Day 30, Sunday, June 29, 2008

Day 30


Socorro, NM to Roswell, NM


We entered Roswell around 9:30PM under the cover of night, just like all the other aliens....

The VLA
Along the way from our starting point of Socorro, we also stopped at the Very Large Array radio telescope where the SETI projects is housed (and which was made famous by the film "Contact" starring Jodie Foster).

Trinity Site
Traveling from there to Roswell, we also passed near the site of the Trinity Site, the location of the world's first atomic explosion near the White Sands desert and mountain range. This site is off-limits to the public except for a few weekends in October every year.

"Little Green Men"
Traveling really expands your horizons (literally) and adds to your education about the world. So here's what I learned about the world in and around southern New Mexico today:

• The Trinity atomic bomb explosion occurred on July 16, 1945 in the White Sands desert.
• The alleged crash of an aliens space craft occurred on or about July 7, 1947 about 70 miles NE of Roswell near Corona, NW.
• These two events, although separated by two years, occurred within approximately 50 miles of each other.

Although I'm not an alien (as far as I know, I'm just a bear), if I WERE one, I would be mighty curious about planet earth's first nuclear explosion and might even be tempted to go check it out in person to see how well these earth creatures had unleashed some of the secrets of the universe.

Really, I'm just saying that it seems like more than a coincidence that the world's first atomic explosion and the world's most famous alien flying saucer spaceship crash occurred so close together in time and space.

Keeping Up With The Joneses
I don't know much about UFOlogy and I don't know if there is already a treatisie or two in the UFO canon written about the close approximation of these events. But just driving through this beautiful, desolate landscape in the course of a few hours certainly brought the point home to me: wouldn't it be likely that the first nuclear activity on a planet would bring interest and observation from another intelligent life form? I mean, it's certainly a milestone I'd look out for if I were keeping track of my cosmic neighbors.