Has a global threat to solar power bigger than any pro-fossil fuel lobby group or anti-renewables government could dream up emerged?
The threat is aliens.
Yes, aliens. The kind from space. Flying saucers and all that – really, really, really big flying saucers.
According to the Express, some UFO hunters claim to have spotted another huge alien mothership draining the Sun of energy in NASA images. This isn’t the first time energy-thirsty extraterrestrials have used the Sun as an On The Run servo. In May, a similar incident was reported.
The potential effects of this refueling?
“If we are sharing our Sun, it’s not going to last the five billion years scientist predicted it at, but may drop below a billion years before its used up,” says one of the UFO hunters.
The gentleman says every time he tries to ask NASA about these UFOs on Twitter, they ignore him. Go figure.
Gordon Garradd from solar provider SunEdison Australia, who has previously worked as an astronomer for NASA, the ANU and Anglo-Australian Observatory, has offered his expert opinion on the issue.
“Just a few hot pixels caused by a cosmic ray or other charged particle hitting the CCD (Charge Coupled Device). We used to get hundreds of them every night on our NEO (Near Earth Object) survey images.”
Phew.. assuming of course Mr. Garradd (if that is his real name) isn’t involved with a NASA cover up. He assures us he isn’t and that’s good enough for us. Mr. Garradd relayed some further technobabble to back up his view, but we couldn’t understand or spell a word of it. Just trust us on this – everything is fine.
The threat of aliens sapping our sun is reminiscent of another story a while back from the world’s finest news source – The Onion – which mentioned (very much tongue-in-cheek) that ‘forced photovoltaic drainage’ by solar panels would also deplete the Sun of energy.
The segment also claimed the proliferation of wind turbines would make the Earth spin so fast, people would be flung from it and our planet would be propelled into the Sun.
While the Sun may offer no free refills and even if the alien theft of its energy is true, at least we have quite a few (million) years to work on a solution for dealing with these pesky freeloaders.
