The director of the sunspot observatory is not sure why the authorities have closed

When, last week, the federal government suddenly and inexplicably closed the Sunspot Solar Observatory in southern New Mexico, the conspiracy theorists went on a rampage. The fact that the Federal Investigation Agency (FBI) – resident agency of fictional paranoid investigators Fox Mulder and Dana Scully in "The X-Files" – was involved in the shutdown did not make it so. feed the conspiratorial fire. A quick search on YouTube will confirm that paranoids have many theories about what could happen in the facilities of the National Solar Observatory. The government and the observatory have not published any official explanation.

Since conspiracy theories tend to reflect the zeitgest, the dominant theories include something to do with extraterrestrials or with Russian espionage. But if you were hoping for extraterrestrials, I have bad news: those who are close to the situation are telling Salon that the closure is not related to any mysterious sighting or transmission.

"There is nothing we observed with the telescope that made us close anything, just the telescope saw," professor of astronomy at the University of Toronto. State of New Mexico and director of the Sunspot Solar Solar Observatory. James McAteer told Salon. "We have not seen strangers, we have not seen any exoplanets, we have not seen any strange solar storms."

The saga began to unfold on September 6, when authorities unexpectedly closed and evacuated the solar sunspot observatory. The solar sunspot observatory is managed by a consortium of universities that fund the use of the telescope and the adjacent visitor center. The AUREA (Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy) is a big site, explains McAteer, tens to hundreds of hectares, and the observatory is used to study the sun in a very specific way .

McAteer said if the reason for the closure is still unknown, he does not think it's as strange as some people think.

"AURA, who decides to close this is not an unusual event for me and I will not jump to unnecessary speculation," McAteer told Salon. "They [AURA] made the decision to close the site on the basis of an internal decision, depending on the decisions made, and as they often make decisions to close remote sites, this is not rare.

Alamogordo Daily News first reported the news on Sept. 7, when the observatory closed down citing a "security problem" in the facility. Shari Lifson, a spokeswoman for AURA, said the closure was their decision.

"The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, which manages the facility, is currently dealing with a security issue," Lifson told the local newspaper. "We decided to leave the facility at that time as a precautionary measure. It was our decision to evacuate the facilities.

"We do not know it yet (when the facility opens again)," added Lifson. "We are working with the relevant authorities on these issues. Local authorities know and know the situation. I do not know when the installation was released but it was in the last day. It is a temporary evacuation of the installation. We open [sic] as soon as possible. "

The fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is involved is perhaps the most mysterious aspect of the closing of the observatory. Curiously, the Benny House County Sheriff said the Otero County Sheriff's Office had been asked to stay.

"The FBI is refusing to tell us what's going on," Sheriff House told the newspaper last week. "We have people there (at Sunspot) who have asked us to stay on hold while they are evacuated. Nobody would really explain why. The FBI was up there. What was their purpose, no one will say. "

He said that he had a lot of unanswered questions about what had happened at Sunspot.

"But for the FBI to be involved so quickly and so discreetly, there was a lot going on there," House said. "There was a Blackhawk helicopter, a group of people around the antennas and work crews on the towers, but no one told us anything.

But if extraterrestrials are not involved, what about espionage, the American bugaboo of the day? Observers said the observatory, although located near Holloman Air Force Base in the United States and the US Army White Sands missile port, could not be used for spying.

"You do not look through," McAteer told Salon. "If it's not a pair of binoculars, you're not using it to communicate. This is not a radio, it only receives sunlight.

Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), told Salon that this test had indeed piqued his interest, but that it was unlikely that extraterrestrials.

"The real thing is that you have the elements here that's an observatory, it looks at the sky and now a branch of the government that has secrets is concerned about something there," Shostak said. "Immediately people jump to this conclusion – the public always assumes when something is unexplained on Earth, aliens are to blame."

"If it happened in a fast food restaurant, did they blame the aliens?"

Shostak hypothesized that the seizure of the facility by the government could possibly be related to satellite observation. If extraterrestrials make their appearance on Earth, it is unlikely that the government is really trying to keep the secret.

"Twenty years ago, we detected a signal that could have been an extraterrestrial transmission, and they did not try to silence or keep something secret," he said.