Plundering Around in my Subconscious

 

Probably best to start this rambling mess of words with a friendly disclaimer.

Just like one of the characters in the movie Inception stated, dreams, at least for me, have no real beginning. The way I remember my dreams is like waking up in the middle of a movie that has been going on for some significant period. I know something in the form of a plot is going on but I have no idea what caused the “characters” to behave the way they do.

Secondly, I absolutely do not believe dreams are supernatural in origin. That means I do not believe dreams are windows to alternate universes nor glimpses of the past or future. And I absolutely do not believe metaphysical beings contact us through dreams.

Dreams are just the unconscious human mind sorting through the bits and pieces of conscious reality and stringing them together. If someone has a dream about their Aunt Sally winning the lotto and that actually happens at some point in the future that was pure chance. For me, deja vu could well just be random pieces of memory that dropped into a dream with that individual experiencing it accidentally repeating those actions in a similar location.

I do believe dreams are elements of a person's psyche and can be related to their fears, hopes, and how they view themselves. Which in my case could mean I'm losing what little piece of my mind that works

With all that out of the way, I had a wild dream recently that I want to relate because it was so weird.

It began with me among an unknown group that I couldn't see nor really hear. All I knew was that they were pissed at me for some reason. I have no idea why they were upset but I understood, at least I think I do, that it involved me personally.

Typical dream stuff that didn't have any real basis in how others see me. Over the next several days, I began to theorize it was just my subconscious playing with my deepest fears. Nothing too awful weird, and given the times we live with economic uncertainty a normal component of life, probably typical.

It was the final segment of the dream that was really different. Don't ask me how I knew the following but I after left behind the unknown group I “bumped” into God.

Now get this, in the dream God was a short, fat white guy. Sort of like Danny Devito, Buddha, and the Boss Hog character from the Dukes of Hazard television show back in the early 1980s. And yes, he was smiling and giving off this feeling of love and warmth that was quite weird for a dream.

Now the really weird part begins, God was wearing a mustard gold Starfleet Command uniform from the original series complete with the flying delta symbol on the upper left of the blouse. My one distinct memory of the dream was being utterly surprised to see God wearing such a costume.

The dream ended right there, or at least that's all I remember. All things considered it was pretty cool and left me with a good feeling for most of that day. Now clearly understand this, I DID NOT have a personal one-on-one encounter with the Almighty. Technically, it's still best to classify me as an agnostic, although I freely say humans don't know as much about the universe nor reality as they think they do. It just takes real, verifiable evidence to prove things exist that would be classified as metaphysical.

Like one character in Star Trek: The Motion Picture stated near the end of the film: “We all create God in our image.” I guess my subconscious wanted to relieve the collected societal pressures in my head and constructed a God I could relate to in the best possible way. What's weird was that my subconscious put God in an Original Series uniform. I relate far more with Star Trek: The Next Generation and I could easily see Sir Patrick Stewart playing God in a movie.

But I can deal with a Danny Devito, Buddha, Boss Hog combination making up a friendly God. Yeah, all that stuff in my head is a mess. Speaking hypothetically, it would be beyond cool if God was a Trekkie.

The Amazing Dabous Giraffes of Niger

 

Wow, things have been crazy around my house lately, not “bad” crazy more like really busy leaving me no energy when I get home after work. It's the heat and humidity, mostly but the weekends aren't much better. Here at my house the grass and weeds in my yard have already moved into the ultra fast growing season I don't usually see to the first of August.

Yeah, I have a riding lawnmower but there's a lot of smaller chores left over like weed whacking and using the blower to clean up the curb and driveway. Anyway here's a small post on a subject I find interesting.

I am continually amazed at what archaeologists find from human prehistory. Long before writing was created numerous vibrant and sophisticated cultures came into being only to fade away into oblivion leaving only mysterious stone relics.

One such remnant are the Dabous Giraffes, stone petroglyphs located in the Air Massif of Niger. Dated to around 8000 BCE they are the largest stone petroglyphs in the world and were created when the Sahara was a much wetter savanna that stretched for thousands of miles. This wetter period is called the Neolithic Subpluvial and lasted from around 12000 BCE to 7000 BCE.

No expert, but if I remember correctly once the Sahara went back to desert some of that regions inhabitants migrated to the Nile River and began the process of establishing Egyptian culture.

The giraffes were carved into a sandstone outcrop and depict a large male and smaller female. Long after the Sahara returned to a desert climate shifting sands covered the glyphs for thousands of years before they were rediscovered in 1987. That region of Niger has over 900 similar carvings of animals and humans.

I find myself profoundly sad that the artist or artists of these glyphs will forever remain unknown to us. The culture that produced the creators of those glyphs had to be advanced enough that they had advanced beyond the mere struggle for survival. That they had enough food and necessities that men and/or women could create such works of art.

Real Dangers to Democracy

Okay, I'll make this brief because I've got people coming to remove some storm damaged trees. What does a dangerously authoritarian-leaning political party do when they can't win elections? You got it, they change election laws in the state legislatures they control. 

What does the other political party do to TRY and avoid having elections stolen? You write a bill that prevents the other party from destroying democracy. What's seriously tragic though is to have the Democratic senators from West Virginia and Arizona sabotage the process.  

On another front for those who don't realize this, we're at war with Russia. We have been at least since the November 2016 election, although it has probably been going on for years before that. While the recent pipeline cyber-attack was supposedly done by non-government hackers they have been traced to Russia. It would take strong evidence to convince me something like this happened in Putin's personal kingdom with him not knowing about it.

Putin is engaging in a curious form of asymmetric warfare with the United States. Numerous news reports over the years all suggest Putin blames the United States for the breakup of the Soviet Union. Putin's inference in American elections is certainly an attempt to spread dissension and chaos in this country. It wouldn't be hard to convince me now given his success that he and his cronies may believe they can actually breakup the United States as a form of revenge for his beloved Soviet Union.   

Understand something, for the most part I trust science and scientists. Of course where science gets sticky is when you have paid lackeys like the "scientists", who while employed by cigarette companies, claimed smoking didn't cause health issues. 

The same can be said for current day "scientists" who work for oil companies and claim Climate change is overblown or not caused by humans. But for the most part if an unbiased scientist with strong evidence says something I'm usually going to side with that person.   

No science is not a religion but it's a process that has been extremely useful in discovering how the world and universe works. Over the centuries since applying this process we have made the lives of billions of people far better. No science isn't perfect and the pursuit of knowledge can be a double-edged sword causing untold death and destruction.

In some ways we've been lucky with the Covid virus. It could have been far deadlier and with the idiots running around denying basic science and politicizing something trivial like wearing face masks the damage would have been far worse. I write this realizing well over half a million people died from Covid here in the United States.

The insanity of our times is exemplified when you have racists morons, like the ones on Fox News, spreading outright lies about the vaccines that could end this pandemic.  

  

News from Proxima Centauri-- Or the Galactic HOA is Watching

 

 

 It's a terrible thing to write, but few things really excite me these days. I don't worry too much about feeling that way since life, experience, and circumstance has a way of blunting the child-like enthusiasm that made everyday an adventure when we were younger. Still, it's nice to occasionally have something come out of left field and rekindle a hint of that former awe and wonder.

Proxima Centauri is a M-class red dwarf star about 4.2 lightyears away from our planet and it looks like in 2019 we received a radio signal from some source in that star system. While most likely this curious signal is just some misinterpreted radio broadcast from a purely earthly source, it has passed many of the initial checks and still cannot be explained. So yes, there is a remote chance that this radio signal originated from an advanced alien intelligence.

What really is freaking out the astronomers is that this signal is being received on the 982 megahertz frequency, a region of the radio spectrum not typically used for satellites orbiting the Earth or space probes heading out into deep space. Adding to the mystery, the frequency of this signal shifted during the broadcast which was consistent with the movement of a body orbiting that star. However there was no detected modulation of the signal, something that would allow extra information to be encoded. In essence the signal was just a long distance dial tone, empty of any significance.

There are a couple of more little tidbits to this development that make it even more intriguing. First that while Proxima Centauri is so dim and small it can't be seen with the naked eye, it's the closest star to our solar system. Secondly, we know Proxima Centauri has at least two planets orbiting it. One is an Earth-like world, called Proxima b, orbiting in its Goldilocks Zone, a region of space where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface. Understand, for Proxima b to be warm enough to have liquid water on the surface its yearly orbit of its star is just eleven hours.

Proxima b's closeness to its parent star is definitely a double-edged sword. While it gets enough warmth and light to possibly have Earth-like conditions, like liquid water on the surface, it is then subject to Proxima's massive solar flares. Most tiny and cool stars like Proxima, paradoxically produce massive flares that scientists believe would strip away any planetary atmosphere in a matter of a few decades. Some planetary theorists do suggest that a planet orbiting a red dwarf with a strong magnetic field might be able to deflect the worst of the solar flares, allowing it to retain its atmosphere.

Making Proxima b even less desirable real estate is that due to its closeness to the parent star, it is probably tidally locked with one side permanently facing the light and heat. While the opposite side is perpetually locked in a frozen night.

The other planet, Proxima c, is much larger than Earth and is so far out from its star that its takes 5.2 Earth years to complete one orbit. This world has the mass of seven Earths and is either a mini-Neptune gas planet or a super-Earth. While you can't rule out a very different form of life, this world and any moons orbiting probably was not the source of the signal.

Then again, the general consensus is that if this signal from Proxima Centauri is from an alien intelligence the beings or entities that sent it are not native to that star system. The chance that two neighboring stars develop technical civilizations “stretches the bounds of rationality.” In other words, the big interstellar empty we thought was the galaxy is probably quite crowded.

Followup observations of Proxima Centauri since 2019 have failed to find the signal again with numerous other radio telescopes joining in the search. The overwhelming odds on this signal is of course that it's a false alarm. There was one infamous radio telescope episode several years ago where an intriguing signal from deep space turned out to be inference from the observatory's break room microwave.

Still though, if an advanced starfaring civilization wanted to make contact with a primitive technical species, setting up shop on the closest star to them would be way to gauge their reaction to any overturn. If we humans give a good impression, these aliens drop by and say hello. If we scare the living shit out of them, they toss a dozen or so antimatter bombs our way to save the galaxy from a possible horde of ravaging monsters.

Just a suggestion, it would probably serve humanity very well if we straighten up our act and actually acted like an intelligent species. The neighbors could well be watching. 

 

Sources:

Scientists looking for aliens investigate radio beam 'from nearby star' 

The Guardian.com, December 18, 2020

Alien Hunters Discover Mysterious Signal from Proxima Centauri   

ScientificAmerican.com, December 18, 2020

Shocking the Monkey

 

 Since the beginning of the Trump era far too many people have been struggling to reconcile the hateful nature of MAGA supporters with their common beliefs about the general goodness of human nature. This extends even to myself because during the initial phases of the 2016 presidential campaign I would have never believed such crude and corrupted individual as the Orange Buffoon would be nominated by the Republican Party, much less actually become president.

Understand, way back before the 2008 election both my stomach turned and my eyes rolled whenever someone spoke dreamily about the glorious nature of a “post-racial America” since Barrack Obama was heavily favored to win that election.

To assume centuries of racial discrimination and oppression would suddenly evaporate with the election of the United States' first black president definitely leaned heavily into the realm of fantasy. However, it did seem unthinkable to me that anyone would seriously consider a clearly immoral and outright racist individual as the Orange Buffoon occupying the highest office in the United States.

In short, I fully expected that Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz would have been the 2016 nominee. The former a simple but dependable rehash of his father and brother. As for the latter, I thought he was the absolute outer edge of the rancid Republican value of profit over people and the party's hateful and skewed societal views.

Recently though I was reminded of the experiments performed by Professor Stanley Milgram at Yale University in the 1960s. These experiments involved how people look at authority and obedience.

In fact Milgram's research can, in my opinion, best be summed up in one of his quotes from 1974. “The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not such much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he acts.”

His experiment involved the recruitment of individuals using newspaper ads which each person was paid $4.50. These recruits were then told they would take the role as a “teacher” who would be asking a series of questions to a “student” in another room they could not see.

On a table in front of the teacher would be an intimidating device that Milgram said was a shock generator with the student in the next room attached to the business end of the machine. The teacher was told to give the student a shock every time they gave the wrong answer to the asked question . These shocks started at 30 volts and increased in 15-increments for every wrong answer going all the way up to 450 volts.

Increasing the stress on the teacher, the switches on the shock device were labeled with terms such as “slight shock,” “moderate shock” and “danger: severe shock.” The final two switches were labeled with nothing but “XXX” suggesting something darker.

Understand, while these teachers believed they would be applying an electric punishment for wrong answers, the students in the next room were perfectly safe and just play acting at the direction of Milgram.

As the experiment progressed the student's reaction to the electrically shocks got increasingly more desperate. The teacher would hear the student in the next room pleading to be released or even that he had a heart condition. Once they reached the 300 volt level the student would bang on the wall demanding to be released. Beyond that point the student went silent and refused to answer any more question. The teacher was instructed to treat the silence as an incorrect response and deliver further shocks.

At that point the teacher would ask the controller of the experiment if they should continue. The controller would respond with a series of commands to prod the teacher to continue:

1. “Please continue.”

2. “The experiment requires that you continue.”

3. “It is absolutely essential that you continue.”

4. “You have no other choice, you must go on.”

You'd think a normal person playing the role of teacher would at least stop shocking the student once the supposed test subject started pleading that the voltage was too painful. But in reality 65 percent of the teacher participates continued to apply the maximum shocks to their unresponsive and unseen students. It was noticed during the experiments, that many of the teachers became extremely distraught and angry at the controllers but continued to follow orders all the way to the end.

The immediate question has to be why did the teacher-participates continued applying painful shocks to an unseen student? The general answer is that the presence of an authority figure (controller) increased compliance. The fact that a trusted academic institution, Yale University sponsored the experiment lead many of the participants to believe it was safe, even after the student became unresponsive.

Milgram summed up his experiment with this statement: “Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work becomes patently clear, and they are asked to carry out action incompatible fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”

So you might be wondering how all this ties into my point. Having the Orange Buffoon as president clearly gave license to the worst aspects of human nature. The natural authority that comes with holding that office allowed the Buffoon to give voice to all those barely hidden hates and fears, giving them an environment they could easily thrive. Sort of like the way mold loves to grow in wet and humid places.

For me, the worst aspect of having to live through such a repugnant individual's reign is that the damage the Orange Buffoon's done will not whither away with him out of office. Because once a mold like him takes hold in a house the repair work to get rid of it will be extensive and costly. Truthfully, taking the mold analogy further, Lincoln warned us of a house divided being unable to stand. The Orange Buffoon's mold might have already metastasized to the point the house is now contaminated beyond the ability of anyone to save it.

Nothing proves this point more than all the Republican congressmen who signed on in support of the Texas lawsuit attempting to overturn the election results in critical swing states. This was nothing less than an attempted coup to reinstall a delusional thug who harbored dreams of authoritarian power. Even after the Texas lawsuit was struck down, numerous fools in the Republican party started speaking about their states succeeding from the Union.

Even if the Orange Buffoon is in jail or dies between now and 2024, there are plenty of others who will take up his debauched mantle. 

 

Source:

Milgram's Experiment and the Perils of Obedience, VeryWellMind.com, September 16, 2019

 https://www.verywellmind.com/the-milgram-obedience-experiment-2795243

Arecibo-- A Disastrous Loss to Science and Humanity

 

 

Arecibo in better days

When news footage of the disastrous 2019 fire at Norte-Dame cathedral made worldwide news I was sadden and shock like most people. Setting aside its religious significance, Norte-Dame is an important part of our common human heritage, something that needs to be rebuilt and preserved for as long as possible. I'd say the same for the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Egypt and Central America, Stonehenge, the Parthenon of Athens, or any other historically important structure.

So it was a bit of gut punch that I recently learned the giant radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico has suffered through catastrophic failures of two of its main support cables and will be permanently closed. The remaining cables are still holding up the 900-ton scientific package platform that over the years helped detect numerous near-Earth asteroids, the first exoplanets, and other phenomena. Back in 1974 astronomers even used Arecibo to send a coherent and intentional message into deep space in hopes an alien civilization on some distant star might hear it.

Built in 1963, the Arecibo telescope has undergone numerous upgrades and continuous maintenance but appears that simple time and climate got the best of it. However a 6.4 magnitude earthquake in 2014 and Hurricane Maria in 2017 were sure to have pushed the aging structure closer to the breaking point.

It's damn tragic that such an important scientific instrument that lead to many groundbreaking discoveries will now be abandoned. Just Arecibo's work on detecting near-Earth asteroids and the dangers they pose to the planet and human civilization should be enough to have it rebuilt. Excuse me, but I do feel losing Arecibo is akin to the fire in Norte-Dame. In many ways I feel Arecibo was a scientific cathedral that instead of bringing us closer to God, helped humans understand the nature of the universe we live. 

 

,

The Arecibo message sent out in 1974.

Source:

Legendary Arecibo Telescope Will Close Forever, and Scientists Are Reeling: Scientific American

November 19, 2020

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/legendary-arecibo-telescope-will-close-forever-and-scientists-are-reeling/

News From Venus

 

 Not being a fan of Russia or anything else associated with those assholes, I cynically laughed a few weeks back when the chief of the Russian space program staked a claim on the planet Venus. It's just another in a long list of nationalistic posturings by Russia wanting to bolster its confidence and global street cred. For example a few years back guys in a deep diving Russian submersible planted a tiny version of their national flag on the seafloor directly under the North Pole ice sheet. The Russian press release went on about that accomplishment being equal setting foot on the moon.

“We think that Venus is a Russian planet, so we shouldn't lag behind.” Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the Russian space corporation, Rocosmos said about an upcoming mission to the hellhole planet. Why the love of a planet encased in an atmosphere of carbon dioxide where it rains sulfuric acid and the surface temperature can melt lead?

Well giving the devil its due, Russia is the only country that landed a working probe on the surface and was able to take pictures. Now the downside is also true in that Russia is batting next to zero getting any of their other probes to Mars, a much more interesting and “habitable” place. And while they did get some impressive firsts in the early days of manned space flight, their plans to get to the moon literally blew up on the launchpad so many times, the Soviets pulled a Chernobyl-level classification on their efforts that lasted to well after the fall of communism. So “claiming” Venus sort of makes sense for a people who have only limited success beyond the moon and never left eighteenth-century imperialism behind.

Understand I'm not here to cast shade on the Russians. Truth be told I find Americans almost as equally obnoxious and ignorant with the United States only saving grace being that we haven't quite fallen into the authoritarian trap Russian finds itself. There's still a chance we Americans could pull our collective heads out of our asses and and be decent citizens of this planet.

Given the conditions on Venus my interest in the planet was pretty nonexistent. Now there is talk among planetary science types that as “recently” as seven-hundred-million years ago Venus might have had Earth-like conditions including oceans of liquid water. But something went sideways and its atmosphere became increasingly warmed by the greenhouse effect to the point global temperatures went critical and the water boiled away.

Over the decades a bunch of science fiction authors have wrote about terraforming the planet back to something livable. But to the best of my meager knowledge most scientific estimates of the Goldilocks Zone -the region of the solar system where liquid water could exist under certain conditions- puts Venus beyond the inner edge. Meaning to me at least that Venus is a total write off for manned exploration and settlement.

Well, shit got weird on September 14 of this year when scientists at two different radio telescope sites detected the compound phosphine in Venus's atmosphere about fifty-five kilometers above the surface. Turns out phosphine is a possible signature of life on other planets because anaerobic bacteria here on Earth produce phosphine as part of their biological processes.

In short, anaerobic organisms do NOT require oxygen for growth and may react negatively to the presence of it in their environment. Which is good for any possible bacteria-like organisms floating high up in the atmosphere of Venus because the planet has only tiny trace amounts. No, anaerobic bacteria are not some speculative or rare lifeform, in fact humans have quite of lot of the little buggers living in their gastrointestinal tract. When they get uppity humans can develop such illnesses at appendicitis, diverticulitis, or perforations of the bowel.

For the unenlightened individuals among us who like border walls, they're may be potentially alien invaders living in your gut. Let's see your deranged orange messiah build a wall and deport them back to their shithole birthplace.

Back on a serious note, the reason the astrobiology types are even mentioning anaerobic processes being responsible for the presence of phosphine is because Venus's harsh environment would normally break it apart. So some source is obviously replenishing the phosphine and while here on Earth that would mean bacteria, the possibility of it being something other than life can't be ruled out. However, we have no idea what non-biological process might account for the supply of phosphine. Obviously, further observations and even mission to Venus will be required to determine what exactly is going on in the clouds of Venus.

Going back to the days when the conditions on Venus was discovered, serious science types speculated even then about lifeforms floating in the clouds well above the hellish regions close to the surface. Somewhere around fifty-five kilometers above the surface of the planet temperatures fall to more livable levels. The sulfuric acid rain Venus is also famous for occurs below that level as well.

So incredibly, it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that we could have a complex biosphere in the clouds of Venus. One scientist even speculated about jellyfish-like creatures lazily drifting in wind doing their own jellyfish-like things.

It also has to be mentioned that given the relative closeness of Venus, and Mars for that matter, any life found on those planets could have originated any of the others. That goes for Earth as well, meaning that life here might have sprung up on the other two and due to a volcanic eruption or massive impact threw life-bearing rocks into space that eventually fell to the surface. From there that primitive life did what all life does and eat, reproduce, and spread out.

Venus is not the only planet in our solar system where life might be floating in the clouds. In Carl Sagan's original Cosmos television series back in the 1980s, he speculated on lifeforms living in the clouds of Jupiter. But I believe he admitted that such a thing was highly unlikely given the chaotic and harsh conditions believed to exist in that environment.

More to the point back in the 1980s, the most accepted opinion was that the rest of our solar system was completely devoid of life. Since then there is considerable evidence to suggest that the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the underground regions of Mars, and now Venus have a strong chance to harbor lifeforms. If I had my way, and a couple of trillion dollars within easy reach, we would be finding out as fast as possible. 

 

Sources:

"Venus is a Russian Planet-- Say the Russians"

CNN.com September 18, 2020

"Life on Venus? Scientists Hunt for the Truth" 

Nature.com October 2, 2020 

A Book Review of Revelation Space

 

 Science fiction in its best forms pushes the boundaries of the possible for those individuals who have relatively open minds. That's especially true for the sci-fi subgenre called “hard science fiction,” which builds its stories around known scientific principles and logic. This not to say hard science fiction novels and movies don't include incredible futuristic technology and bizarre situations, they just have to be within the realm of the possible given current knowledge.

In other words popular culture favorites like Star Trek and Star Wars are more accurately defined as science fantasy since they require faster-than-light propulsion (FTL), various forms of extrasensory preconceptions, and near human-like aliens among other impossibilities. \When the legendary Arthur C. Clarke first made this distinction clear to me, I about had a fit with what I thought was an insult to my beloved Star Trek. But he was absolutely correct, anyone can create a space opera fantasy but I have found that stories which built within the realm of what is possible far more satisfying.

This is proven with the Alastair Reynolds novel, Revelation Space. The novel begins in the twenty-sixth century with three seemingly separate story-lines that eventually merge.

The first story-line begins on a planet called Resurgam in the real-life Delta Pavonis star system. A guy by the name of Dan Sylveste is leading an archaeological colony researching the long extinct Amarantin species. Over the years since they arrived on Resurgam, Dan Sylveste has come to believe the Amarantin had developed a technological civilization before their sun had a massive flare and essentially barbecued anything and everything on the surface a million years ago. More importantly, Dan has a strong hypothesis that the flare wasn't a natural disaster, that some intelligence was responsible.

The second story-line centers around Ilia Volyova, who is part of a crew of the starship Nostalgia for Infinity. A massive sub-light vessel called a lighthugger since it came come extremely close to the speed of light. See the crew of the Nostalgia for Infinity all have nanotechnology augmentation devices in their brains and bodies, but in the captain's case he was infected with the “Melding Plague” which mutates both the nanotech and human cells. So Ilia and the rest of the crew want to find Dan Sylveste, who also happens to have considerable knowledge on how to treat the Melding Plague.

At first, the good crew of the Nostalgia for Infinity believes Dan Sylveste is on the colony planet, Yellowstone orbiting the star Epsilon Eridani. This is because with no FTL technology information can be decades out of date by the time it becomes generally known.

The third story-line involves Ana Khouri who is a bit of an accidental castaway on the colony planet Yellowstone. She was originally from a planet called Sky's Edge in a different star system but through a complex set of events, mainly a planetary civil war, is put in long-term hibernation. Hibernation chambers get mixed up and Ana wakes up on a completely different planet decades later. Oh yeah, she's married and her husband's chamber is either still on Sky's Edge or sent God knows where.

While on Yellowstone, Ana has to make a living and gets hired by a mysterious figure known as the Mademoiselle to infiltrate the incoming Nostalgia for Infinity, fly with them to Resurgam and kill Dan Sylveste.

While Dan Sylveste might seem a popular guy, he's a bit of an asshole with numerous people who literally hate his ass. The first being his ex-wife who lead a rebellion on the newly colonized Resurgam years before, stole the starship that brought them there, and high-tailed out of the system to never be heard from again.

Next, Dan's sparkling personality eventually lead to yet another rebellion overthrowing the colonial government he setup and controlled. Which I can't really blame since Resurgam is far from being a garden spot. The planetary atmosphere isn't directly breathable and the surface more or less looks like a heavily burned bagel covered in dust. The rest of the humans on the fledgling colony are tired of digging in the dust and want to turn their attention to terraforming the planet.

After the second coup, Dan is a prisoner of the new government but finds time to fall in love with the daughter of the man who took over and marries her. At the wedding there is yet another coup with Dan and his new wife, a lady named Pascale about the only people who escape the attack.

When the Nostalgia for Infinity arrives at Resurgam the crew radios down demanding that they cough up Sylveste. There are of course issues, this third colonial government tells Nostalgia to go to hell. Illia in turns hacks into the planetary internet altering records to “create” a fake outpost and nukes it from space. This justifiably terrifies the government who quickly offer up Dan and Pascale.

Dan Sylveste being a really clever asshole is brought aboard Nostalgia for Infinity with the crew not knowing he has smuggled microscopic amounts of antimatter hidden inside his own nanotech implants. You might say big deal, but the antimatter is more than enough to destroy the ship.

Dan makes a deal with the crew to not blow up the ship and try to save their captain if they take him to the nearby dwarf planet Cerberus which orbits a neutron star. Dan believes Cerberus is the key to unraveling what happened to the Amarantin.

I'm stopping here because the rest of the novel is about as mind blowing as they come without actually having to cleanup all the blood, bone, and goo off the floor and walls.

***

One of the real scientific topics the novel touches on is the Fermi Paradox. In summary, a bunch of real life top-notch scientists were having lunch on day and began puzzling over the fact that a starfaring species could colonize the galaxy in a couple of million years just zooming along at ten-percent the speed of light. Throw in a few other adventurous species doing the same and there should be ample evidence of alien civilization even here in our own solar system.

So between bites of his Ruben sandwich, Enrico Fermi asks just where in the Hell is everyone. Decades later numerous smart men and women have pondered the question with most possible answers not very comforting and a few outright scary. Yes, this plays to the extinct Amarantin species in the book.

Another fascinating point of the book is the Melding Plague. Here in the real world nanoscopic particles used in various industrial and even household applications are already a health concern. Like microplastic trash, our bodies don't have a means to flush such artificial substances from our bodies. Nanoparticles could be totally benign but in all likelihood they will eventually be found to cause major health concerns.

Now add only slightly futuristic nanotechnology with the particles programmed to perform certain helpful tasks, like destroy cancer cells for example. Imagine billions of smart particles running threw a human body with bad programming, instead of destroying cancer cells they decide to go rogue and eat all the healthy cells.

One of the darkest nightmares of nanotechnology is the Grey Goo scenario where not only are the nanoparticles programmable, but can build new more versions of themselves from any convenient material. We're talking anything from steel, concrete, or even human tissue. Speculation has it that such a “plague” could go exponential and turn the entire surface of the planet into a massive sea of Grey Goo.

The level of universe building in Revelation Space is fantastic. The author, Alastair Reynolds is a master at painting a complex but grounded work of science fiction. The human societies occupying the universe of Revelation Space are in no way places I would like to live. But that makes them even more plausible in my mind given that human nature more or less stays the same in his twenty-sixth century.

If you're a fan of great science fiction go buy or borrow this book. Oh yeah, its part of a trilogy and the second book is even better in my opinion.

Political Ramifications of Closed Temporal Loop Engineering

 

 The subject of time travel has been beat to death in every conceivable media format, including my humble but insightful and wise outlet. But after some deep, pointless thought, I feel the need to gather up the bones of this tired subject one more time and grind them to dust.

The reason for this foray began a couple of weeks ago while watching a documentary on wormholes. Which are theoretical connections between two distant point in space or time. The better description would be a blackhole that just happens to have an exit instead of dead end singularity crushing all in falling matter to an infinitely small point. Going massively simplistic but those wormholes are the only slightly feasible avenues to go backwards in time. Time machines, whether they be some H.G Wells Victorian-era looking device or a heavily modified DeLorean have no basis in reality.

A second impetus for doing another foray into temporal meandering had to do with a You Tube video I watched describing different points in history and what it would taken for a radical change in how those events unfolded. Yes, there were historical events that could have unfolded differently, radically changing the world. But these pivot points, according to the documentary, are quite rare.

For example armchair historians like me often speculate on what it would have taken to prevent the fall of the Roman Empire in the west. The problem being Rome didn't fall for just one easy reason. There were numerous interlocking factors that weakened Roman society to the point nothing could save it. Worse yet, even with the relatively minor factors some were so ingrained in the daily management of that civilization the average Roman couldn't imagine a different way of living. Off the top of my head the best example on that one would be the Emperor picking a successor. There was no established procedure, which often lead to bitter civil wars and enough palace intrigue to destroy the fabric of civil society. This says nothing about a foolish emperor picking a total incompetent or delusional psychopath to take his place.

Of course one of the possible historical points where events could have turned out differently was the American Civil War. Early in the conflict there were several times the Confederacy could have walked away with an easy victory. But as the war dragged on, and Union leadership improved the fate of the Confederate States became consistently darker.

My position is that the majority of historical events are like that or the fall of Rome. That there were just far too many combined factors that any one time traveling explorer could control. This includes such events like the outcome of the American Revolution and the rise of Hitler in Germany.

For the American Revolution, while Britain was the most powerful nation in the world at that time, the colonies were very far away making a set piece war quite difficult. While George Washington might have been defeated fighting the Brits by conventional means, a determined asymmetrical campaign would have eventually made the conflict too costly.

As for Germany, Hitler just didn't appear out of nowhere taking a wealthy and sophisticated nation down an evil path. Hitler's ideas and beliefs were common throughout Germany for centuries, he just used the circumstances of that time to his advantage to gain power. Someone going back in time and doing a John Connor on him would have probably lead to just another tyrant appearing in his place.

Understand that while Hitler had a talent controlling large numbers of people, his decision making skills when it came to war and logistics became increasingly insane as the Second World War raged. A less insane but more coherent Nazi leader might have been far more difficult for the Allies to defeat. In other words, while he plunged the world into chaos killing millions, someone else might have been far worse.

The same goes for our current real-life situation here in America. The Orange Buffoon is the result of decades of decline in the Republican Party. Just removing him will do nothing to correct the neared failed state condition of the United States Government. In fact, you can easily make a case that our national trajectory to our current situation began with the election of Richard Nixon to president back in 1968.

During that time we have a hopelessly intransigent Lyndon Johnson hellbent on victory in Vietnam. As support for the war here in the States goes sideways, LBJ is forced to abandon any plans for reelection. This sets up the big three of Eugene McCarthy, Hubert Humphrey, and Robert Kennedy pursuing the nomination in his place. McCarthy's campaign falls apart while RFK is assassinated leaving a damaged Vice President Humphrey to take the nomination after a disastrous party convention.

So with a little help from George Wallace, Tricky Dick wins big and becomes president of the United States. This sends all those peace, free love, and Age of Aquarius types into the great cosmic abyss to later evolve into the “Me Generation” of the 70s and dirty stinking yuppies of the 80s.

Before that a paranoid Tricky Dick sends his henchmen to the Watergate Hotel to do a little breaking and entering. This leads to Tricky Dick having to resign with Ford becoming POTUS and picking up the disillusioned pieces of an angry and disgruntled population.

President Ford, a decent man, loses the 1976 presidential election because the country is still a mess. Jimmy Carter, and exceptionally good man, becomes president but is metaphorically run over by circumstance setting the stage for Reagan.

Ronny Raygun has the stupid good luck to be around as communism falls apart leading to First Bush coming after him. A distracted and disconnected First Bush is replaced by Slick Willy who while an able administrator can't keep is overactive dick in his pants. This brings Second Bush up to bat who is around when the 9/11 attacks scare and piss off the country.

Feeling the need to crusade and secure the blessings of big oil, Second Bush goes into Iraq ultimately bringing President Barrack Obama to the scene. Obama not only has clean up the Iraq mess, he has to manage an economic Chernobyl so the Great Recession doesn't become the Second Great Depression. Oh yeah, during this time the Republicans have slipped into the Twilight Zone of far right conspiracies and totally delusional ideas of moral and fiscal superiority.

Here we enter the Age of the Orange Buffoon in 2016 as all those descendants of the Age of Aquarius just can't make themselves vote for what they see as the “lesser of two evils.” I could drone on about that fucked up mindset and comment about how even if the “lesser evil” bullshit is true letting the greater evil win is approaching suicidal nihilism. But instead all I'll write that the Orange Buffoon has spent his time in office busily and productively dismantling American democracy.

Getting back to the time travel/changing history gimmick, I believe all this could have been avoided with one “small” change in to past events. That change is preventing the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

I hold that if RFK could have lived to win the nomination he could gave held together the blue collar Democrat types and the wacky peaceniks. George Wallace would still try to play the spoiler but the Kennedy legacy was exceptional powerful back then and might have been enough to send Tricky Dick to defeat and back home to California.

RFK's charisma and leadership skills might have been enough to forge an entirely different path for the country. His presidency could have cemented the reforms that began with his brother and were furthered by LBJ. It goes without saying that RFK would have almost certainly pulled us out of Vietnam quicker that Nixon.

There are times I feel the 1960s was the make or break era for the United States. In many ways America was at the pinnacle of its power and influence. Even with its systemic injustices our country, back then strove to do better, to live up to the principles set forth by every previous generation.

Don't get me wrong, we've never been saints and in fact we as a people are guilty of some hideous crimes. But I believe there was an overall desire to do better, to improve what we were given.

Now we seem to have not only given up but even abandoned the lip service we gave to our most cherish principles and ideals. We're a country now dedicated to increasing efficiency, maintaining an image, making greater profits, and worshiping the god of convenience. That if we can save a couple of bucks on a new coat we'll ignore that someone in China was forced into near slavery working in a factory with thousands of others in similar conditions.

The pinnacle of this mindset is of course the Orange Buffoon. To the small minded he is the epitome of the new American Dream. The Orange Buffoon is all image without a milligram of true substance. He is adept at playing angles and always ready to manipulate people for his benefit. But mainly the Orange Buffoon is exceptional good at hating and getting others to hate those that can't service him.

Even though the Orange Buffoon is much like Hitler in that he is the result of centuries of ignorance and unfounded arrogance, I believe he could have been avoided. That one small change in events could have pushed the world on an entirely different timeline. Of course, that different timeline would not have been utopia, it would certainly have its own flaws, disasters and persistent dangers. And yes, there would always be the chance that changing our history would lead to some darker event like nuclear war.

But right now if a wormhole opened up allowing me to save RFK, I would jump through and make sure he did not walk through that damn kitchen. It would be worth the risk to play god and alter our current dystopian present.

Hoag's Object- A Special Place in the Universe

One of the cruelest jokes ever performed on humanity is its shared delusion of significance. Human cultures are filled with lies of how we occupy some special place in the cosmos symbolizing our importance. The truth being that we are part of an infinite universe that gets steadily more complicated from our discoveries and observations. The best that can be said about our species is that we are momentary sparks of awareness inhabiting a microscopic sliver of eternity.

One of the discoveries that remind me of our true place in the universe is Hoag's Object. It is a rare, nearly symmetrical ring galaxy six-hundred million lightyears away from our planet. Discovered in 1950 by astronomer, Arthur Hoag, he at first believed it to be a planetary nebula- a shroud of gas expelled from a star in the last stage of its life. The truth being that it's a galaxy with a diameter of 120,000 lightyears and consisting of 700 billion stars.

As you can see from the picture, the weirdness of Hoag's Object comes from its shape with young blue stars and plenty of interstellar gas making up the outer ring. The inner core in turn consists of older stars with little to no interstellar gas that would create new stars. There are other ring galaxies we can see from our telescopes but none as clearly defined as Hoag's.

If you paid any attention to science classes while in school, you would remember that there are multitudes of spiral galaxies like our own in the universe, as well as elliptical galaxies that look similar to the center of Hoag's. The big question of course, is what caused Hoag's Object to develop this highly unusual structure. Most reasonable theories appear to involve a collision between two or more galaxies with the aftermath producing what we see from Earth. And yes, what we see of Hoag's Object today existed 600-hundred million years ago since the light from all those stars took that long to reach our planet.

For me the truly bizarre nature of Hoag's Object is the idea that in the outer ring star formation will continue producing more planets as well and hopefully intelligent life. And unless there is a sudden influx of interstellar hydrogen from some source, the stars in the center will eventually die and not be replaced.

How would humanity have reacted if we learned our own galaxy had such a peculiar nature? Think about it, for centuries we burned people to death who dared to question the accepted idea that our planet occupied the center of the universe. That the moon, planets, our sun, and all the stars in the sky revolved around Earth.

Going beyond my idle hypothetical alien speculations, here's some real, factual strangeness to think about. Hoag's Object is so are away that its apparent width is only one quarter of an arcminute. That's about the same width when we look at the planet Mercury from Earth. Looking at the picture of Hoag's Object above you will see another ring galaxy, much further away in distance, in the space between the outer ring and the core. Given the truly rare nature of ring galaxies, the chances of that happening are astronomical. No pun intended!

Random Coronavirus Thoughts and Observations

1.  One of the most amazing examples of hypocrisy in the modern era has to be how fast the right-wing media went from calling the COVID-19 pandemic a Democratic-inspired hoax to a real event. It's truly a rewrite of history that would make Russian  "journalists" and "historians" proud. Yes for those who don't have a clue, I'm being sarcastic equating right-wing media with the puppet media controlled by Trump's good buddy. 

2.  The big thing with right-wingers now is how they are downplaying the pandemic. Far to many people even now continually say that it's just the flu and that there is no reason to allow it to derail the economy. They seem to understand that it's only the apparent health of the U.S. economy that will allow their Orange Buffoon to have another term occupying the White House. Not his ability to inspire people to do good works, or unite a scared country, or manage the Federal Government.

3.   From my observations, there is a nice dose of  privileged white male frustration inherent to downplaying the pandemic. Even though I'm a white male other members of this group begin feeling extremely insecure when situations start to exceed their ability to grasp or control. This causes such anxious people to hoard important items and make runs on gun shops. Because nothing reinforces a delicate white male ego like going survivalist, especially when it comes to weapons. Americans use to truly believe in the saying that we are the land of the free and the home of the brave. That's now a huge dark joke.   

4.  It's a true paradox of our age that corporations who normally make billions in profits have to be suddenly bailed out with taxpayers funds the second the economy goes sideways. While certain politicians and business types cry out in absolute pain whenever someone says the minimum wage needs to be increased to a living wage.

5.   I've never liked living in a Southern middle class suburban setting. Despite all the displays of patriotism and moral rectitude there is a callous shallowness that can easily be seen by someone like me who doesn't fit in but keeps his mouth shut. The best example I can give is the very existence of Trump. Just a few election cycles ago these good moral folks were all in a mighty uproar over Clinton getting a blow job in the Oval Office. Now the Orange Buffoon can pay off porn stars, assault multiple woman, cheat on his wives, threaten the free press and really anyone who gets on his bad side, and openly lie about things that can be quickly disprove. These self-proclaimed pillars of the community will then swear up and down he was sent by God to save the country from the heathen liberals.

6. Climatologists can take a dark comfort with the fact that it's now epidemiologists, experienced physicians and nurses, virologists, and other trained professionals having their judgement questions by individuals who are lucky to have a high school diploma. The science types have said since the beginning COVID-19 could make a lot of people sick. But all the Bubbas and other assorted trailer trash were convinced by their degenerate, reality television star Pied Piper that it was all some new conspiracy. Now a lot of people are going to die because of their stupidity.

                   

The Limits to Humanity

Much to the chagrin of my grandparents who largely raised me, my view of the universe was shaped by Carl Sagan and his various science lectures on television and books. Not that they opposed me watching his version of “Cosmos” on PBS back in the 1980's, in fact my grandfather was probably just as enthralled as me. But lets just say I came away with ideas that didn't fit well with their views. And to be truthful, some of Dr. Sagan's concepts didn't fit well with my understanding of the universe either.

At that time in my youth, I didn't understand the nature of the cosmic speed limit of light and frankly chaffed at the idea that there was no way around it. Having watched the Starship Enterprise and numerous other fictional vessels exceed lightspeed allowing them to have weekly adventures on all manner of alien worlds was something I desperately wanted to be possible. But Carl Sagan did offered up a semi-satisfying alternative in one episode of Cosmos.

Dr. Sagan said that it was theoretically possible for a sublight starship to circumnavigate the observable universe within the lifetime of a human being. Of course this hypothetical starship would have to squeeze extremely close to lightspeed in the order of something way more than 99.99999999 percent of light. Yes, an extremely difficult task given the energy requirements but as imaginary journeys of the mind go, not a show stopper we need to worry about right now.

What makes such an ultimate journey possible for these hypothetical humans would be time dilation, which would more of less stop time for those aboard the starship relative to the rest of the universe. The price these travelers had to pay though was that many billions of years would have passed upon their return home. While I never saw circumnavigating the observable universe as an attractive adventure just to return to a home that didn't exist anymore, it did imply there wasn't anyplace we couldn't reach for exploration and colonization in the future. The same goes for building fascinating stories here in the present.

One of my all-time favorite science fiction novels is entitled “The Genesis Quest” by the late Donald Moffitt. In that book an alien species in the Whirlpool Galaxy, twenty-three million lightyears away, intercept intergalactic radio messages sent by humans in the good-old Milky Way Galaxy. Included in these messages were genetic instructions on how to recreate living humans. A century or two later the resulting colony of Homo sapiens spends most of it time reviewing the information sent from the Milky Way, like the key to immortality, and growing restless.

As with humans, they get stupid and revolt against their good-hearted alien benefactors who promptly give them a massive sublight starship so a bunch of them can make the twenty-three million lightyear journey back home. Because the humans are now immortal, the five-hundred year voyage to the Milky Way is easy-peasy. The trouble arrives in the sequel, “Second Genesis” when they get back to the home galaxy and find out the neighborhood has gone downhill.

Even without warp drive or any other faster-than-light technology, science fiction suggested that humanity had a bright future filled with adventures zipping between galaxies. That was until Dark Energy went and screwed up the whole thing.

Since the early twentieth century we've understood that the universe was expanding. It all started at the Big Bang with space itself inflating outward pushing all matter farther apart. The general idea held by the cosmology boys and girls was that at some point gravity would slow the expansion and eventual pull everything back together into what they called the Big Crunch. Things got weirder as more accurate measurements of the universe showed that the expansion was actually accelerating.

Cosmologists, a bunch not prone to idle speculation, eventually came to the conclusion that there was a mysterious anti-gravity-like force that causes this increased rate of expansion. They call this anti-gravity force Dark Energy because they haven't a clue about how it works.

Where Dark Energy really throws a cosmic monkey wrench into intergalactic travel fantasies is that it is pushing everything outside the Local Group of galaxies, which includes the Milky Way, away from each other essentially faster than the speed of light. Yes, the damn cosmic speed limit is still in effect but that only prevents anything with mass going FTL. Space itself doesn't have any mass so Dark Energy can expand the universe as fast as it wants.

What this means is that when and if humanity ever begins building sublight starships that go as fast as I mentioned above such vessels would never reach the Whirlpool Galaxy. The same would go for the fictional humans of “The Genesis Quest” wanting to return home. With the expansion of space itself such travelers would spend eternity speeding through a dark, growing void.

Now all is not lost as far as intergalactic travel is concerned. The Local Group of galaxies we're inside consists of the Andromeda Galaxy and a whole bunch of dwarf galaxies all occupying an area around three megaparsecs, roughly 9.8 million lightyears. The Milky Way by itself contains between 100 to 400 billion stars with each star system hosting an assortment of planets. The Andromeda Galaxy is estimated to have at least 1 trillion stars with each of them orbited by its own worlds. That's an awful lot of potential real estate for any species capable of pulling their heads out of their asses and acting like they have some intelligence.

In fact since everyone in the Local Group is bound together by gravity, we'll all merge into one huge elliptical galaxy in several billion years. Sometime after that Dark Energy will push the rest of the universe so far away it will beyond our ability to detect given our current technology. Any existing intelligent species at that time will most likely believe the universe is static and unchanging. That is until all the available interstellar hydrogen is used up, stars begin to die, and the universe suffers what is called Heat Death.

Yes, that pesky Dark Energy means Dr. Sagan was wrong about a sublight starship being able to circumnavigate the observable universe. Dark Energy wasn't discovered until the 1990's, several years after his death so you'll have to cut the man considerable slack.

I've got to admit, I find the idea that the vast majority of the universe exists outside our ability to ever reach disturbing on a philosophical level. That the greater majority of it will eventually slip into the darkness never to be seen or considered again. Yeah, that will not happen for billions of years but I grew up influenced by Captains Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, and Archer to believe that at least the galaxy was our playground.

I like to fool myself sometimes to think I can set aside normal human assumptions about the nature of the universe. That assumption being that the cosmos exists to satisfy the needs and desires of our species. Speaking strictly about the universe, it doesn't give a damn about us hairless primates. It might be beneficial to the rest of humanity to realize that fact as well.

Sapiens: The Long Climb

The archaeological site of Jebel Irhoud in Morocco.

Proving that I spent way too much time interested in all the things normal teenagers ignored, I remember being fascinated by a science article on human origins published in the early 1980's. This article was new research that dated the emergence of our species to a little under two-hundred thousand years ago. A remarkably distant time for a South Carolina teenager who regularly heard revival pastors come to my grandparents' church to report the world was at best six-thousand years old.

The two-hundred thousand year human origin article was real science, as opposed to material that purposed horny space aliens mated with our ape-like ancestors to create humans. One of many utterly ridiculous ideas that had been floating around in popular culture/New Age circles since the early 1970's. These preeminent bullshit theories can all be traced back to Swiss wacko, Erich von Daniken who had extraterrestrials inhabiting every attic and basement on prehistoric Earth and onward into the present.

The real science that tickled the fascination centers of my brain had our ancestors evolving in eastern Africa with early Homo sapiens popping up in southern Africa. At that time, H. sapien appearance was considered “sudden” with them weathering tough climate times in caves on what is now the South African coast. Once the climate situation improved, our people then moved out of Africa to spread across the globe. The general assumption after that being H. sapiens quickly eliminated the “brutish” and primitive Neanderthals while conquering the rest of the planet.

A nice tidy theory that has been turned on its ear.

Back in 2017 the fossils of five Homo sapien individuals dating to nearly three-hundred thousand years ago were found in a cave in Morocco. Needless to say, this fossil find overthrows the idea that our species popped up in eastern Africa before moving down to the South African coast to hang out eating tubers and shellfish. That our species originated throughout the entire continent of Africa.

Northern Africa was probably quite different three-hundred thousand years ago with the Sahara going through a green and wet period allowing those five individuals to hunt plentiful game. There was an important difference between those early humans and those of us alive today. The individuals discovered in the Moroccan cave had smaller versions of the cerebellum. Additionally their braincases were elongated resembling archaic human lineages instead of modern humans.

Despite these internal differences, numerous computer studies and 3D x-ray measurements of the fossils reveal that these people were almost indistinguishable from those of us living today. Whether or not these folks could have been taught complex abstract ideas is questionable, but they did make stone tools to aid in their daily survival.

The book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari purposes that Homo sapiens were pretty lowly creatures up until seventy-thousand years ago when we went through a “cognitive revolution.” This allowed our species develop abstract, imaginary ideas like gods, nations, money, and human rights among many other concepts. Armed with this ability to imagine new things humans acquired the ability to cooperate in larger numbers as compared to our hairier primate kinfolk.

Like my younger teenage self, it fascinates me how our ancestors navigated those long, dark millennia before some unknown spark pushed us over the edge into true sentience. Contrary to Mr. von Daniken and his confused followers, no advance aliens helped our ancestors. Through centuries of monstrous trial and horrific error our species scratched its way up from living in caves and working with stone to the technological civilization we have today.

Ultimately, my thoughts lead me to the opposite end of where we came from to where we are going. Will Homo sapiens exist three-hundred thousand years from now and if we do, what will the lives of our descendants be like.

Of course, my hope is that our species will have spread out to the solar system and beyond. That our far-flung children might one day look back upon our time and feel a similar fascination at how we eventually moved beyond the primitive and destructive desires that hold us back now. 

Source Material: Oldest Fossils of Our Species Push Back Origin of Modern Humans. 

An Update From Betelgeuse

Just because I do not want to write about the ongoing crimes of the Orange Buffoon, climate change and Australia being on fire, or the really scary Corona virus, here's another disaster that could be upon us soon. Well, that “soon” part is strictly speaking a bit of a misnomer on human terms, but on the cosmological timescale it could happen any minute. The disaster I am referring to is the “imminent” supernova explosion of the star Betelgeuse.

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star located in the Orion constellation about 700 light-years away from Earth. That red supergiant description isn't just words, if Betelgeuse took the place of our sun its boiling plasma surface would reach beyond the asteroid belt. Of course, such a size means the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars would be inside the star being cooked like cheap turkeys. 

Wanting to avoid all the stellar techo-babble about Betelgeuse, that huge size means its lifespan is considerably shorter than our long-lived sun. The best estimate of Betelgeuse age is a little over ten million years, thankfully, there hasn't been enough time for intelligent life to evolve on any planets that might orbit it. Although when Betelgeuse does go BOOM, any inhabited star system within a few dozen lightyears are in serious trouble.

When Betelgeuse does go supernova the best estimates is that it will shine as bright as a half-moon for about three months. Bright enough to cast shadows at night and be seen in the daytime. Even as it dims, the supernova will be visible during the day for about a year and several years afterward at night.

The reason why the science journalists have been mentioning Betelgeuse recently is because back in October of 2019 it started to dim noticeably. By January of 2020 its brightness had continued to drop appreciably prompting speculation by less than accurate science sources that the star was going supernova on a time frame on par with our society's short attention span. Realistically, Betelgeuse could go supernova anytime in the next 100,000 years. Meaning our current human civilization will either be dead and gone or changed beyond all recognition by the time it lights up Earth's sky.

Now the universe has a tendency to overturn human expectations, so while I fully understand it will be thousands of years before Betelgeuse explodes, there's a part of me that wouldn't be surprised if it does happen soon. Even though our civilization has embraced rationality and scientific inquiry, at least in name for the last five-hundred years, I can only imagine the ridiculous and possibly dangerous reactions that various people and groups might have to a visible supernova. Just a few years back a total eclipse of the sun tracking through the United States had people proclaiming it was a sign of God like ignorant medieval peasants.

Yeah, if you want to get technical someone could say the orbital mechanics of planets and moons was set in motion by God billions of years ago. But a solar eclipse isn't something that happens suddenly or miraculously, humans have an expert-level grasp on when and where these events occur. Have a wormhole to the Alpha Centauri star system open up suddenly just beyond lunar orbit and that's when I'll start considering the inexplicable. Even then one of Arthur C. Clarke's laws comes to mind that any sufficiently advances technology is indistinguishable from magic.

It would be nice if a Betelgeuse supernova caused humans to realize they are comparable to viruses living on a speck of dust floating in the air and begin to clean up their act. But despite countless religious-based admonishments that humans are insignificant creatures, a number of us not only believe we can guess the mind of God but that the Almighty engages in direct conversations with a select few. The former taking the shape of bizarre indicts condemning certain people for no justifiable reason. As for the latter example, numerous politicians will get on television and say with a straight face that God picked them to be President of the United States. The only thing more glaringly stupid would be for the unwashed masses to believe such claims of divine preference in human political affairs.

So you should be able to guess that my worries about a Betelgeuse supernova would be for the various usual suspects to claim it was a sign of godly displeasure or approval on some subject. Even worse would be for some narcissistic, delusional personality to say it was a sign to launch a crusade or Jihad against evil heathens. Only a few centuries ago some societies freaked out over the sudden appearance of a comet in the nighttime sky. Which is nothing but a large dirty snowball doing a gravity-directed loop around the sun.

When all is said and done Betelgeuse will do its thing when it's ready without any regard to the hairless primates here on Earth. I guess the one certifiably good thing in all this is that we're over 700 lightyears away from the explosion so that when it goes supernova, it will just be a light show for us or our descendants. For any possible alien civilization within a couple of dozen lightyears of Betelgeuse, it will truly seem like a biblical event.

Yes, I should have mentioned the little tidbit about how Betelgeuse could have in fact already gone supernova but we wouldn't know it until the light of the explosion reaches Earth. But I guess if you want to view time from our end of space it hasn't happened yet until we see it.