The Age of Nearby Stars
By Jeffrey L. Kretsch
The controversial interpretation of the Hill “star map” conducted by Marjorie Fish includes the sun and 15 nearby stars. These stars make an ideal case study for stellar age determination as described in this article. For further details specifically about this map, see in Focus and the December issue.
by Terence Dickinson
With related commentary by: Jeffrey L. Kretsch, Carl Sagan, Steven Soter, Robert Sheaffer, Marjorie Fish, David Saunders & Michael Peck. Astronomy, December, 1974
A faint pair of stars, 220 trillion miles away, has been tentatively identified as the “home base” of intelligent extraterrestrials who allegedly visited Earth in 1961. This hypothesis is based on a strange, almost bizarre series of events mixing astronomical research with hypnosis, amnesia, and alien humanoid creatures.
The two stars are known as Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli, or together as simply Zeta Reticuli. They are each fifth magnitude stars — barely visible to the unaided eye — located in the obscure souther constellation Reticulum. This southerly sky location makes Zeta Reticuli invisible to observers north of Mexico City’s latitude.
The weird circumstances that we have dubbed “The Zeta Reticuli Incident” sound like they come straight from the UFO pages in one of those tabloids sold in every supermarket. But this is much more than a retelling of a famous UFO incident; it’s an astronomical detective story that at times hovers on that hazy line that separates science from fiction. It all started this way:
