map. The more I think about it, why would a 3-D map on a starship NOT shift according to the perspective of the traveler, like
current GPS maps? Did they get it from a gas station?

Because astronomical maps in general would be of little use if they worked like GPS.

You understand the reason the map can shift with GPS is due to GPS satellites right? The GPS receiver picks up signals from the various satellites and
that allows the receiver to locate where you are.

GPS works because you are relatively close to the transmitter in cosmic distances. It's hard to imagine a GPS for the solar system much less the
galaxy due to the large distances and the speed of light limit on signals.

What would be more likely to be on an interstellar ship would be a map which shows the immediate neighborhood so one would know where they are in the
context of other landmarks.

Even with GPS not all maps are the same. Some maps used for hiking do not have you at the center of them for similar reasons (wanting to see where you
are in relation to natural landmarks etc).

Ross 54
The two stars of the Zeta Reticuli system are apparently very similar in mass to the Sun. This should mean that they can be expected to grow more
luminous over time, in a similar manner. We read that the Sun, currently about 4.6 billion years old, will partially deplete its hydrogen fuel, and
so grow brighter over the next billion years. This is expected to make the Earth hot, and uninhabitable.
If the Zeta Reticuli stars are 6 to 8 billion years old, it seems that any planets in their habitable zones would already be unlivable, or nearly so.
If this is not the case, then some other factor has presumably intervened.

The stars of Zeta Reticuli are main sequence stars. There is a reason that each of them would still be on the main sequence rather than blossoming
into a red giant at 6-8 billion years.

Because while they are both Sun-like they are both less massive than our sun which means their life expectancy is higher.

I guess it's time for the pre-requisite stellar classification stuff. I can do a brief Astronomy 101 with regards to the Hill Map if people want. It
shouldn't take more than a post or two.

Its very similar to the view of the Galaxy I put together in Celestia. When one filters out the less interesting objects the pattern in the Hill star
map makes a lot of sense. Still working on an explanatory video which I hope to upload this weekend.

I'm not sure why but two other videos I tried embedding did not show up. I guess it's because I'm new to ATS (sigh).

JadeStar
Because astronomical maps in general would be of little use if they worked like GPS.

You understand the reason the map can shift with GPS is due to GPS satellites right? The GPS receiver picks up signals from the various satellites and
that allows the receiver to locate where you are.

But that's not the only way such a map could work. It could also use a detector to find the galactic center, or maybe pick out a known configuration
of pulsars and use those to triangulate a position.

Keeping that in mind, one of the more difficult things that such a map would have to show is where you are in time was well as space. Every
time you'd zip back and forth between even close stars it would twist you out of sync with local time and the time configuration of your origin. And
accounting for relativistic effects, by the time you went from one place to another, the locations of the stars would all shift around, making it even
more difficult to tell where you are, where you came from, and where you want to go.

I suppose the logical thing for any long-distance space voyager would be to just abandon any links with your homeworld and just live as constant
travelers, since there would be no way to return there or get information back to them quickly (barring something like the existence of
trans-dimensional subspace). The aliens who abducted the Hills didn't have a big enough ship for that, though.

Anyway. Betty Hill wasn't the brightest person on Earth, or the world's greatest artist. And here she is trying to remember something she only saw
for a moment, and even then trying to remember it under hypnosis, which is sketchy to begin with.

But that's not the only way such a map could work. It could also use a detector to find the galactic center, or maybe pick out a known configuration
of pulsars and use those to triangulate a position.

Pulsars to triangulate position is a good call as their spin would tell them not only where they are in space/time but also -when- they are in
space/time (as pulsars age their pulses slow down).

That said, I can not see why 'they' would need an extremely local (ie solar system) view when the only planet they might be interested around our sun
is the Earth. And like I said, every GPS map I've ever used has a zoom function.

The question asked of Betty about if she could find where she was on the map could have been a simple test to see if she knew anything about the
nearby stars.

Keeping that in mind, one of the more difficult things that such a map would have to show is where you are in time was well as space.
Every time you'd zip back and forth between even close stars it would twist you out of sync with local time and the time configuration of your origin.
And accounting for relativistic effects, by the time you went from one place to another, the locations of the stars would all shift around, making it
even more difficult to tell where you are, where you came from, and where you want to go.

Hence your pulsar idea which is an excellent one. They even put a pulsar map on the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 plaques for that reason.

Anyway. Betty Hill wasn't the brightest person on Earth, or the world's greatest artist. And here she is trying to remember something she
only saw for a moment, and even then trying to remember it under hypnosis, which is sketchy to begin with.

It may seem like a waste of time but I assure you there is interesting stuff in that map which makes it decidedly non-random. As for remember details
under hypnosis, it's been done in criminal cases to help sketch artists. So sketchy it is indeed.

Ross 54
The two stars of the Zeta Reticuli system are apparently very similar in mass to the Sun. This should mean that they can be expected to grow more
luminous over time, in a similar manner. We read that the Sun, currently about 4.6 billion years old, will partially deplete its hydrogen fuel, and
so grow brighter over the next billion years. This is expected to make the Earth hot, and uninhabitable.
If the Zeta Reticuli stars are 6 to 8 billion years old, it seems that any planets in their habitable zones would already be unlivable, or nearly so.
If this is not the case, then some other factor has presumably intervened.

The stars of Zeta Reticuli are main sequence stars. There is a reason that each of them would still be on the main sequence rather than blossoming
into a red giant at 6-8 billion years.

Because while they are both Sun-like they are both less massive than our sun which means their life expectancy is higher.

I guess it's time for the pre-requisite stellar classification stuff. I can do a brief Astronomy 101 with regards to the Hill Map if people want. It
shouldn't take more than a post or two.

By all means, JadeStar, please give us the astronomical basics about the stars on the Hill map. I was aware that Zeta 1 and 2 Reticuli
are still on the main sequence at 6 to 8 billion years old. The increase in luminosity to which I was referring is the gradual one that has
apparently been happening to our Sun for a few billion years, and presumably happens on other Sun-like stars, such as Zeta 1 and Zeta 2
Reticuli.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:solar_evolution_(English).svg

Alright, this is the pre-requisite knowledge I mentioned so we can all be on the same page when discussing this issue. Apologies if this stuff seems
basic to you. I am sure some of it is new to people who might read this thread who are not well versed in astronomy or our Galaxy.

I hate boring stuff so I will try to make this post as interesting as possible by highlighting why this stuff is relevant to why we're all here:
"Aliens and UFOs".

So lets start with the basics before I move on to the Hill-Fish map.

Milky Way Galaxy Facts

The Milky Way contains over 200 billion stars, and enough dust and gas to make billions more.

The solar system lies about 30,000 light-years from the galactic center, and about 20 light-years above the plane of the galaxy.

More than half the stars (and by extension their planets) found in the Milky Way are older than the 4.5 billion year old sun.

That means, we're likely the kids or possibly even the babies of the Galaxy when it comes to intelligent life. In terms of our Galaxy we've barely
scratched the surface of what may be out there in terms of habitable planets. An analogy I like to make (which if you have kids you might be able to
relate to) is that we're in a baby crib (our planet), in our room (the solar system) which exists in a house (the small circle you see on the map of
the Milky Way below).

We''ve barely explored our house. Nevertheless within that house lay Zeta Reticuli and a whole host of interesting places we're only beginning to
discover.

Someone questioned whether the stars of Zeta Reticuli being 2-4 billion years older than sun would made any habitable planets around them
uninhabitable. That got me thinking now was the right time to give some basics of Stellar Classification and Stellar Evolution. Astronomy 101 level
stuff.

As you'll see below, how long a star lives is based on its mass. The big hot stars live fast and die hard. Smaller stars than our sun live longer
lives.

The most common stars in the galaxy are red dwarfs, which are cool stars about a tenth the mass of the sun. Once thought unsuitable for potential
life-bearing planets because such bodies would have to be too close to meet the criteria, red dwarfs are now considered potential suspects. This is
due to the fact that advanced computer models show planet's tidally locked with atmospheres would still circulate heat and be habitable for our type
of life.

As a general rule in the universe the smaller something is, the more plentiful it is. Stars smaller than our Sun are more plentiful than stars like
our Sun or stars bigger than our Sun.

And as seen in the chart below. The biggest stars have shorter lives. However they are also rarer than our Sun.

The time period in which a star is stable is called the main sequence. Stars outside of this time period are either still forming or dying.

Our sun is in its main sequence right now and will remain so for about another 2-3 billion years After a stars main sequence the star can have
different deaths depending on its mass:

From hotest and most massive to the tiniest and coolest the average stars of our galaxy are: O, B, A, F, G, K, M.....and so on. (Brown Dwarfs and
White Dwarfs have their own special classes below M)

Each letter class is then subdivided based on temperature using a numeric digit with 0 being hottest and 9 being coolest. That diagonal band in the
middle are the stars we're most interested in from a life point of view.

In addition to this each stellar classification there is a further subdivisions based and luminosity and spectral characteristics which can tell a
stars age.

This is called the Yerkes spectral classification. It is shown in Roman Numerals sometimes with another subdivision within it. The Yerkes spectral
class can show where a class of star is in its evolution and it runs from I (a hypergiant ready to go nova or supernova) down to VII (white dwarfs).
Stars in their main sequence are in the range of VI up to IV:

So what difference does all this make? What is our Sun? And what are the stars of Zeta Reticui and the other stars on the Hill-Fish star map?

That will be the subject of my next post. But before that I thought it might be a good idea to bring your attention to some things we know today about
the statistical likelihood of planets and specifically habitable planets like the Earth as a result of both the data Kepler gathered as well as ground
based telescopes.

Kepler's main mission was to determine the relative frequency of different types of planets, with the grand prize finding another earth sized planet
in an earth like orbit in terms of a star's habitable (or "Goldilocks") zone.

What Kepler found was somewhat amazing. There are a fair amount of potentially habitable planets. The Habitable Planet Laboratory at Arecibo keeps
track of them and does further research into them.

Here is one of their graphics:

As you can see habitable planets larger than the Earth but smaller than the large planets of our own solar system seem to be more plentiful than
planets like the Earth. Kepler has found 12 of these habitable "Super Earths" or "Super Terrans" and found 35 more candidates (90% of Kepler's
candidates turn out to be real planets). However it only has found one Earth-sized candidate planet so far.

So one of the questions that some people often get asked about why aliens are always described as being short in stature and thin can now be
answered from a scientific perspective.

A planet 2 to 6 times the Earth's mass would have higher gravity. Anything which walked upright would by necessity be shorter and perhaps have more
efficient muscles than us on a lighter weight body.

It should be noted that Kepler is still sending back data which it took before its mission ended so researchers have not yet analysed everything it
has collected yet. the 3,500+ candidates on that chart are just from the data which has been sifted through, there are mountains of data that hasn't
even been sifted through yet for candidates. While other Earth-sized planets in habitable zones are probably within the data its like calling an
election: At this point we know that habitable Super Earths seem to be more likely than habitable Earth sized planets.

(Sidenote If you have good eyes and are into perhaps spotting a planet in the Kepler data there is a citizen science project I take part in called
Planet Hunters over at www.planethunters.org (part of Zooniverse). We've already found two planets which have been confirmed and tentatively named PH1
and PH2.)

It should be noted that I have found that just about every star on the Hill-Fish map makes sense from an astrobiological point of view. Several of the
stars are in HabCat (the catalog 17,129 of the likeliest habitable stars in our local neighborhood put together by astronomers Jill Tarter and
Margaret Turnbull in 2003.) Others have been found to have habitable zone planets. BTW: I did cross correlation with HabCat and the Planetary
Habitability Lab while looking at the Hill-Fish map. Some stars beyond the map on the same lines also have habitable worlds.

Hope I didn't bore you.

I'm just a girl who is an astronomy student with an interest in UFO claims which may have verifiable information.

I'm still working on my Celestia tour of the Hill-Fish map but I though you might be interested in the following.....

You may have seen a news report not long ago that the nearest life bearing planet is thought to be about 6-7 light years away. This is a direct
result of the analysis of Kepler data by the Planetary Habitability Lab at Arecibo: phl.upr.edu...

It has found among other things that Earthlike planets are likely more common than anyone had initially thought. (And more common than astronomer
Frank Drake had speculated in the 1960s).

An Earth-like planet is defined as a 0.5 to 1.4 Earth radii planet orbiting within the habitable zone of the star.

What that means is the following....

η Earth (Eta Earth) is the stellar frequency of Earth-like planets. δ Earth (Delta Earth) is the mean distance between Earth-like planets.
p10 Earth is the probability of an Earth-like planet within 10 light years from Earth.

Which means our nearest Earth like planetary neighbor is likely within 10 light years of the Earth! Important to keep in mind because a couple of
stars on the Hill-Fish map are not far from that range and one of them has not one but two potentially habitable planets!

Here's a hint.. It's on these graphics below from the PHL at Arecibo:

This is a far cry from what we knew back in the 1960s and 1970s when the Hill-Fish map was initially debated in Astronomy Magazine by the likes of
Carl Sagan and Terrance Dickinson,

It's even a far cry from the 1990s when Seth Shostak for example dismissed it as being likely nothing more than Pareidolia akin to finding faces in
clouds or Jesus on a potato chip.

Tau Ceti is one of the stars on the Hill Map. I'll be going into it and the others sometime this weekend (hopefully) with my video tour.

I'll also go a bit into the Seager Equation. (Astronomer Sara Seager developed a new equation that in many ways is superior to the Drake Equation when
looking for other planets with life) and how that relates to the Hill-Fish map.

Every year or so I re-visit the Hill-Fish map and "plug in" new information that we've learned in the year that past. This year appears to be near a
tipping point in terms of "too many things are right with it to be pure chance or coincidence."

The launch of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (assuming it launches and functions correctly) will be able to tell us a lot more. Think of it
as a Kepler for our local neighborhood. It will survey the closest and brightest stars for transit events due to planets or other low-mass companions.

TESS is on track for launch in 2017. Of course in the time between now and then there will no doubt be further exoplanet discoveries around our nearby
neighbors which would swing the pendulum the other way.

I'm wondering if all of this great information deserves it's own thread instead of buried in this older thread?

I was wondering the same. I am new and so I couldn't start a new thread even if I wanted to. I also thought to "play it safe" with regards to ATS
because other forums get upset if you start a new thread on a subject that already has a thread. Being new I wanted to put my best foot forward.

If a mod can let me know its ok to post this as its own new thread I will, but i don't want to piss anyone off.

JadeStar
Every year or so I re-visit the Hill-Fish map and "plug in" new information that we've learned in the year that past. This year appears to be near
a tipping point in terms of "too many things are right with it to be pure chance or coincidence.

More to come in the next couple of days.

Looking forward to reading it, although this is an old staple of UFOlogy it is always interesting to hear new perspectives on it!

I myself take the opposite view: I believe that Marjorie Fish's interpretation of the sketch is inherently flawed, and further research based on the
assumption that it is accurate is a time consuming dead end.

If you have not already read this excellent thread, I would suggest that it may offer
you some fresh insights into the veracity of the Fish interpretation; I'd be especially interested to hear your thoughts on poster Nicorette's
alternative interpretation which is posted approximately half way down page 6 and which offers what I believe to be a more logical fit with Betty
Hill's sketch.

JadeStar
Every year or so I re-visit the Hill-Fish map and "plug in" new information that we've learned in the year that past. This year appears to be near a
tipping point in terms of "too many things are right with it to be pure chance or coincidence.

More to come in the next couple of days.

Looking forward to reading it, although this is an old staple of UFOlogy it is always interesting to hear new perspectives on it!

The reason I think it is such a stable in UFOlogy is that nothing else like it in the 66 years of the modern UFO era exists.

For all the alleged contacts and abductions we have nothing else in the literature that presents us with any information not known at the time which
can be scientifically investigated with more scrutiny as technology allows.

The Hill-Fish map is unique in that regard.

When reading through the literature it is easy to see why there aren't more people in astronomy related fields sinking their teeth into the phenomena.
Everything else has been vague references to an "end of the world" that as yet has not happened, or to space brothers from such unlikely points of
origin as Venus, the Pleiades or the Orion nebula (which to people with no basic understanding of what conditions are like in those locales sounds
perfectly plausible), or beings from "another dimension".

So until all of the stars on Fish's interpretation are thoroughly examined with future instruments to the point that they are ruled out as places of
life or intelligent life then it will remain the gift that keeps giving.

I myself take the opposite view: I believe that Marjorie Fish's interpretation of the sketch is inherently flawed, and further research based on the
assumption that it is accurate is a time consuming dead end.

I disagree. Anything which gets people interested in what could be out there in our local neighborhood has value.

It was not that long ago that American astronomer Percival Lowell was convinced that canals existed on Mars built by a civilization trying to conserve
water on an increasingly drying world.

Lowell became determined to study Mars and astronomy as a full-time career after reading Camille Flammarion's La planète Mars. He was particularly
interested in the canals of Mars, as drawn by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, who was director of the Milan Observatory.en.wikipedia.org...

It sounds funny to us now but he had a fair amount of company in those days. It was almost accepted as fact in the pop culture of that era that there
was a civilization on Mars.

This spurred things such as Lowell building (with his own money) Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona to see the canals that he thought
Schiaparelli had seen.

In 1894 Lowell chose Flagstaff, Arizona Territory, as the home of his new observatory. At an altitude of over 2100 meters (7000 feet), with few
cloudy nights, and far from city lights, Flagstaff was an excellent site for astronomical observations. This marked the first time an observatory had
been deliberately located in a remote, elevated place for optimal seeing.

It even spurred people such as Tesla to do more work on radio receiving equipment. Why? To hear the Martians of course.

Lowell himself and Lowell Observatory went on to make some real discoveries such as the first Kuiper Belt Object(KBO): Pluto over 60 years before the
next one was discovered. The idea of building observatories at the position where they would best function seems like a no-brainer today but he was
the first to do it and it has become standard practice when considering site locations for new instruments in astronomy.

And where would 20th century communications have been without Tesla's superheterodyne receiver?

One of the reasons for our fascination with Mars to this day goes back to Lowell and Ray Bradbury's adoption of the whole canals on Mars idea with The
Martian Chronicles and H.G. Wells War of the Worlds featured Martians invading the Earth based on the same premise, that Mars was a dying planet.

People here on ATS often pour through NASA images of Mars looking for anything anomalous as a direct result of Lowell's early ideas about Mars.

Today Zeta Reticuli in many ways has become the "new Mars". Until we can investigate it in better detail and look for worlds which may be around those
stars and others on the Hill-FIsh map that's unlikely to change.

But who knows, due to the idea that nearby star systems could be inhabited (and the statistics from Kepler have given this idea a lot of weight) maybe
some well-heeled individual (not named Bigelow) will spring for the bill to build something like the Colossus telescope (which could detect the energy
usage and perhaps light of alien cities around the nearest stars out to 60 light years - which BTW: Zeta Ret falls within).

If that thing or others like it get built because of public interest in whats out there then it wasn't a total waste of time. Our because of Hubble,
knowledge about some remote parts of the universe is better than our knowledge of our local interstellar neighborhood but that will change in the next
couple of decades. We're right at the beginning of perhaps the most exciting time in planet discovery since Lowell's time.

If you have not already read this excellent thread, I would suggest that it may offer
you some fresh insights into the veracity of the Fish interpretation; I'd be especially interested to hear your thoughts on poster Nicorette's
alternative interpretation which is posted approximately half way down page 6 and which offers what I believe to be a more logical fit with Betty
Hill's sketch.

I read a few days before i made my first post in this thread and in fact I plan to base my next post examining the map on the original poster of that
thread's format.

As for Nicorette referring to the alternative interpretation that the map represents the solar system, I looked at that interpretation and it is full
of logical flaws, mainly due to the fact that there are asteroids in that interpretation but some of the more interesting asteroids are not on it.

I've also seen a weak argument that the map represented cities on the east coast of the US and another interpretation by a guy pushing a book called
"Set Your Phasers to Stun" which was equally weak for entirely different reasons.

Like I said, I am not here to debate other interpretations of the map. There are some solid reasons why the Fish interpretation might be the most
likely one for any group of nearby stars.

Those reasons will be the subject of the next post from me about the map. Look for it sometime before Monday.

edit on 26-10-2013 by JadeStar because: Added link to the Colossus telescope website.

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