The Galactic Version of Being in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time

 

According to the universally accepted scientific evidence the universe is around 13.7 billions years old. A number that humans can only barely understand. Given what we know now, it all began with one infinitely dense and infinitely small singularity that for reasons still not understood suddenly began to expand. 

Well, more accurately I believe the space itself began expanding. I’ve just recently come to understand the term, “Big Bang” was coined by a critic of the theory. He still thought the most likely explanation of the universe was the “Steady State Theory.” That the universe had always existed, I’m still fuzzy on how the most basic building block of the universe, hydrogen was supposed to be replenished during these countless epochs. When you have gravity pulling the hydrogen together to form stars, which then spend millions to billions of years fusing it to make heavier elements you eventually would run out. 

From what I understand, at the beginning the Big Bang universe was much too hot for actual atoms of hydrogen to form. You had a blizzard of subatomic particles churning around waiting for the temperature to cool. Once the universe did cool down basic hydrogen, and apparently a small amount of helium, formed with gravity beginning to pull it together to form stars and galaxies. 

The first generation of stars were monsters in size. With no heavier elements to mediate fusion they lived hot and short lives. They fused hydrogen and helium into heavier elements like carbon, oxygen, and many others. When these first generation stars died they seeded the space around them with these heavier elements.

A couple of billion years later enough heavier elements have been created to produce the first terrestrial worlds. Although, the massive, short-lived stars that first produced the heavier elements still make up a significant portion of the stellar population. 

But on some of these terrestrial worlds the conditions were just right to allow life to emerge. As time passed the life on some of these worlds evolved to become complex multicellular creatures. On yet a smaller number of these worlds intelligent life arose and driven by curiosity and need, built a technical civilization to make their lives better.

The problem many of these first alien civilizations had to contend with makes our existential fear seem small. During that era of a still young universe the number of the hot and short lived stars was much higher. Having a sufficiently large stellar neighbor go supernova, even several lightyears away, would sterilize any world in the path of the radiation shockwave. 

Now imagine an alien civilization stumbling through its own version of the 20th century dealing with all the stunning advancements in science and knowledge of the universe. In our own world it wasn’t until 1929 that American astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding. Not only that, but it was Hubble who came to understand that what were called “spiral nebulae” were actually galaxies and that they were “island universes.”

Not to get too deep in the weeds, but during the Steady State era of the universe it was accepted that the Milky Way galaxy was the universe.

It boggles the mind to think of early alien civilizations struggling to learn their place in the universe, only to discover that one of their massive stellar neighbors is about to go supernova. That all life, except what lives in the deepest, darkest regions of that world’s ocean, will be erased. That in just a few thousands years all the monuments created by that intelligent species will turn to dust, leaving no trace of who they were.

Never realized that the word “Oblivion” could be so terrifying. 

For us humans, we’ve mapped our stellar neighborhood and we do not have any of those types of massive stars anywhere near us. There is the red supergiant star Betelgeuse, which is between 400 to 724 lightyears away. It will go supernova eventually but is out of our danger zone when it does. We’ll just get a fantastic light show anytime between now and one-hundred thousand years fin the future.

Enjoy the video from Cool Worlds, its where I got the idea for this post.

 "The First Civilization to Emerge in the Galaxy" 

Dead Bear Cubs from the Twilight Zone

 

You got to hand it to the great Rod Serling, the creator of television’s Twilight Zone. Even though the series is decades old many of the episodes are just a relevant and timely over two decades into the twenty-first century. To show this fact, my twenty-eight year old son loves The Twilight Zone and we will have discussions over various episodes. He has actual training in college-level philosophical reasoning and I’m usually floored by the points he brings up.

Back when I was his age, and younger, whenever my fellow nerds and I talked about one of the episodes our discussions were quite superficial. We pondered what we would do if placed into a situation where the natural world and metaphysical events intersected.

These conversation tended to die out whenever one of my nerd brethren lamented that our existence was devoid of such occurrences. That barring the near infinitesimally small chance that such situations might occur, our universe plays strictly by the known laws of nature.

No, I’m not one who believes in things like interdimensional “shadow people”, haphazard crossings over to parallel universes or into the past. Now the science fiction episode where a dude is imprisoned alone on an asteroid, but gets a robot woman for company and falls in love with her is a whole other matter. Real life advances in AI and life-like robotic technology is bringing such tale closer to reality.

However I was dumbstruck the other day by a thought that was ridiculous but unsettling. That maybe Twilight Zone events occur in our universe, they just take a different form from that on television.

May I present to you the strange occurrence where a presidential candidate from a prominent American family tells the story of how he and several companions found a dead bear cub on the side of the road. This individual then gets the idea that since the bear cub is unspoiled he plans on skinning the dead animal and eating the meat.

But wait, this member of a family called “American Royalty” by many realizes that his busy schedule will not allow him to skin the animal before it spoils. His Twilight Zone-ish behavior continues with him secretly abandoning the dead animal in New York’s Central Park. Just to add icing to this surreal story this son of a beloved political leader who was assassinated, places a damaged bicycle that he also had in his possession next the unfortunate cub to suggest that someone hit and killed the animal, then ran away.

The bear cub is found and is reported on national news. But the subject of this bizarre story only comes forward many years later when a major publication is about to expose him.

There’s already a shitload of Twilight Zone material here but it becomes even worse when take into account this individual has people convinced he should be president of the United States.

No, I didn’t see fit to throw the Orange Buffoon into this equation. He’s a long reoccurring national nightmare and I can only deal with a finite amount of crazy in this day and age.

Rod Serling was a talented writer and producer but not even he would have delved into this level of insanity.

Late Stage Capitalism

 It was my son that introduced me to the concept of “Late Stage Capitalism.” The more accurate description, but worded in a way I can understand, of the idea is that capitalism has entered the phase where its practices and use of resources are unsustainable and where labor is exploited all for an increasingly smaller profit margin. 

Among the list of problems LSC manifests is the commodification of all aspects of life. One of them being a major corporation charging a ridiculous amount for a simple cup of water.

I have no idea at the validity of the meme at the top of this post. But given my years of involvement with the deceptively playful but ultimately amoral corporate mouse, I believe it could very well be true. 

If this is true I don’t blame the employee– who the Mouse euphemistically calls “cast member” for wanting to charge a kid almost over four dollars for a cup of water. Even before the pandemic, any lower end employee of the Mouse knew they were just minor cogs in the corporate machinery. 

One of the many problems with LSC is how very few of the upper echelon understand its keypoint. It is ultimately unsustainable and will either change or collapse.