God not only plays dice, He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen.
~Stephen Hawking

In this particular post we will be discussing one of my favorite universal phenomena, black holes. They are the most powerful force in the cosmos, able to wreak havoc and destruction on an incomprehensible scale. Yet they also seem to be a major key to the formation of galaxies and a big reason why any of us are even here to talk about it. We’ll discuss this, what we think black holes are and what they may do, and end with a scenario involving a black hole near Earth. This is not a scientific text. I’m just a pop-science junkie and I am fascinated by the mysteries of the universe.  So let’s begin at the beginning.

In the late 18th century cosmology was still very much in its infancy. We had  a pretty good picture of the solar system and how it operated, but the distant stars still eluded us. There were many theories for how the universe was constructed and mos tall of them came back to a steady state model.  This theory proposed that the universe was always here just as it is. It is infinite, eternal, and unchanging. This included theories about the spontaneous creation of matter to fill this infinite, eternal space. And if you were  a physicist alive at the time, it would make perfect sense to you. The technology was limited so the theories had to be as well.  The “discovery” of black holes came about during an experiment to test the effects of gravity by John Mitchell. Mitchell, a geologist by trade, dabbled in various arenas of science. And by dabbled I mean made revolutionary discoveries that would have made Einstein tip his hat.

During his various tests he attempted to measure the effects of gravity on light. Again the science was limited by the technology but in 1783 he wrote a letter to the Royal Society in London detailing what he called, “dark stars”. Bodies containing an absurd amount of density that “trap” everything near it, including light. he lamented that he didn’t have the tools necessary to further study this possible phenomena but he hoped his efforts would help future generations discover the truth. A true scientist in every sense of the word. But his work didn’t get many looks. It didn’t fit well with the steady state model that dominated science and it would be more than a century before that model changed. Light was seen as  a wave. A wave without mass. So very few people could be convinced that gravity could so strongly effect something with no mass. So Mitchell’s study sat unnoticed until a patent official from Zurich changed everything.

In the early 20th century the steady state model was coming to an end. The technology was beginning to catch up to the science and people were viewing the universe in a different way. Followed closely together was Albert Einstein’s theory of relatively in 1915, and Edwin Hubble’s 1925 paper detailing stars beyond our own galaxy. Yes, at this time we still assumed our galaxy was it. Nothing beyond it but empty space. Hubble proved otherwise with a telescope large than any that had come before it. But the big discovery relevant to our issue was Einsteins ‘s theory. It changed the concept of space, time, and gravity. Now they were all linked. Einstein’s theory proposed that sufficient mass curves spacetime significantly, and nearby objects fall in toward it. Given the speed of the object, it will either crash into the mass or “fall” into an orbit around  it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbhuRcmSkMg

It also became apparent that light had a dual property as both a wave and particles. This reopened discussion on “dark stars”. If a dense mass curved space enough, and light was a series of particles following a definite path in space, the mass could indeed “trap light”. All paths the light would travel are now bent back in toward the object and light cannot escape from it. But the objects being discussed now were no longer dark stars. If gravity could have such an effect, what would be its limit? How far could it collapse an object?   Karl Schwarzschild was at the forefront of this study. His work, also released in 1915, proved that a star of sufficient mass would collapse in on itself to a point that it literally falls in on itself.  Many were skeptical. They felt some device was in place preventing such a catastrophic ripping of spacetime. And indeed there was. But only for certain stars who did not have enough mass to fully collapse. They would reach a point then settle into what we call a neutron star.

Schwarzschild black hole model

But now it was almost accepted that black hoes were a possibility. It was still very much theory though. Mostly because it was insanely difficult to actually find and catalog a black hole. Well, the absurdity of it all was a turn off to many as well. A “hole” in space? Where does it go? What happens to the material sucked into it? Gravity was and is one of the big mysteries of the cosmos. Gravity is weak. It can be overcome with a tiny magnet. But it is constant. It wins in the end through sheer attrition. It takes a great amount of energy to escape the Earth’s gravitational pull. It extends all the way out past the moon but lessens as you move further away. With a black hole we are talking about an object with a mass thousands or even millions of times greater than the Earth. There was also the argument about whether black holes were actual physical objects or not. A small group of physicists believed strongly that they were but most of the community had already brushed them off as unfounded speculation on Einstein’s equations.

For decades researchers on black holes was relegated to the basement of physics, like  a zoologist looking for Bigfoot. But important people still took interest. In 1939, a team of physicists led by Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, determined that black holes were indeed a possibility. If  a star of sufficient mass began to collapse, no known force was available to stop it.  In the late 50′s the black hole picture began to morph into what we know today. Schwarzschild’s model was studied relentlessly and a  new term, event horizon, was invented for the  “flat surface” framing his models. The event horizon is the point of no return. Once you cross into it there is no going back.  A black hole’s gravitational pull actually isn’t that strong outside the event horizon. But once across it the pull is tremendous and nothing, not even light, can escape. And this is also where physics starts getting real weird. Imagine for a moment you are in a space shuttle orbiting a black hole. You’re watching a fellow astronaut move toward the event horizon. He’s moving, and moving, and moving, then all of a sudden he stops. Frozen motionless in time.

But the other astronaut is still moving. To them time is still moving along just as it should. This is gravitational time dilation.  As you move closer to massive objects, time slows down. As Einstein’s theory shows, space and time are one. So a significant warping of space will result in a like warping of time. The astronaut in the ship will also see his comrade redshifting  as he or she approached the event horizon and the visible light reflected from them becomes less and less. Eventually it will become so dim you can no longer see them even though they are there. Then our astronaut friend becomes one with the black hole. But what exactly does that mean? This would be the next big battle in black hole research. Where does everything go and does it just disappear? And do things actually “escape” them?

Artistic rendering of a black hole "feeding", provided by NASA.

In the mid 20th century talk began about what a black hole is exactly. It is all still just theory after all. Even though research on them is taken more seriously, there is still a school of physicists who insist they don’t even exist. And even if they did it would be under exotic conditions they had yet to find in the universe. But, the “known universe” was only  a few decades old at this time so no one should have been so absolute about something they just discovered. What boosted interest in black holes was the confirmation of the existence of neutron stars when scientists observed  a pulsar in 1967. The same theories that led to neutron stars also led to black holes. More great young minds began taking black hole research more seriously and the field increased significantly. It was also around this time that the term ‘black hole’ actually began to be used.

Over the next few decades equations were produced to define and describe the structure of black holes and the concept of the singularity. A singularity is a point where things merge and become one. It was theorized that every black hole contained a singularity at its center. Singularities were, and in some places still are, the most controversial part of black hole physics. Number one, physics was incapable of describing it. In a singularity the laws of physics we understand do not exist. Up is left, right is purple, and the trees sleep with the  moonlight. Gravity becomes infinite.  Infinite is a tricky word that many mathematicians and physicists dislike. It’s not a real number.  You get into the concept of “imaginary numbers” and other voodoo tricks we use to try to grasp what we can’t grasp. Just take  a moment to think about infinity. Think about infinite gravity. An endless pressure forever increasing.

Still, theories were produced that proved to be mathematically sound. But science needs observation and it’s currently impossible to observe a singularity. The next big point of contention is what happens to matter drawn into that singularity. Early theories suggested that the information of an object, it’s essential quantum make-up, was lost or destroyed inside the black hole. This caused an uproar in the scientific community. One of the basic tenets of physics is that this cannot happen. You’ve probably heard it simplified in the phrase “matter/energy cannot be created or destroyed”. Matter just becomes energy and vice versa. The conservation theory. All energy in a system is constant. You just can’t up and remove it from the universe. A major supporter of this theory was Stephen Hawking, probably the most famous scientist since Einstein. He believed the information crossing the event horizon  was lost to the universe forever and that every black hole was essentially the same regardless of what information it consumed.

With the dawn of quantum mechanics,  many of Hawking’s previous theories began to crumble. In quantum mechanics all information stays the same at the quantum level no matter what happens. It’s make up now determines its makeup in the future. But Hawking was suggesting that the radiation patterns in every black hole would be the same and so different quantum makeups would conform into the same type. Quantum mechanics proved this was pretty much impossible.  Even inside  a black hole. Not only was information not lost, stuff actually “escapes” black holes in the form of radiation and various cosmic rays. Black holes emit jets of gas and energy away from them as they feed, stretching light years into space. Some longer than entire galaxies. In 2004 Hawking was forced to admit he had made an error and gladly accepted the new findings.

By the mid 70′s observational data was beginning to leak in on black holes. Black holes can’t actually be observed.  Thus the name. However you can study the area around it to see signs of its existence. Most notably it’s effect on the gravitational fields of nearby objects. Scientists began observing gravitational abnormalities in various areas of space and cold only come to one conclusion. An object of incredible density was nearby. But they couldn’t see it. Still it was the most reasonable conclusion. Nothing they had discovered could even come close to producing the effects seen. This research led to another shocking discovery in the last decade or so. It seems that almost every galaxy in the universe, especially ones like our own, contains a supermassive black hole at its center.   Supermassive black holes are just that. Black holes of an inconceivable size. It is accepted fact that stellar(normal) black holes are created from collapsing stars. But the star that forms a supermassive black hole would have to be so colossal that it seems impossible to think it could even pull its self together let alone sustain the processes necessary to form a black hole. They could have possibly formed when a proto-galaxy collapsed in on itself.

A possibly more believable theory is that they began as stellar black holes long ago and absorbed enough matter over time to reach this titanic size. Or that they were created during the turbulent moments following the Big Bang. No matter the reason they seem to be tied to galaxies in some ways. And just how remains unclear. For the longest time we felt the size of a supermassive black hole and  it’s galaxy were tied together. That theory went out the window in December of this year. Scientists discovered two black holes of colossal size. One black hole ten million solar masses in size and the other almost double that. A solar mass is the size of our sun. It’s 20 million times larger than our sun. And they are far too big to be in the galaxies they are in. Or so we had thought. And how do they get there? Scientists believe the galaxy forms around the black hole. As the black hole feeds, the energy it emits pushes the bulk of the galaxy back out of its reach and gives it room to grow. Another discovery was made earlier in March and for the first time scientists caught a black hole feeding.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3Z5AS3TTS4

But we’re still no closer to figuring out exactly what they are. Again, we love observations, and gamma bursts on a satellite just don’t give us enough to paint a clear picture. And everything about the singularity contained within is pure conjecture. As OI said before, many people are not comfortable with the word infinite. So many physicists feel there is a limit to what can be packed into a black hole. So when it reaches its limit does it just “throw up” the excess? But, of course, some physicists think there is no theoretical limit. Because some people think black holes are more than just a collection of densely packed matter. Some theorists believe black holes are actually gateways to other dimensions.

Yeah it's getting crazy

There is science behind this though. Real science. A few decades ago talk of other dimensions was best left to science fiction writers.  Now it’s one of the most popular subjects in labs and classrooms around the world. ‘Cause who ever said there were only 3 dimensions? Einstein’s equations produced a lot of things he never thought they would. That any scientist ever thought they would. One of the most interesting and compelling is the possibility of other dimensions.

As I stated before, gravity is a weird thing we are still very much trying to figure out. It’s distribution across the universe seems, uneven. One of the biggest discoveries of the 20th century was Hubble’s discovery of the expanding universe. What we found out decades later is not only is it expanding, the expansion is speeding up. An incredibly surprising revelation considering that, given the amount of observable matter in the universe, it should be physically impossible for it to still be gaining speed. It’s like something we can’t see is accelerating the expansion of the universe. One possibility thrown out early on was “dark energy/matter”. Another clever trick to explain what we don’t understand. According to physicists about 90% of the matter that make sup the universe is missing or can’t be seen. Hence the term, dark matter.  A way to explain the expansion and why stars at the edges of galaxies move as fast as those further in. Another thing that just shouldn’t happen.

But some physicists are contesting the notion of dark matter. They believe the extra gravity is coming from other dimensions. Some believe there is a whole universe right next to ours, and it exerts its gravity on us and we on them. Maybe the reason gravity isn’t as strong as other universal forces is because some of it is lost to these other dimensions. And black holes are just gravity wells connecting two universes. But how messed up is it if every black hole contains a universe? Including ours. And gravity just flows freely between them all. Connects us to them. Plans are already underway to test these theories. I look forward to the results.

The following is highly theoretical and extremely implausible.  But, not impossible.

It is morning(eastern time), February 12, 2012. All around the globe people are beginning and ending their days. Not knowing this will be the last one ever on Earth. At 10:00 a.m. EST, a huge deviation in the orbit of the moon is detected. Almost as if something is pulling it off course, closer to the Earth. Confident it’s a calibration era, machines are reset and the test is run again. The results are the same only now the orbit is further degraded. Hours later reports come in all around the globe of huge seismic activity. As though every plate on earth were going off simultaneously.  And some creepy data suggesting that mountains are shrinking. Falling back into the earth.

Then the sinkholes begin.  Enormous chunks of earth, some the size of a state, begin falling away. Officials are at a loss to explain what is going on. Then 7 hours after the initial reading on the moon, the news come in. And it is grim. Experiments at the large hadron collider have produced an until now unknown side effect. A black hole. It has sunk to the center of the Earth and is now eating it away piece by piece. In less than 24 hours there will be very little left of the planet that is once our home. The black hole’s modest size has only increased its hunger and it devours the earth at a rate far greater than some of its larger brethren.

Panic and chaos erupts across the globe as everyone realizes this is it. Some find peace with what is happening while most lose their fucking minds. Coastal areas are destroyed as the steadily approaching moon wreaks havoc on the oceans. Oceans that soon fall away to be eaten by the beast at the center of our globe. As the earth begins to fracture and distort the core ceases to produce a magnetic field. Remaining plant and animal life slowly begin to suffocate as the Earth’s atmosphere is pulled away. 15 hours after the initial discovery there is nothign left living on Earth. And the planet is barley recognizable. Looking almost like  a dented tin can it continues to fall in on itself toward the awaiting black hole. Any human who may have fallen toward the black hole Earth on would have experienced something freaky. If they go in feet first that is where they will first feel it. And it won’t be all at once. The black hole will exert a constant even pull that stretches the very molecular fiber of your body as you are unraveled like an old sweater. A spaghetti string slurped up by the black hole. Not a bad way to go.   Painful? Oh I’d have to think it’s unbearable. But its gotta look pretty cool.

20 hours in and the Earth is gone. Replaced by the cosmic entity that devoured it. But it’s not over. Soon the moon reaches the event horizon and joins us in the singularity. All becomes one at the center of the black hole. No trace that the Earth ever existed. That humanity was ever here. And then it turns to look at Mars.

So I hope you enjoyed this highly unscientific discussion of a strange scientific phenomena. And don’t worry, the odds of the LHC producing a sustainable black hole are so tiny they aren’t even worth considering. And if one got anywhere near us, cosmically speaking, we’d know well ahead of time. Which would just wind up being torture since there isn’t anything we can do about it. But, maybe in the thousand years it takes to get here, we can figure out how to get the fuck outta here.

One of my favorite segments in the series is “Through the Wormhole, Is There a Creator?”  The whole series is really a cannot miss if you are curious about the universe around you.

One theorist who claims he knows where  the concept of God comes from was proposed by neurologist Dr. Michael Persinger.   He claims he can demonstrate God is created in the human mind, actually he claims to know particularly where in the human brain.  He uses a devise called the “God Helmet” which stimulates parts of the brain using electro-magnatism no more powerful than a blow drier.  He theorizes that if you stimulate an area on the right side of the brain in the mesiobasal temporal lobes that it creates a sense of God.  According to his studies subjects wear the helmet under sensory deprivation conditions and they frequently reports  ”mystical experiences and altered states”.

Dr. Persinger demonstrated this devise on a college student on the show.  When the student’s EEG appeared to exhibit psuedo-delta waves she started to fell a presence in the room and reported different several out of body experiences.  She claimed that there were five entities floating around her.  She had an sesation where she was floating above her body and looking down on herself.  An experience she did not like was the appearance of flames around her.  After the experience she was really quite awed and relaxed after looking nervous going into the experiment.

Her experiences made me think of two cases I had heard about before in my experience.  Anyone who has heard people talking about near death experiences has heard them relate similar out of body experience.  Was Moses burning bush literally a figment of his unconscious imagination?  Was the first question that came to my mind.

Being a chemist by training I also wonder if psychotropic drugs like peyote can interact with this portion of the brain and that’s the source of their halucinagenic effects.

Dr. Persinger claims 80% of subjects experience some kind of “presence” in the room and about 1% of patients say they saw God herself.

Dr. Persinger hypothesizes that this presence most subjects experience is our sense of God, similar to our conscious feelings of self as sentient beings.  He thinks since we are the one species on the planet who really knows what the consequences of death are that activity in this part of the brain is a sort of a survival mechanism that helps us deal emotionally with our own demise.

Michelle Bachmann must have her own personal “God Helmet” or possible uses a blow drier far too frequently to form that perfect “Helmet Head” hairdo.  I really don’t know.  But on Friday June 1st she received a calling from God to run for the GOP nomination.

Michele Bachmann: “God Calling on Me to Run”

The Minnesota congresswoman said she received a “calling” to enter the 2012 presidential race. She spoke in an interview with Iowa Public Television on Friday.

“Well, every decision that I make, I pray about, as does my husband, and I can tell you, yes, I’ve had that calling and that tugging on my heart that this is the right thing to do,” Bachmann said.

Bachmann says she experienced a similar type of spiritual guidance in 2006 when she ran for Congress from Minnesota.

“God then called me to run for the United States Congress. And I thought, what in the world would that be for? And my husband said, “You need to do this,” Bachmann said at The Living Word Christian Center, a megachurch in Minnesota, during her campaign.

Personally if Michelle Bachmann’s God is so cruel that they want to take away affordable healthcare.  I don’t have much time for that God.

 

 

First and foremost, The Quiet Invasion is a first contact story. What would we do if we actually found evidence of alien life out there? It’s also about politics.
~Sarah Zettel

 

This month the National Geographic Channel(NGC) debuted a new special on alien invasion titled, “When Aliens Attack”. It involved a scenario in which Earth makes First Contact with an alien race and how the human race would respond if they turn hostile. I will pretty much follow their outline for the events, but add a little more detail to certain points I found interesting. It seems like a silly subject to discuss but believe me when I say that the governments of the world take it seriously. Especially America, England, and Mexico. In the last decade, with the discovery of many possible life bearing planets close to our own solar system, government agencies have begun the serious work of planning for an alien invasion force. It may never come, but the consequences are serious and must be planned for.

Why get so strung out about alien contact? Many people believe that such an advanced and enlightened species would have long ago moved past the problems leading to conflict and aggression. That they would come in peace and share their advanced knowledge with us. Don’t be so sure. It has never been the case on Earth. In fact, the most technologically and socially advanced cultures on Earth have most often been the aggressors. These great advances, and the ability to sustain them, require resources and labor that are not infinite on any planet or in any solar system that we know of. The most likely scenario on the books involve a species looking for new resources. Perhaps a nomadic civilization that roams from planet to planet refilling it’s coffers. This scenario has come into question in recent years though. Astronomers know now that water is looking like one of the most abundant elements in the universe. At first we couldn’t find it anywhere, now, with better technology, we can’t miss it. There is more gold, iron, and other valuable minerals in a single asteroid than there is on all of Earth. An alien race probably wouldn’t have to come all the way to Earth to find these things in great abundance.

The NGC special suggests they are here for something they can possibly only get on Earth, chlorophyll and protein. Our plants and animals. In the tv special, they are shown  basically stripping our land of trees, plants, and animals. Pulling them all up into their collection ships.

Collection ship from National Geographic special.

It is a good reason for coming here. Those are two things we don’t find anywhere else in the universe. At least not so far. Everything else worth having has been accounted for. Resources are most definitely what they are here for. Why they need them could possibly remain a mystery. Perhaps they need protein like we do but they don’t process it the same way. Perhaps they have a partially plant like biology and need the chlorophyll to produce energy. Unless we actually took prisoners, we’d probably never know. But we’re not gonna take prisoners. Let’s be real. A species capable of traveling between the stars is so far beyond us technologically that it’s silly to think we could match them.

Alien Mothership orbiting Earth

Let’s back up to first contact. As soon as we realize the object in orbit is exhibiting intelligence, we will begin attempting to communicate with them. This may not work though, whether they were friendly or not.  Think of how hard it is for two different cultures on Earth to communicate. This would be a whole ‘nother species. We think that sending mathematical codes may work since math is a universal language, but what do we know? Perhaps they have a math and physics we can’t even begin to comprehend. If they are hostile, it’s all meaningless anyways. They’re not here to communicate,  they’re here to conquer. What is one of the first things an army does when attacking a target? They disrupt the enemy’s communications. The invaders first  strike will most likely be against our satellites. Without them our military infrastructure is all but blind. After that, they will most likely immediately send in forward assault teams.

Individual ships break from the mothership and descend to Earth. Much like the movie Independence Day.

We could be in trouble.

 

The appearance of giant spaceships all across the world will most likely lead to a tempered panic. Many will flee and fear the worst, but many more will remain to see what happens. It’ s human nature. We HAVE to know. The ships will most likely mass over the densest population points. Any place that lights up real bright at night. When you attack someone, you want to cripple their military infrastructure.  This means destroying their factories and means of production.  These are located in civilian populations. We didn’t drop atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they were full of military bases. They had none. We bombed them because they were manufacturing centers. At first, America and other countries, will scramble jets to get  a closer look at the ships. It’s standard procedure for any craft entering our airspace that doesn’t identify itself.

Spoiler: It doesn't go well.

The ships most likely contain a mechanized armada for air and land combat. Robots are the most likely force we will face in an invasion. In our own short history of exploring other planets, we see that robots lead the way. Our own military is becoming more mechanized with each passing decade. Traveling such great distances in space can be very taxing on an organic being. There’s no reason to believe this isn’t a mechanized assault being controlled from a distance. Int he NGC special, it turns out to be just that. Our fighter jets are quickly met by a swarm of alien aircraft moving with incredible speed and agility. Missile locks prove useless since the alien craft use propulsion systems far beyond our own. It is easy for them to dodge the missile, even at point blank range. Air superiority is crucial in any conflict. If you own the sky, you basically dictate the battle. Once air superiority is   achieved, the ground assault will begin. This too will most likely include mechanized units, as was displayed in the NGC special.

Walking cannons. Simple, efficient, deadly.

The projectiles used by these “mechs” will most likely be an energy weapon of some kind. Laser based weaponry is already being researched on Earth, but the application to weapons is proving difficult. We cannot produce the energy right now to make a field ready laser weapon. A far advanced alien race that travels in space has no such limitations. It is apparent they have access to an incredible energy source and learned to use it to power their machines and weapons. They could be laser based or even plasma based. Most of the  ordinary matter in the universe is in a plasma state, such as in stars. Plasma is capable of conducting tremendous amounts of energy, and any weapon based on this tech would be formidable indeed.

Green lasers? That is so cliche!

Immediately, our armies would be overwhelmed. The invading air force would have moved on from the cities and begun bombing every military installation they can find while the ground force continues to decimate the cities and the people. It would be a large, well coordinated, and incredibly violent strike. We call it “Shock and Awe”. You basically try to throw a knockout punch on the first swing. Decimate the target so suddenly and severely that they lose the will to fight back. It’s a tactic that existed long before we called it “shock and awe”. It was a hallmark of the Roman and Persian armies. Sun Tzu even used it:  “selective, instant decapitation of military or societal targets to achieve shock and awe.” The carpet bombings of Vietnam and WW2. The A-bombs in Japan. All meant to destroy on a large scale and weaken the morale of the opposing force. It has had varying degrees of success. Often it proves quite difficult to break the human spirit, and that may be our key weapon against an overwhelming alien invasion, dogged determination.

Most likely, the aliens will win the opening battles. And probably quite convincingly. We literally pay people to do NOTHING but come to a room and devise new ways to kill tons of people. There are secret and semi-secret weapons programs being carried out right now. According to the NGC special, and my personal opinion as well, the Railgun could be  a tide turning weapon.  A railgun is a device much like a regular gun. A “bullet” is loaded into the chamber and fired. What is different is the way the object is launched. In a gun, the bullet is propelled by the force of combustion from exploding gunpowder. In a railgun, the object is pulled along a tract by magnets. Railguns can propel objects to tremendous speeds. Speed is the key to all impacts. Speed produces energy and this energy is transferred all at once to the impacted target resulting in forces many, MANY times greater than the mass of the object. For all the damage a cannonball does, fired from a railgun, a similar sized object  could destroy a tank quite easily.

The problem is that it is still very much in developmental stages. Denting solid steel with a pebble is a far cry from bringing down a spaceship. Also, even if they were field ready, our manufacturing sector is history, remember. We simply can’t mass produce them and we don’t have enough to stage an effective counter attack. Without air support, rapid deployment is a no go anyways. Human civilization will be destroyed. There is just really no way around it.  Before we can even begin to comprehend what is happening, our major cities will be smoldering ruins. Society will collapse, and NO ONE will be coming to help. Mass rioting and looting will be prevalent for days, even weeks.The casualties will be catastrophic. Some predictions have at least 70% of the world’s population being wiped out. Most won’t know how to deal with it. They are so dependent on the society that doesn’t exist anymore they will be paralyzed with fear and doubt. It is a survival of the fittest situation and the odds say a great many of us are not fit. Just look at the great natural disasters we’ve had. As much as we want to be, we just aren’t equipped to deal with devastation on this scale. The mind can only absorb so much before it shuts down.

People will escape though. Pockets of men and women who are ready, mentally and physically, to deal with the collapse of human civilization will make it out.  At some point, armies will be ordered to retreat and leave the cities. Told to separate and hide as well as they can until they are ordered differently. It’s not that we’ve given up, we just realize it is pointless to have a head on conflict. Following this exodus is when the real war will begin. To be serious, any alien race that thinks Earth to be an easy target is fooling themselves. Humans, like all living things, have an intense, natural drive to survive. Most people do not easily accept their own demise. It is not odd to think that the invaders would know this.  Surely we are not their first conquest. What if we aren’t even their only war? If they follow military strategy like we do, they wouldn’t commit their entire force to this invasion either way.

Anyways, after the armies have dispersed, world leaders will assess their last possible means of attack. Nuclear weapons. In the NGC special, President Obama is portrayed in a secret underground bunker making the decision to use nukes against the aliens. Bil Pullman’s character, in the movie Independence Day, was faced with the same decision. He eventually ordered the strike as did Obama in the NGC special. It’s a weighty decision to make. Our bombs are far stronger now a days. A single nuke could wipe out all of London or Washington. But what else is there to do? The most agony will be in knowing that there are still people alive out there in the cities. Hiding and hoping help will come. In the movie, the nukes have no affect. The alien ships are using force fields. The ones invading us may well use them too, as they did on the NGC special. The nuke strike in their scenario failed as well. Force field technology is in the earliest stages here on Earth, so it makes sense the invading force has mastered them. This may have not been invented for purely military purposes though.As the NGC special pointed out, whether it’s force fields or some sort of metallurgy we don’t know yet, alien ships will have to be protected for travel through space. Not just from radiation and other cosmic rays but from the impact of micro meteors and other debris. These objects travel at insane speeds through space, and like the railgun example, it wouldn’t take a very large object to cause problems. Any species that may use plasma based weapons could also have mastered the use of plasma shielding. With it’s intense electrical charge, plasma could repel most all matter it comes in contact with, solid or energy. Another reason a “war” with aliens would be short and bitter. Can’t touch them.

So the cities are in ruins and mankind is regrouping in the forests and caves of the world. Any place that provides shelter and low visibility. Months have passed since first contact and humans are adjusting to their new situation.   Time to form a resistance group. This means changing everything we know about the “norms of society”. The continuation of the human species is at stake so breeding becomes a very important issue. Modesty has to be thrown out the window. This means any female of birthing age must be pregnant. And pregnant with A LOT of babies form many different fathers. Fertility drugs will most likely become a prized possession. No one is talking about opening rape rooms and chaining women down, but there HAS to be a priority put on breeding. Organized groups with recognized leadership will find it easiest to implement. There’s a lot of trust involved here. Every person 14 and above should be armed. Even females unable or unwilling to breed, must be armed and put on the front lines. I keep using the word “breed” because there is nothing fancy about this. This is sexual reproduction with only one purpose, producing as many humans as possible in the shortest amount of time. Sounds crude, sounds barbaric, but it is necessary for the survival of the human race, post invasion.

Now, moving away from that dreary but necessary prospect, we get back to the military side of our resistance movement. With the armies broken and people fearing the worst, the NGC special treats us to a mock radio address from President Obama to anyone  still listening. It’s what you would expect a President to say. We are down but not out. He encourages everyone to have hope, and hearing any voice, especially the President , would probably be enough to lift the spirits of many. It lets them know that they are not alone and that someone still cares. Rallied by the President’s words, the various insurgent groups around the globe begin a series of guerrilla attacks against alien targets. This is most likely how the war would be won for our side. We can probably never beat them but, if we hurt them enough, maybe they’ll leave and think long and hard about coming back.

This is the scenario that plays out in the NGC special. Unable to damage the outside of the ships, they devise ways to get explosives inside the ships. This culminates in a coordinated “suicide bombing”.  Hundreds of people fly up into the flagships around the world on explosive devices lifted by balloons. A simple tech that winds up destroying the much more advanced tech. We see this in Iraq with the various I.E.D.’s we encounter. Low tech handing high tech it’s ass. Dozens of alien flagships all around the world are racked by huge internal explosions. They plummet to the ground, en masse. At this point the aliens have to make a decision: Is this worth it? Russia only lost about 4% of their fighting force before deciding Afghanistan wasn’t worth it. America has taken similar casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan but we kept on chugging.  Eventually though, we are leaving. I think any advanced race would see that the losses are outweighing the gains. They could probably find someone weaker than us very easily. And by the time they brought theoretical reinforcements,our numbers and strength would have significantly increased, while theirs have fallen. It would all depend on how bad they need what they came for. Most likely it’s not that bad. Just because we can’t find chlorophyll and protein anywhere else doesn’t mean it isn’t there  and in great abundance. We haven’t even really begun to look. We said the same about water not too long ago.

The aliens are retreating. The remaining ships return to the mother ship and it departs for greener pastures. Mankind has “won”. Now, this scenario is for an alien race looking for something. It would take priority over eradicating our species. If an alien species shows up seeking nothing but our destruction, we’re probably fucked. One thing they don’t really get into in the special is all the alien tech the invading force leaves behind when it retreats. Dozens of alien flagships are laying broken across the world. The next time the aliens come back,  we may be a lot closer to them technologically.  OR, most likely, used it to kill ourselves. That is  a big concern for me, left behind alien tech. People think an alien invasion would unite humanity as one. And it would, until the invasion was over. We pretend. Consort when it benefits us. What happened to all that talk of  anew American dialogue and a new dawn of awareness after the Giffords shooting? It was fake. Temporary. Once the aliens leave, the most powerful human armies left will want ALL of that alien tech. We will kill each other for it. I guarantee it.

That is what will be the lasting legacy of an alien invasion, in my opinion. Even if we survive it, it will wind up killing us in the end. We overstep with the technology we produce on our own. Imagine an unfamiliar, far advanced tech in our hands. I shudder thinking about it. Maybe it would unite our species as it carried us into space.  a shared perspective that we are not alone and  we could be wiped out at any moment. Common enemies have very rarely led to lasting peace on this planet. Only temporary truces to be later exploited. Whether we win or not, I don’t want the invaders coming here.  One way or another, they will be the death of us.

Well, hope you enjoyed that little read. Really more of a preview and addendum to a very interesting TV show.   “When Aliens Attack” will be airing at various times all summer on the National Geographic Channel. I really recommend you check your local listings and watch it. Fascinating stuff.

After the Big Bang came the Great Darkness. In indescribable darkness, matter raced away from itself in all directions, pushing space into being as it did so. Darkly, it spun and coalesced, exploded and merged, exploded again, grew heavier, impossibly; formed stars that lived billions of years, died, and in that dying gave rise to new stars, stars that spun off particles that, trapped in orbit, coalesced into planets. Galaxies, containing billions of stars, expanding, moving away from each other, pushing at the frontiers where What Is Not yielded to What Is. Unfathomably, Improbably. And all in total darkness.

Because no one was there to see it. A spectacle of unimaginable beauty, resplendent with colors beyond our own limitations of red at one end and violet at the other, played out over billions of years, and yet this spectacle was for not. As bland as a painting of a snowflake floating in a glass of milk, or an inkblot on a lump of coal. For, for only a brief period of the many billion year history of the universe has anything been seen, anywhere, and only as the result of a chance occurrence. On our planet, and perhaps others, matter formed itself into something that could sense light, and by gradual modifications these light sensing mechanisms became more sophisticated, up to and including our own wonderful eyes. And these modifications; did they occur so that the beauty of the universe could be beheld and appreciated? No. Every modification, from the simplest eyes to the most complex, merely helped an organism secure food. Or not become food. Or perhaps a combination of the two.

Think about that for a moment. Do a gut check. Does it seem credible? That except for on our planet, and perhaps other planets similar to ours, and only in a relatively brief period of this and similar planets’ histories, has the grand spectacle of the universe been even partially visible to itself? And only through the vulgar mechanism of keeping one step ahead of a mouth or a grabbing appendage? That up until the time that these modifications came about, on perhaps this planet exclusively, even though it is made up of light and its very mechanisms are circumscribed by the speed of light, the universe was completely and utterly blind?

Such a scenario lacks poetry, to say the least. That a cosmos could be at once so dazzling and yet completely invisible to itself for such a long time, only to finally become visible through the merest chance on an inconsequential rock – somehow seems decidedly unsatisfying to my poetic nature. There, where my mind is free to wander and extend beyond what is rational and explained, the above scenario seems to me to have it all backwards. Eyes, my poetic mind persuades me, do not make sight possible. On the contrary, it is sight that makes eyes possible! Eyes did not develop because, for some odd reason, in a universe that up until then had been completely blind, there was suddenly some reproductive advantage to sensing light (imagine what an extraordinary moment that must have been, and yet so under-appreciated by its experiencer. Hey, now this is interesting. Munch munch).

Rather, eyes are a (but one, I dare say) manifestation of vision. It was not mindless food-seeking that brought them into being. Vision gave them birth, no less so than a painter’s vision gives birth to a masterpiece, and an inventor’s vision gives birth to a flying machine. Speaking of “flying machines”, in the same vein I posit that birds did not develop wings because there were things to eat up there. Birds rose to fill the sky because the sky, because flight, summoned them.

Viewed through the lens of reason, such notions are risible and wholly passe. Where is the evidence to support such outlandish claims? Where do these bizarre notions of vision and flight come from? Obviously, they don’t come from a scientific theory or an experiment, or from an objective, wholly rational observation of naturally occurring phenomena. Rather, they come from an area of human consciousness which science knee-jerkedly meets with cool skepticism, if not outright disgust: intuition, subjective feelings, and our mysterious human quality of looking for meaning in the cosmos.

Yet, how firm is the ground upon which science so confidently, even arrogantly, dismisses such rival attributes of human nature? For someone who is convinced that science is man’s greatest achievement, and moreover is our greatest hope for improving our condition in the future, the very question probably sounds preposterous, perhaps even insane. Nevertheless, I will dare to ask: as reason and intuition are both essential aspects of a fully human mind, can one arrogate to itself an exclusive “rightness” from which to dismiss the properties the other might bring toward understanding the universe which we inhabit, and our relationship to it?

Science, as we have come to define it, has a very brief history. For all practical purposes, it begins in ancient Greece, notably with Socrates, and his method of questioning hypotheses. From there we move to Aristotle, who applied the Socratic Method, with his own modifications, to a variety of fields such as ethics, poetry, politics, etc., and most famously, science. The derivation of the word is perhaps related to cutting, or more accurately, separating. The Greeks, with Aristotle first among them, learned about their world by dissecting and examining it, reducing it to its parts, separating what could be determined to that point, and then investigating more fully into those “parts” which remained mysterious. Aristotle applied this method to zoology, anatomy, botany, and pretty much all aspects of the physical world. What he accomplished, with his stellar intellect and unquenchable curiosity, is mind boggling.

Aristotle’s discoveries and theories went on to fuel scientific inquiry for centuries. His vast achievements functioned as a template for the Renaissance. The great Arab scientist Alhazen refined the scientific method into its current form roughly a thousand years ago. It came into its fullest expression through the Italian super-genius Galileo in the early seventeenth century. Completing the process, the great inventions, such as the telescope and the microscope, along with the higher mathematics of Newton, arrived on the scene in the century after Galileo’s achievements, giving birth to the era that we live in now, the Scientific Age. That’s pretty much the extent of it. The entire history of science (as we think of it), subtracting its fallow period in the Dark Ages, is less than two thousand years, roughly one percent of the history of our species. The duration that it has been the dominant way of seeing the world is much shorter, perhaps no more than three hundred years.

Given such a short history, we can only conclude that science, according to science, was not selected for in the human species. One must keep in mind that according to our present understanding of how natural selection works, traits only pass the test of selectivity if they help the extant, hosting organism to survive. Ask any biological scientist, and he or she will hasten to assure you that evolution doesn’t know what it is doing. It has no grand plan, no concept of a future, no notion of how newly acquired traits may spread among the entire species; no such scheme. Rather, it plays out one groping, clawing, devouring organism at a time.

Our large, multifaceted brains were selected for, most certainly. The knowledge we needed to explore caves, to use weapons, to hunt, to organize against stronger predators, was provided by those brains. The human resourcefulness and inventiveness that our brains made possible was selected for along the strict and narrow rules of natural selection. But science wasn’t. Remember, for only the last three hundred years or so has there been any demonstrable survival advantage to having scientific knowledge, most obviously in terms of decreasing infant mortality, and extending the average human life span by several decades. For the vast preponderance of the history of the species homo sapiens, approximately 200,000 years, the scientific method provided mankind with no survivability value whatsoever, proved by the obvious fact that we survived without it. In purest evolutionary terms, it is nothing more than a “lucky accident”, an ancillary feature of our large brains (which developed, remember, solely to help us secure food and avoid becoming food), that didn’t even begin to reveal its usefulness until twenty millennia after our brains’ development had made it possible! How utterly insignificant the very feature of human consciousness that devised the theory of evolution is, from the perspective of that very theory!

And yet the champions of science hold it up as a paragon against which all other features of human consciousness cannot even hope to compare. Did intuition and hunches help our species survive before science? Assuredly so. Did poetic and spiritual insights provide strength and succor to our lowly and set-upon species, huddled together in small tribes against a world vastly more threatening than the one we inhabit today? Bet on it. Without them, would we even be here? That I very much doubt. That science, coming along so late in the game, should nevertheless hoist itself to such a lofty and judgmental position seems rather presumptuous to me.

Imagine a basketball team that plays well enough in the regular season to earn a playoff berth. The team advances, all the way to the last few minutes of the championship game. A talented rookie comes off the bench, and makes a few clutch shots. A star is born! But no, because this rookie then kicks everyone else on his team off the court. He’s decided they’ve outlived their usefulness, and that he alone is the only hope the team has of winning the game. Every error his teammates have made throughout the season that he didn’t play in proves to him their unworthiness to even be on the same court as him. Their mere presence weakens his chance of bringing home the trophy. Well, I think we can all imagine how that would turn out! And yet that is basically the arrogant stance that science’s staunchest champions take. Any talk of hunches, intuition, to say nothing of spirituality and supernatural phenomena, is met with the same level of disdain our imaginary rookie shows to the very teammates whose efforts have made his appearance on the court possible. Religion? They are convinced that it has been nothing other than an unmitigated disaster for mankind.

Science is so convinced of its own superiority that it uses itself, its own methods, to judge the validity of those concepts that arise from other areas of human consciousness. If something can’t be tested in its laboratories, and proven according to its rules and methodologies, then it becomes fair game to be scoffed at and labeled woo woo. This strikes me as absurd. Imagine a chocolate lover telling you that chocolate is the only legitimate sweet. You proffer a banana. “What is this ridiculous object? It isn’t even black! It fails!” He dismisses it without even tasting it. Dutifully, you come back with a black banana. The chocolate lover puts it in its mouth and instantly spits it out, disgusted (understandably). The banana lover is in a hopeless situation. Playing by the rules the chocolate lover has set up, is it any wonder that chocolate always wins?

Don’t get me wrong; I love science. It is scientific triumphalism that I take issue with. What we have today is perhaps less true science than a raging tyranny of the left hemisphere of the brain over the right, and the consequences scream out at us. On the one hand, scientific experiments have improved medicine and lengthened our life spans, and technological advancement has improved the quality of human life. On the other hand, science has damaged the environment to the point where our very survival is threatened. Factory farmed, steroid injected animals harm our health. Acid rain weakens our forests (the very “lungs” of our planet). Oil spills and nuclear disasters point out the price we pay for our brave new technological world. Beyond all that lurks the mother of all environmental threats, catastrophic climate change. That we could have placed ourselves in such a dangerous predicament a mere three centuries into the Scientific Age should clue us that we should be going about things differently.

To me, the Great Lesson of our time is not that the ascension of science over the last few centuries is a harbinger of a new age of enlightenment, if we can just hold on and solve our current existential threats. It is that our survival depends upon striking a balance between the wonderful possibilities that science brings about and the poetic, intuitive, meaning seeking portion of our consciousness centered in the other hemisphere of our magnificent brains. If that balance cannot be reached, I for one have very little hope that mankind will escape destroying itself. We will,rather, hasten our return to the Great Darkness, clinging to our belief in an unconscious universe that is completely blind to our existence, and never even returned the favor of seeing us.

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From now on we live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It’s not a miracle; we just decided to go.

~Tom Hanks(as Jim Lovell in the movie Ap0llo 13)

Almost 42 years ago, man accomplished something previously thought impossible. Not unlikely or improbable. Just plain ol’ impossible. A man setting foot on the surface of a different world was an idea best left to science fiction writers. The dangers were too great to overcome. Human ingenuity was just too limited to address so monumental a task. But, it turns out, the sci-fi pulp writers were on to something.

On a fall day in 1962, President Kennedy made his famous speech, spurring the American/Russian “space race”. A bold declaration that the United States would set foot on the Moon by the end of the decade. At that point, our ventures into space amounted to dipping  a single toe in a vast ocean. Now we were going to dive in head first. The most amazing thing is that it only took 7 years. 7 years!Le’s look at it a different way. Looking at our history of flight.

Let’s say that da Vinci was the “godfather of modern flight”. He was known to have worked on “flying machines” never before heard of.   We’ll say he drew his first design in 1472.  At 20 years of age. Man did not record a successful flight til 1903, 431 years later. Many attempts were made in that 431 year span. Perhaps there were successful takeoffs during this time frame but the landing must not have been very successful since no one recorded anything.

On the day Kennedy gave his speech, America was just beginning to master jet engines and build the huge commercial liners we see today. 7 years later, we were on the Moon. Only 66 years after we made our first successful flight. Ridiculous. It was not a great technological leap in those intervening years that led to our success. We had to invent new technology to solve this problem. Push ourselves in a way we had not since the Allies stormed the beaches at Normandy.

But we made it. We walked on the moon, hit a few golf balls, then we never went back. The last manned mission to the Moon was Apollo 17 in 1972. A mostly uneventful mission that did produce the most popular and well known photograph of Earth, “The Blue Marble”.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Marble

Now, almost 40 years later, there is renewed interest in returning to the Moon. Spurred on by technological advances and the recent discovery of water, colonization has become a popular topic again among NASA scientists. Right now there are several missions being discussed that will begin the formation of a permanent outpost on the Moon.

But how will a colony on the Moon come about and what would it even look like? Truth is, scientists are still struggling with the basic questions regarding a colony on the Moon. The first step to colonization will be developing structures that can sustain life on the Moon’s surface. A far more difficult task than first imagined. A reason why some have proposed building just below the surface. Days on the Moon last roughly 2 weeks and can see temperatures as high as 250 degrees fahrenheit. Nights also average 2 weeks and can see temps as low as  -243 degrees. Extremes that would wreak havoc on most any structure we could build. Underground, the extremes would average -9 degrees on both ends. But we could use central air to regulate the temperatures underground. One possible solution to all this is to build near the polar caps which receive a steady supply of sunlight. Or, at the very least, begin our power grid there.

With a structure in place, the next step would be to obtain a steady supply of food and water. At first the base would be wholly reliant on provisions from the Earth, but as  structures became permanent and an “Earth like” atmosphere was put up, water could be stored on site and farming could begin. The next big step will be acclimating plant life use to the 24 hour cycle on Earth to the much longer 2 week cycle on the Moon. Tests in the 1970′s by the Russian Space Program have shown that many types of commercial crops can be grown on this cycle and several ideas for carrying forward on a larger scale are already being developed. Including crops bred to grow much faster than those on Earth and basic light techniques developed during the Soviet tests.

Were all this to succeed, it still would not guarantee a successful colonization. The biggest concern is the Moon’s low gravity and it’s effect on the human body. Zero gravity tests in space have shown that constant exposure to this situation causes atrophy in bones and muscles. Without the resistance of gravity, they do not receive the exercise they need to stay strong. All tests have been done in zero gravity situations and scientists are still unsure whether low gravity would still pose the same problems. A rigorous, daily exercise program has been shown to counter some of the effects of the process but is by no means a stand alone solution. This is the biggest challenge faced in colonizing the Moon. No oen yet knows if the Moon’s low gravity will be sufficient to counter these effects as no one has spent the amount of time there that is required to realistically test it. We are still working on an effective way to create acceptable gravity that does not involve spinning the entire structure to obtain the desired result. Such a structure would be quite difficult and costly to build under the Moon’s surface at the current time.

It is all very much worth it as the Moon is rich in elements like carbon and hydrogen. Key ingredients to almost everything on Earth. The uniqueness of pressures when working on the Moon also makes certain industrial processes such as “foaming”  metal, much easier than on Earth. A process that involves injecting gases directly into molten metals before they are shaped and hardened. On Earth, it was fraught with difficulty from bubbles formed by the gases but the Moon’s low gravity prevents the bubbles from even forming. This process will be key in engineering the future of space travel, turniong the Moon into our first factory dedicated to space exploration.

Time on the Moon will also give us valuable experience living on another world. Learning the ins and outs of planetary colonization. Overcoming the physical and psychological barriers of being separated from the Earth.   Making the future colonization of Mars a much simpler process. Plus, who wouldn’t want to vacation on the Moon? Cruising he border of  a crater carved out 50o million years ago while you enjoy the 15 hour sunset. China and India have a proposal to put a base on the lunar surface by 2020. America, not too long after in 2025. That was before the discovery of water and other resources inside the lunar soil. There is  a possibility America may attempt to beat China there and obtain first come, first serve “rights” to the majority of resources.

The economic “collapse” at the end of the decade was a big setback for NASA and other government programs deemed “non-essential” but lately the government has shown signs of moving back int heir direction.  The next decade could be very exciting for fans of colonizing the moon. What do you think? Should America attempt to beat China to a Moon base? If so, what should it’s main purpose be? A launching point for our continued exploration of the solar system? A new land waiting to be colonized and populated by the citizens of the Earth? Or just another large mine to be rummaged til it’s depleted? Personally, I think colonizing the Moon is the first step toward huge things for the human race. A trivial thing to some that could stand as the next major step in our evolution. But, that’s just my opinion. What’s yours?