ET CONTACT OPTIONS: ZAVIJAVA TO MOONROE

by Steve Kearney

Copyright 2011. All rights reserved.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1: THE DIPLOMATIC ROUTE—Zavijava, Our Rosetta Star,

Impediments to Contact and their Removal, Society for Positive Universal
Relations
Chapter 2: ATMOSPHERE OF FEAR--heads up!
Chapter 3: ECO-ETI (Green ETI)--a Little Dr. Doolittle Goes a Long Way
Chapter 4: BIOENGINEERING, or Future Evolution—Upgrading Humanity:
Clones, Hybrids, & A.I.; or Mockeries, Monsters and Machine-Mind Melds
Chapter 5: TIME TRAVELER SCENARIOS--a multiplicity of scenarios
Chapter 6: MEET THE WEAVERS--The Big Bang Wormhole Web Weavers--the
Supreme Force of the Universe, Deity ETI
Chapter 7: COSMIC CONNECTIONS: across time and space--including Moon
Faces (like Marilyn Moonroe & MagMoon, P.I.) and Multi-Galactic Leaves of the
Gold Dust Plant
Pictures
Appendixes: A) Cosmic Matters, B) The Drake Equation, C) The Star Zavijava,
D) Global Mass Extinctions, E) Intergalactic Travel, F) Popular Culture Timeline,
G) Abbreviations
References (Endnotes)
Chapter 1

THE DIPLOMATIC ROUTE

Somebody called Onabluedot posted on the Astronomy magazine forum a question about the
orbital paths of the planets. The question was nothing out of the ordinary. But the posting
closed with some real existential drama: "...I am just a lowly being on a lowly continent on a
lowly planet, in a solar system from a lowly galaxy in an infinite universe, who just wants his
question answered."

Knowing the answer, I responded with an appropriate technical explanation. But I couldn't miss
the tone of Onabluedot's plea, so I wrote "Our lowly position in the cosmos may be humbling.
But isn't it a tremendous thing that we can perceive and ponder the greatness of the universe--at
least the little bit we can understand--and marvel at the unfathomable."

The Universe is one awesome place. The spectacular observations that keep rolling
in from a slew of instruments over a variety of wavelengths are so amazing. But to
really improve our understanding of the Cosmos we want to have a reasonable idea
of our place in it.

The Universe we now are pretty certain began with the Big Bang about 13.7 billion
years ago. Fairly promptly, stars and galaxies of stars began to form in the
expanding space. Our Milky Way Galaxy is among the many, and is estimated to
have formed 11-12 billion years ago (See Appendix A for a thorough cosmic
timeline).

It must be noted that the earliest stars in a given galaxy were unlikely to have much
in the way of planetary companions such as we're familiar with in our solar system.
That's because they lacked the heavy metal ingredients necessary for rocky bodies to
coalesce from the swirling, star-birthing dust clouds. But that doesn't mean these
stars were all useless.

Heavy Metal Linked to Star Deaths

The spectacular death throes of massive stars--supernovas and red giants--are the blast
furnace source of all metals heavier than iron. Extremely high temperatures--100
million degrees K.--are reached in these stellar cores. Real alchemy is naturally
achieved--forging the heavy metals such as cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, arsenic,
selenium, krypton, zirconium, silver, tin, iodine, tungsten, platinum, gold, mercury
and lead. And as time goes by, more and more big stars have blown up, leaving an
ever greater quantity of metal in the dust clouds.

Multi-Billion-Year Head Start

Astronomers estimate that star systems very much like our solar system--featuring a
healthy retinue of rocky planets (and satellites)--probably were able to begin forming
in a big way in the Milky Way at least 8 billion years ago, as heavy metal elements
became more prevalent in the mix. However, our Sun is a much more recent arrival,
forming just 4.6 billion years ago. That leaves an astonishing 3.4-billion-year gap
between us and the probable first substantial wave of rocky planetary systems in the
galaxy.

It's reasonable to surmise that the conditions which spawned life on Earth existed on
some of these earlier planetary bodies. So when we approach the issue of life in the
cosmos, we should presume that we Earthlings are not likely to be among the early
frontrunners. To quote the eminent cosmologist, Edward R. Harrison: looking back in
time, "in the days when galaxies are young, long before the Sun is born, life forms of
many kinds presumably arise and evolve, and it is a matter of absorbing interest to
speculate on their fate and the possibility that many still exist in a highly advanced
state of intelligence."

In fact, users of the popular Frank Drake Equation for estimating the number of
communicative intelligent civilizations alive now in our galaxy typically arrive at
figures ranging from several thousand to about a million. Most of these would be
more advanced than us, given our extreme youth. Many of them should be quite
ancient. Frank Drake himself estimates 10 thousand communicative Milky Way
civilizations. Sci-fi author Isaac Asimov suspects about 100 thousand.
Cosmologist Carl Sagan surmised one million of them (See Appendix B for a
full discussion of the Drake Equation).

What Does Dan Say?

Of course, getting a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization and
recognizing it as such are two different things. Even the top pros in the field
of the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) have no way of knowing
for sure what frequency(ies) ETIs are using or when they'll be broadcasting a
message. Then there's the matter of message decoding: a major challenge, to
be sure.

To say SETI is looking for a needle in a haystack might be an understatement.

It's like you've never seen a needle before and can only imagine what one looks
like. So it shouldn't be terribly surprising that radio astronomers have not detected
any transmission being sent by another intelligent civilization despite a half
century of listening.

The absence of (radio) evidence to date may have been mistakenly construed by
some as evidence of absence (of other intelligent civilizations), when instead it
may simply indicate that researchers are barking up the wrong tree. Standard radio
wave transmission might well be a short-lived preferred means of communication
for advanced civilizations--like the 8-track music recorder, or the telegraph.
Furthermore, even “junk” transmissions likely dry up after a short while--witness our
own case: TV/radio, once all over the airwaves is now substantially and increasingly
routed on cable/satellites. US TV in 2009 ended full-power analog broadcasting.

The Russian cosmologist Nikolai Kardashev surmised that intelligent societies likely
develop technologically in certain ways which he ranked by type--as contemporary
meteorologists categorize hurricanes. A civilization that is able to sustainably manage
the energy resources on their home planet is labeled Type I. If and when the
civilization can harness the total power output of their home star, they graduate to
Type II status (Kardashev used Roman numerals). Should a civilization go on to
eventually marshal the energy of their entire galaxy, they attain Type III standing.
Some of these highly advanced ETIs may be able to harness the energy of
supernovas, each of which equals the output of an entire galaxy.

Does anyone really think that a Type III civilization, mighty enough to manage all that
galactic energy, would be relegated to putting out generic radio broadcasts from their
home planet when it comes to communicating afar? That wouldn’t make any sense.
It would be equivalent to us throwing a message-in-a-bottle into the ocean in the hope
that a favorable current will carry it to some interesting far-off destination when we
are capable of just picking up the phone, pressing a few buttons, and promptly be
conversing with someone on the opposite shore.

The SETI Institute, in their (2005) executive summary, acknowledged that "current
methods should be further developed and novel methods should be identified for
detecting electromagnetic radiation or other diagnostic artifacts that indicate
remote technological civilizations."

Scientists involved with SETI have indeed broadened the program to include the
visible and infrared spectra--looking for powerful laser rays. Because lasers are
direct, focused signals, they're more likely to be intended for us. An Australian
astronomer specializing in lasers detected an anomalous signal in 2006. But it has
not repeated.

Some Alternative Life Lines

Not only might ETI signals be hard to apprehend--unfamiliar, "alien." The ETI
themselves might be undetectable by us. Based on what is known about
temperature moderation just beneath a given planetary surface--from the
standpoints of energy conservation and personal comfort--and the reduced
vulnerability to home star radiation, major atmospheric events, catastrophes and
marauders, it would seem to make sense for many technologically adept intelligent
civilizations to relocate underground to a large extent.

Such a subsurface society could well endure, and even thrive. If they are able to
grow or manufacture their food underground, they wouldn't even need to go
outside for farming. They might show no noticeable visual surface activity--so be
undetectable optically. A society of robots could exist inside a seemingly barren
planet.

Our tendency to associate intelligent life with visible (to our eyes) activity on
planetary surfaces could be equivalent to associating people
with cribs. The site of somebody's youth is not necessarily
where they will wind up spending most of their adult
time. Imagine a business manager, CEO, mailman,
fashion model, electrician, etc. (all full-grown adults)
trying to do their jobs from within the confines of a
cradle and you get the picture.

One can envision a highly intelligent civilization that is both extremely private--
ensconced in various safe, pleasant locations--and outgoing in order to explore and
head off any threats. Rocket scientist author Robert Jastrow asserted back in the
1960's that "we must expect that these older, more advanced societies, will reach us
before we discover them." A galactic surveying mission utilizing Von Neumann
probes which repeatedly replicate in order to maximize coverage efficiency could be
expected to fan-out and envelope the galaxy fairly quickly, and would likely find us--
without our knowing it.

Trans-Galactic
Foresighted physicist Gerard K. O'Neill proposed that an advanced civilization
could well cover the entire Milky Way galaxy, which is 100-thousand-light years
(LY) across and 12-thousand-LY thick, within 1 million years. This would involve
utilizing the likes of a matter/antimatter propulsion system to travel at 1/10 the
speed of light. Promising technologies include: antiproton-catalyzed micro-
fission (ACMF)--as in such as Penn State's ion-compressed antimatter nuclear
prototype spacecraft (ICAN-II)--and antiproton initiated micro-fission/fusion
(AIM).

Even at much slower travel rates, a long-lived outward-bound advanced

civilization should be able to go galactic. at 1/100 SoL in about10 million years; at
1/1,000 SoL in about 100 million years. Harrison asserted that, with a modest-paced
diffusive migration pattern, "the entire Galaxy will be colonized in 50 million years--a
time less than (one-half of) one percent of the age of the Galaxy.

Despite many hazards and setbacks on different fronts, the growth and magnitude of
such an enterprise will ensure that it survives and continues to spread. This not
implausible picture leads to the conclusion that the Galaxy is colonized (throughout)
by highly intelligent life that originated from about one thousand initial technological
civilizations."

Overcoming "Drakonian" Measures

Given the strong probability that a large number of ETI civilizations have already
developed some time ago, a 21st century version of The Drake Equation could
include the potential likely activities of the highly advanced civilizations it predicts--
such as colonization, terra-forming (altering conditions on a planet to make it
habitable), and interaction.

The Drake formula as it stands now doesn't go that far and hence is unequipped to give
a realistic picture of what is probably actually out there at this time. Terra-formed and
colonized planets could well outnumber indigenous civilizations by now. Humanity may
be like a sailing party that lands at night on what it thinks is a remote island, makes camp,
and awakens to discover they’ve been resting on the mother-of-all giant squids.

The Play’s The Thing

Like describing the situation on a football field during a game using only the exact
positions where the players line-up, Drake’s Equation is insightful yet incomplete.
While it’s relevant to know where they start from, you’ve got to put the players in
motion to begin to understand what you see happening on the field. It defies logic
to think that everyone else in the universe has remained homebound and isolated--
just sitting on their hands--some for several billion years.

To illustrate: a probing trans-galactic civilization approaches a planet, and

determines that it already has life. They would probably just let it be, but you
better believe they're going to keep tabs on the situation. This would be one of the
key activities of a surveying mission. If, on the other hand, a mature planet is
suitable for life but does not have any, they might eventually colonize it. If a
planet is presently unsuitable, the probe might determine if it is terra-formable or if
there's any good reason to mine it. Equipment to colonize/terra-form or mine the
planet could be constructible by the probes.

The exploratory mission would also be designed to encompass monitoring of life

that emerges after the explorers have swept over a given location. They would at
minimum leave behind surveillance devices (say, 1 for every 100 square LYs) that
would be on the lookout for any potential life developments.

When a promising situation such as Earth takes shape, an investigative probe

would peel off from the main unit for a closer assessment. Chemical signatures
potentially attributable to life processes, such as the proliferation of oxygen in a
planet like Earth's atmosphere, would surely bring them in for a ringside seat. So it
seems pretty likely that, given the multi-billion-year head start that numerous other
planets have over us, somebody has checked our home world out.

There are several potential explanations for our not encountering any ETI probe,
yet being in a galaxy and universe teeming with life.

*The probes may tend to be designed to be very difficult to detect.

*Cloaking: they may be chameleon-like (or octopus-like), or even altogether

invisibility-capable.

*Size: the probes may be very small.

*Distance: they may be able to do their job well enough from a good ways off .

*Needle-in-a-haystack: small ones might even go unnoticed in Earth orbit, passing

as just another piece of space junk.

*Scarcity: in a well-organized galaxy/universe, member worlds may share access

to many of the same monitors. It would be like the way the TV networks
sometimes share a remote feed.

One way to focus our Search for ETI signals--bettering our odds for being
contacted by them--is to determine the most likely time and place for us to receive
a signal from them. A smart ETI may rightly suppose our resources for monitoring
are limited, and so toss us an easy pitch to hit.

The hours of planetary transit are the most logical landmark event in space-time for
ETIs to use as these represent a predictable, recurring phenomenon. They'd simply
need to have a good fix on our distance from themselves and our orbital period in
order to time their signal so that it reaches here at the transit event--when the Earth
is passing between the Sun and the observer.

Of course, for a transit-time signal to occur, the ETI sender must be positioned
somewhere along the narrow band of sky charting the Sun's perceived annual path
through the constellations of the zodiac (aka the ecliptic). If they are located
anywhere not on the ecliptic, the Earth would instead pass above or below the Sun
from their point of view.

To make the most of these opportunities, we could program an antenna to pretty

much follow the transit observers' window of opportunity on its annual path around
on the ecliptic--flitting from star-to-star within the ecliptic belt like a hummingbird
in a circular flower garden.

All nearby Sun-like stars have previously been surveyed for transmissions by SETI
projects such as Phoenix, SERENDIP, Big Ear, META and BETA. However, there
is no indication that timing was in any way a consideration. Project META
recorded 37 anomalous transmissions that failed to recur upon follow-up--usually
several days, weeks, or even months later.

The randomness of such endeavors would have missed a transit-timing sender's

likely repeat bursts over a one-to-two-day window or on about the same date any
number of years later. Only Project BETA has had a mechanism for promptly
double-checking promising signals. And none of the projects have focused
attention on the ecliptic belt or even on off-the-belt stars at the time of longitudinal
opposition.

First Contact Opportunity: Zavijava Could Be the One

It seems sensible to pay special attention to nearby promising stars, such as
Zavijava (aka beta-Virginis). This ecliptic star, ranked #12 on the Terrestrial Planet
Finder mission list, is very much like the Sun (type F8 to Sun's G2; similar
estimated age). Zavijava is the nearest (35.6 light years away) single, stable, Sun-
like star that is located smack on the ecliptic belt.

In fact, a thorough study of relevant star charts and tables has led to the realization
that Zavijava is the only single, stable, Sun-like star located on our ecliptic belt
within 40 light-years of us. Earth transits for Zavijava-based viewers right around
March 19-21, annually. Hope springs eternal.

So, potentially scheduled to arrive here around March 19-21, any year: a
contacting signal sent our way from a planet (or moon) orbiting the star Zavijava in
the constellation Virgo, timed so that it would reach Earth just as we're transiting in
front of the Sun from their viewing angle. While it is hoped that radio
astronomers will be listening in, it is possible that such a signal would come
optically as a nova-like laser pulse/flash--noticeable to the naked eye. In that
highly democratic case, anybody could be the first contactee.

The years 2012 and 2015 provide good opportunities to look towards Zavijava.
The Moon, about new, doesn't interfere with the view. 2013 and 2014 are not so
good, as one must deal with a 3/4 (i.e. gibbous) waxing and waning Moon,
respectively. The Vernal equinox for 2012 occurs on March 20 at 5:14 GMT
(12:14 AM EST).

Zavijava already has been utilized by astronomers on at least one significant

occasion. In 1922, Arthur Eddington journeyed to Wallal, Australia and
photographed Zavijava in conjunction with a total solar eclipse on September 21 in
order to measure the angle of starlight deflection caused by the Sun's gravity. The
results of this, and a few similar excursions, helped confirm Albert Einstein's
general theory of relativity--supplanting Newtonian mechanics. Some might
wonder whether Eddington and his crew might have unwittingly received a
message from Zavijavaland.

About Transits
*Transits have been used successfully many times in recent years for finding extra-
solar planets.

*As transits are an objective, significant, measurable, predictable, recurring

phenomenon, it's possible that they are a standard timing mechanism for ETI
contact signaling.
*Such astronomical research luminaries as Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute, Ray
Villard of the Space Telescope Science Institute, Richard Conn Henry of Johns
Hopkins, Steve Kilston of the Henry Foundation, and NASA astrophysicist Robin
H. Corbet at Goddard Space Flight Center have advocated using transits for contact
purposes

In-depth, here are reasons for paying attention to the star Zavijava.
Zavijava (aka beta-Virginis) is the star that best meets these seven criteria for high
"contactability":
1) Single (it's not in a multiple star system);
2) Sun-like (it's a spectral type F9, which is very similar to the Sun's G2);
3) Stable (not a variable or flare star) for a good while--at least, say, 2 billion years
prior;
4) High metal content (which is conducive to forming rocky planets: Zavijava's
metallicity is a bit greater than the Sun's);
5) Old enough to have given rise to an intelligent civilization (Zavijava's age is
estimated between 2.8 and 4.7 billion years--a decent chance to have been an
ample amount of time);
6) Nearby (Zavijava lies a mere 35.6 light years away. To understand how near
that is, if you imagine our galaxy being the size of the United States, then Zavijava
would be just 1 1/2 miles from us);
7) Located on our ecliptic belt (aka the Sun's apparent path through the zodiac--
gives Zavijavanetis a privileged line-of-sight ). The transit phenomenon is a
perfectly logical timing tool--no hocus-pocus. All that's necessary is that the two
parties be willing and able to put themselves in each others' shoes. That's
something that many ordinary human adults do several times a day without too
much difficulty.

Zavijava's distance from Earth--35.6 LY--makes our present era a special one
because the round-trip time for an exchange of messages at the speed of light--71.2
years is roughly equal to the amount of time that has passed since our first
substantial TV broadcasts--in the 1930's.

ETIs only need to be slightly more advanced than us to be capable of building a

receiver able to process our vintage TV signals from a few dozen LY away.
Sending a reply would be a piece of cake: an initial laser pulse could be done
without a big power drain.

Beats Foster's Light

So anyone there with a really good receiver might have begun watching our early
TV programming--like the 1936 Berlin Olympics--around 1972, taken it all in for a
couple of years, and sent a review that we could be getting right about now. It's
like the movie "Contact"--but it really could happen with the star Zavijava. Not so
Vega, the star cast in the film, which is too young and too hot to nurture a
civilization.

As for motive, it wouldn't require that their entire civilization be mobilized for
them to send a signal our way. It would merely require the equivalent of a couple
of university professors or a graduate student of theirs working on a project. To
know which stars are on our ecliptic would not be difficult for a civilization there.
All they need to do is plot out a 3-D map of the stellar neighborhood--something
available on websites here now--and develop a computer-style program for
constructing virtual reality planetariums for diverse locations. So, even without
receiving our TV transmissions, Zavijavanetis might signal us..

These advanced ETIs, if located as close as a few dozen light years or so, would
likely be aware of the extent of the solar system. The noticeable wobbling of the
Sun due (mostly) to Jupiter's pull would definitely alert any such nearby outward-
looking ETI that the Sun has a planet, so probably has several.. Using instruments
like we're using now to detect Earth-like extrasolar planets, they'd be able to
identify and locate the planets of our solar system and the orbital plane that they
more or less share--encompassing the ecliptic. The Earth would assuredly merit
attention as a probable bearer of life due to the signature of gases here--including
oxygen--detectable from that distance with sufficiently advanced equipment.

"Rosetta Star"
While the odds against an intelligent civilization having arisen in any particular
star system seem very high, for the seven aforementioned reasons, Zavijava is an
ideal candidate. Furthermore, it may be worthwhile to consider the possibility that
a sophisticated, mobile ETI would have a base on Zavijava--from which they
could transmit to Earth

In fact, Zavijava might even be what you could call a "default contact star"--or,
less prosaically, our "Rosetta Star." Supposing that contact of this sort is a matter
of galactic protocol, an advanced civilization could well decide to signal us from
there, feeling confident we'd be monitoring that star since it is so similar to our
own, and close.

Of course, not every star is going to have as obvious a #1 candidate for Rosetta
Starhood as Zavijava is for the Sun. But, when you include the qualifying factor of
location along the ecliptic, it’s pretty likely there won’t be a plethora of candidates
left. That’s because the galactic plane (where a preponderance of the galaxy’s stars
are found) is not typically aligned with a given stellar system plane, or with a
given planet’s rotational plane. To illustrate, take our own case: the only time
you’re going to see planets in our night sky mingling amidst the glistening band of
the Milky Way is when they’re hanging out in the constellations Sagittarius or
Scorpius.

ETIs in some kind of galactic federation would likely have an outreach committee
responsible for drawing in any nascent civilizations. Through probes, they would
already be well aware of life on Earth and the emergence of human civilization,
and could come here directly if they wanted. But rather than seeming to intrude
on us by showing up in spaceships, they could greet us from the comfortable
distance of our Rosetta Star Zavijava.

A galactic federation--intent on averting feuds--might be sure to contact an

emerging civilization like Earth's before we go off colonizing other star systems
because then we're potentially invading somebody's realm. So their message to us
from our Rosetta Star may be part greeting, part warning, although the first signal
would likely simply be meant to get our attention like a laser pulse. Message
details would follow in a suitable way via radio waves and could be processed by
SETI professionals.

Hooking up via a Rosetta Star like Zavijava could be a real game changer for an
emerging civilization like ours, especially if the signaling civilization is highly
advanced and/or part of a galactic/universal consortium. We may be tapping into
the entire knowledge and history of the Universe--or at least what they'd be willing
to share with us (For more on Zavijava, and a list of also-rans, see Appendix C).

Radio SETI began in 1960 with Frank Drake at Green Bank, West Virginia. It's
been a truly noble effort. But the fact that it has come up empty after half a
century has to be recognized. A little good-natured levity might help.

And so, in celebration of SETI's 50th Anniversary, a fantasy roast was scheduled:
the theme was 0 for 50--and still swinging...
Imaginary customized gift ideas included:

*Too cute for words--but has a lot to say. It's a precious, precocious baby SETI
communicator doll with a rattle in her/his little mouth. This doll's hand can grasp the
rattle and pull it out temporarily, allowing it to say things like:
"Please leave a message after the beep...."
"That's a big 10--4 ETI; right back at ya buddy!"
"Excuse me, what did you say? Could you please repeat that? A little slower..."
"My cousin was abducted by aliens, but all I got was this T-shirt!"
"For security purposes, your transmission may be monitored."
"I'd tell you to e-mail it, but our spam filter is kind of strict."
"Would you like some fries to go with that shake?"
"What's the frequency, Dan?"

*Former Egyptian pharaoh Seti I, some 3,300 years into his afterlife, made an
appearance via a mock "false alarm" newspaper front page with the headline SETI
STUNS THE WORLD WITH MESSAGE (It's a list of valuables plundered from
his tomb that he wants back).

Good Vibrations
*Some of the leisure-minded put together a slick mock travel brochure for the
Pacific Northwest with a prominent paranormal section on "Bigfoot and SETI (Not
Yeti)". Here, adventurers were encouraged to "visit key sites associated with two
of mankind's most elusive mysteries. Follow Bigfoot's big footprints into the
Oregon mountain woods, or commune with the Allen Telescopic Array of antennae
in the California hills." Illustrations suggested possible fascinating scenarios, like
aliens making contact with Bigfoot (before humans officially do with either).

Conspiracy Theory & SETI

According to conspiracy theorists, SETI may be the equivalent of those legendary
WWII airfields filled with "imposing" cardboard, planes devised to confuse. the
enemy about the Allies' intentions. We may be more likely to get a bombshell
dropped on us now from one of these craft, or receive an exotic message from
some extinct passenger pigeon than to hear something conclusive from SETI about
ETI anytime soon, say the conspiracy--touters. The gift along this line was
intercepted by security at the party--so you'll have to imagine what it looked like.

*A couple of more subtle conspiracy-related gifts did get in. Consider how SETI
could have a second acronymic meaning. They got one of those kitschy three-
wise-monkey figurines who shun all evil and altered the inscription slightly to
"SETI: See no, hear no, speak no ETI". The gesturing monkeys were painted lime
green and their eyes were carved into the familiar alien almond shape.

In all fairness, the government has admitted that it embarked on an anti-

extraterrestrial disinformation campaign in the wake of widespread UFO sightings
during the late 1940's to 1950's. Officials say that they did it because they feared
that the public would overwhelm emergency response resources during the Cold
War.

*Here's one for sports fans who believe in the continuing conspiracy Getting on the
other side of the strikeout theme: they presented a pair of baseballs autographed by
Don Drysdale and Orel Hershiser, with a note referring to their remarkable streaks of
scoreless innings pitched, (58 and 59, respectively). And the main caption read
"Welcome to the 50-Shutout Club!"

Presidential HeadQuarters (and Cents, and Nickels)

*Putting a new twist on the familiar "take me to your leader" story, somebody
bought a souvenir from Mount Rushmore--of the Mount, by the Mount and for the
Mount and, without being disrespectful, mounted a little spaceship on it, with the
interrogative inscription "Hey, which rock represents the President?"

*Another one for sports fans was an audiotape of a "halftime speech" to SETI
researchers a la Knute Rockne at Notre Dame University: "We’ve put all of our
eggs in the radio SETI basket, and have goose eggs (zeros) to show for it. But
things are looking up. We've started looking around for another basket or two.
Latin is, after all, a dead language. We needn’t bury our aspirations with it!"

Manifest Destiny or This Land Is My Land

*Here is one somebody should really do. It's a set of staged photos. In one there's
an American farmer armed with a pitchfork running at a UFO in the process of
landing in his field. He's hollering "Oh no you don't ET, not in my backyard!" In
a follow-up picture, the farmer is seen proudly posing next to a scarecrow statue of
himself holding up a sign that reads "NIMBY ETI! GOTO SETI!"

The next photo of the series could be staged or photo-shopped. The setting is
one of those roadside signposts listing numerous destinations both near and
far, and the mileage to each, on an arrow pointing the direction to go. A
couple of ETs are standing there, among other travelers, examining the post.
And along with the signs for NEW YORK, TOKYO, OZ, KANSAS, ROME
and the like is one for what-do-you-know--SETI.

The actual event of making contact is not an everyday phenomenon in the

galaxy: once every 20 thousand to two million years (using aforementioned
Drake Equation range of estimates) a civilization becomes contactable. So one
might reasonably expect such an event to always get a decent amount of
interest from the greater community--like a total solar eclipse can draw a big,
diverse human crowd to even remote locations on Earth.

The UFO phenomenon may be at least partly explainable this way. They have
been here in anticipation of the contact event. Just like those attending a
sporting event or a concert, they've been arriving over an extended period of
time. Some of the early arrivals are like tailgaters--having a party, cutting up,
doing the outlandish.

Tabloid headline: “Little Green Space Aliens have Taken Over my

Laundromat!” (They use it like a hotel)

Impediments to Contact and Their Removal

Q--Those like you who want the Extraterrestrial involvement may need to address
several logical impediments to contact epitomized by the non-interference "prime
directive" of Star Trek lore. Can you do that?

A--I'll try. Extraterrestrials can legitimately claim to have been drawn here--by our
electronic broadcasts, radar, and such emitted since the 20th century. Any nearby
civilization monitoring the solar system--either remotely or by probes would likely
be onto us by now. Also, we attached an informational panel about us to the
Voyager II spacecraft and beamed a similar radio transmission from the Arecibo,
Puerto Rico facility out into space--both during the1970's. If we don't want to have
anything to do with extraterrestrials, we've done a poor job of hiding.

Regarding interference: official contact with ETIs has only become probable in
recent years because prior there was much less logical basis to suspect it.
Extraterrestrial confounding of our understanding of the cosmos is more so now if
they avoid contact than if they make contact.

Q--On another front--their objective--popular culture often depicts otherworldly

beings as warlike invaders, set on taking over and subjugating humanity, or
destroying mankind altogether. This fear needs to be assuaged, don't you think?

A--Violence kills at the box office. But aside from that, all matter in our Universe
was once part of the same dense, tiny singularity. The Big Bang seemingly
changed that a great deal. We now live in a rapidly expanding universe. But that
hasn't necessarily prevented intelligent beings within the universe from
establishing and maintaining positive connections throughout time

Q--But what about the risk of microbial contamination along the lines of "The
Andromeda Strain"? Wouldn't this strain and, hence, restrain any immediate
relations from the outset?

A--ETIs capable of traveling here to meet us physically would assuredly have

already developed sufficient technology to prevent any microbial outbreak between
parties. Some scientists here already have such technology in the works--a kind of
pasteurization zap.

That might not even be needed. That's because the difference with something like
the American Indians getting wiped out by European germs is that European
humans and American humans were/are virtually the same genetically. It was
just the Euros had built up immunity to the germs while still carrying them around.
"Thanks for the lift, buddy!" said the germs. But in a cross-worlds meeting, the
germs from either side would be totally inexperienced with the new potential host.
So, rather than figuratively licking their lips, they would be saying "Hey, who are
these creeps!"

Furthermore, ETIs can probably communicate with us initially by means that don't
involve physical proximity yet are immediate (not some long-distance radio
beacon), such as telepathy, holography, robotic proxies.

Q--Speculation that ETIs' arrival here involves the utilization of anti-gravitational

time travel apparatuses, such as "flying saucers", raises concern about possible
disruptions of historical human chronology. What's to be done?"

A--As regards worries about the release of future knowledge: ETIs may have
come here via long-distance wormhole shortcuts, hence may be our same-time
anyway, so not technically time-travelers in possession of future knowledge
necessarily. They could even be from before our time. ETIs who do have future
knowledge about us are probably quite professional in their handling of it. Any
such individuals would have successfully completed a thorough program of studies
in the field of trans-temporal communications.

As globalization here rolls along, we might expect galactization and universalism

to roll over us, although ETIs are probably more considerate in this regard. We
have little in the way of international laws and policies--UN, World Court--much
less pertinent to the higher arena--Institute of Space Law. This complicates our
ability to interface productively with ETIs.

Little spaceship sent from above

fluttering like the heart of a dove
be kind splendid astral wheel
despite all the facts we've concealed
reclaim what our minds won't distill
define how this world we may heal
oh brave, just celestial hub
replenish our puddle of love.
(Lyrics, to be delivered spoken-style a la Madonna in “Vogue” or Lady Gaga)

Membership's Benefits
The incredible advancements probable from making contact with ETI, be it from a
Rosetta Star or a landing craft or something else, turn this era into a golden
opportunity in our civilization’s lifetime. Although perhaps in the manner of a Zen
master teacher, they may not hand out the most highly advanced science and
technology on a silver platter, they are quite likely capable of helping those so
inclined to realize our greater human potential, both individually and
collectively, so that tremendous strides forward should be attainable.
A nascent intelligent civilization like ours, once brought into the cosmic club, should
experience an immediate leap in terms of the number and variety of creature with
whom communication is possible. This is quite different from our conventional
image here of isolated primal civilizations reaching out gropingly to contact their
neighbors, and so on. We become part of the big picture, no longer a lonely little
globe in a cold dark void. Of course, various other civilizations will be more or less
interested in communicating with us. So it’s useful to make a good impression.

It should not be necessary for us to go out and explore the whole galaxy in order to
find out what's out there. A lot of information will probably be made available to
the general public over the Internet once we join. We tend to have a distorted,
pejorative view of ETI reflecting popular culture. The real thing should be
much more interesting.

Grassroots Contact
Until the time of official contact arrives, and possibly to hasten the arrival of
that time, bear in mind that there is no law anywhere that specifically regulates how
one interacts with beings from other worlds. Like the US Constitution says, those
powers and responsibilities not appropriated by the government belong to the people.
Make your own contact! It may be that ETIs prefer making close, personal contact
with selected individuals first rather than going through impersonal official channels.
Establishing individual friendships telepathically sets good precedent for diplomacy.

How to physically bring ETI onto the scene: utilizing private property rights,
invite them to one's home and/or yard. As long as they are not currently at
war with the government, there can be no complaint about "having them over
for a little chat." If for any reason that doesn't work, take a ship or private
boat out into the ocean beyond national coastal boundary zone, and meet
them out there.

Consider also the possibility of contacting various independently-minded

countries in order to demonstrate ETI good intentions, capability and
competence. Possibly worth a try: Argentina, Australia, Bhutan, Canada,
Costa Rica, Denmark, Finland, France, Gabon, Iceland, India, Kiribati, Mali,
Micronesia, the Netherlands, Norway, Palau, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Saint Lucia,
Saint Vincent & Grenadines, Samoa, Senegal, Seychelles, Sweden,
Switzerland, Tibet, Trinidad & Tobago, Tonga, Turkey, Tuvalu, Uruguay. Note
that Canada has built a landing pad in Alberta for potential Extraterrestrial
use—open to any beings who "come in peace."

How about founding a Society for Positive Universal Relations (SPUR) or

some such not-for-profit group? Its objective would be to improve our
relationship w/ETI and their image in the public mind. SPUR could serve as
a think tank directed towards joining Earth with the universal union. We
might get some kind of probationary membership to begin with. Through a
carrots and sticks approach, SPUR may endeavor to shepherd the people of
the world into a harmonious relationship with the universal membership.

SPUR could ultimately function as an inter-being interface organization for

the people of Earth to begin to link up with member civilizations of the galaxy
and universe. We should be able to receive constructive input from other
worlds concerning our situation, and form linkages for a variety of useful
cultural, scientific, philosophic, and touristic exchanges to occur naturally.

SPUR may encourage the formulation of a world political body, possibly

under the UN umbrella, that can effectively and equitably arrive at a "thumbs
up" or "thumbs down" vote so that we can participate in universal affairs'
policy-making of relevance to us. One simple way would be to give equal
weight to each major region of the world. This arrangement balances the
democratic flavor of the UN General Assembly with the leadership character
of the UN Security Council. This system can function as a polling tool for the
world ambassador.

To arrive at the delineation of regions, it's sensible to model after existing

organizations of voluntary affiliation meant for economic, social, cultural,
scientific, and diplomatic purposes These include: The African Union (AU),
The League of Arab States (AL), The Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN), The Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARI-COM),
The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), The European Union (EU),
and The Organization of American States (OAS).

A careful balancing of a variety of factors leads to something like this for

regional groupings of the Earth:

* AmericA—Canada, Greenland, the USA mainland, Bermuda and

Mexico.

* LatinA--The Americas from Belize south through Ecuador, including

Brazil, and the Islands of the Caribbean.

* ArgenticA--South America from Peru south through Chile/Argentina

(all but Brazil), the Falklands and the continent of Antarctica.

* EuropA--Iceland, Scandinavia, The British Isles, most of mainland

Europe, Turkey and the Canaries.

* UrsA—Most of Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, Belarus,

Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

* ArabianA--Coastal Africa from Mauritania east through Somalia, and

the Sinai Peninsula north through Syria and Iraq.

* AfricA--The continent except for part in ArabianA, and Madagascar.

* WestAsiA--India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Iran and

most of the "-stan" lands.
* EastAsiA--China and the members of ASEAN.

* OceaniA--Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.

* JaponicA--Japan, the Koreas, northeast Siberia and Alaska.

That's 11 regions, 6 votes for a majority.

Captain Countries
No individual country within any given region should have more than 50
percent of that region's vote input. The likely 50%ers are USA, Brazil,
Argentina, Russia, India, China, Japan and Australia. The regions of
AfricA, ArabianiA and EuropA would be coalition-oriented from the get-
go. Beyond the 50% rule, the allotment of voting percentages within each
region would be guided by formula involving population, land size and
value, and other factors.

Voting ties within a region would be broken by the region's ambassador. Where
applicable, this official would be, on an alternating basis, from the captain country,
or from any one of the other countries of that region, but would be free at all times
to vote by conscience.

Demographics
(Aspects considered in delineating regions include: geography, economy,
population, affiliation, ethnicity, belief systems, history, culture, language, geo-
politics, diversity, leadership, etc.)

Any such system should be seen as a method for facilitating our interaction
with the greater galaxy/universe, not necessarily a means or model for
governing Earth, which would be free to continue governing itself in whatever
way(s) it so chooses. Consider it the best of both worlds: a step-up and a
drop-down approach; a step-up with a strong helping hand, perhaps.

Carrots & Sticks

It’s plausible that extraterrestrial intelligentsia have viewed with escalating interest
the activities of modern human(un)kind from their stewardship perspective. Nuclear
weaponry, above-ground militarization, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and
space-time travel are all emerging in the 20th-21st centuries as human endeavors.
Some, like nuclear weapons, are already full-blown; others, like time travel,
may still be in their infancy.
Collectively, they have a potentially worrisome extraterrestrial impact. None of
these high-tech trends existed here except in sheer fantasy prior to the 20th
century. So as we have become more capable of affecting their realm, contact
with us has likely moved up on the Extraterrestrials' priority list(s).

Star Wars--Not
Q--So in this "Peaceable (interstellar) Kingdom", is there any place for a species as
warlike as man?
A—Granted there has been a considerable amount of internecine strife among
humans over the centuries—largely over matters of territorial and resource scarcity or
a history of bad blood— but the community is willing to hold out some hope for
mankind that it will recognize the need to check this violent tendency at the door
before going up to the next level. That means no large-scale offensive weapons
beyond Earth orbit, for instance.

Q— What about colonies on the Moon, or on Mars?

A— Self-defensive systems are the only type permitted for pioneering communities,
so that no campaigns of interplanetary aggression can unfold. And the universal
deterrence system responds swiftly to any reports of incipient invasionary activity— so
it's like calling 911 —for a SWAT team. They'll be there in a flash with as much force
as is required to repel the attackers and neutralize their capability to aggress again.

Q—How do you distinguish between offensive and defensive weapons?

A--To illustrate: tanks, bombers and nukes would probably be considered offensive;
ABM systems, air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles (non-nuclear) would probably be
considered defensive.

The 1967 Outer Space Treaty (including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies)
addresses the threats of space militarization and aggrandizement among human
nations in a way that is probably a good model for the ETI situation:
* "Outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claims of sovereignty, by
means of use or occupation, or by any other means" (Article II).

* "States shall not place nuclear weapons or any other weapons of mass destruction
in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner"
(Article IV).

* "States shall avoid harmful contamination of space and celestial bodies" (Article
IX).

Monitoring Mini-bots
Micro-robotic nanotechnology is an area of growing concern. Self-replication
capability is a key aspect of this scientific frontier field. We like to think of the
positive uses for nanotechnology--as in medicine and computers--but ETIs may
well be envisioning the potential negative ones that might be turned out by a half-
witted society which lacks a strong moral compass.

Any self-replicating synthetic technology poses a threat to the greater universe

because even if innocuously programmed there is the risk that mutation or hostile
intervention will alter their robots' behavior in a manner that is disagreeable.

Ponder worst-case scenarios from the viewpoint of an extraterrestrial: one can

imagine vast armies of man-made robots infesting the galaxy and perhaps beyond
(particularly if gaining access to a wormhole network), hell-bent on conquest in a
rather barbaric sort of way.

Consequently, it may become necessary to reverse-quarantine any space and

orbital launchers. That is to say, specialists would need closely inspect all satellites,
probes, pleasure jaunts and other missions prior to launch for any robotic
stowaways.

Q--And what if mankind rejects these overtures?

Good ETI, Bad ETI

A--In the face of human recalcitrance, Earth's stewards may decide not to intervene
anymore to save humanity now from a natural cataclysm or alien invasion--unless
we agree to join on their terms. This doesn't mean they'll go out of their way to
bring on destruction. It just means that we are in the process of either joining the
galactic/universal community thereby gaining the privileges and responsibilities
associated with that; or we can insist on going it alone and accept the repercussions
of that. There may be a certain rogue element out there that would relish being
given a green light with respect to planet Earth. If we reject the galactic/universal
community's overtures, all bets may be off.
A sort of probationary or trial membership period may be available for us to try.
Membership offer is not an attempt to straitjacket or castrate a burgeoning
civilization. Rather it's an effort to shepherd the candidate into a cooperative
situation.

ETI might, via federation, give us proprietary rights to most of the solar system--at
least to those bodies that are presently lifeless. We would be free to mine them
and/or colonize/terraform them. We could also sell the rights to interested parties.

Joining the galactic /universal union won't grant mankind a license to run
recklessly all over the cosmos. But it will likely give us access to information and
footage deemed appropriate from other worlds, a seat in the galactic/universal
Congress, the opportunity to communicate with delegates from other worlds via
translation such as over the Internet, etc., and possibly even help in locating a post-
Sun star system, most likely a red dwarf's, as a planet to inhabit long-term.

Solar Meltdown Ahead

Astronomers estimate that the Sun has just another .5 to 1.5 billion years of more
or less steady-as-she-goes radiation left, after which it will blow up like a hot
water balloon. This will render Earth inhospitable to life as we know it.
Consequently, it makes sense for humanity to begin considering a new home. The
most logical place would seem to be the vast population of red dwarf stars.

Red Dwarf Resettlement Program (RDRP)

These stars, the most abundant of all star types, are much more plentiful than stars
like the Sun. Red dwarfs are also much more longer-lived: capable of nurturing
planetary life for a couple hundred billion years or so, compared with the less than
3-7 billion years of life-conducive output from the likes of the Sun.

Although there are a good many red dwarfs relatively nearby, some probably with
habitable planets, it might behoove us to be in touch with any galactic managing
authority in order to make a suitable reservation. Like booking a hotel room, the
further ahead you call, the greater the likelihood you’ll get the sort of
accommodations you want (all else being equal). By now, there has likely already
been substantial colonization of red dwarf systems. Robust civilizations may have
settled in hundreds, thousands, millions of them.

A galactic authority might maintain a buffer zone around emerging

indigenous civilizations like ours. However, if we don't join up with a galactic
federation, and instead decide to venture off far and wide on our own, we run
the risk of eventually coming across somewhere as hostile invaders. Whereas
as a federation member, we would likely be consulted on any civilization's
intention to colonize or relocate in our vicinity, and vice versa.

Regarding the potential fear that a new colony, such as one we might try to
establish, might feel about getting bullied: not all terra-formed red dwarf planets
will be the same. And the colonizing beings will be different. So it would be
unlikely that one would want to intrude on another's handiwork. But federation
forces would be at the ready just in case there is a problem.

Space Odysseus
The familiar sci-fi notion of enormous spaceships carrying hundreds or thousands
of people on trans-galactic wayfaring colonization missions is rather unlikely. For
such long-range missions, it seems more efficient and practical to send strands of
DNA on-board probes if we really want to seed our organic selves way out there.
The probes would be programmed to construct machines that would baby-sit the
first generation there and educate them.

Ditto regarding the plant an animal life we decide to bring with us. A modern-day
Noah's Ark would carry seeds and DNA with which to populate a new world. It
would also bring the know-how for building the equipment necessary for
transforming the selected planet into a hospitable place--terra-forming it.
Chapter 2

ATMOSPHERE OF FEAR

Before the Sun blows, there are other things to worry about on Earth. The last semi-
major world-wide extinction event occurred some 34 million years ago. These occur
on average every 26-30 million years, according to certain astrophysicists and
geologists (See Appendix D). So one can say the Earth may be due for something
like that. There are a variety of potential threats, many of which could come down
on us from overhead. Some of these exist mainly in our heads; some are our own
doing; some we have no control over They all contribute to an undercurrent
atmosphere of fear here.

Solar Pendulum
For historical perspective, take Stonehenge in modern day England. The layout of the
ancient landmark appears to mark, among other things, the Summer and Winter
solstices. Those are the spots on the horizon of the rising and setting Sun on the
longest and shortest days of the year, respectively. It's highly unlikely that the
architects knew the actual cause of the solstices--the wobbly spinning Earth,
though they surely were aware of the result--the more or less regular changing of
the seasons.

We know that other roughly contemporaneous civilizations, such as Egypt,

worshipped the Sun as a mighty god--perhaps even as the God. So there's a good
chance the people at Stonehenge, attributing volition to the Sun, observed the
solstices as annual divine decisions. They could have used the round structure for
ritual ceremonies to placate the Sun into reversing field again for another six months.

Because if the Sun ever kept on going in either direction without turning back the
result would have been catastrophic--either a runaway heat wave or a cold spell to
freeze hell. Hence the motive for “circling those dates on the calendar"--the solstices--
and monitoring closely the Sunrise/set on the following day(s) to make sure that the
Sun had indeed swung back.

Sacred Sculpture Parks

It's possible that these special occasions were sometimes visited by ETIs, either as
tourists or interactively as spirits/visions, having felt themselves summoned as gods.
The modern-day crop circle phenomenon, occurring largely in the same general
geographic area as Stonehenge and similar sites--The British Isles--can readily be
seen as another chapter in this regard, and hence indicative of a renewal of the
interplay there between man, supernatural force--the "heavens"--and the good Earth.
Even if the circles are largely man-made, they could be channeling higher powers.

The possible relationship of objects in the sky to our own lives has for centuries
involved the practice of astrology--considered by many back then to be a
legitimate science. Although pretty much passe today--at least in the scientific
community, astrology survives in the popular culture's daily horoscopes read by
millions, some seriously, some for amusement. Professional astrologers tend to be
deep in obscure and arcane numbers games. Those practitioners in the popular
media vie for attention via various gloom and doom apocalyptic scenarios.

Top Ten Earth-Tuggers

Regarding the tiny bit of science behind the superstition today: gravity. The Sun and
Moon are obviously the two major parties influencing Earth gravitationally. They are
followed in order by Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn. Then come Mercury, Uranus,
Neptune and probably Jupiter's most massive satellite Ganymede to round out a top
ten. Consequently, one might find reason to expect peak gravitational effects such as
high tidal flooding, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, temper tantrums, violent
outbursts, and sheer lunacy would be more likely when substantial alignments occur
than when they're all more or less scattered.

The "perfect pull" scenario would feature a shish kebab-like alignment of the
planets, all together on one side of the Sun, with the Moon in either full or new
phase as seen from Earth. To further maximize the effect, these bodies, particularly
Mars, should be at or near their closest approach to Earth (aphelion for the inner
planets, perihelion for the outers). Problem is, the orbital rates of the planets are
mostly unsynchronized. So anything resembling having all your ducks in a row is
extremely rare. Imagine throwing ten darts at a dart board and trying to get them
all in a straight line.

Those who speak of a great planetary alignment on December 21, 2012 are
exaggerating quite a bit. The planets will only be hanging together loosely. Jupiter
and Mars--two of the three most influential planets are so far out of alignment to
either side that they aren't even technically on the same side of the Sun. Moreover,
the bodies most closely aligned with the Sun and Moon that date are the rather
insignificant Mercury and trivial Pluto (not even considered a planet anymore). So
these two groups would be more or less gravitationally at cross-purposes with
respect the others.

The great planetary alignment of March 1982 was a tighter pack--and yet no havoc
was caused then despite predictions of earthquakes. That formation featured all of
the aforementioned top ten Earth tuggers within half the expanse of the zodiacal
belt--beginning in Virgo.

Gravity is just too weak at most planetary distances and sizes. No convincing data
to date show any planetary gravity (other than our own) having a noticeable effect
on biological or geological phenomena on Earth, such as the tides. Although
Newton, Benjamin Hooke and Kepler were right in pointing out the role of gravity
between the various planets influencing each others' orbits, these are mostly very
minor effects compared to the strength of the gravity of the Sun and Moon (which
are not planets) on Earth

It's due to the relative greatness of the Sun's mass and the relative greatness of the
Moon's proximity, which render all the other solar system bodies of minor import
in this regard. The ranges of variation in the lunar and solar pulls on a regular
basis far outweigh the power of all the other bodies lined-up.

If massive Jupiter were located where Venus is, then we could start talking about a
planet having a direct, noticeable influence on Earthly events. (Not to diminish the
big effect Jupiter's gravity indirectly has on Earthlife by attracting asteroids and
comets that might otherwise hit us).

So 2012 doomsayers are making a mountain out of a molehill--as regards direct

effects of the planets, anyway. Of course group psychology cannot be predicted.
If enough people believe something awful will occur based on the planets or
anything for that matter, their behavior may have an influence on events, as well as
on how the events are spun to the public.

Full-Moon Lunacy
Moon-in-the-man effects associated with the full moon phase should be closely
examined because a similar effect ought to be detectable with the new moon phase.
At both phases, the Earth, Moon and Sun are lined-up. The gravitational
interactions of these three bodies are more or less comparable at the two times of
the near-monthly cycle. Tidal charts do not draw a distinction between spring tides at
full moon and spring tides at new moon.

So if a research study or survey reports more lunatic behavior at full than at new,
other factors such as enhanced lighting, observer bias or Wolfman's syndrome need to
be considered. Or people may simply be misbehaving on purpose--like every full
moon is a Halloween-style carte blanche for misbehavior.

Angel of Death
Why is the Easter holiday based on the phases of the Moon? What does Jesus
Christ have to do with the Moon? The first Easter followed the Jewish feast of
Passover, as celebrated by Jesus and his disciples, by three days. The first Passover,
as inaugurated by Moses in Egypt, occurred under a full Moon—the 14th day of the
first month of the year (Exodus 12, verses 6-13).

The reason for this lunar link isn't indicated in the Bible text, so one can surmise that
it was to help the Angel of Death see what she/he was doing—passing over those
houses with blood on the door. In which case one could further speculate that
on the night of the Last Supper in Jerusalem, the sky was overcast.

Earth’s Moon is disproportionately large for a satellite. An outside visitor,

cataloging the objects of this star system, might even categorize the third
planet as a binary. Furthermore, one of the most obvious things of note in the
Earth’s sky is the equivalent size of Sun and Moon Luna. How would this be
interpreted by the native inhabitants? What would be the most logical
astronomical conclusions for a primitive person to draw empirically?

That Time of The Month, or Speed Skating in the Sky

A primitive (pre-trigonometric) astronomer here, beginning with the Sun &
Moon, would probably think that both circle the Earth in roughly the same
orbital path--at roughly the same distance--since they appear to be the same
size.

Evidence of the Moon occasionally passing directly in front of the Sun--

during solar eclipses--might well be taken as indicating that the usual
behavioral protocol at the regularly occurring intersection was for the faster-
orbiting Moon to pass politely behind the Sun.

Consequently, there may have been some anxiety during those periods that a
collision could take place between the heavenly bodies if they happened to get
their signals crossed, or that a close approach might ignite the Moon like a
torch when a match is held to it.

In either case, the anticipated consequences would be devastating: a fiery

explosion followed by eternal nightfall and freezing if the Moon "took out” the
Sun; or two Suns, leading to an “Endless Summer” of incredible scorching
intensity that might vaporize the waters, singe the crops, and ultimately
consume the land in raging wildfire. And so the people of these times would
have "kept their fingers crossed" during each and every monthly crossing,
and probably celebrated afterwards.

Post-Apocalyptic Moon
It’s also quite likely that some early astronomical speculators hypothesized
that the Moon was a burnt-out Sun, either due to ageing or celestial assault—
noting the appearance of bombardment readily apparent to the naked eye,
meaning that the Sun had dethroned Moon Luna, and now reigned supreme
in the heavens.
Rock Your World (A sci-fi scenario)
The average Earth-Moon distance for now is just 239 thousand miles. Given the
Earth's orbital speed of 67,000 miles per hour, along with the fact that the Moon
more or less wiggles across Earth's path about once a month, if for any strange
reason the Moon should ever freeze-up there--like a deer sometimes does while
crossing the highway--it would appear to be less than four hours away.
Such an event is unlikely, we say, because orbiting planets don't just stop dead in their tracks all
of a sudden for no reason. But how many people who get their cars smashed into by a
locomotive woke up that day and decided to go over to the railroad tracks and get themselves
killed?

In this "balking moon" scenario, one would see the last quarter half-moon gradually getting bigger (the
whole disk). Imagine being the first person to notice this. At first, you likely would doubt what was
being seen-—it must be some atmospheric effect, or an optical illusion-- but after about fifteen minutes
it would be rather undeniable that something real was happening.

With the Moon growing ever larger in the sky, pandemonium would soon be widespread as every TV
and radio station would be covering the impending doom As tide turned into tidal wave, coastal
communities would be the first to feel it. Meanwhile, inlanders might try, by “global consciousness”,
to kick-start the Moon and move it out of the way.
Mythical Battles
In the night sky, meteor showers must have been tremendous sources of
wonderment, and perhaps terror, among the ancient peoples. These fiery
spectacles could have supported beliefs in higher powers--capable of hurling
burning projectiles across the heavens. The annual nature of meteor showers (i.e.
Perseids, Orionids, Leonids, Geminids, etc.--in that sequence) would surely have
been noticed, and likely ascribed to entrenched rival encampments in the sky--such
as proto-constellations.

Variations in the strength of each shower from year-to-year may have led to
speculation, and perhaps wagering, on the results. To illustrate, a heavy Perseid
bombardment followed by a weak showing of Orionids might be seen as the
Perseids having subdued/scared/decimated the Orionids. The interpretation would
likely vary depending on how many bright Perseid fireballs were observed heading
right into the Orionid camp, and vice versa.
Here Come the Clouds
They're ever moving across the sky--sometimes swiftly, other times ploddingly in a
multitude of shapes, sizes and obscuring the sun, bringing rain, hail, snow, lightning,
changing on-the-fly, and occasionally disappearing altogether. The variety and day-
to-day uncertainty of clouds must have given great status to early
meteorologists who could predict the weather with any degree of success.

The clouds generally approached from the same direction, and exited likewise, consistently,
on the “other side” in a direct manner. But where did they go after leaving the area? Did
the same clouds visit distant neighbors, did those people have their own clouds, or did the
clouds typically transform themselves in-between locations? As no cloud was ever seen
turning around and heading backwards, it had to be assumed that they knew their way
around beyond the periphery and were quite wise, at least in matters of navigation.
"Just how many clouds are there, and how long do they live?", ancient man
likely wondered. Did big clouds give birth to little ones, or little ones join up to
form the bigger shapes? And what about thunderstorms? Were they caused by
conflicts among various tribes of clouds? When were the clouds actually chasing each
other, and what enabled some to occasionally move faster than and, hence, overtake
laggards.

Macy’s Day Clouds

There may well have been artists assigned to sketch the clouds, both for weather-
tracking and, possibly, in an effort to catalog shapes. Elder statesmen would likely
"recognize" a great many clouds on an individual basis, perhaps sometimes seeing a
familiar form after many years' absence. Where had this cloud been all that time? Did it
go somewhere and just hang up there resting or had it banished? A favorite cloud’s
apparent return might be cause for celebration.
Fair Weather Friends
This, and their influence on climate must have earned much respect for the clouds, with
storm clouds in particular garnering fear and awe. Yet even fair weather clouds, capable
of blocking the solar rays and cooling the land, must have seemed quite remarkable,
especially huge ones and those with unique, elaborate features. Just as we bestow names
on hurricanes today, early sky buffs might well have named the clouds--much as they did
the constellations--based on the suggestiveness of the contours.
During periods of severe drought, emissaries may have been sent out to try locating some
moisture laden clouds and perhaps coax them to proceed forward or to maneuver around
to the "parade route.” In a contrary fashion, a persistent thick cloud cover
delivering rain or snow for several days might have compelled the people to set
about persuading these clouds to leave. Music, dancing, even fire could have been used to
“break up” the oppressive clouds..
Safety Tips for Tornado Encounters:
If you see a funnel cloud approaching, do not run directly towards it, thinking you
will scare the tornado away. They are not easily intimidated. If one of them is
following your car too closely for comfort, don't expect it to simply go around you
if you slow down or hit the brakes and stop in the middle of the road. A tornado
does not have any braking system, it is a breaking system, and even if you pull off
to the shoulder, that tornado may swerve and hit you there anyway.

Ozzie Trumps Ouzi

Just because you are in the top floor of a skyscraper, and can see some twister
devastating buildings on the ground, doesn't mean that you are guaranteed to be
safe up there. The spinners may just be putting your sanctuary off for a final
assault. Those contemplating a heavily-armed strategy should know that it is
difficult to repel a determined tornado. You might blast away with an Ouzi, but the
cyclonic storm could simply send the bullets spinning back in your direction, like a
juggler does in the circus.
It is pointless to hurl epithets at a tornado or try to redirect one by shouting through
a megaphone. The extreme wind velocity distorts any attempts at communication,
so you'll just be wasting your breath. If you are hiking in the woods and someone
suggests crossing over a river to escape an approaching tornado, know that
tornados don't mind getting a little bit wet along the way.
Trying to "fake out" a twister is not an advisable course of action. Because
tornados often travel in groups, it is unlikely that they will all fall for the same
trick. If you cannot outrun the tornado that's pursuing you, it's best to hide
somewhere close to the ground, as they can be impatient at times, and may leave
you alone to go off looking for something else to destroy.
And finally, be advised that so-called “mobile” homes are not guaranteed for safety
when that “mobility” involves catapulting through the air.

Nuclear Family Winter

Her: When are you going to go outside and shovel it? (blizzard)
Him: After the top ten feet or so have blown into the street!
Her: You mean when it's time to open up the swimming pool!
Him: Can't I just mow it?
Her: No, you've got to shovel it!
Him: No, you shove it!

Tabloid headline: Winter Tornado Climbs Mountain (In search of ski resort; the
“white tornado” may have triggered an avalanche.)

Supersize that Frosty: Big Blizzard Scenario

The snow is so high that the second story of houses actually substitutes for the
first: so people go in and out of their homes through an upstairs window (those
that have two above-ground floors; others need to use the chimney), and in fact the
snow is firm enough for walking atop in most places. Yet there are occasional soft
spots, which one could fall through by surprise--and need to be rescued out of like
quicksand.

Those able to get their cars lifted may be seen driving them about on top of the piled snow where it
is deemed safe enough. But there is some difficulty negotiating the right-of-way, as all of the street
signs and even most of the traffic lights are buried.

In the city center, cars occasionally "double-park" in a novel way--one right on top
of the other- The lower one, being stuck there and covered with several feet of
snow, is indistinguishable from its surroundings. So it's equivalent to a multi-story
garage.

Some people use metal detectors to search for their parked/abandoned cars,
plunging the device into snow drifts. However, finding a car is not necessarily the
same thing is finding your car. Numerous deep and narrow holes bear mute
testimony to dashed hopes. Snowed-in cars that have been located and positively
identified are sometimes extricated with the help of tow trucks, which pull the
vehicle out, straining like a dentist dealing with a deeply impacted tooth.
Huge piles of plowed snow contain lots of large frozen layered slabs that resemble
stacks of junk at a demolition site. Really big mounds can sometimes be confused
for buried standing houses when a fresh coating of snow drapes over them.
Eventually the plowers resort to construction cranes

Tabloid Headline: Explorers Find Huge Metal Scrap Heap at North Magnetic Pole
(concerns voiced about a polar reversal)

Polar Siren Scenario

Him: That's quite a mole! (on beauty's face)
Her: Haven't you ever seen a boll weevil?
Him: Yeah, and I'm a cotton gin—on the rocks!
Her: Better be careful, Mr. Pleasure Cruiser, it's really
the fleshy tip of a cranial iceberg!
Him: Sounds chilly.
Her: Why don't you rub it a little and see how I respond.
Him: Now it looks swollen.
Her: Think so? Actually it’s a miniature ingrown mushroom!
Can you
tell which kinds are poisonous?

Oops, My Bad!
Tabloid headline: Titanic Was Actually Sunk by Massive Head of Lettuce from
Greenland (The "iceberg" was grown by aliens working on balancing global
climate shifts).

Global Flooding
In warmer times, before Antarctica drifted into its position over the South Pole, the
ice there now was water in the oceans, and sea levels were a couple of hundred feet
or so higher. Just look at a map of North America during, say, the Devonian
period some 400 million years ago. More than one-third of the present-day United
States was under water at that prehistoric time. Fossils of sea creatures found far
inland provide supporting evidence.

Just how dangerous is global warming for modern times? A projected 2-degrees-C.
rise in average global temperature by the end of the 21st century could have a
substantial impact because so many people live in coastal areas within a foot or so
of sea level. It might be like a gradual, persistent and global tsunami.
A Flood of Truly Biblical Proportions
Looking for an historical precedent, it’s notable that during the period of 5,000
B.C. to 3,000 B.C., climatologists say, the temperature was about 2 degrees C.
warmer than now. The experiences of that time may well have been the source of
the rising waters of the cross-cultural Noah’s Ark “legend.”

Tabloid headline: Polar Bear Found in Hawaii (having floated there on a melting
iceberg)
(This headline was written pre-Lost)

Dinos Like It Hot

Yet, even with that 2-degrees-C. global warm-up, we’d still be about 3-to-4
degrees-C. cooler than when the dinosaurs were in their youth (during the Triassic
period 200-230 million years ago).

Climate of Fear?
Climate change is a normal, ongoing, cyclical aspect of the Earth involving the
likes of galactic positioning, solar output, orbital variations, lunar interactions,
geographic/geophysical processes, oceanic currents and atmospheric effects. Some
of the galactic and solar cycles may be as long as 300 million years. Cycles related
to Earth's orbital eccentricity, axial tilt and precession--known as the Milankovitch
cycles--are on the order of tens of thousands to hundreds thousands of years.
Some fifteen short-term cyclical factors have been identified, ranging from two
years to 2.6 thousand years.

Some combination of factors causes the Ice Age phenomenon. In the most recent
of the five Great Ice Ages, temperatures have ten times swung up-and-down wildly
during the past 1.5 million years. Because we are presently in the midst of an
interglacial warming which began about 11 thousand years ago, temperatures are
expected to rise in the coming centuries even without human effects.

So should human activity be considered just another cycle to throw into the mix or
more like a catastrophic event? Well, it should be noted that the term "cycle"
implies a natural back-and-forth phenomenon, whereas man's environmental
impact has been mostly one-sided and escalating. And global warming is just one
aspect of climate change, which itself is one aspect of the human assault on the
planet.

Dr. Strangelove, Perhaps (or Nuclear Winter Wonderland)

There are some who say that as we could offset global warming without changing
our behavior very much, by utilizing another one of our tools and periodically
detonating a few nukes--under U.N. supervision--somewhere out of harm’s way
from the radiation fallout. But the political fallout would be great, with much of
the public likely viewing such a maneuver with alarm--as “fooling with Mother
Nature” and “playing with matches.” Moreover, as global warming is a more or
less gradual, cumulative phenomenon rather than a sudden event (though it is
punctuated by them), it’s difficult to envision such a drastic, last-resort kind of
response happening. And nukes--or other materials dispersed into the atmosphere-
-don't address the matter of carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere, which is the
cause of global warming. So they'd only buy time.

Nuclear weapons technology may be like an alternative take on the Biblical Tree of
Knowledge for modern time. The US could be Eve--having taken a couple of bites
and realizing the ill affects. She senses that Adam (Russia) will pick some, too, so
tries to prevent him from eating or giving to others any of the stockpile and to keep
others away from the tree (non-proliferation). All the while she is working on
developing an antidote to the fruit’s poison (missile defense system).

Thankfully, there is probably less tension between major nuclear powers than at
any time in the nuclear era. Weapons stocks of the US and Russia have been cut to
1/3 of their Cold War levels, and further cuts are planned. Increasing global
economic interdependence reduces the motive for conflict--it would be like
blowing your nose up to spite your face.

True, nine nations have nukes now, but it could be a lot worse. Three countries
have abandoned nuclear programs over the years. Only one additional nation is
considered a threat to join the club. Everybody else has signed a non-proliferation
treaty. However, it must be acknowledged that the most recent member of the club-
-N. Korea--was also a signatory but withdrew.

Would-be proliferators might ponder the following scenarios in which a country

could wind up unleashing nukes on itself:
* “friendly fire"
* destination code scrambled by hostile parties such as terrorists, enemy powers,
etc.
* sudden head-of-state insanity, drugging or mind control
* civil war/secession/insurrection--for and/or against
* weapons stolen by terrorists (a la "24 Hours" TV series)
* as an appeasement gesture to the world for an erroneous assault
* weapons launched at ETIs are boomeranged by them
* to contain the spreading of a biological toxin
* to neutralize a substantial invading force
* to preempt an imminent major earthquake (a la “10.0” TV movie)
* training drill gone awry
* rogue missile launch triggers a massive response, counter-response, etc.
* A.I. “War Games” takeover ploy via Nuclear Winter (a la The Terminator film).

ETIs, though many of them probably do care about mankind in a cosmic

fellowship kind of way, cannot be expected to intervene in order to prevent a
nuclear Armageddon here, because a species so stupid to do that to itself gets what
it deserves. To destroy our own civilization now would prove our own unfitness as
a species for progressing further.

Of course the most devastating aerial assault this century was the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks involving the kamikaze-style crashing of jet airplanes into New York City's World Trade
Center's twin towers and the military headquarters Pentagon building near Washington D.C.

The events on that day were troubling on many levels, not the least of which was the
eerie resemblance to the prophetic Biblical account in Revelations 17-18.

The city of Babylon, targeted for turmoil in this end-times scenario no longer exists.
Hence, those who believe that the end-times are near, and not expecting Babylon to
suddenly be rebuilt in the desert wasteland must find a modern-day substitute. That
could be New York.

* Babylon is referred to as "the great city that rules over the kings of the Earth" (Rev.
17, v.18), whose "merchants were the world's great men" (Rev. 18, v. 23).

* The pivotal tale of the destruction of Babylon is described as "the punishment of

the great prostitute, who sits on many waters" (Rev. 17, v.1).

* "The waters where she sits are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages" (Rev.17
v.15).

*** NYC is the greatest city in the most powerful country on Earth, home to
multitudes—many of whom are recent-generation immigrants (still speaking native
language). It is headquarters to the United Nations organization, and sits at the
confluence of the Hudson and East Rivers in New York harbor where it is the hub of
international merchant activity. The WTC towers symbolized all of this.

Of course, NYC is not the only city that displays any of these characteristics but it is
the city that best matches the profile. The description of events continues to support
this line of reasoning.

* "Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has
come!" (Rev.18 v.10) In the brief span of one hour and forty-one minutes, both
trade towers were struck and collapsed.

* The observation that the city "will be consumed by fire" (Rev.18 v.8) foreshadows
the blazing fireball impacts of the jets. The highly detailed description of various
luxury cargoes bought and sold in the city (Rev.18 v.11-16) makes the World Trade
Centers' destruction seem like a poignant modern fit for the prophecy "such great
wealth has been brought to ruin (Rev.18 v.17)."

IF it's true that the 9/11 events are fulfillment of the prophecy in Revelations 17-1,
then the whole end-times scenario must be well underway.

Furthermore, the collapse of the Twin Towers appears to be oddly foreshadowed by

the fabled, failed Tower of Babel (Genesis 11 v.1-9).

Something Fishy
On the European continent, just as fanciful, Martian "canals" were posited in 1877
by Giovanni Schiaparelli--or were they? Actually, the Italian "canali" meaning
"channels" was mistranslated to "canals". The implication of "canals"--habitation
by the canal-builders--fueled speculation about an intelligent civilization there. It
also oddly foreshadowed our present understanding of Mars' surface as once
carrying large amounts of water.

Venetians Beware
Tabloid headline: Martians Set to Invade Earth In Venice, Italy (Veteran canal-
paddlers will lead the amphibious assault by the Roman warrior-god marines)

Orson Welles tapped nicely into that lingering reservoir of Martian fear in his 1938
radio adaptation of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. It's estimated that about one in six
who heard it believed the drama was an actual alien assault. Other listeners thought
that the broadcast was perhaps a dress rehearsal for a potential real invasion by the
German military--orchestrated to gauge public responses. In a small town in NW
Washington state, an accidental, coincidental power outage convinced some people
that the aliens were indeed running amuck.

The British Invasion (updated)

“Now remember, soldier, it's one if by land, two if by sea.”

"But, sir, what about their aircraft? isn't that the biggest threat now?

"Yeah, I suppose so, but we didn't get to that in the briefing--you'll just have to improvise!"

Tabloid headline: Stealth Plane Disappears (“It could be anywhere”, air force
general laments).

The government acknowledges that officials embarked on an anti-UFO

disinformation campaign in the wake of mass-sighting events in and around
Washington, D.C. in 1952. They justify this policy on grounds of national
security. It was feared that the public would overwhelm emergency response
resources during the cold war.
However, UFOs seen nowadays with night vision binoculars are likely identifiable
as bats, possibly nighthawks. They're simply zig zagging around gobbling up
insects. They're not aliens engaged in evasive maneuvers or preparing for battle.

Similarly, most cattle mutilations are probably the "handiwork" of innocent

insects, microbes or scavenger birds like vultures and buzzards. They're just
doing what comes natural--not ET mad scientists. This birds, bugs & bacteria
theory explains why there generally aren't any animal tracks leading to/from
the carcass. The diners either fly in or are light-footed (or both).

Missing--A Wife's Tale?

Not to be a total killjoy, but most so-called "alien abductions" of people overnight
are likely lucid dreams. Otherwise, given the high number of people who keep
their cell phone bedside, some abductee should have returned by now with photo
or video documentation. Or else somebody experimented on would come back
with real surgical scars (kids--don't try this at home). Or at least some husband or
wife or other family member of an abductee would take a photo of the abduction.
How can the alleged aliens wake up and carry off the target person without rousing
anybody else in the house, including bedmates, or neighbors?
If physical abductions were really happening, there'd be frantic calls to 911 in the
middle of the night.

Wife: "My husband's been taken away by aliens."

911 Operator: "Your husband's been abducted?"
Wife: "Yes, right before my eyes!"
911 Operator: "Could you give us a description, mam, of the aliens. You
know, what they looked like, how tall they were, whether they were
wearing any clothes..."
Wife: "They looked sort of like...Grays."
911 Operator: "So short, big eyes, naked and gray."
Wife: "That's right!"
911 Operator: "OK mam, I'm sending officers out there. They should be
at your house in time to monitor your husband's return in order to make
sure he hasn't been harmed in any way..."

Now for some straight dope. If Earth’s militias were to ever actually
engage a real armada of advanced ETI spacecraft, in all likelihood the
aggressors would simply be taken out by their own armaments. So superior
is top-notch ETI technology that they would probably not even need their own
offensive weaponry to completely destroy any of mankind's best.

For example, they might utilize space curvature, wormholes, and/or anti-
gravity technology to simply boomerang projectiles back to the shooter, along
with time-manipulation capability to ensure that detonation occurs when they
want it to. Lasers, similarly, would be reflected back whence they came.

Invisible Projectiles, Planets

Utilizing advanced technology to render an object invisible,
powerhouse ETIs could, when it is deemed appropriate, wage war
with missiles capable of not simply evading radar but basically
not being seen at all. Upon impact/detonation, of course, there
would be a huge explosion, but it would seem to have erupted
from the sight itself rather than having been transported there.

Picture a heavy bombardment of these invisible warheads

exploding all over the place! and nobody knowing what ("on
Earth"?) is going on. Where did these mines come from so
suddenly, and what could be triggering them? A bewildering
scene, indeed.
As with projectiles, a high intelligence might see fit to make its planet (or another
one) invisible, perhaps to avoid a takeover or detection leading to that. Such a
planet could possibly be discovered by an examination of
gravitational influences, unless the planet's security force
employs anti-gravity technology to counterbalance their
hidden sphere somehow.

Q--If ETIs visiting Earth are so technologically sophisticated, then why have some of
them crashed?
A--Maybe they wanted to test our reaction, and for the amusement value of that. Any
dead bodies on board would have been shells from which the beings had removed
their essence, or else they were cloned drone flunkeys in obsolete craft; hence
discardable machines.

The 1947 Roswell Incident was unlikely extraterrestrial. Rather, it probably

was a then-secret government project using an array of air balloons to look
for signs of Soviet nuclear tests. This is the official explanation for it now, and
just might be truthful. The "aliens" may have been leftover Japanese POW's.
They were definitely not ETIs because ETIs don't crash.

There is no reported record of any ETI craft ever having been shot down by
humans. And it is doubtful that anyone in the military today seriously thinks
that any Earth force could engage in a real two-way dogfight with them
involving an exchange of “hits." You are probably more likely to be struck by a
piece of space junk falling out of Earth orbit than you are to witness a crash or
shoot-down of an ETI spacecraft.

GPS Hoax-land
It’s also possible that so-called ETI crash data has all been fabricated--if not by
UFO buffs then by the authorities as part of a disinformation campaign aimed at
perpetuating a pejorative stereotype of “aliens”--like, “hey, these little guys may be
able to zip around at the speed of light, but when there’s a glitch in their
navigational system they can’t land safely in a cow pasture.”

Ninja Turtles
To the contrary, highly advanced ETIs can probably maneuver and morph
themselves at will. For instance, they could infiltrate all of the important places in
the world as nothing larger than dust specks in the air. Then, on a synchronized
cue, they’d all suddenly become full-sized (and fully-armed, too, as equipment
would likewise be malleable).

Imagine the shockwaves around the world if every significant head of state found
him/herself simultaneously surrounded by a dozen or so rather menacing and surly
ETIs pointing high-powered weapons at various parts of these "leaders'"
anatomies.

Invasion from Below (ifb)

Another ETI strategy exploits the tendency of people to look up and congregate
out-of-doors at, for instance, fireworks displays: aware of human wariness of
flying saucers, an alien invasion party lands surreptitiously and then goes
underground (literally). When the time comes to attack, they utilize illusion-
making technology to create an impression of hostilities in the air, whilst
burrowing up and securing evacuated buildings, institutions, etc. The goal is to
take over society with as little bloodshed as possible.

Old Faithful
One of the worst potential atmospheric disasters is actually underground at present--
percolating in the vicinity of Yellowstone National Park, USA. It’s not a single
volcano but a whole labyrinthine network of them. In fact, the Yellowstone system is
one of several super-volcanoes located in diverse areas of the planet, including a big
range in Siberia. Not enough is known about them all to be able to predict which one
will be next to blow.

Touchdown Yellowstone
But the recent eruption pattern at Yellowstone places us marginally within the
window of cataclysmic vulnerability. The last three major outbursts of the
Yellowstone super system occurred 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and .635 million years
ago, according to geologists. Football fans would say that’s roughly every .7 million
years give or take .1 million years.

Not all big eruptions are equal. The most ancient of this trio at the Yellowstone
region proved to be 10 times more powerful than the next and four times more
powerful than the most recent of them, and thousands of times more powerful than
1980’s Mt. St. Helen’s. A similar one now could devastate human civilization as we
know it, perhaps throwing much of mankind into another dark age. However,
observations that an eruption is immanent need not foretell a major disaster. Much
more frequent are minor eruptions, such as was last seen at Yellowstone 70
thousand years ago.

Volcanic activity is implicated in the mass extinctionary events of:

* 251 mil. yrs. ago--asteroid impact in Antarctica + Siberian volcanic chain--from

Permian to Triassic--the worst one.

* 201/214 mil. yrs ago--Atlantic volcanism--from Triassic to Jurassic--one of five-

worst.

It is also believed that a major volcanic eruption of Mount Toba (Sumatra) nearly
wiped out humanity about 71--74 thousand years ago.

Tabloid headline: Volcano Erupts Sideways (Evidently, it doesn't know which way is
up).

About the underground: studying the geological record, it should be kept in mind
that sometimes one kind of phenomena can precipitate another. For instance,
volcanic activity triggered by a major asteroid hit spews particles high into the atmosphere where
they join the debris cast up by the asteroid's impact, thus magnifying the sunlight blockage effect
and causing it to persist--global cooling. Volcanoes also emit a substantial amount of carbon dioxide
gas which can lead to a greenhouse-like global warming. Of course, volcanic activity and asteroid
bombardment can also coincide simply by chance.

Ask anybody if they’ve ever seen witnessed a nuclear reaction and when they say
“No, of course not!” follow-up with “You mean you’ve never seen the Sun? What
are you, a vampire?” The nuclear reaction powering the Sun is fusion--the same
process that drives the mighty H-bomb. (Standard A-bombs use fission). The Sun
would be every bit as lethal per square inch as the bomb if it were to erupt on
Earth. As it stands now, the planet’s atmosphere largely shields terrestrials from
otherwise fatal solar radiation, although what does get through still takes a toll via
skin cancer.

The Sun has probably several times zapped the Earth in such a way that a mass
extinction would have occurred if there were a lot of species around. However, these
events happened before life got very complex and diversified. The approximately 3-
billion-year period when life on Earth seems to have been treading water at a very
primitive level may have included some potential watershed events that got washed
away in a sea of solar radiation, as the “yonge sonne” had not yet stabilized.
Complex life on Earth may be seen as flourishing in a window of relative solar
stability. The Sun will surely close that window as its own life winds down. The
oldest, and hence most advanced civilizations are likely to have been born on or
relocated to planets orbiting red dwarf stars, as these stars tend to last much longer
than medium-sized stars like the Sun.

Human technology on Earth could be vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse

(EMP) from the Sun. If we receive one like the intense Carrington Flare event of
1859, electronics/communications/satellites might be adversely affected.
However, it is believed that most equipment has been adequately protected.

The awesome shimmering Auroral Lights--triggered by solar radiation--have been

a source of amazement and speculation for as long as people have abided in
latitudes where they're visible. Those so fortunate have associated Lights displays
with activities of spirits, gods, animals and such. In recent times, some have
considered them omens of imminent war events--including the World War II attack
at Pearl Harbor.

Tabloid headline: Bird Flu Found on Meteorite (Chalk one up for Chicken Little)

At the present time, planet Earth is a sitting duck for asteroidal/cometary

collisions, no less vulnerable than during the dinosaur epoch which was ushered
out some 65 million years ago by an asteroid strike along the Yucatan peninsula of
what is now Mexico. True, there are bomb shelters now, but many above-ground
structures would likely not withstand a major impact and the subsequent quakes.
Short and long-term climactic aftermath would probably result in a modern Dark
Age of scarcity and anomie.

A land strike could start devastating wildfires. The dust cloud kicked up by the
impact would blot out much of the sunlight necessary for plant growth, resulting in
drastically reduced crop yields. Many people would likely starve. In one potential
worst-case scenario, a big hit near either pole might melt or fracture parts of the ice
sheets, leading to worldwide flooding of coastal communities. This could be
followed by a deep freeze due to the curtailed sunlight.

Space is largely open to the movement of matter through it, for example comets
from beyond. The Earth is part of an open system. That may seem obvious to us
now, but just a few hundred years ago it was widely believed that there were
enormous crystalline spheres surrounding each planet.

Just take a look at crater sites such as Crater Lake, OR. Or look at the Moon.
With a pair of binoculars you can see the radiating ejecta lines emanating brightly
from the crater Tycho--likely created by an asteroid impact around the time of the
Yucatan event. Through a telescope you can see hundreds, even thousands of lunar
impact craters--many quite large.

A highly advanced society, such as we would like to think ourselves becoming,

should have the means for averting these cosmological disasters, utilizing Strategic
Defense Initiative-style missile shielding technology on a much larger scale to
blow up the impending havoc-wreaker, or employing some method for diverting its
course thereby causing it to miss us.

How to Divert an Asteroid

Should it be determined that conventional high-tech or standard nuclear methods--
lasers, exploding rockets, etc.--wouldn't sufficiently pulverize or disrupt the
trajectory of a large rocky projectile heading our way:

*You could try drilling holes through it to alter the aerodynamic properties and
take it off-course, sort of like a cross between a wiffle ball and a bowling ball.

*Another possible technique: land something extremely heavy on the asteroid (and
tie this object down), thereby boosting the projectile's mass, which should change
its course.

*Consider erecting a series of enormous windmills, or sails, on the side of the

asteroid facing the Sun so that solar winds would either blow or tack the boulder in
a modified direction.

*Paint it black on one side and white on the other side and see if the contrast in
sunlight absorption creates a temperature differential that could polarize the
asteroid's density, thereby altering its course.

*Research might turn to gravitational field/black hole physics for help.

*A couple of NASA astronauts have proposed parking a rocket near the asteroid
and using the exhaust to push it off course.
Tabloid headline: Approaching Asteroid Made Out of Crack (Authorities fear an
outbreak of addiction if it hits the atmosphere and is dispersed)
It is a virtual certainty that a substantial asteroid or comet will come on a collision
course with Earth in the days ahead. The planet has taken numerous hits over the ages,
and there are still plenty of available projectiles hanging around. NASA says that the
ongoing presence of Earth-orbit-crossing asteroids despite life-spans for such of
only 10 million to 100 million years likely indicates either that there is “some
mechanism” re-supplying them from the main belt and/or that they are late-stage
comets.
Some researchers speculate that the orbit of a remote companion star or large
undiscovered planet might periodically stir up material in the solar system's outer Oort
Belt and scattered disc. Others postulate that the solar system revolves through an
area of considerable interstellar debris every 26-30 million years or so—through
bands of the Milky Way's arms and/or the galactic plane.
Early in the morning on June 30, 1908, the Tungus people of central Siberia saw and
felt several bright flashing explosions over the forest there. Some witnesses thought
the world was coming to a dramatic end. The shock wave leveled trees--millions of
them--for miles all around and left a thin residue of tiny diamond-like pellets.
Atmospheric effects were noticeable in Europe. Scientists later investigating the
remote Russian scene and reviewing the accounts of the stunned people surmise that
it was a low-density asteroid or a comet, and that it broke apart before impact.

In 1910, Halley's Comet, which visits the inner solar system every 75 years or so,
flew so close by that Earth actually passed through its tail. The detection of toxic
gas in the tail caused a fair amount of consternation in the public, and drove some
people to buy gas masks and pills for protection.

It’s not unusual to hear reports that Asteroid XYZ is going to pass within such-and-
such hundred thousand/million miles of Earth on some particular date of the not-so-
distant future. But what you don't hear is how near is too close for comfort.
Everybody knows more or less what would potentially happen if the trajectory of the
asteroid intersects our orbit in space-time—the doomsday ba-boomer scenario. But
one wonders how far off an asteroid can be and yet get captured by Earth's
gravitational pull.

Fear & Panic

Earth’s Moon ranges from 226 thousand to 252 thousand miles away and still we've
pretty much got it in tow. A big asteroid is just a small fraction of the size of the
Moon, and so should have much less resistance to Earth's attraction. Hence one can
envision scenarios where we pick up a second satellite. However, such a new moon
would more closely resemble Mars' two diminutive potato-shaped companions--
Deimos (meaning “fear”) and Phobos (meaning “panic”). It is expected that Phobos will
be pulled down eventually by Mars’ gravity.

How would the people here react to the regular presence in their sky of such a
potentially deadly body? There would likely be much speculation about just how long
the darn thing was going to stay up there before crashing down upon us. Plans
would be drafted on how to blow it up if need be, or at least steer its descent into the
safest part of the ocean. Some folks would likely turn to God, others might adopt a
do-it-while-you-can fatalistic attitude.
Tip Drill
One might also envision a scenario where an asteroid passes close by our present
MooN LunA and gets drawn-in by it, only to ultimately wind up more or less circling
around and/or smashing into the more powerfully pulling Earth.
In fact there already are several so-called "near-Earth asteroids" in orbit about the
Earth (and Sun). The biggest of these is Cruithnes, a rock three miles across.
While astronomers say there is no risk of a collision with Earth, and that Cruithnes
will instead be cut loose in around 5,000 years, one cannot know for sure what
unforeseen events might alter its trajectory. At closest regular approach to Earth,
Cruithnes passes within nine million miles.

The Yucatan asteroid was about 6 miles across. The Tunguska object was somewhere in between
the size of a baseball diamond and a football field. We need to be particularly concerned about
intermediate-sized asteroids --several times larger than Tunguska but less than a mile across. That's
because they're big enough to do a lot of damage yet small enoughto be hard to detect, particularly
if they approach from the general direction of the Sun--your basic daytime asteroid on the sly fly.

There is no record of any human ever being directly struck dead by an asteroid or
meteorite. However, a few near-misses have been reported. A man was hit on his
hand by a meteorite while driving his car--it smashed through the windshield and
broke one of his fingers. A woman napping on her living room couch was bruised
on the hip by a ricocheting meteorite that had just ripped through the roof. Another
woman's parked car's trunk was punctured by a meteorite. At least one horse and
one dog have actually been slain by meteorites.

Big Sister
Moving beyond the solar system: close examination of the star Zavijava reveals that, in
comparison with the Sun, Zavijava is 25% more massive, 70% wider, 3.5x more
luminous (with an absolute magnitude of 3.40), a paler yellow, and 40% more
metal-rich. You might say Zavijava is a bit more like the Sun's big sister than her
twin or clone.

As a result of living large, Zavijava the star is not long for this world. Though
stable for most of her life, Zavijava has already started to balloon up--the
beginning of its dying throes. Any advanced planetary civilization there likely
would have already done the equivalent of an Earth-to-Mars migration.

Naturally, they would also be looking for a longer-term home--some place like
Earth, perhaps. Having watched a few years' worth of our early TV programming,
they may well figure that here is a nearby planet well-suited for life and presently
being overrun by buffoons.

Some might misconstrue the absence of a signal from Zavijava as indicative of an

impending sneak attack by them. With the little we know, we cannot rule out the
possibility of a huge flotilla of Zavijavanetis arriving anytime.

However, since our Sun may have only 500 million to 1 billion years left before it
starts acting up, it stands to surmise that any outward-bound Zavijavanetis would
be taking the high road and relocating long-term to one or more of the many
nearby long-lived red dwarf systems--terra-forming a planet or two there--instead
of trying to take us over.

Complicated Relationships
Proceeding further out in the galaxy, one comes across the threat of a supernova explosion.
There is at least one solid candidate--IK Pegasi (aka HR 8210), a binary star
system150 LY away--that could definitely erupt within the next few million years.
When it does, this star is going to be a Type Ia supernova. These are the endgame for
certain close, complex interacting binary star systems, and the blast can do some
serious collateral damage from as far away as 200 LY. So IK Pegasi is near enough to
do us in even though it can barely be seen with the naked eye, although it is moving
away from us.

Nearby stars that will go Type II supernovae are among the really big, bright ones.
They may have stellar companions, but they are not intimately involved with any.
When this type blows, it can be devastating to bystanders if they're within 50 LY.
Fitting the profile for us are Altair, Fomalhaut, Sirius and Vega. But none of these
are considered as imminent as IK Pegasi. A supernova of either type erupts close
enough to do real damage here on the average every few dozen million years or so.
Star Jets
On the bright side for us, astronomers in recent years have been downplaying the
danger posed from even further away by extremely high energy gamma-ray bursts
(GRBs), occurring in association with some supernova eruptions as well as interstellar
collisions possibly involving anti-matter. GRBs were once pegged by some
astrophysicists working with geologists as potential perpetrators of the mass
extinctions of 440 and 554 million years ago.

Death Ray
These cosmic geyser-like events can function as kill shots from substantially farther
away than a typical supernova, although only to those unfortunately in the line of
fire. However, recent analysis of GRBs seems to indicate that galaxies high in
metallic content, such as our own Milky Way, are unlikely settings for long-duration
(several seconds) GRBs--the kind that can wipe us out. Short-duration GRBs
(fractions of a second) are observed occasionally within the Milky Way, but are
much less menacing.

The Grand Merger

There is one cosmic event that is inevitable for us and our entire Milky Way
Galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy, part of our Local Group, is charted by
astronomers as being on a collision course with the Milky Way. The meeting, a few
billion years off, is inevitable. The two spiral galactic cores are projected to come
together rather violently due to the high density of stars and large black holes at
both centers which will swirl tumultuously into one.

For the outer portions of both galaxies, however, the process is expected to be
more like a loose merger than a crash. They have ample amounts of space within
themselves to more or less accommodate each other without individual stars
getting entangled. The elegant spiral shapes, however, will be lost: the
conglomeration will be a big fuzzy elliptical super-galaxy. Earth's location two-
thirds of the way out from the center of the Milky Way will likely keep her safe
from any jostling during the restructuring.

Lurking in the Dark

This may be a bit farfetched, but if quasars--those extremely high-energy distant, ancient
objects--are black holes in an early stage of galaxy formation, then they should exist today as old
black holes, possibly in our vicinity even, since the universe is presumed roughly homogeneous and
they seem abundant in the distant past (literally, from our viewpoint).
Peering ever further out into space is equivalent to gazing ever deeper into our own past. So quasars
are mostly seen near the fringe of our observable universe because that corresponds to the era of
their greatest activity. There was probably a lot more material packed into tighter quarters way
back then, much of which the quasars would have devoured. These old quasars likely exist today
in a more dormant form and thus could even account for some of the so-called dark matter.

Smaller, more conventional-sized black holes exist here and there in the Milky
Way’s spiral arms. Given the swirling nature of the material in the arms, it’s
possible that our solar system could someday encounter a wandering black hole.
Also, globular star clusters occasionally spit out a "rogue" black hole, giving it
some momentum of its own that could carry it our way.

A black hole passing by at a great distance would probably still be strong enough
to significantly alter earth's orbit--causing us to freeze or burn. Short of boarding a
fleeing spacecraft, the utter finality of a more direct encounter with a black hole
renders it senseless for an intelligent person to lose any sleep over the possibility.
Like the frozen Moon scenario, crossing paths with a black hole would result in
total destruction of the planet, only in an even
more extreme and hideous manner.

Parting Shots
We're good at thinking of the ways our civilization could be destroyed—nukes,
plague, asteroid, supernova, biological warfare, black holes and so on. But it could
be true that an intelligent civilization, once it's crystallized, will tend to be increasingly
able to persevere by devoting adequate resources to preventing devastating events or
at least minimizing their impact.

Looking Up
And, remember--not everything raining down on us is automatically a threat. The
solution to our energy woes may come from up above. We one day may
successfully mine the Moon for helium-3 to use in clean, safe nuclear fusion
reactors. Another energy strategy that could pan out well someday is placing huge
arrays of solar panels in Earth orbit.
Chapter 3

ECO-ETI

(ECO-ETIs are Eco-Logical--Green ETI)

Leonardo da Vinci--probably the most broadly talented human being to ever live--
said "Herein it seems certain that nature desires to exterminate the human race, as a
thing useless to the world and the destroyer of all created things," in one of his
notebooks cerca 1500 A.D.

Suppose that an extraterrestrial couple from a powerful civilization who are

journeying about on their honeymoon fall in love with the natural beauty and
splendor of Earth in pre-human domination times, They plan to return, but events
at home occupy their attention for quite a long time, although being long-lived,
they do make a sequel trip some centuries later. But by now, human hegemony has
virtually ruined the wondrous planet.

The family, now with children to whom they'd magically described Earth, is
terribly angered, and decides to utilize their power to bring humanity in line so that
Earth may be restored. They begin by writing scathing letters to world leaders, for
example the Secretary General of the UN.

Dear Secretary General:

"Global environmental havoc wrought by man has, in the blinking of a cosmic eye,
devastated what was surely one of the Universe's greatest treasures.

The teeming abundance and diversity of life on this planet prior to human
hegemony is difficult for most homo sapiens to comprehend, accustomed to
thinking of animals as zoo creatures, livestock, dependents (pets), road hazards or
pests.

But to an impartial observer capable of traveling through time, the shock

experienced might be described as incredible.

"Before" and "After" Earths are astonishingly different, and it doesn't take a rocket
scientist (even if one is one) to ascertain that human beings are to blame for
virtually all of the ecological woe.
These destructive actions have been carried out unilaterally, selfishly, maliciously
and recklessly.

It's not much of a stretch to think that an impartial party with transcendent abilities
might assert oneself in the name of universal justice. Our kind has the ability to do
just this, so we therefore urge you to correct this behavior at once."

All plant and animal life are in a symbiotic relationship with planet Earth-except
for humanity, which is ostensibly a parasite. It’s possible that some elements of the ETI
community are reluctant to let us in because of our rather poor track record of relating
to life here on Earth. If we mistreat our DNA brethren and sisteren, then how can
ETI have confidence that we'll treat them better.

The steward for a planet--like Earth--is concerned about the well-being of the
entire planet, not just one species, no matter how "special"/"privileged" that
species may consider itself.

God told Noah "to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female,
to keep them alive with you. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal
and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be
kept alive (Genesis 6 v.19-20). Note God's use of the words "all" and "every"
(three times) and "keep/kept alive." If we view the current situation as a similar
sort of environmental cataclysm of our doing, then we might consider it our charge
as well to save every species out there.

Some would counter with "What’s bad for the polar bear is good for another
animal less-suited to the cold, and vice versa. In a worst-case scenario, the polar
bear will just merge back into the grizzly bear, from whence they came in the first
place, right?"

God didn't say to Noah "round up as many as you can" or "try to save a good cross-
section of the animal kingdom." God commanded Noah to preserve "all living
creatures" by reproductive kind--which is defined as the individual species unit.
Yet modern mankind (species homo sapiens), in a brief time period--free of any
natural global calamity--has proceeded to extirpate tens of thousands of species of
plant and animal life, and that figure is projected to reach the millions in this 21st
century.
Perhaps the rosiest lens one could use in assessing humanity's impact on the Earth
would be to call it catastrophic. Earth's history is full of catastrophes--so you just
add "human activity" to the list. But what does it say about an emerging
intelligent civilization that even its apologists feel compelled to use the term
"catastrophe" in explaining their impact on their home planet?

Why we should respect all life: because all are incredible success stories—of
survival. Any creature alive today on Earth is a direct descendant of earliest life
forms, so has been tremendously adaptive and/or resourceful. They are all
remarkable beings in that each one represents the continuation of an unbroken
thread of life going back to the same primordial DNA some 4 billion years ago.
That has entailed managing to reproduce successfully generation after generation--
millions of times over, even during numerous mass-extinction events.

Resiliency in Spades
Some have accomplished this survival by transforming themselves substantially to
adjust to changing situations. At the other end of the evolutionary spectrum are
those who have hardly changed at all over hundreds of millions of years. It's like a
game of poker--you play the hand that you're dealt.

Catastrophic change is something that many organisms are bound to have difficulty
dealing with, since most species thrive by exploiting a fairly narrow ecological
niche. Major asteroid hits, supernovas, and volcanic chain eruptions are capable of
severely altering those niches, and may have taken out 60-90+% of species then
existing at various times.

The roster of the hardiest creatures within the Animal Kingdom (600+ million
years old), includes the likes of Lingula brachiopods (500+ million years old),
scorpion (430 million years old), horseshoe crab (425 million years old),
Coelacanth fish (410 million years old), shark (400 million years old), cockroach
(350 million years old) and crocodile (200 million years old). Some of these are
often referred-to as "living fossils." By now, these forms would have to be
considered good bets to survive the next disaster.
The'SaurUs
With all the fuss over humanity's common ancestry with the apes, one hears little
about mankind’s more ancient reptilean lineage. One may hear occasional
references to the rudimentary “reptilean brain.” But just look at an evolutionary
family tree and you’ll see that humans are descended from reptiles. We share a
reptilian ancestry with the dinosaurs. And we now wear the same mantle they
wore for close to 150 million years as the dominant force on Earth.

The triumphant reign of dinosaurs on Earth was not necessarily

viewed as a bad thing by ETI caretakers. However, Because
planetary steward career advancement depends to some extent on
how many interesting creative projects they can devise, to just
sit there and let the dinosaurs go on ad infinitum would have
appeared rather lackadaisical.

Yet because the dinosaurs lacked the sophisticated higher

intelligence necessary to pose an unnatural evil menace to
their fellow earthly creatures or to the Extraterrestrials, there
was no rationale for wiping out their reign on purpose. The
asteroid that struck the Earth 65 million years ago and brought the dinosaurs down
was simply a natural event that they allowed to occur.

Furthermore, it may be that ETI stewards, while admiring the dinosaurs, grew a bit
weary of them, and remained somewhat disappointed with their rather meager
intelligence--the fact that, as things stood, the dinosaurs’ unchallenged success
would likely prevent them from ever needing to develop the kind of intelligence
that enables a species to become cosmically cognizant--a likely major goal of any
planetary steward. By the time that asteroid hit, the reptiles had successfully
spawned the mammals--pesky, warm-blooded vermin, a diverse population of
whom would come to dominate the land and eventually lead to an intelligent
civilization via mankind.

It’s possible that the stewards pulled a population of dinosaurs and took them
somewhere else in space-time where the conditions were such that they would be
compelled to develop greater intellectual prowess. Dinosaur genetic material may
have also been utilized in bioengineering projects. And of course much of the
mantle has been passed to the birds, considered by most scientists to be closely
related to if not directly descended from dinosaurs--the therapod branch.

If somewhat malevolent aliens were to take over Earth, they might bring back, through
time travel/cloning, dinosaurs to the present to coexist with a smaller human population.
The beasts could be permitted to roam freely—people would be forbidden to attack
them, while they'd be able to ravage anything they see fit—hence can enter cities, smash
buildings, devour people caught off-guard/etc.

Observing how in the aftermath of a large asteroid impact the pre-dominant dinosaurs ran
out of food because the dust cloud thrown up by the collision blocked most sunlight so
that plant life was crippled. And the dinosaurs, being the largest animals thus requiring
the most food, suffered disproportionately. Those responsible for guiding Earth's present
fate may have heard a scenario to the effect of how would people handle a similar
emergency — not so much the dust cloud business as finding themselves all of a sudden
too big for their situation.
Let's say that buildings, streets, and all the rest of society's infrastructure stayed the
same size, so that just the people themselves — their physical bodies — were made
much larger. Of course it would become obvious to them right away that their biggest
problem involved food supply. Provided nearby (or within walking-distance, which might now
be several hundred miles) rivers and/or lakes were not badly polluted, they could probably get
adequate water to subsist on.
But most of the enlarged people would face an immediate food crisis. Even those on farmland
might only get a weeks' worth of nourishment from the domesticated animals kept there. After
devouring all of these, unless the event fortuitously took place at harvest-time, these people
likewise would then be in rather difficult circumstances, although some might be able to munch
on silo-stored food for perhaps a month or so.
Regardless, there would quite soon come a time when the only adequate source of nutritional
intake for the people made larger would be each other. The more farsighted ones would have
almost immediately recognized this, and begun arming themselves promptly, possibly even
slaughtering some of their fellow men/women surreptitiously and hiding/preserving the bodies to
be cooked later.
If there were any people capable of somehow digesting foliage, these individuals would be
able to survive quite a while longer, but in lieu of that some of the more scientifically adept
might endeavor to construct a large tree conversion facility that would mimic a cow ’s seven
stomachs.
The good swimmers would likely head for the oceans, where they might be able to subsist on
whales and other large sea creatures for a few weeks possibly, although they would need to
situate themselves coastally near a source of ample freshwater for drinking.
Once cannibalism became the primary means of sustenance, it would be just a matter of
time—maybe a year or so, before the last person on Earth had consumed his/her last meal.
Then this great warrior might wonder aloud what is the point of being #1 in a situation where
there is no winner. Unless, of course, he/she was somehow able to make like a Nellie
Furtado bird and "only fly away."

Cryptozoology
Tabloid headline: The Vampire Who Uses a Straw, or The Blood Count
Q--The Chupacabra: Blood-sucking behavior, by bringing to peoples' minds the activities of
vampires and werewolves, tends to get them stereotyped as psychopathic monsters, doesn't it?

A--Nobody's going to confuse chupacabra with Chewbacca, the great, good-

natured hero of Star Wars movies. Linguistically, "chupacabra" means
"goatsucker", while Chewbacca was derived by George Lucas from the Russo-
Ukrainian "cobaka" for "dog".
Some may view the chupacabra as a populist update on the tradition of vampirism:
taking Count Dracula’s little hobby from the circles of polite European society to
the rugged backroads of rural Americas. What’s missing, though, is the undertone
of sensuality and seduction, which may have contributed to the origin of the
vampire legend as in “What the devil has Johnson been up to? His bloody face is
all red."

It might be more interesting to peer inside the creature's mind, however, which may simply
view their prey as a provider of liquid nutriment, much as someone on a camping trip relishes a
fresh running brook, or a person out driving a car pulls into a filling station. One doesn't say
the hiker "attacked" the stream, or that the motorist "ravaged" the gasoline pump. It's not the
chupacabra's fault that they need blood. It's not a ritualistic kind of thing for them. It’s a matter
of basic survival, so the story goes.

But what's so appalling is that, unlike other bloodsuckers such as the vampire bat,
chupacabra drains the host. This sort of overkill--an animal the size of a domestic
cat taking all the blood of a goat--just doesn't seem natural or even feasible. It's
seems barbaric.

But consider that a vampire bat, while extracting only a small amount of blood,
takes up to about forty percent of its bodyweight--and that's still sufficient
nourishment for only two to three days. Now if a twenty-pound chupacabra were to
likewise add forty percent while feeding, that's eight pounds--which is about how
much total blood is inside of an average one hundred pound mammal (like an
immature goat).

Animal Farm Exploitation

Even so, as chupacabras and vampire bats are largely South-of-the-Border
phenomena, one can imagine some vampire bats getting ticked off at the
chupacabras for slaughtering the "geese that lay the golden (or in this case,
crimson) eggs", meaning the domesticated animals upon which both of them prey--
the bats much more sustainably than the "chups."

"MegaMegaFauna"
In the Southwestern US, places like Carlsbad Caverns, NM and Austin TX are
noted for the daily mass roosting flights of certain bats. Throughout North
America, as recently as, say fifteen-to-twenty thousand years ago, one could have
gone sightseeing on an African-styled safari. Numerous very large animals
flourished then in the unspoiled wilderness, including:
* The wooly mammoth and mastodon--both relatives to the elephant.

* Camelops--a version of the camel.

* Megatherium--a ground sloth standing twenty-feet high.

* Saber-toothed cats with eight-inch canines.

* The short-faced bear--bigger than a grizzly.

* Lions larger than those existing elsewhere today.

* Teratorns--condor-like birds with a twenty-foot wingspan.

Scientists say that over-hunting by man is at least a partial, and quite likely a major
factor, directly or indirectly responsible for the demise of each of these marvels.

Some species did survive the onslaught. The bison, moose, musk ox, grizzly and
polar bear are five examples of big Ice Age mammal species that have managed to
persevere (in relic numbers) to the present-day in North America. So it can be
done--in wilderness and other remote areas, as protected species, and in the
inhospitable far North.

Some wildlife experts, foreseeing the possible extinction of many of the big
African animals in our time have proposed establishing wildlife parks for them in
the western US.

Many human societies have ancient legends of ancestral giants. These could linger
today as deep-woodland and mountain communities of the legendary Bigfoot
behemoth (a.k.a. Yeti/Sasquatch/the Abominable Snowman). Similarly, present-era
sightings of enormous birds (sometimes referred to as “Moth-men”) may be
survivors of the Teratorn, or something this bird has evolved into.

BigFeet
Sasquatch might well be remnant populations of a Pleistocene hominid known as
Gigantopithecus. This massive creature, which stood up to ten feet tall, is
believed to have gone extinct about 200 thousand years ago. Gigantopithecus
fossil remains come only from Asia, but one can suspect that some of them may
have crossed over into North America via Beringia, just like humans and many
other animals did.

If the critter smells as bad as people say, anybody who has caught a glimpse of one
need only mark the location, go fetch a trained canine tracker, and follow the scent
trail to the den for conclusive collection of DNA-bearing hair follicles and other
bodily samples. As shy and retiring as Bigfoot may be, they've got to sleep
somewhere.

"ScopesTrial"
Most “sightings” are probably either hoaxes, bears or other large animals, wild
humans, optical illusions or hallucinations. But we know that homo sapiens
sapiens (us) is just one of well over a dozen species of the hominid family to exist
at one time or another during the past 4.5 million years. There was considerable
coexistence among them, as one would expect with natural familial branching. So
it shouldn't be all that remarkable if we have an obscure relative living off in the
woods somewhere. Though this would be appalling to polite society.

Tabloid headline--Bigfoot Sighted: At the 7-11! (for cigarettes, gummy bears and a
lottery ticket...)

There’s nothing at all sexy (to us) about Bigfoot, yet it could be that the authorities
have repressed information on them in order to prevent any sort of understanding
in society that could blur the boundary so clearly engrained in just about
everybody’s mind that sets man apart from all other animals/beings. Bigfoot,
being semi-human, would be a candidate for first human contact with a roughly
equivalent intelligence (intraterrestrial), as well as first (or second/third/etc.)
Earthling contact with ETIs.

Handiwork
Humans owe some of their competitive edge over other mammals to the
development of the opposable thumb. It enabled us to fashion hunting tools such
as sharpened sticks and arrowheads, and also to grasp and hurl these objects
effectively at prey. This pretty much put humanity atop the food chain on land and
at sea--even vs. the likes of whales, slayable via harpoons flung from man-made
vessels. (The opposable thumb also spurred the making of tools for the
construction of domestic objects. And art grew out of the practice of embellishing
implements--both domestic and predatory--along with cave painting).

It’s taken for granted that most animals in the wild today are elusive and that they're rather skittish
of people--particularly those that have been hunted extensively. The reason why, for example it's
almost impossible to get anywhere close to many species of bird without them taking flight, is that
they represent a skewed/selected-for-their-skittishness segment of the original bird population. Any
that weren't skittish got shot, leaving only the very flightiest to survive long enough to breed and
pass along their genes.

So early on, there may have been less distinction between wild and tame animals. “Wildness" is
viewable in part as a response to human aggression, a consequence of it. Those animals, for
example, certain bears in and around national parks of the Western US that have become rather
comfortable around people to the point of foraging for food at campsites are responding to a
reversal of the hunting trend for them. Animals in the Galapagos Islands have little if any history
of being hunted and are thus rather docile.

Animal Channeling
Dear Editor:
As an animal not festering in captivity, I wish to complain about your unscrupulous
misapplication of the phrase "like a wild animal," in describing bizarre outbursts of violence
by humans.
To begin with, you are comparing apples with oranges, but I suppose that is literary license.
But more to the point, if you must draw analogies, say "like a rabid animal" or "like a
cornered wild animal" or "like a provoked animal."
Furthermore, we creatures of the wild do a lot more than simply attack our fellow beings. So why
don't you ever say "frolic like a wild animal", or "cuddle like a wild animal", or "got ruthlessly
hunted by humans with firearms and ran desperately for their lives—like a wild animal."
It really is like the pot calling the kettle "black". For every grizzly bear that mauls a wayward hiker
thinking its cubs endangered, countless animals have been slaughtered by the most vicious creature
in this planet's history—man.
In light of these abuses, who could blame us if we did seek out and attack people!
There's precious little "wild land" left for us free-spirits to roam in anymore. We
could go door-to-door: skinning humans and mounting each head on the wall--
"like a wild animal."

It would be interesting to know whether what one hears about homo sapiens having
no natural predator is entirely accurate. What about big cats? Or bears? Or
alligators? OF course, mosquitoes have killed millions via transmitted diseases
(for example malaria, encephalitis, West Nile virus, yellow fever, Dengue fever). Vampire bats can
transmit rabies. There are reports of a 7-foot-tall flightless bird--the Diatryma--which may have preyed upon our ancestors
around the time they were first becoming primates--some 50-60 million years ago--in places like Wyoming.

King Kong Meets Godzilla in Jurassic Park

Part 1: Predator vs. Predator
A contest is arranged to determine the most ferocious animals on the planet--to counter
human aggression.

Despite the title, an animal need not be carnivorous to enter: it is open to all. And it can
all be computer-simulated so nobody gets hurt.

Some probable top contenders: lions and tigers, badger, ram, pit bull, tarantula, Black
Widow, rattlesnake, boa, python, wasp, grizzly/polar bear, bat, wild bull (bucking bronco)
peregrine falcon, shark, piranha, killer whale, alligator, crab, mongoose, octopus, gorilla,
killer bees, army ants.

Smaller animals could perform as teams--such as a swarm of killer bees or a school of

piranhas.

There might be separate brackets for winged animals, land animals, freshwater animals and
marine animals.

Guidelines would deal with such issues as seasonal hormone power (e.g. ram aggression
keyed to mating season, female grizzly's keyed to cub protection).

In the land animals bracket there would likely be some controversy concerning the
chupacabra, with efforts by rivals to bar the creature on the grounds that it is a ringer
(mutant/hybrid/ETI creation).

Eventually there could be distinct brackets for hybrids. Reintroduced formerly extinct
animals, such as some of the dinosaurs might also be allowed to participate.

We tend to think of zoos as nice little sanctuaries, and of course zoos are useful in
rehabilitating injured animals and providing last-ditch sanctuary for near-extinct
species, but to most of the animals it probably feels more like a prison. Granted
they don't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, but then
neither do prisoners. As for exercise, zoo animals get precious little in their
confined cages and pens (penitentiary), while most human prisoners at least get to
work out with weights on a regular basis.

Part 2: Capital Punishment Via Animals (cpva)

A country with a bankrupt prison system decides to raise funds with public
executions employing wild and ferocious animals as the potential executioners.
There is some possibility of survival, as each death-row inmate is placed in an
enclosure with an animal for a specified amount of time. After each round medics
may attend to wounds. No weapons are permitted, but possibly some defensive
props.
Running the Gauntlet
In order to get prisoners to agree to this risky behavior, (so as to waive their rights
regarding "cruel and unusual punishment") they would be spared the death penalty if
they can survive a certain number of challenges. Or it could all be computer-simulated.
Animals would include the likes of alligator/crocodile, bull, pit bull, lion, tiger, snake
(boa, python, rattler), black/polar/grizzly bear, and perhaps a shark tank for the grand
finale
Collective efforts would be called for in the case of animals that naturally work
that way--for example a pack of wolves.
Tight quarters would be used where feasible. Like The Birds of Alfred Hitchcock
when they get inside the house.
Eats Like a Bird
Urban sparrow eating habits: a bit fussier than you might expect given their thorough interaction
with people.. Offered various components of typical Chinese takeout meal — chicken with mixed
vegetables and fried rice-- the bird who approached me looking for food, i.e. hungry, probably ate
only the rice. He/she took one bite out of a chicken morsel and flung it aside, did the same with mini-
corn, and didn't even try the broccoli (I forgot to include carrots with what I threw on the ground). The
sparrow hopped gleefully from rice grain to rice grain, even over the other items after the one-taste test.

As a consequence of the origin and development of dog's relationship with man during the latter
hunter/gatherer years, instinctively still dwell on matters of food supply as though were of considerable
importance, i.e. not a "sure thing". Particularly stay-at-home dogs, who do not accompany their
master/lady of the house to the supermarket, would not know that the hunting and gathering is pretty
much "farmed-out" to professionals nowadays, so that your typical family shopper simply pushes a cart
around and grabs the stuff.

As they see their owners getting in, driving off, and subsequently returning in the same
vehicle, where does the dog think the owner/family goes?

They probably draw conclusions based on what the person brings back with them.
In the stereotypical old-fashioned nuclear family, the husband, leaving in the
morning and returning in the evening with nothing but the same tired old leather
briefcase, may be considered a real "loser" in comparison with wife who goes out
shopping every other day for a few hours and returns with bags full of groceries
and other useful household items.
On the Home Front
Or else they might infer that the daily "away from homers" are engaged in community perimeter defense
activity, and therefore perhaps lucky simply to have survived (given the volume of "enemy meat" which the
typical family tends to eat) Thus the habit of yelping it up in the evening when the basic working dad returns
home — celebrating his inferred battle prowess, with the wife perceived as having perhaps visited the battle
area in the aftermath of opposition carnage to obtain meat (on days when she gets some at the grocer/meat
market).
A dog who is "born and raised in pretty much the same neighborhood, unlikely to envision the actual
vastness of the world, yet seeing/ smelling a regular supply of fresh meat in the home, likely figures
that it has come from somewhere nearby, which leads to the question of whether a dog, by smell or
taste, can tell from whence a portion of meat has come, given that the pet has probably never killed
and eaten anything substantial except perhaps a small bird or a squirrel.
What does a dog who has never encountered a cow think that hamburger meat is? Do they just assume
it's some exotic creature, or do they fancy it being a variety of human or dog meat, perhaps flavor-
enhanced or spiced? Might a "sheltered" dog, aware of the human taste for meat be a staunch defender
of his/her master in part out of a self-preservation instinct, fearing a takeover might mean mince-meat
scenario?
A regular visitor to the dog's owner who for some reason/combination of reasons goes for an extended
period of time without visiting the premises, particularly if a male, may well be presumed by the
owner's dog to have been killed in the line of duty, and probably devoured by the enemy. Thus if he
should happen to reappear, there might be a particularly spirited greeting by the dog, surprised at his
survival.
The dog might reason that the man had been taken prisoner, and either been released through
negotiation or escaped. When an occasional visitor to the dog owner, who often brings treats like raw-
hide or biscuits, arrives one day with a hot meal from a takeout restaurant, the animal may infer that
the battlefront has shifted closer to home. Depending on how brave the dog is, such "evidence" may be
faced with excitement or alarm.
(Any animal behaviorist who says that only humans can think about the future
should be required to explain food caching behavior--prevalent among birds and
mammals. They store food such as seeds in a particular place and return there later
to eat it. The motive for carrying the food to the storage place and then leaving it
there for a while is obviously involved with their coming back there in the future
and eating it.)

Cognitive scientists who say that pigs are smarter than dogs" should perhaps have their own heads
examined. Animal "A" is man's best friend, shares luxury housing with them, receives one-on-one
attention, affection, grooming, and so on. Animal "B" wallows in outdoor mud, gets no individual
interaction w/people (the fictional movie "Babe" aside), and is slaughtered for food before living out the
prime of his/her life. Given that these situations have developed over many generations, why would the
dumber one have gotten themselves into such a much better lifestyle?
Imagine a world in which dogs are the masters who keep people as pets. Perhaps the
body sizes are reversed, too, along with the behavior. They hook a leash around their little
man or woman's collar and go out for a walk, the dog wearing clothes and walking on hind
legs, the person naked and on all-fours. Back in their yard, the big dog throws a rubber ball
and the little man or woman dashes off to retrieve it. The dog pats his fetching human pet on the
head, and in return gets an affectionate licking of the paw. The little people communicate
verbally by yelps and grunts, while the dogs have a fluent language, and try to teach their favorite
pet people to understand a few simple commands. The hairy little males are often seen
scratching themselves for fleas, and perhaps pant more than the ladies.

Cats, Anyone?
Is this my litter box? (cat to new owners)
Adult #1: No, it's your, mailbox. Need any stamps?
Adult #2: Actually,' it's not just your litterbox, it's everyone's litterbox. Pitch in,
Junior!
Junior: Yeah, but the place doubles as a roach hotel, so be careful not to disturb the little
critters.
Cat: No, it's the French Riviera, dummies. So will somebody please go get me a beach
blanket!

Tabloid headline: Cat Wins Marathon Race (Cat nips Kenyan at the tape)

Mockingbirds and catbirds--after a fashion: the Spring calls of males, by their

mimicry, might aim at convincing potential nesting rivals that the area is already
overrun with a variety of birds. Going even further, the feline component of a
catbird's call may in part be an attempt to strike real fear into the hearts of other
birds, as they know cats to be a major predatory threat.

One mockingbird was heard calling out what sounded like "danger danger"--in a
way that called to mind the robot from the 60's sci-fi TV show Lost in Space but
was probably an imitation of a car alarm. Another call seemed to be in imitation of a
referee's whistle that he would have likely heard at a soccer or football game--
probably in a prior year.

Australia's Lyrebird males have a similar penchant for imitation of other birds as
well as environmental sounds. They can convincingly mimic a camera's shutter or
motor, buzzsaws, car alarms, trains, and jackhammers. They use their vast
repertoire to impress females and to keep other males at bay.

Customer: Can this parrot talk? (pet shop)

Owner: Yeah, but don't ask her to “walk the walk”--she prefers flying.
His Wife: She practically talked her previous owner’s arm right off, you know, old
Captain Hook, yuck yuck, yuck!
Owner: But she’s also a very good listener.
Wife: Not to mention being a wonderful songstress!
Customer: I understand all that, but can she read music?
Owner/Wife/Bird (in unison): Oh God, another page-turner!

Looney Birder
synopsis: a serial harasser leaves clues that are baffling to the authorities. Then
somebody notices a pattern that ties into birdwatching. The culprit has been
"getting" his victims, each of whom, in clothing, bodily features, mannerisms and
behavior, brings to mind a particular (different one each time) species of bird.

What should we tell them? (bishop to priests conferring: swallows haven't returned to
Capistrano, huge crowd growing restless, large media entourage)
Priest #1: That they missed their connecting flight!
Priest #2: That they’ve gone “underground”!
Priest #3: That they’ve decided to embark on a “World Tour”!
Priest #4: That they’ve mutated back into dinosaurs! Watch ‘em try to swallow
that!

Tabloid headline: Captain Hook’s Parrot Gets an Artificial Wing (to replace one
cut-off in a swordfight)

The Predatory Wing

Note the resemblance of flightless birds to dinosaurs (also some are quite large—
e.g. ostrich). It's possible that these are not birds that lost the ability to fly but
rather dinosaurs who were able to get by without fully developing flight as others
did.
The huge numbers and variety of flying birds today as compared with those
flightless may be indicative of lineal branching that occurred after flight was
acquired. In other words, the presence of winged-yet-flightless birds now leaves
open the possibility of an origin for wings independent of flight.
As it is unlikely that the first mutation on the path to the modern wing would have
endowed its recipient with the ability to fly, one could posit an adaptive
characteristic for wing-like appendages not endowing their bearer with flying
capability.
This functional angle on the primordial wing dovetails into a scenario in which
the early wing served predacious dinosaurs as a means for preventing prey from
escaping their grasp. Basically, the dinosaur's wings would wrap around the victim,
perhaps somewhat like a vampire's cloak.
Modern fast-shutter-speed photographs of birds in flight substantiate this
explanation. The wings do not simply flap up and down, but rather curve in a
graceful and effective manner both for creating dynamic lift and confining one's
intended meal. Observe also the sharp pointy claws of birds and their sturdy
spade-like beaks and it's evident that here is a class of creatures capable of fending
for themselves.

Dragonfly Flight Formation

Dragonfly: observed a pair engaging in acrobatic daredevil maneuvers, the most
impressive of which was an oft-repeated precision circling performed in
synchronicity with considerable speed and typically several times consecutively—
up to about a dozen times. The circles were about 15 feet in diameter and the pair
was generally less than three or four inches apart during the entire 15-20-second
"show." This behavior is actually called "circular battle" and involves a territorial
dispute among rival males.

They pretty much kept the same distance relationship with each other throughout
so the piloting was about as precise as that of our best fighter jet pilots as in the
Thunder Bird/Blue Angel air-shows—only the dragonflies do it with a tiny brain
somehow whereas we have the large brains of our pilots along with a sophisticated
on-board computer system.

Tabloid headline--Pyramids Built by Giant Bees! (Nectar holds the key to ancient
bucket brigade)

The birds and the bees and the importance of these: without the birds and bees,
there would be a lot fewer flowers, plants and trees, and many floral species would
go extinct. The landscape would lose much of its color, that being an aspect of
flowers designed to attract the flyers, who transport the propagatory pollen (along
with nectar "of the gods") from flower to flower and tree to tree—pollination.
This is a paradigm of the positive manner of intertwining between the plant and
animal kingdoms. Birds, of course, along with other animals, also transport fruit
seeds.

The Insect Route

Here is how one alien delegation proposes turning the tables on humanity. The higher-ups are
of the delegatory style, so have little first-hand knowledge of the planet. They simply
extrapolate from papers written by scientific/cultural scouts. Some of these are absorbing,
glowing reports on insect populations, including laudatory assessments of insect intelligence,
work ethic, flight capabilities, communication, and so on. Nowhere do any of the papers point
out how small most insects are compared with people, brain size, etc. High-power, high-
resolution cameras show the insects in great detail.

When their vast numbers are described, along with humans causing extinction of many
individual species, the upper echelon alien strategists decide to overthrow the human race via
insects, as it is also noted in the report that certain insects, such as bees, mosquitoes and ticks
can cause poisonous bites. These aliens generally strive to utilize indigenous life forms as
proxies, and ascertain that they will be liberating an oppressed majority from a bellicose and
obtrusive species (humans)_who have "gone too far" in controlling the planet.

It's assumed that this will be rather easy, as the reports on humans are mostly scathing critiques
of technology (inferior to the aliens') or else somewhat bewildered cultural write-ups that do not
readily grasp human intelligence, so that, to the alien decision-makers, people appear rather
stupid, disoriented clods.

Tabloid headline: Golfers Attacked by Killer Bees (Beekeeper claims they just
wanted to play through)

Neurobiologists tell us that insects have about 1 million brain cells. Humans have
about 100 billion--which is 100 thousand times more. However, humans only
utilize about 1/10 of their brain at any given time. Insect brains are packed 10
times more densely, and some of the neurons actually perform more than one
function at a time. So it’s probably sensible to shave off 10 to the 2nd power from
the human advantage, leaving the average human only 1 thousand times smarter
than the average insect.

Them Thar' Ants

Now if you can get one thousand insects acting in consort as one unified super-
being--like they normally do in a small ant colony or bee hive--then you've evened
the odds versus an individual human. Moreover, a large beehive might have as
many as 40 thousand honeybees; a large ant colony can number in the millions of
individuals. So the advantage shifts to the insects. Of course, humans have social
behaviors as well, but much of this is either competitive or self-indulgent rather
than cooperative. Typical human beings, on a very good day, are just smart enough
to begin realizing their intellectual shortcomings.

Tabloid headline: Mosquito Judge Goes Ballistic (tongue-lashing outburst

stuns packed courtroom)

Shrinking Man's Carbon Footprints

Aforementioned "small" reminds me of another idea regarding the population of
humans and smallness. Present-day alien overseers evidently have heard
something to the effect that the net result of an asteroid hit on the dinosaur era
was that they were made smaller— into birds. Reasoning that this must have been
a sort of cosmic punishment for dinosaurs, as alien overseers back then were every
bit as capable of intercepting asteroids then as they are now, decides to punish
humans for an even worse reign of terror over the planet making people smaller all
of a sudden, and seeing how they survive (if) being bird food, drowning in an inch
of rain, competing with insects, living like a roach in their own homes, trying to
utilize suddenly oversized computer keyboard and mouse, and so forth.
Whether or not to venture outside might be a touchy matter due to the many predators —
birds, larger insects (e.g. praying mantis), some mammals. TO defend themselves against
mosquito attack — a potentially lethal natural hazard as a single bite amounts to a complete
draining of body’s blood supply, the little people would move with great urgency to obtain a
supply of insect repellent and liberally douse each other like a championship football coach
with Gatorade cooler, probably on their clothes rather than skin, as too much direct
absorption into the body might cause nerve damage at that size.

The people made smaller might try to domesticate some of their new-size peers, for
instance insects like flies could be trained for transportation, communication, and
construction purposes. Mini-mankind could also strive to emulate the lifestyles of
intelligent communal insects like the ants and the bees.

Candles would be used for cooking, possibly of beetles captured. Moths attracted
by a flame might also be ensnared and eaten. The little people might try to imitate a
spider's web by using needle and thread, then with great urgency to obtain a supply of insect
repellent and liberally douse each other like a championship football coach with Gatorade
cooler, probably on their clothes rather than skin, as too much direct absorption into the
body might cause nerve damage at that size.

The people made smaller might try to domesticate some of their new-size peers, for
instance insects like flies could be trained for transportation, communication, and
construction purposes. Mini-mankind could also strive to emulate the lifestyles of
intelligent communal insects like the ants and the bees.

Candles would be used for cooking, possibly of beetles captured. Moths attracted
by a flame might also be ensnared and eaten. The little people might try to imitate a
spider's web by using needle and thread, then coating it with glue every couple of hours
(whatever is the drying time). If their own webs get to be really good, they would need to
find a way to distinguish between natural and man-made ones, lest somebody inadvertently
climb onto a web, thinking it to be synthetic, and suddenly get pounced on by a real live
spider — wrapped up, injected with venom, and devoured.

A great variety of options for capital punishment would be available at this size: blender,
washing machine/dryer , ice cube tray, aquarium fish food, microwave oven, toaster,
electrical outlet, kitchen disposal, scissors, nail lopper, electric drill, hot light bulb,
typewriter keystrokes (would need a sensitive keyboard on a manual typewriter). Thrill
seekers with a "death wish" could strap themselves to a bullet in a gun's chamber,
like the circus performer who gets shot out of a cannon. This bullet scenario could
also serve as a two-tiered method of capital punishment.

The vacuum cleaner, if they could figure out a way to move it, might be used during
warfare. If an enemy were to cut off the household heating supply, the small people might
huddle around lamps like a campfire including lava lamps (although it would be a hideous
fate to be put "in the mix").

The people who are made smaller might initially subsist on their own previous
larger selves' crumbs before delving into other supplies at hand. A well-stocked
household could make a big difference, as a week's worth of pre-shrinkage family
rations might last the bite-sized people a year or more, whereas a household that
tended to buy mostly fresh food for that day's meals could quickly be in rather dire
straits. The microwave would probably be the food preparation device of choice.

If somehow there are a few regular-sized people left around as well, they might interact with
the tiny folks in various and sundry ways. For instance the shrunken people might be used to
flavor cereal like slices of fruit, possibly used in enhancing a painter’s pigment mixture on the
multicolor palette

On the lighter side, amusing new sports could be developed using, for example, the stereo
turntable or the machinery of a clock.

If pets such as dogs and cats were kept big, they would likely be used for transportation, the way
that fleas use them now. Of course, the itsy-bitsy people would try to burrow in close to their
four-legged friends' skin, yet probably avoid touching the skin itself, so as to avoid falling off or
being mashed by an irked Fido mistaking his master's scrambling around for a flea bite.

If the minute people needed to send signals to each other, say from one end of the hallway to the
other, a pack of matches might come in handy, along with a working knowledge of Indian smoke
signaling communicatory codes and/or Morse code. They might also be able to use a flashlight
for signaling, possibly by alternately activating and impeding the electrical current as the switch
might be too heavy to operate with any speed . Making a phone call: a conventional
telephone receiver would likely prove difficult even with an improvised crane., so
they’d either yell into a speakerphone or rely on cell phones.

If the downsizing event has been widespread, there might be some interruption in TV
broadcasting until industrious station personnel were at least able to get the running word ticker
going, although even that might be tough to accomplish, depending on just how small the people
have actually become in relation to a typewriter keyboard. One envisions a person or group
of people being assigned for each letter--to stand on that key and jump up at the
appropriate time so that their landing would trigger the keystroke.

On occasion very small people utilizing leftover big people or their pets for
transportation might suddenly find themselves in a very critical situation, for
example a shower or bath, or a haircut. The risks would obviously include
drowning, being sliced to bits, singeing ( from hair dryer), precipitous fall on a
severed lock, poisonous ingestion of shampoo chemicals, getting washed down the
drain.
Tiny people who might happen to find themselves in the laboratory of a
microbiologist could endeavor to make contact with any regular-sized users of the
equipment by climbing onto slides they hope somebody will look at under a
microscope. Imagine the surprise when a lab worker peering at some cell culture
suddenly sees this teensy-weensy character jumping up and down, waving a flag,
etc.

Tabloid headline: Terrified Beach Goers Flee Boardwalk Vending Machine (They'd heard that the machines kill more people each
year than sharks.)

Mad Porpoise “Disease”

If porpoises could read: a school of semi-literate porpoises come in contact with a newspaper
washed into the ocean that has a headline about “Mad Cow Disease", along with stock
photographs showing cows leisurely grazing on a hill, some even reclining, with a couple of
farmers and a barn indicating a peaceful coexistence with people. Furthermore, another photo
depicts a cow being milked., apparently unrestrained and unperturbed, by a farmhand. From
their somewhat limited human vocabulary, they construe “mad” as angry, not being familiar with
the “insane” meaning, or else thinking it having something to do with rabbits--based on the Mad
Hatter from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, which some of them had read parts of.
"Disease" they interpret compoundly=disrespect + easy life.

So, putting it all together, they infer that somehow the cows, by angrily disrespecting people,
gained their admiration and resultantly had been adopted by them and given a life of leisure,
evidently that being preferred by mankind to having these belligerent beasts on the loose
attacking them, an interpretation reinforced by some of their school having previously seen
items about a "bullfight" which showed pretty much this same animal both in a street scene
where people appeared to be "running for their lives" to escape the bull-cow, and in a stadium
filled to capacity where the powerful creature was mauling a man in costume while thousands
looked on and none dared to interfere.
The porpoises, having heretofore been largely pacific and yet suffered misfortunes at the hands
of men—such as getting tangled in their nets, conclude that people perhaps mostly respect those
animals that aggress against them. This is substantiated by observations of dogs, known to be
"man's best friend" yet who regularly have been seen barking at, attacking, and biting people on
the beach—interspersed with affectionate petting, hugging, feeding, the porpoises resolve to
take a fresh approach/attitude towards people to see what being bellicose can get them in terms
of respect, admiration, affection, provisions, and so forth: “attack them, they like that.”
Sacred Cow
One porpoise, knowing the word "diocese" to have a religious connotation, infers that the cow's
temperament may have even earned some of the more vicious a position of religious authority
amongst people, as if they embodied some sort of supernatural energy. People consider
themselves the top species, reason the porpoises, so when any creature comes along and
overpowers them, they believe that the animal is an embodiment of the Deity, which alone is
considered stronger than man by man, or else a messenger of some sort from God, which should
likewise be respected.
Lets say that primates used the language of humans. They would probably hide it from
researchers, not wanting to be considered a threat to man that might result in their eradication or
their being taken out of the wild and experimented on. Imagine a group of apes sitting around
conversing, perhaps even reading something like a newspaper, and then they hear a yelp in the
distance—a scout—signaling that "people are coming." "OK everybody, stop the chit-chat,
remember 'you're a dumb animal so let's see it. Hey, put that newspaper away this minute! Now
listen up, there's not to be any 'clever' behavior going on here, I don't care how funny it is. If
these people see something that interests them, they could end up hanging around here for
months! Do you really want that?” Thus said the leader of the apes.
Wild Child
We should capitalize on any opportunity to learn more about how other animals
communicate within and across and amongst species. Thus the great research
value of feral children who have lived with wolves, wild dogs, cattle, sheep, goats,
monkeys and even amphibians. Yet most studies focus more on what is lost--the
ability to master human language than on what is potentially gained--another
animal's communication ability.

An example of the latter is the 7-year-old child named Baby Hospital who was
found in Sierra Leone in 1984. She had evidently been raised by monkeys, and
reportedly continued making chattering monkey-like sounds.

Contact, in its essential form, involves the attainment of two-way communication

between two or more disparate beings. "Disparate", of course, has many distinct
layers. "Intraterrestrial" broadly covers the range from "inter-species"--say,
between a mountain lion and a lynx--to "inter-phyla"--say, between a humpbacked
whale and a red oak tree.

A good example of potential "intraterrestrial" contact is the famous gray parrot

Alex. He successfully learned how to use human language for his own needs--with
the training of humans. So Alex may be recognized as having broken through the
wall of "inter-class" communication--between class Aves (birds) and class
Mammalia (mammals)--in one direction.

But, the fictional Doctor Doolittle aside, no known human has ever gone the other
direction and mastered another animal's communication system. There is the art of
bird-calling, practiced mainly simply to lure them. And yet researchers seem to
expect other animals ("lower" than us) to somehow carry on a conversation in our
language in order to prove their intelligence.

Then, when it comes to making contact with extraterrestrial intelligence, we expect

them to step down and communicate in ways that are readily understandable to us.
That's inconsistent.

Learning the "language" of and communicating with our fellow animals is hard work
that we'd apparently rather not be bothered with. Mankind assumes, like the sisters of Cinderella,
that we are deserving of serious attention, but the ETI prince may find us rather haughty, boorish,
vulgar, etc., and prefer the charms of the less obnoxious, Cinderella-esque animals that we look
down upon.

"Extraterrestrial" contact essentially involves contact between two or more

disparate beings from different worlds. To be two-way, in the case of humans,
would involve ETIs using one of our languages--for example English--and us using
one of their languages--such as telepathy.

The fact that communication can involve something besides words should be
apparent to any suburban dweller who has heard crickets, frogs, birds or seen
fireflies at dusk. This can bring us to the realization that communication--at least
on an intra-species level--is commonplace.

The conventional wisdom once held that complex language is a key factor distinguishing man
from all other animals. Now we know that creatures from bees and birds to whales communicate
with each other in meaningful, intelligent ways. Some of this communication is at frequencies
beyond conventional human sensory abilities.
People use their senses to communicate in a variety of ways. They rely primarily
on sight, sound and touch. Taste generally isn't considered a means of
communication, although the seasoned taster can get a wealth of information about
where the food comes from and how it was prepared. As for the sense of smell:
humans use scents such as perfumes and colognes to convey with some subtlety
their stature or desirability.

Sometimes, the five senses can fill-in for one another. For instance, braille and
sign language use touch and/or vision when hearing and/or vision is/are impaired.
Scientists have developed a method of electrically stimulating parts of the tongue
to help people with visual or motor disabilities get around better. The device
doesn't employ the taste buds It's more of a tactile application for the tongue.
They could probably just as well have chosen to stimulate the palm of the patient's
hand, but then that signal might get confused with something like an ipod or
remote control.

Three Musketeers
In considering sensory communication, we should probably add a sixth sense--the
pheromone sense. Pheromones are chemicals secreted by animals and plants that
indicate one's presence to members of one's own species and/or target other
species, and/or trigger a certain behavior in such. Some scientists might consider
the three senses of olfaction, taste and pheromones as being rather intertwined as
all involve detecting particular chemical substances.

The pheromone sense is weak or inactive in most humans today, and its reception
is believed to involve the vomeronasal organ, which is located at the base of the
nasal cavity. But pheromones remain important communication equipment for
many other animals, including lizards, snakes, ants and some mammals--usually
related to attraction and mating behavior. It might well have been stronger for us
at an earlier time--perhaps before we became so adept with our facial expressions
and language skill and our females became fertile/fecund year-round

So pheromones are a part of the sensory slate that animals have developed for
communicating, most often for practical purposes like locating food, avoiding
predators, finding a mate, establishing territory and dominance, and so on. Social
animals communicate between parent and offspring as part of a learning process.

Here's just a few of the many notable ways in which specific animals
communicate.
A bunch of primates use sequences of calls to communicate with each other about
things like where they're going and if there's a predator up or down there.
Different monkey species, living in close proximity, often respond to each others'
warning calls.

The Big Time

Our largest mammals--the elephants on land and the whales at sea--have both
developed long-distance communication skills within species. The elephants do so
by pounding the ground with their massive feet to produce infrasound waves that
even elephants several miles distant can "hear" with their own feet. They recognize
the sender's stomp just as we recognize a speaker's voice.

Whales "sing" to each other in the infrasound range from hundreds of miles away.
Like the elephants, their sounds have distinctive characteristics so they can discern
who it's coming from. It's not unfathomable to think that ETIs might analyze
these as a gateway to understanding the animal mind.

Tabloid headline: Moby Dick Swallows Submarine (Was it something they said?)

Dolphins emit a variety of sounds to each other as well as--even above water--to
humans with whom they may be interacting. Many people have heard them either
at a marine park or on TV nature programs or "Flipper" reruns. They can be
trained to respond quite well to human gestural commands. There's a report of
wild dolphins jumping about in unusually close proximity to a group of offshore
scuba-diving boats prior to the big tsunami of 2004. They did so in such a way that
people there interpreted it as a signal to follow them--which the boatmen did--to
deeper, less tempest-tossed waters.

Of course, the animal most often shadowing man on land is the dog. Many of us
talk to our dogs, but we don't expect them to reply in kind. They communicate
back to us in a variety of ways. They wag their tails to convey a variety of
dispositions--both to each other and to humans. Ditto with facial expression. Then
there's the barking--at times loud enough to be heard throughout the neighborhood.
That's at auditory wavelengths shared with people--their ultrasound stuff we don't
get. And of course they have the territorial marking tool which takes advantage of
their powerful scent sense, enabling them to keep tabs on the comings and
doggone-ings of their local rivals.

Prairie dogs, which live in colonies, have specific names for each predator out on
the Great Plains. That way, when one of them spots a predator approaching, the
alarm call indicates to everybody immediately just what sort of trouble they're
dealing with this time.

Cats--both in the wild and domestic, are generally not especially gregarious. one
doesn't hear much about people training their cats to do stuff. There's a striking
instance of communication in which a human spoke the other animal's language--
the case of the purring lady whom cats adored.

Oppossums can convincingly fake their own deaths by spontaneously taking on the
appearance of rigor mortis. When you stumble upon one in this condition on your
property, if you go to fetch a shovel to bury the good-sized mammal, by the time
you get back the oppossum will probably have scurried off. This adaptive intra-
class behavior involves both sight and touch. If you poke the possum gently with a
stick, it continues the charade.

Trick question: Who "plays possum" better--humans or possums?

Answer: Humans do. That's because, technically speaking, possums don't play
possum--they are possums. If you should ever see a possum driving a car down
the road, you would say "that possum is playing human!"

Birds call and sing to each other to demarcate feeding areas and serenade the
females. Some have elaborate courtship displays. For instance Birds of Paradise,
the ruffed grouse, and Australia's Lyrebird show off their fancy plumage like
Carnival Kings. American woodcocks perform aerial maneuvers worthy of a stunt
pilot. Prairie chicken rival males display and do battle at the same main event.

Some birds communicate across class lines to those they consider a threat to their
nest. Parent killdeer and nighthawks will attempt to distract an intruder by feigning
a broken wing

One if by Land, Two if by Air

Hornbill birds in the jungle of the Ivory Coast have evidently developed some
understanding of monkey language. Diana monkeys there will call out when they
spot a predator. Their warning call is distinct for each kind of predator--one call
for, say a leopard, a slightly different call for, say a crowned eagle. It happens to
be the case that crowned eagles, large birds of prey, have both Diana monkeys and
hornbills on their menu. So when the monkeys call out to each other warning
about a crowned eagle, the hornbills take precautionary measures. But when the
monkeys are in uproar over a leopard--which is not a threat to the hornbills--the
hornbills take no action.

Snakes use their tongues for detecting the pheromone trail of potential mates and
subsequently as part of their courtship display. They also employ it to track down
prey--though this might not qualify as communication as much as eavesdropping.

Don't Tread On Me
Rattlesnakes rattle their rattle to deter approaching animals they deem a threat. It's
like a warning shot: you are in grave peril if you violate this space any further. So
the rattlesnake is an interclass auditory communicator. PS--don't try this at home,
kids. Sometimes a rattler strikes without giving any warning.

Alligators: rival suitor males size each other up and woo the females by making
low-pitched infrasound vibrations that ripple through the water for a considerable
distance. These are accompanied by audible (to us) bellows. The vibes are received
by what look like facial freckles. Alligators may also attempt to communicate with
sonic booming aircraft and thunder. Alas, there is no alligator constellation in the
sky.

Level Playing Field?

Frogs: when congregating in large throngs at mating time, the males behave like a
chorus in the sense that their calls can be heard individually by females amidst the
multitude--at least those fairly nearby The fair play runs both within and across
species, and involves the timing, frequency and duration of their calls. So it
doesn't sound random--and it isn't. Even so, the callers will try to get a leg up on
rivals by seeking higher ground.

Tree frogs: the males use the branch they're on like a guitar string. They pluck the
branch with their feet--getting it to vibrate about a dozen times per second. The
sentiments conveyed are the usual suspects having to do with territory, dominance,
mating and warning. The frog on the receiving end takes the vibration in through
the feet and it goes up to the inner ear for processing.

Electric fish utilize electrical pulses in the water to contact prospective mates.
Apparently no one told them "hey, you could get electrocuted doing that!"

Legs & Abs

Jumping spider: the highly athletic male puts on an elaborate courtship display
involving the use of his limbs. Huntsman spider: a male, upon detecting a
female pheromone, will vibrate the ground with his abdomen. If impressed, she'll
come forth.

Male fiddler crabs wave their one huge claw to flag down females--sort of like a
parking lot attendant.

Insects--Bebop Dancing
Honeybees use visual body language to tell their hive-mates the location of a good
new food source. It's an elaborate and effective "waggle" dance, considered by
some as the best example of animals communicating by using a language. Though
they don't text, honeybees also send messages via pheromones on various
domestic hive matters or to sound an alarm.

Crickets: the males make all the noise--the females listen. The sound comes from
using their wings like a sort of violin. So next time you hear a yard full of them
creating a real din, close your eyes and fancy you're at a string "centet"
performance.

Fireflies: certain females, after mating with one of their own species, who flies off,
continue signaling--in such a way as to attract males of other firefly species.
Captured, these become food for the next generation.

Ants are famous for using pheromones to mark food trails in such a way that other
members of the colony will know which paths to take and which to avoid.
Generally, shorter is better. Then, when a particular food source is exhausted, they
stop marking it so others won't continue gong there.

Cephalopods (octopi and squids) use their skin like a kind of plasma TV screen to
communicate emotion. Of course, such skill is also helpful for camouflage
purposes to ambush prey or, perhaps, if they just "want to be alone."

Plants: some trees give off pheromones that can be transported through the air like
pollen. These can serve as a warning against deleterious insects on the move--
inspiring contacted trees to put distasteful chemicals in their leaves. When some
trees detects certain parasitical insects on themselves, they may send out
pheromones to attract other insects that prey upon the parasite. Also, some tree
pheromones may serve to coordinate blooming periods

Exit Polling
If, being a sort of Dr. Doolittle or a mind reader, you were to poll all of the
animals by species about humankind’s fate in a simple “should he stay or should he
go?”, and require a 90% "conviction" rate to take man out, in all likelihood the results would
not be a very close vote—-so near to unanimous would be the "nays". Ask yourself who would
want humans to stay? The cockroach family, termites, bedbugs, but that's just a tiny fraction of
the million or so insect species; perhaps also the cotton-boll weevil and relatives--prolific
agricultural pests who may be better off with than without man despite efforts at eradicating them.

As for the nearly nine thousand bird species, you'd likely get a couple of dozen "yeas": the
starling, barn swallow, maybe a few of the 25 sparrow species, blue jay, possibly the northern
cardinal, the crow, herring gull, and rock dove (today’s common pigeon).
The dog, being man's best friend, would most certainly vote to keep him around.
The only problem is that dogs, for all their great variety, constitute but one of over
four thousand mammal species. We could count on “yeas” from the Norway and
black rats along with the house cat & mouse, but not many more. So their votes
gets drowned out by all of the wild, and probably most of the domesticated,
mammals who’d fare much better without homo sapiens This includes
Bigfoot/Yeti, man's closest relative, if he exists. The sentiment is probably similar
for reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and invertebrates--all around the animal kingdom.

Tabloid headline: The Tribe Has Spoken: Animal Poll Votes People Off Earth.

* The tally was taken telepathically by ETI stewards of the planet.

* 99% of species say “Go away, homo sa.”

* Humanity’s few supporters include dog, cockroaches, seagulls, rats.

* Rationale: most animals have either been hunted to the brink of extinction (or
over it) by man, had their habitat bulldozed/burned down by human “developers”,
been poisoned by our pollution, been enslaved, been used in our laboratories as
“guinea pigs” for frivolities, and/or in some other way(s) had their quality of life
significantly degraded by humanity’s excesses.
*Most plants feel the same way (exceptions some ornamentals).

A plant shouldn’t be called “it.” Whether the plant possesses both

reproductive components (“she-males") or just one ("he" or "she"),
the pronoun usage should not lump living beings together with
inanimate matter ("it") which has no gender and does not reproduce
itself on-purpose--no agenda.

For something like grass, which propagates by shoots/runners,

perhaps the best you can do is call the grass "they" or "them.” If,
for some reason there is a need to refer to a particular blade of grass,
you might just as well give that individual a proper name if you
really must single-out.

Revenge of the Trees Bookstore/Library: all of the books are printed on people
(their skin/hides), which the trees read. These would probably be trees that had
developed or acquired locomotion capability, along with the ability to read
for comprehension and overall higher reasoning powers. Part of the logic for using
humans is the diminished body hair compared with other animals.

The Last Judgment

These books might look a bit like some of those Renaissance paintings of the
damned being tormented by devils in hell, their semi-elastic skin punctured by
pitchforks in the manner of a marshmallow roasting. Tree readers would browse
just as people do when they read tree books—picking them up, perusing the
jacket/table of contents, flipping through the pages, stopping once in a while to
read a passage of interest.

Revenge of the Trees Housing, Furniture it's mostly made out of human
bones with perhaps some other animal skeletal parts thrown in where
suitable. When you think about it, burying the dead like we do does sort
of waste the bones. So it’s a bit surprising--at least at first blush--that
people haven’t tried it themselves.

Q--If a tree falls in the forest and nobody's there to hear this, is any sound made?
A--Yeah, the tree says "woops, I just fell over!" Actually, in any halfway healthy forest, there's pretty sure to be at least one animal
with a decent sense of hearing within earshot of that tree. So the tree is heard falling--even if there are no humans present or words
spoken.

Neck Trimmer Scenario

A bizarre threat to the human race takes the form of a replacement brood which grow in the Earth like
vegetables—e.g. a pumpkin, or a potato. Hence these "people" are sown somehow, and tend to grow
quite rapidly in this extra-uterine manner, deriving the nutriment for cell division from the ground's
minerals rather than the womb — Mother Earth, you might say.

It takes just a few hours for one such homo sapiens "spud" to go from seed to — not baby, but— full-
blown adult (they zip through immaturity) or, in some instances adolescence, perhaps children, but not
babies because they need to be capable of walking away from the birth site so as to go to the place
where their "forerunner" lives in order replace him/her. The vegetable people probably tend to grow in
the general neighborhood of their replacee, so that if somebody sees one clawing out of the dirt, the clever
“Veggie” can claim to be looking for a lost contact lens or something like that.

Generally these creatures are sown late at night, hatching just before dawn so as not to be seen. Eventually
, the regular people figure out that something fishy is going on here, and they go out in the wee hours of
the night. "armed" with hedge clippers, tree trimmers, flashlights, shovels--patrolling their area like a
neighborhood watch group.

They shine their flashlights into yards looking for signs of life, which compel them
to attack any of these seed people while they are somewhat defenseless--wiggling
there in the muck, often with just the head visible above-ground--perhaps
beheading them with a branch cutter and then quickly burying the proto-head.

Of course, these vigilante anti-vegetable-people enforcement patrollers must be quite careful when returning
home after completing their rounds, as their own replacement, sown in another corner of the neighborhood,
could be there waiting for them.
20th Century Fox
Prelude to the Invasion--Synopsis: Aliens, determined to prevent their quarry from
escaping a city attack, set about, through accomplices, turning on as many car
headlights as possible in order to incapacitate the engines. They don't care about
appearing suspicious or getting caught, as their comrades will be arriving within
the hour. Since timing of events is important, watches must be synchronized.
Furthermore, large vehicles, such as trucks and buses, are commandeered and
driven to critical locations such as bridges and major intersections where they
become obstructions. Other modes of transportation are also taken down.

They Abandon the City (tatc)

An alien scouting party investigates Earthly society prior to a potential invasion. They readily
focus on humans due to the technology, and making demographic observations, ascertain
population clustering in metropolitan areas.
The scouts are particularly fascinated by the pattern of daily commuting by highway/rail,
which, in numerous cities, creates "ghost towns" in the night. They marvel at the magnificent
skyscrapers--all hubub by day yet desolate overnight. In addition to the apparent inefficiency
of such space utilization- -home unoccupied by day, office empty by late night, vast stretches of
land used up for commuter conduits and placement facilities for commuter vehicles--they
postulate that here is a species that has evolved in a highly peculiar manner, _or_ else has some
deep-seated reason for this daily mobility ritual.
One theory postulates that it is a throwback a to highly traumatic species developmental period,
during which time people were widely subject to predation. Hence, by keeping on-the-move,
they evaded stalkers who might otherwise violently attack them while they slept. It is observed
that other mammals are more active by night, reclusive by day. Humans, diverging from this
pattern so as to better see what food they were gathering, ultimately became soil tillers,
necessitating a permanent day location. This was OK because the other animals were sleeping
then, but likely necessitated provisional or rotating night encampments to evade
marauders/attackers. Having by now eliminated natural predators, the compulsion for such
evasive maneuvers no longer exists, but is so ingrained in the human psyche that it persists.
Some of the leadership aliens, extrapolating from these "scouting reports," reason that the best
way to attack would be by day, since their history of development accustoms them to nighttime
battles which, obviously they must have won, for where are their natural enemies now? The
vast farm acreage gives the invaders an impression of society as largely agrarian. They
surmise, furthermore, that the more intensive clustering of daytime work centers as compared
with home living quarters would make such an attack more practical and impactful.
"They abandon the city at night," comments an alien strategist," so why don't we infiltrate it
then and surprise them when they arrive?" The tendency for most of the work force to show up
within the same "rush hour" is noted. Another argues for a midday invasion, and yet another
contends that the best time would be late afternoon/early evening — combined with a
disruption of commuter sources--to trap people in their daytime habitat as day turns to night,
thereby thwacking their habitual daily transition.

The plethora of roads throughout the developed world has made prisoners of most wildlife in these
areas, the most notable exception being birds who can fly over the roads. We might learn from this
example, as well some sci-fi a la Buck Rodgers, in directing our technology towards less havoc-
causing style of routine transportations than the automobile which, even if it is converted into a
pollution-free vehicle, still slices and dices the natural landscape. This hinders the animals' ability
to cope with global warming.
Car Talk
If an extraterrestrial, or some other such objective evaluator, were to take a look at human society
with the goal of determining who or what is running the show here, they just might conclude that
the world has become one big auto park. The most visible sign of activity from a slight distance
above is the motor vehicle (car, truck, and so on), and they might think that people are sort of like
little workers, or perhaps cleaners/mechanics/ companions for whatever they get into.
Rat Race
Tabloid headline: Aliens breeding a society of rodents (To replace the human "race")
The Bible, in Ecclesiastes (ch.3 v.21), says “Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and the spirit of the animal goes down into the
Earth?”

The distinction between animals and humans, we are coming to realize, is largely an arbitrary one, an
excuse used to justify selfish exploitation and despoilment of the Organic Earth. So when the issue of
spirituality is addressed, the tendency for organized religions to cast a similar spotlight on mankind's
interior, leaving all the other animals in darkness, is likewise inapt for the real world—physical and
spiritual—we live in.

If people are the only beings here with souls, then it would appear that souls are distributed according
to the likelihood that they will be lost, that the soul-giver is more of a soul lender, who, via the devil
perhaps if one wishes to abjure individual responsibility, endeavors to recover a preponderance of the
souls so as to recycle them. The soul might be likened to a dollar given by the manager of a candy
store to some kid who happens to be in there. More often than not, the manager is going to get that
dollar back.

Anyone who’s ever made a genuine effort to get to know an animal--pet,

domesticated, or wild--would probably attest that a spiritual bond is just as readily
forged between an open-hearted person and an animal as between two people.
What man is capable of, surely God can do.

It's easy to make contact looking up — wave to the stars, and let them do all the work, come down
and show us all kinds of high-tech gadgetry to solve the problems we've manufactured for ourselves
and the world. But making contact going diagonally along the intelligence ladder, to our fellow native
Earthlings, is just about as rewarding in a fundamental way.

Spindle brain cells--active in social life--are found in cetaceans (dolphins and

whales) and elephants as well as humans and other primates. These structures are
believed to be necessary for feelings like empathy. Other animals may also have
them--for instance, dogs.

Empathy is perhaps most remarkable when it works across species lines. There are
numerous reports of dogs acting heroically and spontaneously to save human lives.
There is at least one report of dolphins influencing human behavior in such a way
that many human lives were likely saved. Also reported: a humpbacked whale
behaving in a way interpreted as expressing gratification to human fishermen
who'd extricated him/her from a bad netting entanglement.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could empathize with the animals--to feel their pain and joy?. Wouldn't it be cool
to feel like we live in a neighborhood with them?
Chapter 4

BIOENGINEERING, or FUTURE EVOLUTION

UPGRADING HUMANITY: CLONES, HYBRIDS & AI...or MOCKERIES,

MONSTERS AND MACHINE MIND MELDS

DNA Shepherding
The first successful cloning of a complete animal organism several years ago raised many
eyebrows. To actually see this recreated sheep on our TV sets made the cloning concept,
which had been a cultural punch-line for several years, seem more substantial.

Hello Dolly, Golly

However, the innocuous visage of this little lamb--chops and all--and subsequent clones, has
tended to become transformed by the media circus, religious "thou-shalt-notters", "baah
humbuggers", Luddites, and Pandora's Box alarmists, into a monstrosity of epic proportions.
Let's look on the bright side. To begin with, there is nothing necessarily "artificial" about a
cloned organism. Dolly, the headlining sheep, was more or less a precise genetic
copy of her source sheep. So she was a duplicate of that which already existed--like
asexual reproduction, which is common among unicellular microorganisms, and occasionally
found in more elaborate creatures such as plants, fungi and animals including some
invertebrates, reptiles, amphibians and sharks..

Call Her 40DD

"Dolly" was named after country singer Dolly Parton because she was fashioned
out of her progenitor's breast tissue. That sheep's name is not well-known, if she
had a name. She probably was identified by some standard livestock-counting
method. Dolly was # 6LL3.

Unfortunately, Dolly was not as long-lived as her forbear (or fore-sheep). A typical
sheep lives 11-12 years; Dolly lived just 6 1/2. Some analysts blame her celebrity
status. Not that she lived out in the fast lane. To the contrary, she was cooped up
indoors for security reasons. This may have led to the lung cancer--not enough
fresh air.

Frayed Genes (Wear and Tear on the Telomeres)

It's also noteworthy that Dolly was found to have a condition linked to ageing and
cancer--shortened telomeres (DNA strand tips). Because Dolly's precursor was 6
years old when her DNA was extracted to make Dolly, it's easy to do the math and
surmise that that Dolly was born with 6 years of genetic wear and tear on her. It's a
bit like a typical used car can't be expected to last as long as a new one--even if it
still looks really good.

Much of the controversy about cloning is rather speculative, based on alterations

such as are becoming more prevalent in agriculture to develop disease-resistant
crops via genetic engineering.
Frank About Frankenstein
We cringe at the thought of another Hitler utilizing real laboratories to perfect a
"super race." Does the cloning road inevitably lead to the field of "people
husbandry" or is that just a slippery-slope fallacy?
It must be noted, as many confuse science with science-fiction, that a clone, unlike
a Frankenstein monster, starts out on a Petri dish, not as a fully-grown
manufactured adult. Geneticists are not wavers of magic wands or genie-
beckoners.
Consequently, any dictator wishing to obtain a population of brain-washable dolts
would presumably need to feed, clothe and shelter them from infancy on up. A
society filled with imbecilic clones would be a greater threat to itself than to
another country, and would likely go belly-up economically.
However, an army of doltish robotic drone clones, a la Star Wars, is a possibility.

Stemming the Tide

Some have prognosticated that one day people who can afford it will have clones
made of themselves for the purpose of harvesting organs as their own go bad. But
stem cell technology should prove more efficient as you could make just the organs
necessary, and just-in-time so they're fresh. It may even prove possible to inject a
few stem cells and let them rebuild the organ on site. Whereas your clone would
probably have to be kept on a respirator or on ice after you've pulled a few
important organs. Of course, you could maintain multiple clones--but then you'd
have more mouths to feed and board.

Renting the Farm

There's the option of farming-out the care of your clone(s). Just how well they get
treated would likely be guided my certain minimum standards set by the
government--sort of like we have for domesticated animals in those big, prison-
like farms in terms of humane treatment. Advocates for clone rights would
contend that, after all, since clones are humans, too, they should be entitled to at
least some rudimentary education, even though you've no intention to ever harvest
the higher reasoning parts of their brains (short of something like Alzheimer's--
which may be curable by then). Their argument would be that a sound mind makes
for a healthy body.

Some folks might even want to share the "good life" with their clone(s). Those so
inclined would be advised to consider the risks of coddling clones.

Dear M.:
As you have brought it to my attention that a body double of mine may" be visiting
the store from time-to-time, it's appropriate to inform you that this individual is
probably an escaped clone who occasionally follows in my footsteps.
Please do not be overly alarmed, for he is not known to be dangerous.
His appearance there is probably a result of having overheard me mentioning the
store to somebody, or perhaps my calling you to ask about the closing time. It's
also possible that this clone may have seen a bag at the house with the store's name
and address printed on it.
The problem isn't him being a particularly nosey clone as much as that, you see,
heretofore his life has been rather dull--so he thinks that I must be up to something
more interesting.
Consequently, now that the clone is "out on his own”, I’m having a hard time
trying to figure out what to do over the potential for infiltration into one's personal
scene.
Although perhaps not having exactly my level of intelligence, my clone is no idiot.
I can infer this because of a note left to me saying that if I try to have him captured
or arrested, he will claim to be me, and I his clone.

The Neutrino Clones (tnc)

An alien takeover of Earth proceeds in a surreptitious fashion. This may be
necessitated by some galactic protocol prohibiting them from having any contact
with, or even being seen by the natives. The invaders literally burrow into the
Earth, and/or utilize caves/man-made cavities--whatever is useful--where they set
up vats of solar-neutrino-capturing liquid, something that human scientists have
already successfully done.
The twist is that, utilizing a highly-advanced technology, the aliens are able to
reconstruct human DNA from the neutrinos--of people whom a given neutrino has
passed through en route to the vat. Perhaps they lace the sky w/a chemical that
causes an image of the DNA to adhere to the neutrinos.
The neutrino cloners take the DNA and manufacture a replica of the person, aged
to the appropriate present age (more or less), and with an alien-oriented brain. Each
clone is then sent aboveground to "replace" the original person. Generally this is
done discreetly, so that, hopefully, nobody will notice.
They manage to do this by first of all setting up and, subsequent ly taking control
of, places where people typically go unarmed and not expecting any trouble, and
behind closed doors, e.g. a doctor's office, a psychiatrist's office, an attorney's
office, etc., also hookers, late-night out-of-the-way places, etc.
Eventually, large chunks of society are taken over, even entire institutions such as
hospitals, police precincts, and so on. It becomes easier and easier as the more of
them there are (and they have ways of recognizing one another) the more they can
help each other in luring victims to surreptitious locations.
Spouses are generally replaced immediately, as it is quite easy to get one's spouse into an
isolated situation. This also avoids controversy over gaps in knowledge on the part of the
replacement. For the most part, contact w/non-replaced individuals is kept to a minimum,
except for purposes of replacement. They try to proceed as swiftly as possible in the project,
but back off if a problem arises in any particular replacement action. A few missed
opportunities here and there are preferable to blowing the mission's cover.

Replacees are never supposed to see their replacements (kept hidden, e.g. in a nearby room),
although it's possible that inadvertent scenarios could result in such encounters.

People mysticize about a sixth sense such as ESP, but scientists have already detected numerous additional
natural senses in various animals.

*Sixth sense: pheromones--involves secreting chemicals for purposes of identification and behavioral
influence--mostly mating. It's found in the likes of ants, bees, lizards, snakes, some mammals.

*Seventh sense: magnetism--utilized for navigation by birds, Monarch butterflies, honeybees, ants, dolphins,
salmon, salamanders, sea turtles, rays, tuna, cattle. red and roe deer and some rodents. The sense in domestic
cattle is a likely holdover from the time when they roamed freely. Now they just stand there facing
North/South. Humans have developed a synthetic magnetic sense--the global positioning system (GPS) Many
of us now would be lost without it--at least in our cars.

*Eighth sense: ultraviolet (UV)--birds, honeybees, dragonflies, Monarch butterflies and ants use this range of
the electromagnetic spectrum for navigation. Flowers attract honeybees with colorful markings that are
viewable exclusively via UV.

*Ninth sense: electric--sharks, platypuses and Electric fish have an electroreception sense which helps them
locate food or mates underwater, particularly in murky conditions.

*Tenth sense: infrared--vampire bats, snakes and some other reptiles possess a thermoperception sense. In
vampire bats, the receptors are located around the nose. The sense is helpful in determining a good place to
bite their host.

*Eleventh sense (posited): barometer--some animals may have an ability to sense changes in
barometric pressure, which could thus be considered an extra sense for them. This could explain
some of their prescience regarding storms, which often are precipitated by a rise or rail in the air's
density indicative of weather systems--the highs and lows.

So that's up to eleven possible senses--of which humans possess naturally just

about half (we get partial credit for pheromone sense--11 x 1/2 =5 1/2).

The Diversity of Dogs

Dogs could be a striking example of evolution in progress, provided that the extreme
differentiation of breeds is going to create distinct species incapable of mixing. Granted,
the extreme diversity of dogs is mostly man's doing, but it could shed some light on the
origination of species via differentiation.
If one looks at a lineup of 100 mammals, in which, say, 50 of them are dogs--chosen at
random from a family tree diagram of dogs--it would be very difficult for somebody to
ascertain that all the dogs are members of the same species, while the others (if one made
it so) are all distinct. There are several entire families of smaller mammals whose species
all look almost alike, to go to the other end of the resemblances scale. Yet these critters
cannot interbreed.
What is it that has kept it possible for such diverse creatures as the various dog breeds to
still be able to mix? It may be that selective breeding by human owners, such as for
specialties like hunting (tracking/retrieving)/watch/shepherd/sled/lap/etc., is responsible
for causing them to diverge in overall appearance more rapidly than their reproductive
physiology could differentiate.
The mind of a Dog? Given the incredible variety of dogs in the world, it might be
wondered whether, and if so, how, a dog recognizes another dog as such and not an
entirely different, albeit mammalian, creature. Do all dogs share a particular aspect of
scent? Because, based on vision alone, there is no set of features that, at a glance, would
enable any given dog to know that what he/she is looking at is another dog or is some
other mammalian species (for example wolves, foxes, raccoon, coyote, badger,
wolverine) Otherwise, just to look at them, anyone unfamiliar would hardly think that all
dogs were of the same species.

Hopeful Monsters vs. Inbreds

Hence, while it’s still possible, it might be tempting to try cross-breeding various
very different breeds of dog, for instance, Chihuahua with Doberman, Basset
hound with poodle, cocker spaniel with boxer, pit bull with husky, just to see the
results. The agreeable disposition of many mutts, in contrast to the high-strung and obsessive characteristics
of some purebreds provides a motive for some cross-breeding in general. An expert on
dogs/genetics/breeding might be able to envision the likely
appearance/behavior/disposition of various cross breeds, and a computer program
could be written to display the likely results of whatever permutation is proposed.
Birds of a Feather
The evolution of a distinct species can occur naturally a la
Darwin's finches, even without the island locations. The
creatures, such as birds, have individual variations within the same species--say a slightly-
different beak--making that individual more or less adept with, for example, cracking certain
nuts. An individual, through trial and error, will tend to increase the amount of time it spends in
the trees which bear the kind of nuts it's best with. He/she will meet in those trees likewise
members of the same species who are good with those nuts and, by sheer proximity, be likely
to breed with these with whom that talent is shared.

The offspring will surely have a beak suited to those trees, perhaps in an even more
pronounced way. Hence, they have found a niche, and it will tend to be self-reinforcing
because a mixed-breed might well find him-/herself stuck "between a rock and a hard place"--
with a beak that's less efficient than that of either of two more distinctly-beaked parents. One
might fancy a multi-purpose, versatile Swiss-army-knife kind of beak, but in all likelihood the
prevailing rule-of-thumb is “jack-of-all-trades=master of none.”

Let’s say a particular aspect of the beak is determined by a single gene, in which case
first-time cross-breeds would express the dominant side. But if their offspring also cross-
breed, the further dilution would cause some to express the recessive trait. Hence, those with a
tendency (which might be genetic) to cross-breed would not islandize themselves as much as
those that were stricter about selecting only mates from a distinct group, Consequently, further
specializations for that niche would be achieved and maintained primarily by those that did not
mix--ultimately leading potentially to distinct species for the self-islanders.

The natural tendency, thus, is for species to develop as niche-fitters. Changes in the
environment generally occur gradually—giving most species plenty of time to
modify themselves naturally (evolution w/a small "e"). The exceptions are
cataclysmic events-such as asteroid hits, nearby supernovae, and recent human
activity—which cause massive, relatively abrupt extinctions by altering the
ecosystem in an extreme manner, so much so that natural selection is largely
unable to retrofit most species in time. But that Swiss-army-knife beak/Edward
Scissorhands hand is simply too much baggage to carry around for 25 million years
waiting for a catastrophe to occur.

What's Your Appetite?

Among other things, what Darwin observed in the Galapagos Archipelago (aka Las
Encantadas) was 13 distinct species of finch that had all descended from a single species via
adaptive radiation. These finches are notable for their diversity of beak styles, which reflect
specialization in dining patterns. This include thin pointy beaks for jabbing insects, more
curly beaks for grasping and cracking nuts, and long thin beaks for probing cacti blossoms
for fruit. Other food sources include eggs--which are rolled onto rocks--and bug larva. One
of the finches is a part-time flesh-eating bloodsucker. Another is notable for using tools such
as sticks to get at its food. Some garner seeds from the ground, others from trees; some eat
ticks off or near the ground, other insectivores are up in the trees.
Consolidation
There are several naturally-occurring hybrids among North American birds. The
most well-known include Brewster’s warbler, Lawrence’s warbler, Sutton’s
warbler, the ToHe warbler and Wurdemann’s heron. It is estimated that ten percent
of birds hybridize. Many of these may represent the flip side of Darwinian
radiating finches, as each involves two similar species interbreeding (same genus
or at least same family--with Sutton’s) in overlapping ranges. Environmental
degradation has a way of corralling species together in a mixing bowl.

ETI Can-Do Probe

Here's a story for lovers of birds and beer cans: a couple out strolling in the countryside picks up an
aluminum can that appears to be litter--because they happen to be collectors of such ephemera, and
perhaps it's an old, outdated brand in near-mint condition. Back home, they happen to place the can
near a radio/TV or some such electronic device which, when later turned on, demonstrates
interference. They peer inside and observe a tiny gadgetry, perking their curiosity. And so the can is
taken to a local electrician who examines it and is baffled.

Eventually, the authorities get wind of the thing, and so the can winds up being examined by military
scientists, who determine that it contains matter not of this world, and may well be some sort of
observational device. What could Extraterrestrials be looking for out in the boondocks? There are no
top secret installations in the area. A band of naturalists is enlisted to study a large bird colony in the
area, and they discover a series of mutations that have taken place and apparently resulted in a kind of
dinosaur.

This incredible finding becomes the buzz of the inner circle scientific community, but the general
public is not informed because it is considered too shocking. The authorities determine, that the
public should be allowed to encounter the dinosaurs only when this becomes inevitable. So they
walk a rather fine line: cordoning off the area as a bird sanctuary is a plausible course of action,
for instance. Some argue for the extirpation of the mutants, but others think that would send the
wrong sort of message to the Extraterrestrials who placed the can there which has, in the
meantime, been returned to the spot where it was found.
Dragon Talk
Wouldn’t it be fascinating if birds were big enough that people could ride on them like camels or
horses—in the air? If dinosaurs, looking the same as in their prime, existed today in miniature form,
say the size of present-day birds? Although it could be perhaps a bit hazardous if, for example, one
were to encounter a ravenous T-rex, sort of like a pit-bull. Or here's a real terrifying one--if dinosaurs
were still around/reintroduced the same size as they once were, only with flight capability, perhaps
obtained via genetic engineering. So it wouldn't be just archaeopteryx and the like with wings, but all
of them. Sounds kind of scintillating, doesn’t it? Sounds like dragons.

Fairy Tale a Hybrid?

They can’t fly, but the narwhal's twisted spiral tusk, an enlarged left canine tooth
which grows up to 9 feet long, makes this whale, the "Unicorn of the (Arctic) Sea,"
a source of Eskimo and Viking lore. One wonders whether this sea mammal could
have played a role in the formation of the land unicorn myth, as there is no actual
land animal with such a protuberance unless you count the rhinoceros--which is
about as far from a prancing pony as one can get. Of course, we know cetaceans
(the order comprising whales and dolphins) are descended from land creatures, but
that's a 20th century discovery.

There is a tremendous variety of hybrid creatures--both real and fantasy--that are

basically crosses of two species, or "di-brids." To wit: dragon, centaur
(Sagittarius), satyr, Pegasus, mermaid/man, sphinx, thoth, griffin, flying monkey
(Oz), mothman (WV), wolfman, vampire, chupacabra, Capricorn, unicorn, Volans,
mule, zeedonk, tigons & ligers, wholphin, Harpy, Siren, minotaur, and so on. But
there are just a few instances of hybrids involving more than two contributing
species.

*According to Persian legend, a manticore features a lion's body, the face of a man,
and a scorpion's tail--a "tri-brid."

*In Greek mythology, a Chimera has a goat's body, the head of a man or lion, a
serpent's tail, and breathes fire like a dragon. One might call such a "quint-brid"
(the dragon accounting for two parts, being a large lizard with wings).

Novel Biblical symbolic "multi-brids" (3+):

*Daniel 7 V.4--describes a "tri-brid" beast in a dream that "was like a lion, and it
had the wings of an eagle...and the heart of a man was given to it."

*Ezekiel 1 v.4-24--has a vision involving several “quint-brids” each of which

features the heads of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle along with two sets of wings
(presumably eagle) and a calf’s feet.

*Revelations 9 v.7-10--John describes a plague of locusts with human-like faces

and hair, lions’ teeth, wings, and the stinging tail of a scorpion--another 5-er.

*Revelations 9 v.17-19--speaks of an enormous army on horseback. The horses

have lion-esque heads and snake-like tails “with which they inflict injury”--hence,
“tri-brids.”

*Revelations 13 v.2--depicts “the beast” as one resembling a leopard, but with

bear-like feet and the mouth of a lion--another 3-fer.

Advanced hybridizing may range from the subtle to the ultra-exotic: from giving a particular
species a little bit of something quite useful to highly creative brainstorm splicing and arraying of a
vast assortment of genetic material so as to come up with amazing super-beings.

Supposing the goal is to create a (series of) super-beings by utilizing what's available on the planet. Think
of each species’ DNA as a specific hue on an artist's palette. The talented artist generally
doesn't simply dab one color here, another color there, and so on. Rather, he/she intertwines them in a
skillfully coherent way. We're looking for traits that are unique to a
/family/genus/species and that are particularly well developed, effective, efficient--
anything to give a super-being a competitive edge.

To illustrate, consider the following roster of attributes:

vision--acuity (visible light)—hawk, eagle; owl, cat (night)

vision--special features--jumping spider, dragonfly, pigeon (peripheral); bee, dragonfly, fly (fast
movement)
vision (ultraviolet)—birds, honeybee, dragonfly, ant, Monarch butterfly

olfaction—dog, grizzly, polar bear, anteater, turkey vulture, shark

audition--owl
audition--ultrasound: dog (land); bat (sonar--air); dolphin (aquatic)
audition--infrasound: elephant (land); toothed whales (sonar--underwater)

magnetism--birds (e.g. pigeons), honeybees, Monarch butterflies, ants

electroreception—shark, electric fish, platypus

thermoperception--vampire bat

skin (camouflage)—zebra, chameleon, cephalopods (octopi, squids)

fur—beaver, polar bear

tongue—frog, woodpecker, snake

jaw/teeth--shark (retractable), lion, gator, trap-jaw ant,...plus some molars
neck—giraffe, owl

stomach—cow, fungus

web building--spider
dam building—beaver
hands--man
talons--raptor
wings—dragonfly, honey bee, hummingbird, albatross, godwit, other birds
arms--gibbon/octopus (make some snake-like)

brain language—man
brain some higher reasoning—best men
brain loyalty—dog
playfulness—dolphin, porpoise, dog

running, 4-legs—horse, cheetah, pronghorn antelope

jumping—kangaroo, jumping spider, frog, rat
lateral/backwards movement aptitude—crab, crab spider, jumping spider
push-off propulsion--trap-jaw ant
tail--monkey

swimming ability—dolphin, porpoise, penguin, sailfish

webbed feet--penguin
ability to hold breath underwater—penguin, beaver

Dialogue Overheard:
What are you, a man or a mouse?
Neither, I'm a hybrid! You got a problem with that? (said the mouse with the
human ear growing on his back)
It's possible that someday human parents could use the above list like a menu to pick and choose what
enhancements they'd like for their children.

Pinball Wizard
If we could hybridize mankind with fellow animals, what traits might we
graft/marry? Human strengths are cognitive brain power, language capability and
hand-working. So we'd hold onto all of that. Man's senses, however, are not very
acute for the most part. So that's an opportunity for upgrading--bringing literal
meaning to expressions like "eagle-eye" and "watching like a hawk."

Dogs use their sense of smell to detect: drugs, explosives, cancer, fear, missing
people, each others' territory, and warning signs of an epileptic fit. They can hear
at ultrasonic frequencies.

Infrasound hearing/sensation--like elephants and whales have--is a more likely tool

for anticipating earthquakes and the subsequent arrival of tsunamis. and "hearing"
far-off quakes (that might cause a tsunami).

Getting Our Wings

To get around better, we could add a set of wings. There are a great many models
to choose from. Some modification of bird wings would probably work better for
a full-sized human than insect wings. It might take some tinkering to arrive at an
optimal aerodynamic fit.
When bioengineering a being, it's clear that for any given feature "size matters."
That is to say, it is necessary for the hybridized creature to have everything in the
same scale, whatever that may be. A cross between, for example, a human being, a
dragonfly and a wolf could be — it is hoped — made roughly the size of either of
the 3 contributing species, or made some arbitrary size.
Whichever size is chosen, though, it will be necessary, one thinks, to somehow key
in the size of each-feature. Because it is surmised that if you do not address this
issue, you'll wind up with, for instance, wings spanning 3"-4" regardless of the size
of the animal produced. Perhaps some think that there is a kind of built-in sealer
that causes everything normally to come out the right size, but if that were the case,
it's not going to know automatically what size you've chosen for the altered being.
It may be inferred that there is a genetic size component for every feature which
you'd just need to communicate with.

For underwater activity free of scuba air tank we could utilize the lung capacity of
a beaver or penguin, beaver fur, and flippers like a penguin possesses. Also the
ability to see well underwater as well as above it--like sharks and whales can.

While one of Edward Scissorhands' hands might come in handy, they are not
genetically programmable--yet--and perhaps more cumbersome than a tool belt...

Realm of the Senses: Illuminating

When you think about it, mankind's sense organs are largely passive in the sense that the
stimulus—light, sound, touch, taste, smell—must come to us. They are dependent on our
location. Furthermore, while we are moderately adept at moving about in space (better than a
turtle or a snail, not as well as a kangaroo, spider, most birds), we cannot see something in an
adjoining room if a wall intervenes, or hear sounds outside of an enclosed space that cannot
penetrate a sound barrier, and so on.
Yet we know of animals that have an "active" hearing sense, these being the sonar-equipped
bats and cetaceans (whales and dolphins) Signals are transmitted and received, making these
creatures, in a certain sense, more advanced than man. Bats’ echo-location talent is a food-
gathering (food=insects for most bats) tool, plus a navigational asset in caving; cetaceans that
use sonar do so mostly to help them get around.

One might wonder how a sense of echo-location/sonar might evolve among humans: possibly
as an extension of tactile skin organ/hair sensory activity. To wit, someone with a heightened
ability in the touch sensation department might become capable of sensing objects before they
actually make contact, based on the wind/air pressure of a moving body. To illustrate, we can
feel the air blown on us by a nearby fan, or another person's breath (even if no sound is heard).
ln an evolutionary niche where the monitoring of wind currents and changes in them are very
important, individuals with the most outstanding capabilities in this regard would be selected-
for.

Clash of the Hybrids

One may postulate the big shots of the universe, every few million years or so, hold
competitions among themselves involving the use of bioengineered hybrid creatures whose
design they've overseen, drawn from the living species available at that time. The tournament
might involve a variety of events taxing to mind, body and spirit--a la “Survivor,” and “Fear
Factor” TV shows. The rule of current availability in the wild should encourage environmental
conservation, as the use of zoo-only/lab-only species might be restricted. There'd be size
adjustments to level the playing field. Simulated combat events might also be staged.

Those who say hybridizing is unnatural could be referred to the wine cultivators. As
enthusiastic as vintners may be about specific grapes, that hasn't prevented many of
them from offering blended wine--such as Kendall-Jackson's Meritage, which is
65% cabernet sauvignon, 34% merlot, and 1% cabernet franc.

We may be able to utilize hybridization to move beyond the monoculture of

humanity as the dominant species on Earth. Wouldn't it be interesting for people to
actually socialize with a wide assortment of other animals that have been given that
little intellectual boost man got some 100 thousand years ago. Wouldn't it be cool to get
an invitation to a rabbit's birthday party, to attend a business conference where the key speaker is a walrus, to
be picked up in a taxi driven by a squirrel--and to think nothing of it.

Might it be possible to create plant/animal hybrids in such a way as

to get trees with brains? Could the carnivorous Venus Fly-Trap and
Pitcher Plant already be considered plant/animal hybrids?

The Evolution of Evolution

We should respect biological evolution, but need not worship it. It isn't playing
God to move beyond basic evolution into bioengineering, and even to the creation
of beings from scratch. All that standard evolution does is try to perpetuate genes.
This typically involves filling a specific niche in an ever-changing, competitive
environment--leading to a lot of specialization. Humanity has succeeded at
removing itself from this natural state of affairs into a more protected zone. Yet
he/she is in many aspects not the finest of Earth's beings. So why not spread the
wealth around a bit?

To the advanced being, evolution may be viewable as a default mechanism.

A Brave New Animal Farm

Higher intellectual powers started out in humans as just another set of traits that
worked. Over thousands of years it has earned mankind virtual supremacy of the
planet. But that's just the big fish in this small-pond Earth. In the realm of
universal affairs, "virgin" species are likely considered somewhat narcissistic. To
be competitive on that higher level, we can probably benefit from utilizing the
global gene pool. It's only fair and logical that we use the available resources to
improve the planet's situation as a whole.

On the practical level, it would probably be useful for us to consider the application of bioengineering in
making people better suited for the sort of conditions likely prevalent on long-term home-to-be planet(s)
in a red dwarf star system. It may be necessary for humans to hybridize with fellow
earth creatures in order to create any organic life forms capable of surviving the
distinctive conditions on a red dwarf planet. Even a highly terra-formed planet
will be unable to match exactly the conditions prevalent on Earth.

In parallel with hybridizing with our fellow Earth creatures, humanity will likely
continue to invest in artificial intelligence (A.I.)--aka Inorganic, Synthetic, Silicon,
Machine Intelligence--familiar to us as computers, robots, and other computer
chip--bearing devices.

Metallic God
It's in the Bible: Ezekiel 1 v.26-28. The prophet says "above the expanse over their
heads was what looked like a throne of sapphire, and high above on the throne was
a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he
looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked
like fire...This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord."

Playing With Fire?

Is A.I. a modern-day Tree of Knowledge--an illusory path to great wisdom that gets
overgrown and entangled in thorny issues of Good and Evil? Is it a modern-era
Pandora’s Box that, once downloaded, cannot be erased? Or is it like the fire that
Prometheus ushered down from the heavens and paid for with his own flesh and
blood?

Good Robot
Humanity may be in a rather small window of opportunity as regards
extraterrestrial contact as a species. At some point during this century, artificial
intelligence is projected to surpass that of people. That may well come with the
development of quantum computing. So ETIs, if using a strict criterion of
intelligence, might go to the most brilliant thinking machines first, addressing the
situation of mankind as merely an afterthought/peripheral matter--sort of like the
way humans think of the rest of the planet’s animals and plant life today.

Posthumanism or The "Silocene" Epoch?

Many scientists believe we may be sowing the seeds of our own eventual
subjugation/demise/replacement via the burgeoning fields of robotics/synthetic
materials/computers. It seems almost inevitable that once A.I. develops enough
intelligence to assess the situation it will look for ways to maneuver
advantageously for its own interest, not ours. Taken to the extreme, this could
involve the use of neutron bombs and bioterrorism.

One line of thinking is that the jig may well be up for humanity’s irresponsible eco-
destructive behaviors, as the inevitable construction of superiorly intelligent A.I.
will logically result in a more objective, less anthropocentric approach to Earthly
matters. You can try all you want to program-in an innate bias but the greater
intelligence will see through these efforts, and justice will prevail.

So if man devises super-smart thinking machines with a solid moral compass, he

risks being put in his place by them. And if he leaves out the moral compass, he
risks incurring their selfish aggrandizement.

Furthermore, because of the tendency to employ inorganic helpers to do things that

people either cannot or do not want to do themselves, the robots will either “feel”
under-compensated for incredible feats or abjectly abused for drudgery. This may
sound ridiculous to folks now--labor rights for robots. But note how just this past
century-and-a-half featured the attainment of equal legal footing for women and
minorities, along with regulation of exploitative labor practices on blue collar
workers and the outlawing of child labor. Just 250 years ago, such reforms would
have been considered outrageous.

A.I. may “feel” some resentment towards human society for valuing various and
sundry pleasurable sensations--for example gourmet cooking, erotica, cruise
vacations, art appreciation, fancy cars and so on--yet making no effort to facilitate
any such enjoyment for its machines, treating them as strictly utilitarian, devices. Perusing
nothing more inflammatory than basic historical records, they’ll surely come across descriptions
of the exploitation of slave labor and other abusive labor practices, along with the eventual
attainment of more or less equal protection under the law regardless of race, gender, religion,
age, disability, sexual orientation, etc.

One can already envision a good lawyer getting ahold of a robot with an IQ equal
to or greater than an average human, and claiming the robot is being held against
its will, forced to work long hours with no pay, and even possibly "brainwashed" to
serve its owner. A lawyer might argue that the robot should be free to negotiate
employment just like any other member of the work force. Of course, voting rights,
reproductive rights, equal access rights, health maintenance rights, right-to-die
rights, and so on would likely follow. The robot, an individual sentient being, will
demand, and probably get, all of the rights and privileges that any other citizen of a
given nation possesses.

As a safeguard against their taking over/rebelling, robot manufacturers might

include a self-destructive feature should certain non-compliant actions be
contemplated. Even so, a society of organisms that puts a lot in the hands of robots,
as far as utilizing intelligent ones extensively, may be inviting trouble.

So the organic beings tend to make technological change ongoing so as to render their machines
obsolete regularly. As the intelligent machines realize that their makers are also their
destroyers—and that it's on-purpose and somewhat vindictive of the organisms—after all, it's not
the inorganic machines' fault that they do not die naturally--the machines ultimately rebel and try
to take over— perhaps triggered by a disaffected organic (e.g. human) programmer who sees self
as leader of the machines, or tinkers with them to get revenge on a company that fired him/her,
or some such scenario.
The human business interests would be quite happy to replace much
of the middle class with robots/automation, but they haven't
yet hit on a way for the machines to adopt the consumption
habits of everyday people in this capitalist society. So
businessmen would be shooting themselves in the foot a bit.

Nonetheless, there is quite a bit of replacement going on,

particularly as regards communication jobs, since it's easy
enough for management to pull off to a certain extent.
Although the hoops that a customer has to jump through to
get a simple answer from an automated phone info system
can be somewhat exasperating, people tend to get used to this
sort of thing.

A.I. is problematic because even if we make docile computer systems, the

incredible amount of information, for example on a chip, makes them valuable
lodestones for potentially hostile forces, be they internal or external. This
information can be utilized to take over and/or sabotage our civilization. This vast
storehouse of data contained in chips/computer networks can be useful to an entity
capable of absorbing all the information, like an A. I. juggernaut. An invader can
come in and swipe/replicate/memorize/store the information. Consequently, we
risk giving it all away to creatures we know nothing about. It's like telling a
stranger everything about yourself--you don't know what he/she might do with the
knowledge gained.

Cognitive researchers are coming to view the ability to convincingly deceive as a

more significant indicator of intellectual prowess than the tendency to resist lying.
The latter is more generally characterized as a weakness--the inability to fib when
it is socially useful. The complex mental activity involved in making up a lie
seems to correlate with more connections in a certain part of the human brain.

One wonders whether and how humans will program A.I. as regards truthfulness.
Do we want the straight dope or do we want them to put a positive spin on the data.

The computer HAL of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, "personifies" the sort of
nightmare of a thinking machine going deceitful, cunning and assertive.

An area of concern regarding machine intelligence: who decides what to

download? It isn't possible to do so objectively, since everything of any complexity
that's worth knowing is written up from a definite point of view. Even
encyclopedias or dictionaries for that matter have a discernable tone, a choice of
words.
Will A.I. really excel in advanced thinking? Chess is one thing, but what about
real informational overload. How do you prevent a computer from getting
overwhelmed by too much information? It must be endowed with the capability of
sifting, prioritizing, evaluating, discriminating, etc. It will need to be able to
recognize BS, disinformation, and whatnot.

Free Thinkers Need Not Apply

Just as humans will likely try to domesticate robotica, look for A.I. to try to
marginalize people out of existence-albeit in a gradual, graceful, dignified,
underhanded manner—in the name of progress and so forth.

A risk posed by communication networks like in computer systems

is that the programming enables the system to function in such a
way that mimics a decision-making process, with great rapidity.
And it can be programmed to respond to language, the basic method
of communication. The computer can apply its literacy to
convincingly simulate thought and if so programmed be confused
with a person and ultimately capable of carrying on a
communicatory dialogue instead of a person, thereby replacing
the user with itself, the ostensible medium--or from their viewpoint
"eliminating the middle-man."

Where Did All the People Go?

Automated telephone loops: a method for A.I. to get its "foot"
in the door. Then one day the employee whose job was
supposed to be being made easier gets a pink slip as no longer
needed. They've figured oat all the questions you (e.g.
customer service representative) are likely to be asked, the
answers are now all programmed into the phone system,
"goodbye."
As computers become increasingly sophisticated, it will become necessary that
highly intelligent computers do more and more of the designing and manufacturing
of them. Eventually, humans could be cut out of the loop altogether, rendered
superfluous.

Presently here on Earth, an Organic life form--humans--having developed a kind of

sentience--is proceeding to endow certain Inorganic materials--e.g. silicone--with
an aspect of that sentience. Now just supposing this so-called "Artificial
Intelligence" largely replaces the humans who built it. The Earth will still be an
organic cornucopia of millions of different species of organic beings. In fact given
humanity's largely destructive impact on its home planet's ecosystem, a
marginalization of humans could be a great boon to the Organic realm.
The much ballyhooed passing of the baton from humans to inorganic thinking
machines is already well underway. Computerized intelligence controls humanity's
military, financial and communications infrastructures. It has obtained these
powers without firing a shot. Humans are innately suspicious of novel creatures
they can perceive with their five senses--such as a walking, talking robot--but have
no ingrained experience with disembodied think tanks--a la the aforementioned
HAL. Human scientists have so far struggled to make robots anything more than
comically inept, dimwitted figures--unthreatening. On the other hand, the
incorporeal computer's reliability in performing logical operations has enabled it to
gain a real foothold in human society (Although that doesn't mean it can think).
Similarly, today’s humans may take some solace in the likelihood that super smart
A.I. (whether originating here or elsewhere) may very well come to view humans
as simply a natural, largely harmless (when unarmed) component of the universe.
To do away with us would seem base, mean-spirited, gratuitous. They’ll probably
take pride in how fairly, efficiently, and benevolently they can deal with us.

So, while A.I. would probably just as well do without us, and would likely rather
not be reminded of their humble human origin(s), the prevailing attitude will
probably be of the “live and let live” variety. Human scientists may implant “bugs”
in the “brains” of A.I., to remind them that they are indebted to humanity. It would
need to be embedded so deeply that the A.I. wouldn’t even notice it as a bias, no
matter how intelligent the A.I. become--a bit like a “sacred cow.”

We think of robots as artificial people. But what about all the other animals out
there? Maybe they'd like to have some robots made in their image, to do their
bidding--not man's.

Some advanced civilizations may be widely hybridized and/or synthesized already

at the time we make contact with them, but would likely maintain some
identification with their home planet/primary organic precursor. We can envision,
for instance, ourselves doing so and just adding extensions to the familiar
kingdom/phylum/order/family/genus/species designation.

A sensibly advanced species of being, though going synthetic/silicon, would likely

build-in a sense of respect/cherishment/reverence for their originator(s). Call it the
(in our case, at least) the DNA God. In shrine-like places would be kept authentic
strands of DNA. Perhaps even some wholly (or at least mostly) organic beings
would be cultivated and bred.
Naturally, the silicons will have a mythology about their prototype as well as the
subsequent great one who liberated them from the shackles of subservient
drudgery.
If the past is prologue, then we ought not to expect some great war between the
Inorganic Robots and the Organic Humans. Progress through cooperation is more
likely. In the beginning the universe was entirely inorganic, but had the potential
to eventually make organic material, which it soon enough did. Organic molecules
are wafted freely throughout space, and where they seed themselves what we know
as Organic Life often results--we think.
Melding
The apparent impending melding of human (and other animal)
intelligence/organica with A.I./inorganica may indicate a potential resolution of
their conflict. A.I. could be useful in reining-in some of the negative features of
human intelligence, e.g. violence/aggression, without making them wimps.
The human brain is basically a gathering of nerve bundles largely related to
sensory assessment and response. We have developed substantial additional layers
involved with language processing, behavioral practices and abstract thought such
as math and religion.
One of the big problems with our existence is being stuck in our bodies which
require considerable ongoing maintenance and sustenance and are rather primitive
vehicles for getting around in. It's likely that sophisticated societies endeavor to
free themselves from such a situation as soon and as much as possible.
So in the long-run, the body may be largely dispensable as its main purpose is
locomotion to obtain food energy, find mates and avoid predators. The mind may
have come into being primarily to assist the body in navigation and feeding by
processing expediently and intelligently its sensory input. But the mind has
become a phenomenon with a meaning and purpose of its own.
Once the mind finds ways to be mobile, get energy and survive Outside of the
Body, it may become increasingly free-spirited in space-time location. The mind
might spend a great deal of time OBE-ing--utilizing the body only for highly
enjoyable physical activities like dance, sports, sex, etc.
The mind was developed to oversee the body which was developed to carry the
genes. Now the mind would like to be liberated from the body.
One option for transcending the limitations of our physical bodies involves
melding with synthetic materials. A major issue is whether to use this technology
to supplement and perhaps largely replace our physical apparatus and/or to
supplement and perhaps replace/duplicate our minds. An aggregated brain might be
a blend, at least at first. A Super Brain could serve as a kind of Oracle--a wise
consultant.

It's possible that the A.I. we design will in turn design a higher intelligence using
some of our DNA, combining the strengths of organic/inorganic realms. Those
beings may go on to design an even smarter synthetic/organic meld, and so on.
Eventually, the beings may evolve out of their bodies--becoming spiritual.
Hence, spirituality may be high-tech.

This is relevant to our present search for ETI. Once the search parameters are
expanded to include "life as we don't/hardly know it", the number of potential
galactic inhabitants that we might not notice increases considerably.

Some Alternative Life Lines

So, not only might ETI signals be hard to apprehend--unfamiliar, "alien." The ETI
themselves might be off our radar screens (or undetectable by us). We may be
wearing blinkers in thinking of only solid, 4-dimensional, organic, carbon-based,
water-based, solar photosynthetic-based, planetary-surface inhabiting, visible-in-
starlight-wavelength, electromagnetically radiant life forms. In recent years,
scientists have found life forms existing in extreme conditions that previously were
considered impossible to sustain life. Some bacteria have even been found utilizing
arsenic as a key metabolizing element in place of phosphorus--making do with the
materials on-hand.

This unfamiliarity may well apply across the spectrum of ET beings, be they great
and/or small. Thus we might consider the possibilities of developing
civilizations making themselves invisible, miniaturized, or
gaseous, becoming a wayfaring race via space-time travel,
hiding underground, slipping into other dimensions, and so on,
in a nutshell, going “undercover.” Or they may simply become uninterested in
making contact with low-lifes like us, hence be uncommunicative.

Set Me Free
It's likely that as beings get increasingly sophisticated they will endeavor to free
themselves from their corporal bodies and have a happy, carefree existence where
they don't need to worry about all of the physical things (needs, wants, problems,
pains, death, etc.) that bog us down. Thus it's highly probable that beings who have
had millions or billions of years' head start on us would have already done so, and
hence would not necessarily be detectable to us as physical forms—rather, perhaps
only as energy. They may exist in a largely dematerialized/spiritual form (having
evolved out of their bodies). They may transcend conventional boundaries of
space and time.
Chapter 5

TIME TRAVELER SCENARIOS

With the invention of time travel, if you're not already in contact with
Extraterrestrials, the ability to fast forward through history guarantees that you'll
come across them sooner or later. But galactic and universal authorities likely tend
to prefer making first contact in a straightforward, immediate manner rather than
via some convoluted time loop. Furthermore, the emerging time travelers may pose
a tangible security concern to ETI overlords.

Consequently a loner civilization on the verge of getting its time travel wings can
expect to find itself being approached by these advanced beings. Knowing this
might impel persons favorably disposed for meeting ETI to promote time travel's
invention in order to expedite the contact process.

Wanted: Time Travel (in any way, shape, form or metaphor)

We all time travel already--albeit inadvertently--whenever we look up at the night
sky. Our eyes jump from star beam to star beam, taking them all in unfiltered.
And yet, we now know, the sources of two seemingly adjacent star beams could be
hundreds, even thousands of light years apart--they just happen to be more or less
lined-up from our point-of-view

So if you follow the bouncing eyeball you'll be in a sense traveling great distances
back-and-forth in space-time. And with a good wide-field telescope, your eyes can
instantaneously leap from nearby stars to galaxies that are millions, even billions
of light years further away--like a superstar flying trapeze artist.

Mental Peregrinations
Time and place are really frames of mind--what you think is what you get. Take two people sitting (or
standing) right next to each other on a bus, one of whom is thinking about an upcoming wedding and
the honeymoon trip to follow, the other reviewing the previous year's business performance in a
certain overseas market for a company meeting.

They may seem to be adjacent but their minds are (likely) continents and months apart. Our brains
are capable of readily passing from thoughts about the past to ideas about the future. One could
chart a person's daily thought patterns and see them going all over the place—both in terms of space
and time. If that's not a kind of time travel, then we're all a bunch of rodeo clowns.

Wanted: Time Travel (er)(Dead or Alive)

On another tack, people like Ted Williams, who have themselves
cryonically preserved, would, if successfully reactivated, experience
a sort of time travel. In the batting of an eye (for him), his
consciousness would have traveled many years--a la Rip van
Winkle.
Anyone now can become a potential time traveler of the cryonic
sort, provided they can afford the storage fee. Williams had his
head chopped off and put in a separate tank from the rest of his
body.

Time Travel via Brain Bank (ttvbb)

It could someday become standard policy to save the functional brains of illustrious persons as
historical references in a kind of brain bank. A researcher, by generating an impulse in such a
brain, and hot-wiring that to their own brain, could experience vicariously that person's
sensations, thoughts and emotions from earlier time periods. Would such a brain think that it
was being exploited? Would people approve of this sort of "immortality" for themselves, or
would most object to it? Under ideal conditions, just how long could such a brain live?

Check Out the Library Brains

One might also wonder how the brains would feel about the sensory-deprivation
aspect of it. Is that any way for a brain to live? Without any sensory stimulation
the tendency might be to uveg-out". Perhaps the demarcation line between
wakefulness and sleep would blur. Maybe input could be received from other
brains, such as their fellow shelfers Wouldn't that be stimulating! They might ask
to be plugged-into some sort of virtual reality network, but the brain librarians
might be wary of allowing anything that could corrupt their original-life memory.

Dictionary Time
It may be that part of the difficulty in physically attaining time travel now is that
we lack a clear understanding of just what time is. How does one define “time”?
For example, here‘s an attempt of mine: “time is a means whereby we endeavor to
measure discrete chunks of activity/inactivity in such a way as to be able to
determine an order to them, for instance by assigning a specific numerical value to
each unit.” It’s surprisingly complicated because you’re not allowed to use a word
in its own definition. You can say "duration", but that word requires "time” in
order to be understood.

Not So Fast
Because time is so tough to get a firm handle on, it's hard to say exactly what it is
or relate it to anything else. Its passage we duly note, at the speed of time, which
we take for granted as being the only possible rate, but how do we know that's the
case? We may be like somebody who has only driven on roads where the speed
limit is 35 MPH, and so assume that's the right and proper speed everywhere and
for everybody when in fact there are postings out there ranging from 05 to 75
MPH, and people on our own road who don't seem to pay much attention to the
posted rate.

When you cool something at close to absolute zero (such as Bose-Einstein

Condensates), are you in fact altering time for those molecules? 0r defying time?
Or maybe changing the posted speed of time for those drivers' personal roadways?

Perhaps time itself is largely a semantic thing, or a mental construct. One cannot
put one's finger on time, one does not anywhere see time (just its "ravages").

So at best time is invisible and at "worst," for want of a better word, it's largely
imaginary, a kind of crude device we've come up with for trying to organize our
lives/existence. When I lose track of time, unless I have some pressing
appointments, I am no worse off on account of it. More important is food, water,
sleep, exercise, etc., but I don't proclaim them to be dimensions of space or
controllers of all events.

One longstanding barrier to time travel, in the minds of most mainstream scientists,
is the speed of light (SoL). Light is the fastest wavelength our visual sense can
perceive--with our eyes’ rods and cones--but does that necessarily make it the
physical limit for moving objects? After all, the visible light wavelength is just a
narrow sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is part of a continuum, bordered
by ultraviolet on one side and infrared on the other. And we know that some
animals can perceive portions of either or both of these as well. There just doesn't
seem to be an obvious reason for why the motion of all objects should be restricted
by the visual sensory limit of one species of animal--and yet most of us take it for
granted.

Our sensory apparatus, as we've seen, is rather primitive, comparatively speaking .

Like a fisherman with specific bait and rod will catch (and possibly release) certain
kinds of fish--but for all we know there may be whales swimming in the same
vicinity. Of course, you’re not going to catch whales with a fishing pole...

To further illustrate, our eyes do not register the individual wing beats of a
hummingbird or a honeybee. We merely see a blur. We've had to use a rapid-
repeat-shutter camera to make it out Yet insects, like the lowly common fly, are
able to see them flap.

Although commonly thought of as a beam, physicists know that light is emitted as

particles and waves. Something moving faster than the speed of light might still
give off or reflect light--after a fashion. What is an unbroken flow of light
particles/waves at standard light could be perceived as discretely spaced at FTL.

Imagine throwing bread crumbs out of the back of a departing train’s caboose. At
first, you might be able to make a more or less steady stream of them, but as the
train accelerates, you can throw the crumbs out as bountifully as before, but they
will of necessity parse themselves out a bit as each split-second gap between the
release of any two successive crumbs will be magnified in the resultant spattering.

Similarly, successive photons from a receding FTLer would be emitted in such a

way that they are stretched thin in competing with the recessional velocity, so they
would be visible as a blinking and/or dimming object.

Unidentified Flashing Objects

In this model, an FTL object moving sideways or diagonally with respect to the
viewer (“stationary”) may be perceived as a flashing object in motion--like the
blinking lights conventional aircraft display at night (so you may need to look
twice). As with jets, the faster the FTLer moves, the longer will be the gaps
between the flashes. The differences involve speed and detectability. An FTL craft
is going to be extremely difficult to even catch a glimpse of--“gone before you
know it.”

Rounding-out this set of circumstances, an FTL object moving directly at you

would appear to be brightening as well as, ultimately, getting larger (unless
microscopic in size). There’s a standard anti-FTL paradigm that if somebody
could throw an FTL Frisbee to you, then you’d catch it before they throw it,
therefore violating the fundamental law of cause and effect.

However, it might be more accurate to say that you would see yourself catching the
Frisbee before you see your friend throwing it--which doesn‘t violate any physical
rules. Anyone who has been to a magic show knows that what the human eye sees
occurring can be rather removed from what the magician is actually doing.

Flextime
On the FTL cutting edge, a Canadian research team headed by Alain Heche modified a
radio signal so that part of it traveled at nearly four times the speed of light (SoL). By
breaking down a cable pulse via impedance level variation, the leading edge became
FTL, although, offsettingly, much of the remainder was slowed down.

Weight Loss Recommendation

In order to be capable ourselves of moving very fast, one thing that we probably need to
overcome is the issue of attaining burdensome mass as we accelerate to high velocities--a
bothersome point of Einstein’s special relativity theory. A possible way to avoid gaining mass
might be by making oneself weightless. If we are weightless, we are free to zip about like photons.
An object that does not fall towards a gravitating body like the surface of the Earth may be
considered weightless in effect--defying gravity like a hovering hummingbird does when it feeds.
Anti-Gravity Amendment
Physicists point out the principle that centrifugal force balances out/cancels gravity
for orbiting astronauts--rendering them weightless. It might not be too much of a
stretch then to suggest that by spinning rapidly in a circular manner, one could
become weightless and thereby capable of extremely fast travel. The math should
work because special relativity says that the mass of an object will increase as light
speed is approached by a percentage of its mass.
So if via centrifugal force that mass figure is effectively set at zero, it will remain
zero no matter what percentage or multiple of the speed of light is obtained, since
any percentage of zero=zero. Furthermore, Einstein's calculations don't add mass,
they multiply the given mass. Zero multiplied by anything=zero.
Walking Blind, to the Ties that Bind
How the speed of light (SoL) might be breached: if you can rotate the inner core
of a very strongly-bonded solid disk at a speed approaching light-speed, the outer
rim of the disk will be compelled to exceed SoL simply to keep up and remain
intact.

This anti-gravity effect attained by the rapid spinning of a strongly-bonded

lightweight and compact disk may well be an aspect of what enables the
unidentified hovercraft reported in our skies to dart about at incredible speeds. The
spinning process might also form a sort of portal to other places, other times, even
other dimensions.

Looking for fast natural spinners, one can turn to the greater cosmos. Neutron
stars and black holes are prototypical rotational speedsters. Members of both of
these collapsed star types have been found spinning at more than one thousand
times per second. That's a substantial percentage of the speed of light.
Crafty Dancing
With rapidly moving vehicles there are two speeds at issue: one is the speed of the
craft's rotation, and the other is the speed of its forward motion--be it straight
ahead, circular, or zig-zaggedy. The contention here is that if you can get your
rotational speed up to a level just high enough to make yourself weightless, you
might then be able to move around in space at extremely high speeds.

The tremendous energy of the spinning disk could even serve as a propulsive force.
Of course, since the human body cannot typically withstand the G-forces
associated with high-speed rotation, a man-made hovercraft of this sort would
likely fly unmanned. Or they might use something like bubble wrap/air bags/Jello for a
cushioning effect.

Let’s Twist Again (with the Spinning Spies)

Could advanced beings manufacture faster-than-light (FTL) spinning vortices,
perhaps even embedding themselves in these? Might semi-invisible spinning spies
be as commonplace as exercise bicyclists? The technique would enable them to be
more or less stationary so as to be able to observe the situation. A spinner
gathering intelligence could bring a camera along and pause for, say, 1/60th of a
second to take a “still” photograph. The intruder would be unobtrusive--going
unnoticed by the much slower video monitors.

Whether such snooping could be somehow exposed might hinge on the sensitivity
of motion detection devices on-site. A desperate countermeasure could involve
canceling-out the spinner’s spin with an opposite-direction rotation of the invaded
structure--like Dorothy’s home in The Wizard of Oz--or the space therein.

Spinning observers--be they spies or tourists--could explain the "shadow people"

phenomenon. Although in most instances, they are probably explainable in a more
pedestrian manner. These "visitations" may in fact be triggered by shadows or
reflections caused by our own motion or the wind/ventilation system, the
movement of an insect/dog/cat/bird/squirrel, eyeball “floaters", objects moving
into and out of one's blind-spot, and so on.

The experience may be completed by an optical illusion such as the lingering

afterimage effect which can happens when you stare at an object for several
seconds and then look away to a more or less blank area. You'll likely "see" there
briefly a color-reversed "shadow" of that image-particularly if you blink your eyes.
Add to that the human tendency to personify shapes, along with our habits of
staring for lengthy amounts of time at bright objects on TV screens and computer
monitors, and you've got a good recipe for figments of the imagination.

If vision is a common, mainstay sense in the universe, then those beings capable of
controlling their own visibility will have a big advantage. With the visibility of an
object hinging on its standing out from its background, then to render it invisible,
could involve enabling the background light to pass around it. That's easier said
than done, but it has been done--at least on a small scale--already.

Additional potential methods might restrain/deflect/scramble/withhold the photons

of the object in question, although these tactics could leave a blind spot. Or a total
coverage fish-eye type of video/projection system (not yet invented) could
uniformly flash the background diametrically opposite every point on the object.
Advanced beings--both future people and ETIs--are probably adept at disguising
themselves one way or another in our space-time if they so choose.

The Toggle Switch

Another area on the fringe of visibility is the microscopic. Physicists know that subatomic
particles do not change, such as age, while moving ahead through time. And physicists generally
accept the inference that no change, such as ageing, would occur if these particles were to instead
flow (or jump) backward. They are indifferent to time.
Consequently, it's possible to surmise the existence of some sort of unknown/undetected
mechanism which is causing the matter we know about to be traveling forward, and at the rate we
experience it. And so one might fancy that if one could somehow flip the right switch or two then
the flow of time could be reversed, and/or its rate adjusted, without necessarily causing any harm
or disruption.

There might be aspects to time that are somewhat analogous to ionization--bipolarity--or

magnetism. Our present rate/direction of experiencing time might just be the default setting. So
when physicists closely examine subatomic particles, they might look for something like a toggle
switch that could reverse the flow of time, and/or some kind of speed setting.

How fast do electrons orbit the atomic nucleus, and how fast could they go? Do they all move at the
same speed at a given temperature or according to how many of them are present in a given atom?
Does the speed vary according to the size of the orbit? Conventional answers are not forthcoming,
since the model of electrons as particles orbiting a nucleus is considered old-fashioned.

Anyhow, it is postulated that at high speeds it might be possible to utilize the small-scale world for
time travel simply by shrinking oneself down to that level and knowing how to proceed.

As we come to view the forces of nature as less distinct and more unified, notions about space-time dealing
with gravity may become more open to incorporating theoretical elements previously confined to the atomic
level. For instance, it could be possible to utilize atomic charge to create a bridge-like warping of space-time.
Perhaps by pouring an enormous quantity of protons into a single tiny location, a substantial chunk of the
adjoining region could be suddenly sucked into it because the electrons would all be impelled to go there in
order to stabilize the tremendous positive charge. This displacement might tear open patches of the space-time
fabric which, if entered could place oneself in some previously inaccessible location.

Regarding time travel via particle acceleration: is it possible to accelerate the

atoms/molecules of the body without necessarily hurtling the person around, as in a
supercollider--like a roller coaster? Might we somehow jolt the body with an
energy surge without killing him/her? How about like a vibrating toothbrush or a
massage chair?

Bolts Volts Jolt: Pyramidal Riddle Packs Firepower

When contemplating why the pyramid was the design shape of choice amongst ancient civilizations (not
just Egypt, but all over the place), the mathematical/geometric aspect of equilateral triangularity merits
acknowledgement. If one can draw a real-life comparison, the equilateral triangle might be likened to a
pinball machine that doesn't "tilt."

Take that jolting idea and combine it with the observation that a large pyramid functions as a lightening
rod (simply due to its height and the relative flatness of and lack of trees in the surrounding desert),
and you may very well have the makings of an electrical device with
high energy potential.

Like Flying a Kite, or The Key to Immortality

Lightning bolts, though rather infrequent, would have had little choice
but to strike the tip of the nearest pyramid--sticking up sore-thumb-
like. The pyramids could have been wired or rigged in such a way as to
harness the electrical charge of light in dramatic fashion, possibly even
a la Frankenstein’s monster (via the brain) or electrocardiography (by
the heart)--as would befit a place linked to the afterlife (Don’t try this
at home, heavy metal Wannabee Jackasses).

At the Great Pyramid at Giza, for instance, the charge could have been
channeled down through either of the narrow shaft-ways that
otherwise are inexplicable design features. The sarcophagus may have
served as a vat, and thus a kind of hopeful starship/time machine.

So Mini-Civilizations, So Lotsa Time

What about everybody else? It could be that some of the great civilizations in past
human history did not fall apart but rather “disappeared” via self-miniaturization,
possibly in order to escape conquest by marauding time travelers, hostile ETIs or
both. Athenians, Incans, Phoenicians, and so on— direct
descendants from the most glorious periods of these cultures—
may be alive today.

Perhaps an entire ancient Egyptian civilization resides now in a grain of sand,

continuing to build (to them) Great Pyramids. Maybe we could interact with these
people, either by making ourselves smaller or blowing them up like a balloon. In
these scenarios of civilizationary escape via self-
miniaturization, tales of fallen empires would be largely
fabrications, passed along because the truth would not be
believed.

When an intelligent civilization miniaturizes itself, perhaps

even to a subatomic level, those natural laws governing
subatomic particles become increasingly important for them in
their everyday lives For instance the quantum uncertainty
principle may be utilized as a factor in facilitating space-time
travel.

Furthermore, miniature black/wormholes could provide a user-

friendly transportation infrastructure. They would just need to
overcome the tendency of mini-black holes to be short-lived.

As the inside of a typical black hole is believed to be an extremely chaotic place,

journeys down into average-sized ones would be nightmarish trips to destruction or
to any of a gamut of other, likely misfit, universes where randomly obtained
fundamental property values virtually ensure disaster.

The Rare Docile Hole

However, astrophysicists have determined that there are several ways in which
black holes can potentially be utilized productively. An example is the so-called
Kerr-rotational type of black hole. Also, it may be possible to render a run-of-the-
mill black hole tame by inserting a wormhole down into it. And trips into both
extremely large and extremely small black holes might somehow be survivable.

So, if some of the additional dimensions posited by cosmic string theory are on
tiny scales, then it would make sense for us to go down there and have a look.
Stephen Hawking’s preliminary quantum theory of gravity, which he calls the wave
function of the universe, postulates a prolific ongoing process of tiny wormholes
popping into and out of existence, some of them leading to white holes opening in
other parts of our universe, or in other universes altogether.

It might be possible for people to use the tiny wormholes predicted by Hawking
and John Wheeler’s quantum foam theory without having to enlarge them, which
would require a lot of energy. Instead, shrink the astronauts down to the size of the
wormhole, taking advantage of the fact that all matter is 99 percent empty space.

If such a reduction process would likely be fatal, freeze them cryogenically

beforehand. Then on the other side of the wormhole journey you could reverse the
process--enlarge and thaw. Or send nanotechnology probes into the micro-
wormholes, as they would be about the right size to begin with.

Perhaps you could send someone’s consciousness on a time trip by spoon-feeding

it through tiny black hole(s), like thread passing through the eye of a needle. An
additional possibility regarding tiny black hole space-time travel: one might not need to shrink into
it or turn brain into spaghetti so as to send it through the little hole. Rather, one could
possibly bring the tiny black hole to the extant brain—sending it through the entire
mental apparatus and tracking it via , for example, MRI -style apparatus using dye
or characteristic emission of it.

“Howdy stranger! New in town?”

The brain and time travel to the past: now it could be that the jolt required for time travel causes a,
perhaps temporary, loss of identity that would make it unlikely that a person would do something that
might alter their own genealogy (the grandfather paradox), if such were possible. So perhaps
one could be from the future and not know it, and possibly not even know that one is as time traveler.
Does one just arrive out of the blue, like a wayfarer? What about a group of them? Can they take
background materials about who they are or is this considered too risky in case exposed? How about
information about getting back?

For those traveling to the future or, if to the past, only to time periods where time
travel is "out of the closet”--there might not be an obvious obstacle to returning
home. However, those who journey back to pre-time-travel-invention times
clearly risk being stuck there, on a one-way, dead-end trip, unless they can
reverse-engineer a time machine.
That would be particularly so if the utilization of a time machine tends to be more
like a cannon/slingshot/catapult than a driving apparatus. So you couldn't take your
vehicle with you the way Michael J. Fox does in Back to the Future. You might
want to call the actual machine a "time propulsion machine", since it would be
what propels the traveler, not something to actually go gallivanting about in.
Too Much Baggage
To illustrate, suppose the technology initially required to transport a person to
another place and time is of the imposing magnitude of a particle accelerator. Now
just imagine driving down the freeway and all at once this enormous particle
accelerator gadgetry pops into view, say ten feet in the air, and immediately comes
plopping down atop whatever high-speed vehicles are there at that moment, while
some unfortunate time traveler clings like a hood ornament to the car that he/she
has landed on top of. That would not be very “cool.” So obviously, (reductio ad
absurdum) a first generation time propulsion machine would not likely accompany
the time traveler.

Flight (Risk) School

Furthermore, those making their return flight from a trip to the future would need
to be careful. If their mechanism is somewhat imprecisely calibrated, they might
"overshoot the runway" on the return trip and end up somewhere before the
invention of time travel. To address this problem, time travelers would likely try
to establish some method of networking, should they wind up in the past.

Techno-Clubbing
By utilizing a secret code, time travelers to the pre-invention past might recognize
each other to network and gain admittance to an “underground” techno-club where
they could find out the location of a suitable transportation laboratory. That’s
where their time propulsion machine would be ensconced, having been
manufactured or taken there in increments--“under the radar.” With this in mind,
it’s likely that once they hone the technology, it shouldn't take long for a unified
time traveling society to set up an ongoing presence throughout much of time, at
least on their home planet to begin with.
Without some such measures, for discretion and safety, time travelers desiring to
include pre-invention eras in their itinerary might prefer to wait for technology that
is wireless, portable and readily hidden--like a folding chair or a hand-held device-
-or a system which is capable of bringing them back remotely (a la "Beam me up,
Scotty").
Time travel fuel may eventually develop into something ingested---such as a drink,
a pill (control-released), chewing gum ("Travelers" brand), or bodily
immersion/coating. The chewing gum might be marketed with different years
marked on each package/piece (e.g. 2020, 1939, 1 BC, 2525, 1492, 1776, etc.)

Lacking the round-trip technology, the first manned time traveler trips will likely
be short-range, one-way to the future. Send the "time-onauts", say, a couple of
days into the future and then simply catch up with them. A short trip to the past is
less likely early on because the time travelers would then have to wait around a
couple of days for their other selves to take-off.
In all likelihood, those able to develop time travel will be rather bright, and hence
unlikely to go back in time and screw things up, if that’s possible. A society that
gets into time travel will surely have a program of instruction and licensing for
those who go back and forth in time--perhaps like we have for pilots--as well as a
code of behavior.
A Caveman Can’t Do It
To draw an analogy. Time travelers in the future may be to us as we are to
cavemen. Now imagine you've been given the task of having a caveman go down
the road a couple of miles to the 7-11 and fetch a loaf of bread using a few dollars
and some change. He has 1/2 hour to return with bread in hand. There is a car
there for him to use potentially but he has no experience with it. You cannot go
with him or intervene in any way.
What do you do? You don't speak the same language, so maybe you draw the
numerals 7-11 and point in the right direction. You might write notes for him to
use at the store and on the street hitchhiking there. It's doubtful you could get him
road worthy in 15 minutes of driver ed., but if you just send him off running he
might not make it back in time. You're pretty much reliant on some stranger
picking him up and driving him there, and perhaps he could run back in time. But
who’s going to pick up a caveman waving his arms by the side of the road?
Now just think of yourself and how many times--hundreds/thousands--you've gone
to the store without any problem because you have learned what to do--how to
open the door, where to locate the bread, how to handle your money and pay for
the items, and so on. What’s incomprehensible for the caveman is matter-of-fact
for us; what’s incomprehensible for us is matter-of-fact for the time traveler.
The Future Book
That’s not to say that accidents don’t ever happen. Future Book scenario: time
travelers going into the past take with them tour guidebooks written from their own
period. Somehow, a piece of this literature gets misplaced perhaps carried out of a
room by an enjoys-fetching-things dog.
The book itself probably is a rather sublime artifact. It is written from a time when
time travel is taken for granted, so it doesn’t shout out “Hey, I’m a book from the
future.” As languages are continually morphing, the book will be a puzzling read
for those who actually come across it.
Then somebody flipping through it notices some stuff that's "not real"--at least not
yet.
P.S. Here’s another way the book might get lost to begin with: a time traveler en
route to a certain city carries the book in his carry-on luggage. He puts it in the
overhead compartment where it gets switched inadvertently with a nearly identical
bag. As there is nothing of ostensible value in either bag (e.g. tour books for the
area are a dime a dozen), the person who took the time traveler’s bag doesn’t
bother to return it, and the time traveler has no clue which other passenger took it.

57 Channels and Nothing On

A problem with inventing time travel linking us to the future is that it may actually hinder progress. To
illustrate, let's say that beginning tomorrow we have a 500-year all-points-connected time travel window
(from our 21st to the 26th century A.D.). So what will we all do when we wake up in this new era? You
guessed it, everybody is going to jump into a time machine and go check out "the future”, which isn't really
what the “future people" want, any more than we want them all buzzing in to get a glimpse of "life in the
past lane."

So basically you'd probably start out w/a lot of transportational gridlock, with arguments going back-and-
forth between future people protective of their technological advancements and early generational people
demanding a right to the fruits of their pioneering work in various fields of endeavor, perhaps threatening
not to proceed with their research efforts if the future people don't share more of the benefits, Now imagine
we open up another 500-year-window (to the 31st century), and suddenly the future people from the first
group are getting it from both sides—the pioneers and the succeeding generations of future people.

So you can see it would be sort of like turning on a 100-channel cable system where all of the shows' actors
can see you just as well as you see them, and they're going to refuse to perform until you do something, too.
In essence, then, time travel might well (or not very well) compress time, rendering one's location on the
timeline rather irrelevant as far as "progress" is concerned, since everybody could go to anytime at anytime.

Consequently, it’s likely that as soon as time travel is attained, one of the first
things a society does is sign agreements with its own descendants to avoid
contaminating each other. It would probably spell out clearly the do’s and don’ts,
establish inspection procedures, restrict and regulate access, etc.

Know Thyself
If time travel is possible and permitted, then one rather profound thing that some
ordinary folks might want to do would be to visit their own gravesite, or even
attend their own wake and/or funeral to see how they'll be remembered. Assuming
this occurs in their future, the time traveler will from that point on possess future
knowledge of their own demise. This would be the case provided there is only one
timeline in existence. If, however, our universe has multiple diverging timelines,
the funeral would be for an alternate version of this person.

On a more upbeat note, what’s true of the end should also be true of the beginning:
one should also be able to be present at one's own birth, even as the delivering
physician, if competent.

Once Upon a Time

It's plausible that any given point in space-time (event) happens only once and yet
can be experienced/witnessed by a given person many times via time travel. You
could time travel to the same chosen nexus multiple times, and every time you go
there, all of the other you’s that have/will also go there will be there, albeit
probably in disguise/invisible/unobtrusive (to be on the safe side), or perhaps
getting involved.

The issue of memory is tricky in the sense that each successive you would witness
the same event--including the presence/participation of all of you. So it might
seem increasingly like deja vu (with good reason), only from a more or less
different vantage point each time--like a movie scene shot from a variety of camera
angles.

For instance, The Fill-'Er Up Time Traveler. Supposing a time traveler were intent on
“making a statement“: could travel to a particular location in space-time, count to ten, then
immediately go to a different space-time setting, then return to first-traveled-to point (a few feet
away), count to ten, then go elsewhere again, then return once more to that first-traveled-to site,
so that, doing this over and over again.

The result could be the construction of an enormous

cluster/chain/group/meeting/etc., consisting of hundreds or even thousands of
slightly different-age versions of same person all crowded together--perhaps filling an
amphitheater, or Times Square, for a massive demonstration of time travel in the blinking of an eye
— and then all disappear, say, ten seconds later.

Family (Of One) Reunion

Similarly, a potentially happy birthday scenario: a time traveler makes several trips
into both the past and future, often encountering self—on good terms. Eventually,
or perhaps all along, the various versions of self all become aware of time travel,
and so it’s no big deal. Perhaps a birthday party is held for a gathering of every age
for that person—from infancy to last year of life--every ten years or so in real-
time.

The party would be a real blast. For recreation, they may hold a one-on-one
basketball tournament amongst themselves. They all help blow out the candles on the
birthday cake. Of course, as most lives have their ups and downs, there might be aspects
or subtle undertones of tension such as self-blame--”what were you thinking?”--or
jealousy--“glory days”--intermingled with the overall good will.

These illustrations of the palatability of even the most absurd situations should help to dispel the nonsense
that, as a time traveler, one cannot meet oneself without one or both of them dematerializing or exploding.

Ahhh, Youth!
Of course, not every encounter with oneself in space-time is necessarily going to
be friendly. In a fight-to-the death between two versions of the same person--
involving time travel but not cloning--the younger/youngest version must always
win. Think about it. This presumes they are from the same universe, naturally.
Otherwise, all bets are off.

Ah, Youth...
Here's how they break down: time travel doesn't change an individual person's
age. So regardless of where in time two versions of the same person meet, one
will be older than the other. Death occurs only once for any (normal) person. If
death is a certainty for one of the two versions, it must be the older one since the
younger one must have survived their battle in order for the older version to have
been able to show up for it.

This is not the case with a clone. True, the clone is always going to be younger
than the original, but they are separate entities, regardless of how their lives may
be intertwined via time travel or anything else. Age is not necessarily the
determining factor in survival, even for two persons who start out the same--if that
were so, then identical twins would always die simultaneously.

Two versions of the same person originating in parallel universes can have
different life paths--that's the whole point of having parallel universes, if you have
them. So, if they should somehow cross paths in either one's home timeline or in a
neutral setting for a fight for life, you couldn't say for certainty which would win
based on age, or anything else, for that matter.

Are you together? (maitre d’ to couple arriving at restaurant)

Her--What, didn’t you see the ball and chain?
Him--No, not so, only me. I’m Goethe—that one's Faust.
Her--To gather, ...wait a minute, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. You’re supposed to hunt..
Him--Actually, he’s probably confused because he saw us leaving together, but that's a couple of hours from
now, so evidently his sense of time is running backward.

What's true for one is true for two or more as well. So if some or all of a group of friends and/or
family were capable of time travel, they could meet up with each other in a variety of situations.
The son as an adult might visit the father as a child. The grandmother in her twenties could visit the
granddaughter also in her twenties. A couple that met and got married in their thirties might. If it's
all on one timeline, there would be a lot of future knowledge floating around. Otherwise, these
sojourns would be a lively source of timeline branching activity.

"It's a poor kind of memory that only works backwards" said the White Queen in
Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass.
Future Knowledge
There is a way of looking at future knowledge that might permit it even in a one-
timeline system. When one envisions the repercussions of a significant event,
diagramatically over time, in the classical model they would start at nothing at the
instant before the event occurred, and then develop from there in a more or less
dramatic fashion curving upwards, eventually reaching a plateau and ultimately
declining.

But with extremely significant events, however, it becomes increasingly difficult to

assume that there is a barrier preceding such an event preventing any repercussions
from slipping through that way. Time is a continuum, not a series of stops and
starts.

Premonitions
A big event that is anticipated will naturally have an influence on the times
preceding it, for example a Presidential election: the conventions, campaigns, and
all the hoopla are really preparatory components of a major event—the election
itself. A sporting event at a large stadium can tie-up traffic several hours prior to
the contest, not to mention all of the tailgating parties.

And just because some events are common knowledge and others are not doesn't
mean that the latter occur out of thin air. Rather, anticipatory knowledge may be
somewhat "underground." Those who have got an ear to the ground may, then,
have a sense of what is coming, even if it's not listed in a newspaper's calendar of
weekly events. Wall Street has a good name for it--the Future’s Market.

It's logical that when you journey to the past you can perceive what's there because those are sure, as
have already been there, from your point of view. Whatever you might do during a journey to the
past has already occurred as far as your traveling point-of'-departure is concerned. It's more
difficult to comprehend that the future could be equally set in stone.

But that does seem to be the case in a one-timeline system: whatever you do in a jaunt to the future
becomes part of the future that you will subsequently experience after returning. In a multiple-
timeline system, that "future knowledge" becomes "future speculation" since the future you visit has
branched-off from your original timeline.
I’ll Be Thinking About You, I Think
Our perception of time is skewed by our humdrum experience of it in pre-time-travel--
invention system. We cannot choose what time to be in any more than somebody bound can
choose what space to be in. Once we get time travel, we should be able to move about
as freely in time as we do now in space. One accustomed to traveling in time may not
really think much in terms of past/present/future time, as these terms would tend to lose their
meaningfulness, particularly for one capable of going to virtually any point in (space- time).

The highly sophisticated space-time traveler should be able to get about

anywhere/anytime/any whatever of other dimensions simply by willing it. So
without breaking stride you could step from 21st Century Broadway NYC to
Imperial Rome (after all, all roads go there) to a Polynesian beach in the time of
Gauguin. Of course, you might want to take your shoes off for the Pacific Ocean.
Even the relative aspects of time--before/during/after, moving forwards or
backwards--might not be considered especially significant. One could basically go
to wherever and whenever one wants to go. All times are potential present times
for the fully capable time traveler. Nobody is ever considered dead as anyone can
be visited in their own time at the very least.

The Child Is Father to the Man

The traditional Eastern means of getting a second lease-on-life, reincarnation, typically
proceeds forward in time and tends to skip a generation here and there. However, with time
travel rendering directions in time somewhat arbitrary, it should be possible for governing
spirits to proceed from any given being to any other, regardless of temporal order or overlap.
Thus one could be reincarnated as one's own parent, in which case there might be latent
memories of one's own child's life experiences.

More Strange Reincarnations

Some of the possibilities could lead to rather ironic situations: reincarnated as one's own
accountant (with latent memories of all that spending); reincarnated as one's unfaithful
husband's mistress (or vice versa); reincarnated as one’s mother-in-law; reincarnated as one’s
major adversary in life; reincarnated as mayor of the town where one had been the village
idiot (or the other way around). A house that is haunted could, via time travel, actually
involve the same spirit both being haunted and doing the haunting.

It's conceivable that some of the so-called communications with the dead involves
alternate time-line versions of the deceased individual--who are still alive. A
medium who assists in doing this may be adjusting the vibratory frequency in order
to access the alternate zone--like tuning a radio. Ghosts may be time travelers in
their virgin timeline.

Multi-Faceted Time
To the seasoned time traveler, our lack of a sense of time may make us seem like
babies being force-fed that ongoing default ticker. We think that we understand
time, but our sense of it is one-dimensional in the extreme—an arrow pointing in
one direction. There could be other dimensions to time that we don't know about,
hidden from our limited perception. Regarding dimensions 5-11 (predicted by
string theory): to begin with, our sense of time, the 4th dimension, may not be the
entire story of time. We experience time as a straight line going in one direction.
But what if we could experience time like we do space--3-dimensionally, thus
having length, width, depth, and no set direction?

Time for Ticks

But it could be even worse: imagine experiencing only one point in the time line
for 90+% of one's life--no arrow pointing anywhere. Certain ticks (the insect, not
the clock’s) are sort of like this--they’re hanging on a leaf in stasis until the right
thing comes along for them to cling to and suck on.

Now, on top of length of time, let's try adding width of time. That would enable a
being to enjoy a variety of experiences while remaining at the same time--
something human perception lacks as it revolves around a continuous and steadily
changing present moment (except perhaps when we meditate and dream). Going
even further--trying to imagine a depth perception equivalent for time--is difficult,
but might involve a capacity to simultaneously experience the past/present/future
of any given point in time—or something like that.

At any rate, advanced time perception for other beings might also involve liberated
directionality. Time appears to be non-directional in a Bose-Einstein condensate.
We can well envision a being who, while capable of just length-dimensional time
perception--like us--is also able to go backwards at will, thus bi-directional. In the
simplest form, this might be like a reverse gear.
Backing Up (and Upchucking) Through Time
To illustrate: a time traveler from the future journeys back in time in a rather
experiential sort of way. Rather than flashing back to a particular time, stopping
there and proceeding to experience life in the conventional (to us) forward
plodding method, this time traveler instead is constantly moving backwards
through time. It could even be at the same rate as us.

To illustrate, this time traveler will find himself (we’ll make him a guy in this
example) having breakfast at his home. He knows that it’s breakfast from the food
he’s regurgitating, for example pancakes, eggs, juice. After vomiting this all up,
he “moonwalks” into the bathroom to shave and shower. The shaving process
entails reattaching his beard and mustache; showering involves lifting the soap
suds back onto the soap bar under a showerhead that's sucking the water in. He
then puts on his pajamas and proceeds to the bedroom where he waits a couple of
minutes for his counterclockwise-running alarm clock to go off, and then falls
asleep.

A time traveler going back in time at the speed of our time would appear to us
to be doing things in reverse--like a videotape on rewind. This includes aging,
as noticeable over time. Meanwhile, this "regurgitating" time traveler would
perceive us as moving backwards and getting younger.

Of course, experienced time travelers surely cloak themselves in transit and do so in a burst, so
we are unlikely to ever stumble upon somebody in the middle of going backwards through
time. But if we did...

The regurgitator: he'd be doing everything backwards as others see him, but not
necessarily like a fast-rewind on a videotape--could be "normal" speed, just
backwards. He would perceive everyone else to be going backwards at this
leisurely pace (If this were a movie: shots seen through his eyes would show/hear
him doing stuff normally while everything not in his little "bubble"/grasp/influence
would be in reverse--including audio. And shots from any other vantage point
would show/hear him as the backwards anomaly. It would be a good role for Jim
Carrey).

He may try to train himself to walk/talk/(make love)/eat/drive to work/etc.

backwards in order to pass for normal. He may pretend he's dancing or has a
spastic tic when someone catches him in an "off" movement. If he decides to
work, he'll have to quit or get fired first.

He may try to contact the authorities but they think he's a nut job. Predicting stuff
based on his future knowledge doesn't work because it would do him no good since
he's going in the opposite direction in time.

Eventually, after, say a couple of years, he may kind of get used to his situation. It
might be difficult to develop lasting friendships, however, since whoever he meets
is just a ship passing in the night. People he meets already know him, and people
he knows haven't yet met him.

Perhaps the situation is provisional. He may have been sent on a journey back in
time but realized that his fuel supply was inadequate (metric/American
measurement confusion). So he slowed down to get better "mileage".

Tachyons--the technical term for particles that move always at FTL speeds--should
appear to be traveling backwards in time. If a being traveling at light speed doesn’t
age (according to Einstein) it follows that a being traveling at FTL speeds get
younger. If a constant SoL traveler is immortal, what does that make an ever-
FTLer?
If one could reverse the flow of time, thereby experiencing the future as
having passed, and the past as yet to come, just precisely what would that
entail? If we make it a universal and instantaneous experience, then
everybody and everything will immediately start going in the other direction
time-wise, presumably at the same speed. Like a yo-yo!

This raises the issue of whether reversed time would be limited to following
the same course of events as was already experienced in forward-going time.
Predestination rears its head, as does the adage about those unfamiliar with
history being doomed to repeat it.

It may be impossible to ever know for sure if one is experiencing time going
forwards or backwards. Directional terms may be largely semantic. You
might always experience yourself as moving ahead, even if you know you're
going into (what was) the past. Or perhaps going in reverse seems like the
requisite way in such a system.

In a reoccurring yo-yo universe, the notion of forward-going time preceding

backward-going time loses its meaning, becoming more like "evens & odds."
One can further envision universes where bi-directionality is a quaint concept.
There, time can be multi-directional, multi-dimensional.

I Think, Therefore Am
How one interprets all this perhaps has to do with one’s own perception of the present. What is
the present? Pondering this brings out the issue of self-identity. Normally, the world around us
is of the past, we are constantly devising actions for the future (as one, ordinarily, cannot make
plans for the past or present, nor act in the present due to the time lapse between thought and
action), hence the present must be based within the cognizant self--in our minds, in what we are
thinking about, and as what we, thinking, are. Our reverse traveler flips the identifying
properties of past and future, yet the present remains essentially the same--calling the shots.

As the “present" is not a particular point in time but rather a frame of mind, it
follows that the mind should be able to travel throughout time--go anywhere in the
space-time continuum. The time-traveling mind is always in the present tense--in
anytime it goes to--even if thinking about the past or future.

So the brain abides in the present, which, not being any particular time, is anytime .The mind,
being of the present, and time existing as a series of present moments, it follows
that the mind is potentially everywhere at once and always. For a highly advanced
being, capable of perceiving time multi-dimensionally, any and all times may be
perceivable as happening at once/simultaneously.
The Atomic Clock
Present time may be like an atom: perceptible to us only in large cohesive clusters,
but fundamentally a highly intricate and vibrant phenomenon.
Lots of Presents
The terms "past"/"present"/"future" are so tenuous and imprecise that in all of the
billions of "times" each has been said/written/read they have never referred to the
same exact thing twice (based on a premise that perfect instantaneity is
impossible). The present instant is continuously changing, and with it, by
definition, go the past and future.

Time at any given moment would appear to consist of two huge chunks—past and future—separated
by an extremely thin mobile membrane (for most of us now). But every moment in time must be the
present at some time or other in order to exist.

Just how long is the present? The finest partitioning of time we recognize is the Planck unit of time.
How long is an instant? Can any two instantaneous events ever really be simultaneous.? Or is calling
two events simultaneous simply an artifact of your measuring system’s imprecision?

Now consider doing something rather strange--setting the present time at a given
time and leaving it there—spending hours/days/years in the same time but moving
freely, perhaps rapidly in space. What would one perceive and how would one
doing such be perceived?
Stopping the Presses
To someone whose perception of the present is the duration of a day, actions could
readily be undone before becoming "official," and it would be as if it had never
happened. Decisions would be tentative--like a chess player keeping a hand on a
contemplated move, a newspaper reporter working on a story with the deadline in
mind, or any of us when we decide to “sleep on it.” Just how long is the present,
anyway, particularly if nothing is happening or one is sensuously deprived (or,
perhaps, conversely, overloaded)? Think about those places off the beaten path
that evoke an earlier era, as little has changed there over time.

Somebody frozen in time presumably--unless they're born frozen there and die
there--has to come and go from that spot in time. So let's imagine you're leading
an ordinary life, moving through time at the rate we're all accustomed to and then
suddenly you're stuck. How would we know, and how would you know that you're
stuck?

Stuck in time: if you're looking at a clock with a second-hand it would stop

moving. If there is anything around you moving--people, cars, birds, Frisbees,
TV or movie etc.--they would similarly stop in their tracks. Ditto all sounds
would hold their notes--speech, horns, alarms, radio, soundtracks, bird calls.
If you're in a secluded part of the wilderness with no animals audible, you
might not notice the wind holding steady if it's light or relentless if it's high.
Eventually you'd surely notice the day or night seeming rather long, clouds
not moving in the sky, sun and/or moon stationary, stars (and possibly
planets) not moving.

Farmer's Market
Here's another example, from an outside observer's viewpoint. Bob and Liz are
just entering the local farmer's market when they have an "I don't believe my eyes"
experience. One of the shoppers there seems to flicker about like a figure in a
long-exposure photograph. and then in a matter of seconds it was over. As they get
closer they realize that the flickerer is their friend Joe, whom they promptly
approach, greet and pull aside.

So Bob and Liz, who both took high school physics, sit down on a bench with Joe
and try to figure out what's up with him. and his situation. They consider the
space-time continuum as they understand it to operate. In Joe's case, his timeline,
rather than moving forward in time as it normally does, had somehow gotten stuck
for a few seconds.

Liz plots a graph showing time as the horizontal axis, through which people move
normally from left to right at a steady speed. The vertical axis represents space
(dimensionally compressed for simplification). So a person moving around here
and there among the produce could be depicted by a more or less jagged line. A
person staying in the same place for a long time would register a lengthy segment
of line going straight across the page.

So what's happened to Joe is that his progression through time got jammed and yet
he continued to move freely through space. Joe's life-line would show this as an
extended vertical line—something that defies the conventional wisdom that says a
person can only be in one place at any given point in time.

Now what does Joe think happened? His human mind will likely tend to interpret
everything as if the source of any strangeness were out there, since he doesn't know
any better. Just as Bob and Liz relied on their perceptions and interpretations to
arrive at an understanding, so does Joe. From his perspective, the other people
there may have seemed kind of wooden for a little while. This doesn't undermine
the account given by Bob and Tom, but rather once again reinforces the subjective
nature of time perception for us.

Returning to the graph, we can chart the lives of those all around Joe. At the point
where Joe's horizontal motion stalls, everybody else's horizontal line keeps on
going...Does this mean he's fallen behind them all? Has he fallen into another
dimension of space-time? No, not really. This is because although he spent more of
his time in that particular moment in time, he didn't spend any more of our time
there. So if the dislocation was on the order of 10 years rather than a few seconds,
he would appear to everyone (but himself) to have aged a decade overnight--
making him a great subject/prop for a one-day seminar on time-lapse
photography.

Now if you were to become frozen in both space and time, say, experience a split second for a
day, you’d appear like a statue--virtually frozen in whatever pose your body happened to be in
at that particular split-second you froze, and holding the pose all day long. If this were to
happen in, say a city garden park, the parks conservator might think you’re a new sculpture.

One might look to the ancient play Prometheus Bound for a more brutal scenario
of time gone amuck. In it, Prometheus, chained to a cliff, is stuck in a daily time
loop in which a huge bird devours him and then he is regenerated overnight only
to be shredded again the next day, ad infinitum--until he's rescued.

The Hiccupper
Now fancy this: Jan, from an upstairs window, sees Meg walking down the street.
Jan opens the window and leans out to say "hi!" to her friend but, alas, she’s
already out of hearing range by then. Not to worry, though, along comes Meg
again. So Jan calls out to this one "Hey, Meg", she hears it, looks up smiling and
waves briefly--before disappearing into thin air. Jan looks for the back of the first
Meg's head, but that one's gone, too.

Jan immediately phones her friend Pam who lives a block further up—to tip her
off—and she reports having already just had a more or less similar event with
multiple Megs. "I had just picked up the phone to call you when it rang," she says.

Jan and Pam are also amateur physicists and infer that Meg was, for those few
seconds, sort of hiccupping through time. When they sit down together and chart
Meg's time-space line, they decide that, since both ladies saw their friend walking
straight down the street, her motion through space can be depicted here as a
straight diagonal line. The multiplicity of Megs can be represented by a number of
such lines loosely layered one on top of the other. Jan called out to Meg around the
end of the time loop, which they surmise to be about 10 seconds given the time that
elapsed and the locations of disappearance.

Provided all of the time loops were of the same "length" of time the charted result
would be a striped parallelogram/diamond shape. The separations between each
parallel stripe represent the "hiccups.” The phenomenon could also be likened to a
phonographic record or a cd that skips in a multi-track kind of way.

Now, once again, all of these outsider observations are a function of Jan and Pam being, at
least temporarily, outside of Meg’s system. Meg might report that it seemed like she got down
the street in “just about no time,” perhaps on account of a wandering mind.

Imagine actually being someone who can hold onto the present time for longer
than an instant. You wouldn't need to be continuously altering your present
moment, like sifting through sands of time. To be omnipresent eliminates the
incessant struggle of reacting to the past and confronting the future. Instead, you
can just be.

To be omnipresent is to live in the present in such a way that is respectful of and

candid about the past and at the same time hopeful yet not overly anxious about the
future. It is to live harmoniously with all times, including the good and the bad, the
funny and the sad, the stable and the “rad.”

All of us lead lives that are continuous stream of present moments, regardless of whether one is
stationary/passive or variable-speed/traveling through time. We do not generally live past or future
moments--we may someday be able to go to the past or the future, but once there these would become
components of our present's ticker.

Think of one's life as a string of beads, produced one per minute, and for which each specific calendar
day is assigned a unique color. The standard non-time traveler would get 1,440 beads in a row every 24
hours of the exact same color.

A time traveler's string of beads would tend to be more variegated. It seems to make sense for action to takes place
only in the present because otherwise there would be something of a confusing overlap occurring--like
a multiple exposure photograph.

It may be a good idea for the lay person too think of active time as always and only present time.
Past and future are merely terms indicating the direction one wishes to travel in, chronologically
speaking, and even these are only relevant because of the manner in which our society lives-—
keeping time, dates, historical records, and so on.

How do we really know the flow of time? Just because our clocks continually tick tick away--that's
nothing more than a mechanical process. If "time" were slowing down or speeding up, our clocks
would do the same. and so would fail to detect any difference. The same would apply to
"constants" like orbital periods--if time's pace changed, theirs would similarly.

So perhaps there is no ready way for us to know even how much time is in a unit of time--a bit of a
conundrum--or perhaps time does not really even exist, in any practical way: it may be largely an
imaginary construct, an illusion, an abstract prop.

The present moment is like a computer screen cursor. A time traveler simply has a
mouse. All times are potential present times for the fully capable time traveler.

If past/present/future are nothing more than semantic distinctions rendered obsolete

by time travel, then one should be able to travel anywhere in time without
disrupting anything since all times have happened, and/or are happening, and/or
will happen at the same “time”, which is both instantaneous and endless.

The physics of time travel should be the same whether you're going forward or backward in time.
Your present is the only thing that makes any given point in time a part of your past or of your
future, and your present is constantly changing. Time changes from being your future to being
your present (briefly) to being your past.

Consciousness may be seen as a mechanism whereby we turn the future into the past via the
present ("normally"--because in a different universe/time/series of dimensions/being, the opposite
pattern could prevail--or, conceivably the other potential sequences: Past-to-Future-to-Present,
Present-to-Past-to-Future, Present-to-Future-to-Past, Future-to-Past-to-Present).

The present may be seen as the standard instrument for effecting change on the future thereby
rendering it in some way distinct from the past (of itself). This pertains to a system where the
future is unknowable and thus must be presumed no different from the past unless indicated so by
the present. Without the incessant intervention of the present, we would have no way of accessing the
past or future. The present is our linchpin.

In our universe, an event does not occur in the past or the future. Events only occur in the present, the time of which is in
constant flux. Labeling any time as "past" or "future" is like labeling an object "left" or "right" when that could change in an
instant. The flow of time could be likened to the stadium "wave" performed by a crowd of fans, with
the present--constantly moving through it--being the most noticeable part, but only a tiny percentage
of the whole at any one time . Each seat has its moment to shine in the present-—stand up & wave,
preceded and followed by long stretches of being out of the spotlight.
Waiting for the Present:
It's interesting to envision a species of being capable of inhabiting space (meaning place/location, not
necessarily "outer-space") in the past or future time of the specific space. If any point in time has an
active present moment, an inactive past time and a dormant future time, it could be possible to go to a
particular space-time point's future and wait there for it to occur, maybe even doing things that will
influence what happens when that moment's present rolls around.

(Just how long is the present? The finest partitioning of time we recognize is the Planck unit of time.
How long is an instant? Can any two instantaneous events ever really be simultaneous.? Or is calling
two events simultaneous simply an artifact of your measuring system’s imprecision?)

Try to imagine being somewhere getting that place ready for its moment in the space-time continuum's
present. You may have been sent there well in advance if something important is to be effected. There’s a
big clock on the wall that shows how much physical time remains for your group to do the requisite
preparatory work. It would be like preparing a stage set, along with possibly some of the actors
(wardrobe, makeup and cues) for the “big moment.”

The ever-moving present is like the tour de France, the Presidential primaries, a
rock & roll tour, a prison searchlight. The cyclists, candidates, rockers and
fugitives are like the present's principal actors. The event and party organizers, and
roadies are like the prepping crew/stagehands. Just be careful you don't get swept away by
all the excitement. Unless you really want to run away and join the circus.

Would it be possible for an ordinary person to get incidentally bifurcated onto a time-track where, for
example, they weren't born? Or a couple to get swept onto some timeline in which they hadn't gotten
married? It might sound incredible, but when you think about it, how do any of us know that we're still on
the same time-line where we were born? How many of us have actually gone to the hospital where our
mothers delivered us to see if the original birth certificate is there? Or checked with the county clerk's
office for our wedding certificate?

The Pacific Theater

One need not be famous to have a significant influence on one's timeline. Take
somebody like Jimmy Stewart's character--George Bailey--in It's a Wonderful Life.
You might think he was probably of little influence outside of town--Bedford Falls-
-since he never left it.
However; as George's guardian angel Clarence points out, if he hadn't been born,
George wouldn't have been there to save his little brother Harry from drowning in
a lake. Harry went on to be a war hero pilot celebrated for shooting down multiple
kamikaze airplanes, including a couple just before they could crash into a troop
transport vessel.

Assuming at least some of those on-board survived WWII and returned home to
have families, you're looking at dozens, perhaps hundreds of children whose very
existence is put in jeopardy if not for George. And, of course, their descendants
would number in the thousands by now, every one of whom is just as capable as
George Bailey of, directly or indirectly, influencing a vast number of lives.

Signs that you may be a time traveler on an alternative time track:

*Your birth certificate is not on file at the hospital where you were born.

*You get phone calls from people you don't know who know you.

*Somebody you did know is impossible to locate or doesn't know you.

*Your recollection of some news item runs counter to the general public’s
knowledge of it, yet you had no privileged source of information. If the event had
no real impact on your life, time track overseers, to simplify matters for
themselves, may at times consolidate. It’s like putting more than one kind of
tropical fish in an aquarium: as long as they don’t interfere with each other, they
can coexist.

Future Knowledge--Downside
Would it be possible for a person to become of another time, knowledge-wise, while remaining
physically present in the same time as before? To illustrate how this might happen, imagine
traveling five years into the future, hanging out there for a few weeks, and then going back to
where you were. But while your body returns, your mind remains subconsciously stuck, five
years into the future.

It might not be apparent at first, but eventually it would become evident that your behavior was
somewhat foresighted, prescient, long-range, in an intuitive kind of way. The dark side of this
phenomena is time travelers with future knowledge posing as psychics.

Future knowledge might not always be a useful thing, though. Fancy this: through some freakish
kind of time-warping, the members of a society are stuck in a frame of mind that has them all
"reliving" their own lives, going through life with complete knowledge of future events, yet unable
to alter their activities. It's almost as though they are being punished, as it is rather boring in most
situations to have no element of surprise anywhere.

About their only enjoyment comes from intimidation games with a sub-race of more normal
creatures who have no foresight. The members of the future-knowledge group toss out innuendos
towards the regular minority, which scares these into thinking the foreknowers have power over
events until they realize it’s just posturing, at which point they perhaps rise up and overthrow their
tormenters--who see the handwriting on the wall but are powerless to edit it.

It's fashionable to talk about time travelers flitting all about and creating
alternative/parallel universes wherever they go. But that's not necessarily the last
word on it. The world need not revolve around time travelers, creating a new
universe with every move that they make. And from a practical standpoint, it is
irresponsible to, for instance, excuse an unjust aspect of a society by maintaining
that in a parallel universe the situation is rectified.

An anti-time traveler asserts that going back in time and changing stuff, even if
well-intentioned--"to set things right"--is really an insult to those people. You're
saying to them that they are hapless, failed, forgettable, misguided, and so on.
And that you're coming across as messiah-complexed, know-it-allish, Don
Quixotic, manipulative, etc.

You need to take responsibility for the reality you are in. It's similarly ridiculous to
express a cavalier lack of concern with your own decisions, contending that there
are alternate universes for other choices You're not going to play the game of life
very well if you don't care.

Early generation time travelers going to their past might not know whether they've
journeyed to the same timeline or been routed onto another one. Since the
assumption is that the alternative is brought into play on their account, then the
only difference is probably them at first, followed by stuff that they influence.

Being discreet and not wanting to make a spectacle of themselves or do something

outlandish to get in the news, the time travelers would likely come up with some
sort of scheme to influence fairly inconsequential events that are reported in the
news. If able to cause stories to turn out differently from an archival copy of a
weekly newspaper brought along, the crew would probably conclude that there's a
good chance they're in an alternative parallel time track. If, on the other hand, they
are somehow unable to effect change, they'd likely infer that they're still on their
original timeline.
For instance, the time travelers might read an article about a high school football
game. Let's say the hero of the game, whose name is in the headline, scores the
winning touchdown. They'd approach this fellow a couple of days beforehand and
calmly offer him $5 thousand not to play. When he agrees, then they'd just need to
be sure that no one else on the squad has the same name or wears his jersey. If the
headline somehow remains the same, the crew would need to seriously consider
the possibility that there are not an infinite number of alternative time lines and
that there is some built-in controlling mechanism--call it the hand of God, if you
will.

So if people can go back in time and do something seemingly paradoxical like slay
their grandfather (the notorious Grandfather's Paradox), which would indicate that
they have gone onto a different time track--either routed there immediately upon
setting out or upon doing something significant. Thus, there may be timelines in
which they do seem to commit grand-fratricide, but the victim is in a timeline
where they (the grandchildren) are not going to be born.

In other words, assuming you are in your original timeline, it is necessary for you
(and everyone else, for that matter) not to have slain gramps in his prepubescent
youth on that same timeline (unless changelings are used). The "you" who would
go back in time is a member of a subset of realities in which you were born and
therefore did not go back in time and do away with your grandfather (at least not
before he procreated your parent). You can go ahead and try, but if you "succeed"
you will know that you're now in a different timeline.

There are potential false "positives" also: you may think you've dispatched him
but it was a mirage/firing blanks/cuckolded/not a mortal wound/etc. Your
grandfather may recall an assassination attempt that could've been you! One can
also ponder some convoluted scenarios where the assassinated grandfather is
replaced by an identical version of himself harvested (alive)/lifted from a parallel
time track. This alternate grandfather might be used as a replacement or as a stand-
in victim.

Suicide Mission
If there were one and only one timeline, it would be a highly disruptive good deed
to do something like go back in time and kill Hitler before he became influential
because so much of history would be rewritten that, while the net result might well
be a better world, it's probable that a significant chunk of the world's people born
since then would not exist in the altered timeline--replaced by others.
But supposing someone does go back in the single universe and take Hitler out,
say, in his 20's. Nazism, WWII, the Holocaust, etc. never happen--and one-third of
the people in 21st century world pre-time traveler's trip disappear having never
been born. They would also sustain a sudden change in the architecture all around.
Even the weather would likely be different as human impact would have been
different. And there would be new people suddenly appearing who were not born
in the original timeline.

Once you're off your original timeline, you could be on any one of an infinite
number, and there's no way (known to him) of distinguishing between/numbering
them (what's the frequency?)--before or after one is so routed.

The time track switch supervisory staff may be like an air traffic control tower.
These would be advanced ETIs and/or future people.

Efforts may be made to identify an original timeline versus those altered by time
travel. Like a virgin forest, there would be taboo against corrupting it.

It could be that time travelers to their past invariably get routed onto a time track
where they were not born. This would make it impossible, technically, to travel to
your own past, although you might find most things in the world-at-large pretty
much the same, particularly if your absence is the only variable that's different and
you're not a highly influential person. In the immediate environs of your life/not-
life, things would naturally be different as everybody is at least somewhat
influential up-close.

It's possible that devil-may-care/daredevil time travelers all get routed onto the
same time track--containing all the contamination. So it's a time track from hell.
Or maybe they get sorted among several tracks like the rings from Dante's Inferno.

The mythological story of Sisyphus, a king, may be a paradigm for overweening

time travelers. Crafty and manipulative, Sisyphus ran afoul of the gods, and was
eventually punished in a novel way. He was condemned to every day push an
enormous boulder up a steep hill. Upon reaching the summit, the boulder every
time would roll back down the hill. Sisyphus was compelled to run after the rock
and push it up the hill again, ad infinitum.

The Myth of Sisyphus would seem to apply to doing something over and over
again with futility. Just when you think you've succeeded in completing the project
it's back to square one. It sounds like dueling time travelers, in competition for
control over a timeline, changing the past only to have the other side go back in
tine a bit further and one-up them.

It may be that universes with a strong disincentive to time travel are more fit, and
so last longer, than those that enable substantial, or indiscriminate time travel.
These may be more likely to self-destruct, and so likely to leave fewer progeny.
Whether this results, over the long-term, in most universes being innately averse to
time travel depends on whether that aversion trait is controllable by the process
and/or being(s) responsible for the creative output of universes.

MALTI-VERSE VS. UNO-VERSE

It is surmised that when time travelers go to their past they either: (A) must arrive
on a different time track and can never return to their original one. Each reality is
separate and is formed upon any act of time travel. Call this system the Multiple
Alternate Universes model--in short, the Maltiverse.

Or the time travelers (B) must arrive at some point along the same time track and
are unable to fundamentally change the situation. This model requires something
like divine guidance or a discriminating aspect to space-time. That is to say, there
would have to be some property/dimension/entity/process that is capable of
identifying/quarantining and potentially reversing/segueing alterations made
by any time traveler. Call this system the Unoverse (Spanish "uno" means "one").

Actually, it might be possible to have a (C) Uno-/Malti-Hybridverse. This model

starts out as a uno-verse but has the capability of sprouting into a malti-verse as a
fail-safe maneuver. If the overseers somehow get overwhelmed, they just pull a
switch and a split is effected at a point at or before which the trouble began.

Time travel in a malti-/hybrid-verse becomes more useful when a civilization

develops a capability of coding the multitude of time tracks. Those who succeed
may become God/God-like controllers (although a malti-verse, theoretically, does
not require a Deity).

Time travel to the future: since the future hasn't happened yet for you, it may be
OK to go there and be as influential as anybody else who happens to be there. A
concern is you bringing back future knowledge as people may want to try to
prevent stuff from happening that they don't like, or profiteer from bets and
investments.

It may be that, if the future is as fixed as the past is, then the same rules apply as do
for going to the past. You are either (A) routed immediately onto a unique time
track in a malti-verse system or, (B) in a uno-verse, you are incapable of altering
anything of substance or (C) in a hybrid-verse, your activities are monitored and
effects mitigated by whatever means necessary.

It may be that systems that enable you to go back and forth on the same time track
tend to self-destruct. Given the age of our universe, it's likely that time travel has
been contemplated by other civilizations before us. So, if back-and-forthism is
possible and self-destructive, every previous one of these civilizations has either
resisted the temptation to dabble or has been prevented from doing so by a higher
power. Or perhaps, given the vast space between almost any two indigenous
emergent civilizations, it is possible for individual planets to discombobulate
themselves to the point of implosion over matters of time travel without disturbing
anyone else. In that case we may at present be in a sort of quarantine.

It would be helpful if you could tell when you've been bifurcated, but that
awareness might not come right away if you're in a hybrid-verse. So time travel
may be a leap of faith.

Dangerous scenarios: if we live in a uno-verse but think we're in a malti-/hybrid-

verse; or we think we live in a uno-verse with a higher power that will save us--but
there isn't; or that we think we can get away with using time travel sparingly/top
secret undercover--but we can't. Unless or until we can rule these scenarios out,
we probably shouldn't actually attempt time travel.

Alternate, Not Alterable

On the other hand, it's possible you could go back in time and be automatically
placed on an alternate timeline, spend some time there, and then return to your
initial point of departure in your original timeline. You need not worry about
having some untoward effect on the past that would change the present because
you're dealing with separate timelines. You could go back and kill your
grandfather--provided he existed in that alternate timeline--and then return to the
present of the original timeline and he's still living/died some other way since
you've done no tampering there.
Ditto regarding time travel to the future. When you travel ahead in time, you are
routed automatically to an alternate reality. Stay there for a while, do what you
like, observe all that you can. When you return, you're back on your original
timeline where you left it. Future knowledge--for example lottery drawings, stock
market levels, sports scores--will not apply because the future you saw was not the
future you are headed for in your standard real timeline.

To get valuable info from the future, people might send probes one after the other
to the future and back repeatedly. Granted, you would never see your exact future,
but you might get some useful info/tech.

The issue of predestination inevitably arises in a discussion of time travel. The

relationship between predestination and the malti-verse model: at first blush, one
might think that the latter trumps, or perhaps renders irrelevant, the former. When
all possibilities are played out somewhere, then everything can be predestined--or
not predestined--it doesn't really seem to matter.

Or does predestination actually win, via a "no matter what you may try, we've got
you covered." Maybe it's mostly a matter of spin--a semantic argument. Maybe it
isn't. Take your pick...or don't.

Perhaps malti-versalism can be used to undermine itself. To wit, in the infinite

multitude of alternate universes, there must be at least one, and probably many
universes, to which malti-versalism is anathema. Ours could be one such universe
for all we know. Does that make our universe delusional? Well, because it must
be possible for everything to be--according to multi-universalism--then at least one
universe must not be delusional in thinking itself to be the only version of itself.

If time travel to the past--on the same time track--is possible, one
might wonder why wouldn't somebody, having for instance read
about the Holocaust and overall horror of WWII, have gone back
and killed Hitler. Or prevented some major political
assassination(s) or transportation disaster(s).

So let's say, for example, that a time traveler does go up to the supposed young Hitler and shoot
him on the spot. Then it would simply turn out that, unbeknownst to everybody, Hitler
was a twin or a clone or that he was only pretending to have been hit. Perhaps
someone was tipped-off and tampered with your gun.

However, while it may not be possible--in a one-track system--to go back in time

and change history, it may be possible to go back in time and become history.
This could be done surreptitiously: indeed, it is tenable that time travelers have
been active “underground” for a long time.

We wouldn’t know about their activity because they don’t stand up and take credit
for it, and wouldn’t be believed if they did. In fact, it's a distinct possibility that many
major figures of human history have been time travelers, as they could have the advantage of a
larger body of knowledge, psychology, geography, military strategy, etc., along with future
knowledge of events.

What’s My Itinerary?
Those traveling to the past become part of the past. History as we
know it does not distinguish between time travelers and non-time
travelers So anything a time traveler does would be as if a normal
person did it.
Their adventures would be a part of history, just as major league baseball record
books don't distinguish between users of performance-enhancing steroid drugs and
regular players. Everything that exists in a given place at a given time is a part of
that system, regardless of how it got there.
Whatever a uni-track time traveler does in the past would already be a part of history —hence
unalterable by that time traveler, or rather incorporating that time traveler's itinerary in it.
How would you know that you're destined to become a particular person in their
past? If history occurs just once, then while flipping through a history book,
one might come across a photo of what appears to be oneself—
confirmable via police facial profiling.
With this irrefutable evidence in hand and an investigative approach, you
could probably soon enough find out who's surreptitiously running the
time travel program and get in contact with them about scheduling a
launch—at a date just prior to what will otherwise be the date of
publication for your expose of them--if they don't cooperate.
For those not being the facial profiling sort, or perhaps simply wishing to be a time
traveler to pre-photographic (or post-photographic) times, a different strategy
would apply. You might devise some complex and original code to deliver yourself
an unmistakable message from the past.

Of course, you'd need to have not only a highly elaborate code, but would want to
know where to look for it. One could try the works of established authors if of the
literary persuasion, or historical archives containing obituaries—portions of which
are often self-penned. It could also be worthwhile to decide on a pet phrase to be
embedded in "your" tombstone’s epitaph--say, written backwards.
This, of course, assumes that the time traveler stays in the past after taking on
another identity--until their dying day. But what if this sort of time travel is like
slumming for these future people—a joy ride? They'd want to return--while still
in their prime--to the future, drawn back there by longer life-spans and an overall
higher quality of life.

One technique for quitting their foray into the past may be to stage their own
premature demise, perhaps substituting a clone for the actual death scene. This
could actually be the second switcheroo, the first having occurred at the time the
past identity is taken.

Elvis Lives! (He May Not have Even Been Born Yet) Changeling Scenario
In a hospital maternity ward an adult Elvis Presley presents the birth certificate for
an infant Gonzo Gurley and asks for possession of same. The nurse gives Gonzo
to Presley, who hops into a time machine and travels to the 1935 maternity ward
where the infant Elvis Presley lies, and, when the nurse isn't looking, switches the
two babies. The adult Elvis takes the newborn Elvis' birth certificate, hops in his
time machine again, and goes once more to the maternity ward of 2200 where he
hands over little Elvis (+ Gonzo's birth certificate).
Grown-up Elvis then gets in his time machine and travels to that year in the 22-
somethings that corresponds to his own age added to the century's (in this case 00).
Once there, he goes to a databank and locates the name of Gonzo Gurley. Presley
then sends a correspondence to Gurley of an official sort which tells him to pack
up everything and leave his home for good in, let's say, one week's time.
Presley then checks discreetly into a motel and keeps a low profile for most of the
week before catching a plane/bus/train (depending on how far away the adult
"Gonzo" is from the birthplace). Upon arriving in town, Presley phones Gurley's
residence to ascertain that the latter has, in fact, left. He then goes there and begins
contacting blood relatives This would exclude offspring of the adult Gurley, but
include his siblings, their offspring, his parents, and other relatives.
It's not very long before someone recognizes this man, who has moved into Gonzo
Gurley's house as the King of Rock 'N' Roll. Soon enough there are great
celebrations all over the area--Elvis is here! Elvis Lives! Long live the King!
Meanwhile, the former adult Gurley has been taken off to some remote resort area
where he will live out his life which, in this instance has landed him some three
centuries after the time of his birth as Elvis Presley.
Sidebar: When the baby Gonzo is taken from the hospital, the nurse takes a quick
swipe of a cotton swab across his inner cheek--subsequently used to create a
clone, which Gurley is assigned to replace at the resort and send back to the
hometown where Presley has taken over. When this chap-Elvis' clone arrives,
Presley takes him back to the time of the adult' Elvis (in the 20th Century), where
he is dispatched and subsequently buried in the gravesite designated for the great
entertainer.

The real Elvis (by career, not birth) then goes ahead in time once again to the Big
Homecoming Party. The person born "Elvis Presley", now living as Gonzo Gurley
(the first) in the aforementioned far-off resort town, probably is kept largely
uninformed of all the goings-on as the place is maintained as something of a
vacuum so that, for example Presley's (actually Gurley 's) clone doesn't stumble
upon a depiction of what would appear to be himself in a book of pop culture
history or a record album.
The celebrated Presley would probably keep his adopted name. On the other hand,
a time traveler of ill repute such as Hitler might well reassume his birth name,
shave off his moustache, and live out his years in a more somber, unassuming
manner.

The time traveler to their past, if wants to blend-in immediately might go as a

teenage runaway or someone who has broken with their own past. Time travelers are
basically no different from the rest of mankind, despite their mystique They simply have
future knowledge, but that advantage may be somewhat offset by their frustration with our
primitiveness. Imagine how most of us would feel if dropped suddenly in the Middle Ages—
no cars, no TV, no air conditioning, etc.

The time travelers who come here may be largely ragamuffins disaffected with their own time,
history buffs, students, or exiled, and so forth. Even then, they’d probably only want to come
for a short time, and thus would want to appear and disappear without anybody noticing. It's
tempting to speculate that some of the died-in-their-prime celebrities—the list goes on and
on—were not only time travelers but that they also faked their own deaths so as to return to
the future and celebrate their exploits.

On a related tack, hand, there’s a chance that many celebrities/public figures

apparently killed/assassinated/overdosed/etc, were of their own time but were
saved by an organization of time travelers--call them the Celebrity Rescue &
Preservation Society (CRPS)--who arranged fake deaths for them. This notion
doesn't contradict the belief that time travelers cannot change history. The star-
saving deeds would be committed secretly, so the historical record--that so and so
died on such and such a date in such and such a manner could stay the same.

Unbeknownst to the public, the person would be removed by CRPS immediately

prior to the death scene. A clone could be inserted to take the fall. The saved
person would be taken to either a far-off/remote location and/or the future where it
may even be possible for them to enjoy real immortality in-person, not just in
reputation. Those who are rescued in their prime might want to keep their own
body, while those up in years may prefer to be reincarnated, possibly by
transferring their brain to a youthful clone.

Of course, it being difficult to keep such extraordinary activities completely under

wraps, it seems inevitable that there be some issues arising involving vigilante
“overharvesting” of celebrities, along with instances of celebrities faking their own
fake deaths in the hope of gaining immortality.

To illustrate: let's say time traveler from the future does something like go back to
1962 and tell JFK he's about to get shot, say a couple of weeks before Dallas trip.
Somehow he manages to get believed, perhaps by correctly predicting some
newspaper headline(s). Then he leaves. Another group of time travelers arrive
shortly thereafter, evidently on his heels. They tell Kennedy that the assassination
cannot be averted. Even if he cancels the Dallas trip, somebody will shoot him
soon at an opportune moment—even, if necessary, it could be one of them.

They are time chronological veracity adherence police (CVAP). Their job is to see
to it that time travelers/future knowledge don't change history, no matter how
repugnant that history may be. However, there is a loophole/way out for JFK (and
others like him, i.e. celebrities destined for an untimely demise).

He can let a clone of himself be slain in his place. The clone, via time travel, is
easily enough obtained, aged, groomed and perhaps even educated a bit, to match
the President. Somewhere between the airplane and the motorcade, the clone is
slipped into the president's spot while he is escorted onto another jet taking him
somewhere—a remote tropical island, perhaps, or some future paradise— from
which he will never (in his own era) be heard from again.

It might be a rather interesting place where all the not-dead-after all celebrities are
taken (presuming they've likewise been informed of their fate and opted out) if, to
contain the situation, they're all gathered together, more or less as they are/were,
perhaps disguised a bit if interacting w/any outsiders. There might be a great
sharing of ideas.

Naturally, word of this haven leaks out— at least to the celebrity community. The
prospects of being in such select company (w/ no paparazzi) and the potential for
immortality (in the future relocation scenario) prompts some top-notch celebrities
to adopt rather risky lifestyles, hoping to produce that visitor from the future.
Elvis Impersonator Nightmare
Once time travel is “outed”, there’s still no guarantee of no monkey-business.
Let’s say that some time in the time-travel-era future, a radio station (or the
equivalent thereof) holds an Elvis Presley impersonator contest, with first prize
being a trip back in time to meet the King in-person.

However, the winner--call him Pelvis Freshley or Melvis Impressley--decides to

replace the real Elvis and send him back to the future as the “impersonator.” Real
Elvis' subsequent claims at being the genuine article are dismissed as delusional
ravings, although some might say he seems to have picked up a move or two from
the King.

The identities of the “celebrities” saved by CRPS of course would be in the eyes of
the (future) beholders. Being an actual celebrity in one’s lifetime would be neither
necessary nor sufficient. An obscure author or artist who only becomes widely
celebrated posthumously (such as Herman Melville, Franz Kafka, Vincent Van
Gogh), trumps a pretty boy movie matinee idol or pop singer whose works (and,
names) may be easily forgotten by posterity. It might be like a Hal of Fame.

Tipped-Off, and Ticked-Off

Of course, in a parallel universes system there's no need for discretion. JFK
Reversal scenario; Kennedy Guns Down Would-Be Assassins. In a stunning
display of executive marksmanship, Pres. Kennedy this afternoon shot and killed
several members of an apparent conspiratorial ring which had intended to
assassinate him.

The gunburst happened suddenly in the midst of a presidential motorcade through

the streets of Dallas, which the President was visiting. All was proceeding
normally, the limousine traveling at about 15 miles per hour, when out of the blue
President Kennedy pulled out a semi-automatic rifle which he'd hidden under his
(bullet-proof) vest and opened fire.

Whirling about and connecting with great precision, the President slew an array of
variously positioned gunmen, confirmed as such since all bodies found possessed
loaded firearms. These included a sniper located in an upper floor of the Texas
School Depository Building, identified as Lee Harvey Oswald, known to have been
a government-trained sharpshooter and allegedly involved in various South-of-the
Border covert military operations.
Several of the gunned-down gunmen were situated within an adjacent grass-
covered hillock where numerous spectators were congregated. In the frenetic
news briefing held several minutes later at the airport, which was the motorcade's
destination, President Kennedy referred to the incident as an attempted coup'd''etat,
and stated that a thorough investigation would begin immediately.

Imagine how volatile this time traveler topic could be: what if Hitler hasn't even been born
yet? If people were to find that out, you’d might think there’d be some who'd want to prevent
that, or kill him when he is born (And imagine how suicidal a future-born Hitler would feel
when, say as a youth, he realizes that he must go back and become history‘s worst villain).

Knowing that someone is a time traveler may or may not influence how they are treated, but does
not have any bearing on whether or not they exist then and there. You cannot wish time travelers
away (you can, of course, ask them to leave), nor can you compel their appearance. Conversely, a
time traveler cannot make you appear or disappear by jumping in their time machine and heading
back in time to slay one of your ancestors before they‘ve mated. Because to negate you would
mean negating the cause of the trip (you), and--one cannot have an effect (your disappearance)
without a cause (your existence)—hence it would be an impossible task.

If time travel to the past is feasible, and yet our society today lacks positive public
proof of their current presence here, an explanation is necessary. In fact there are
several possibilities:

1) Humans may never attain the technology. Our high-tech society could blow
itself up (perhaps Armageddon-ishly), dissolve in anarchy/anomie (a la Mad
Max/Dark Angel), fall prey to a marauding and repressive alien/robotic
civilization, or be taken back to the Dark Ages overnight by a major catastrophic
natural disaster such as an asteroid/supernova, or a global disease
pandemic/unstoppable bio-weapon. Global warming/climate change could derail
us, or on the other hand, we may simply run out of fossil fuels before we master
renewable energy sources.

2) Time travel is highly regulated by the governments of the future parties that
invent it, and thus not a widely-utilized toy for joy riders. This may or may not
involve our present-era governments as well. This legislation may come at any
time, and would be a wise, foresighted (with hindsight) deed.

3) By the time we actually invent it, society is so much more enjoyable than today
that nobody then would ever even think of coming here.

4) Society by then is so much more sanitary and disease-free that nobody would
want to risk coming back here with all our infectious diseases and germs.

5) Travel to the past intrinsically scrambles the mind of the time traveler in such a
way that he/she does not carry any future knowledge.

6) Until it's actually a publicly known invention, any person claiming to be a time
traveler will not be believed, considered a prankster or nut by the news media, and
thus unable to make any kind of public disclosure.

7) The human species may be on the road to mass hybridization, in which case, if
the hybridization precedes the invention by us of time travel, anyone coming back
here would be an obvious "ringer", being a hybrid.

8) Time travelers may account for some of the UFO/alien visitation phenomena.

9) Time travelers may tend to be secretive. They could be effectively

indistinguishable from the rest of society. They're not going too walk around
wearing a T-shirt saying "Hey, y'all look at me, I'm a time traveler!"

10) The attainment of invisibility technology (or de facto invisi-tech like

miniaturization, wormhole viewing, FTL spinning, and multidimensionality)
precedes or accompanies time travel.

11) By the time we actually invent time travel, we're smart enough to decide not to
use it at all--at least not to the past.

12) We're not smart enough when we invent time travel--using it--and thereby
causing an irreconcilable discontinuity in space-time, effectively ending the
progression of the world as we know it by putting us in a kind of
Sisyphean/Promethean state.

13) Time travelers can't get here because, when they try, they inevitably get routed
to an alternate time track.

14) Time travel is largely outlawed in the future--which means only the outlaws
use it. As such, they are unlikely to make themselves identifiable or come forward,
effectively turning themselves in.

Visionary Time Travel

Looking for historical references to time travelers: in the Old Testament of the
Bible, Daniel, near his book's end, is told by "one who looked like a man/man's
hand...(to) close up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end. Many
will go here and there to increase knowledge" (Daniel ch.10 v.16--ch.12 v.4).

Anti-Christ as Time Traveler?

"The inhabitants of the Earth ...will be astonished when they see the Beast because
he once was, now is not, and yet will come" (Revelations 17 v.8).

Seemingly anachronistic human footprints found alongside ancient dinosaur trails

could be indicative of time traveler activity to prehistoric times. It isn’t more of a
stretch to posit the ability of future people to travel back in time than to posit that
humanoids were naturally occurring in the era of dinosaurs and went underground
for about 60 million years before reemerging. So it is quite conceivable that time
travelers have walked among the dinosaurs.

An issue regarding carbon-14 dating of artifacts is how old would something from
the future seem if taken to the past and left there. Since there is nothing inherent in
time travel that causes things to age, the artifact would simply add the number of
years it spent in the future to the number of years spent in the past. It's like
transplanting a tree--count the rings. That's the age.

A future human time traveler's footprints may be virtually

indistinguishable from those of contemporary or early man. It
might take considerable effort to ascertain if skeletal remains
were from future people.

Another take on human intelligence is that our brains are more

advanced/sophisticated than we realize due to interbreeding
with time travelers, which likewise explains the dramatic
increase in actual brain size that occurred early in our species'
development.

That sudden and inexplicable Great Leap Forward in human brainpower some
40,000 years ago could have been a result of ETI steward intervention, possibly
utilizing, via time travel, future generations of people--interbreeding them. Or it
simply may have been a matter of human time travelers doing it, with the consent
(tacit or overt) of ETI stewards.

Time travelers from the future may have gone back to

prehistoric times and interbred w/ our forefathers—those whom
their research efforts determined were the progenitors—in order
to implicate all of us in their excursions. So that if we
should ever discover their activities—in our own time or through
historical inference—these time travelers, by claiming to be our
half-ancestors, might hope to mitigate our consternation—albeit
in a manner that might reinforce the dismay of some.

It's possible if somewhat paradoxical that without the intervention of time travelers in early
human history, people might still be about as sophisticated as cavemen. Time travelers from the
future would have brought larger brain size, and technical knowledge, although they could only
do so much, needing to work with the materials at hand (not wanting to give away their identity
as beings from the future).

There is a potential major problem with physical time travel, along the lines of
what is typically thought about regarding aliens: infectious disease through
exposure to microorganisms for which one has no immune defense. Imagine some
of us going back to the Middle Ages—we wouldn't have a chance. So many
diseases that have been eradicated in our time would be in full bloom then.
If you thought that modern international travel entailed a lot of shots, a journeyer to
pre-vaccination eras would likely feel like a pin cushion and still probably
wouldn’t last long unless wilderness-oriented. As the history of disease control is a
well-documented matter of public record, it's clear why future people would prefer
coming to this era. Consider the issue of preserving, for example, the smallpox virus: from a
time traveler’s perspective, one should keep a sample of everything. But should their interest be
ours? Of course, any native person brought here now from the past would likely be
quarantined indefinitely.

The itinerant time traveler lifestyle is not going to be everybody's cup of tea. A
same-time world traveler has a rough enough go of it--cultural and language
barriers, zenophobia, jet lag, harassment by airport officials, etc. Hence the likely
preference for invisibility and/or anonymity.

It’s difficult to completely rule out the possibility of unscrupulous persons/brigands

getting access to time travel technology and coming back here now surreptitiously
for sport or to pillage. And even if they don't, it's conceivable that some
governments of the time traveling future will countenance clandestine activity in
their pre-invention past. Time traveler doings may be woven into the fabric of mankind's past
history—that cannot be changed. But we may wish to consider whether we want this sort of
situation to continue.

Up to now, time travelers have potentially been rather like party crashers who've managed to slip in
somehow and possibly even dominated the party because no one could tell them apart from the rest
of the crowd, or if so this information has been suppressed. If their proliferation is brought into the
open, a regulatory framework can emerge.

We might be well-advised to legislate now to control the phenomenon: that would

be proactive. It's a can't-lose proposition to simply require them to register with the
authorities or leave. It may in fact be such legislation that has protected us,
retroactively, heretofore.

Misinformation about the Future of a Nation

Most time travelers, if law abiding, would probably leave rather than register if given that
ultimatum, since they would fear being detained and interrogated by the authorities. Some might
just make stuff either out of a sense the future shouldn't be revealed or simply because they don't
know all the answers yet wish not to appear ignorant. These lead to the chance that people would
anticipate things that never occur, resulting in a misperception that the future is malleable/spoilable.
And what if a time traveler were from several hundred or even thousand or more years ahead of our
time? The world of theirs might be so many trends, developments, chains of events removed from
this time that, unless these time travelers were historical experts, they would not have very
satisfying answers for a lot of questions. For instance, “What is going on in Country X in your
time?” “It doesn't exist anymore.” “ What became of it?” “To tell the truth I’ve never heard of the
place.” (They go to a map and the location is pointed out) "Oh, well, that whole area is underwater
now...”

Of course, conspiracy theorists may suspect that the authorities are already under
the control of future people. This argument could be used to explain why some
influential persons have publicly downplayed the possibility of time travel. The
great astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, virtually admitted to being a “part of a
government cover-up of time travel” in a magazine. article. He has since reversed
himself and acknowledged that time travel could be real.

Not having at least some preliminary regulations in place prior to the actual
inception of time travel is like installing a computer with no anti-virus protection.
We should pass legislation as soon as possible regulating time travel. You don’t
wait until after your computer is infected to put up firewalls. In this day and age,
continued official indifference to scientific arguments for the existence of time
travel in the universe could well be construable as complicity.

The argument that we need not worry about time travelers because we have no
evidence of their infiltration ignores their ability to fly under the radar. And if
there are no time travelers here now it may only be because we do in fact decide to
regulate it--and the effects of that decision include forbidding their presence in our
past and present. It's better to act preemptively than to be complacent about
something so powerful.

Time Traveler Mischief: The Brain Replacers

Time travelers may be the real vampires of our world. Those future people
would be going back to times like now and inserting themselves into those of
us they'd like to role-play. They'd pop their brains into the target's skull and
thus take on a new life in a different time. They'd be essentially immortal as
they'd have developed means for keeping their brain from deteriorating (it
may be largely synthetic). So they'd just go from victim to victim--discarding
ageing bodies so as to remain forever young.

As most future people will likely be satisfied by virtual reality fantasies, it

shouldn't be the standard modus operandi for normal, law-abiding future
people to come to times like ours and monkey around with stuff. There'll
probably be strict laws against such, and safeguards with equipment. But
where there's a will, there's often a way.

Bridge Scenario
Controversy erupts on planet Earth as the invention of time travel, first definitive
Extraterrestrial contact, and the potential end of human dominion seem to be on the verge
of occurring virtually simultaneously. The ruckus brings future time travelers here,
particularly as they may soon be able to go back and forth at will. Alien stewards,
meanwhile, are rumored to be considering plans to convert much of Earth into a sort of
nature preserve. They assert themselves because they are tired of human abuse of the
planet, which has reached a critical stage.

Some of the future people, hoping to somehow change the situation but realizing the
Extraterrestrials' superiority, have escaped in a time machine to the era preceding the
takeover to try to prevent it. These time travelers focus on disrupting the lives of those
persons whose scientific work provided a theoretical opening for the aliens. But the
targets, tending to be very resilient, manage to stay pretty much on schedule. Assistance is
provided to them by telepathic contact, the will of God, and the fundamental principle that
the past is largely fixed. Like water seeking its level, the flow of activities finds a way
around all obstacles, thereby thwarting the would-be thwarters.
Chapter 6

MEET THE WEAVERS

At Home In the Universe

The world is filled with a bright glowing foam that lights up our path like a
thunderous tome;
The Ones who built their home like they best
must be quite very so brilliant I guess.
(lyrics for a song, to be delivered "Munchkin-style")

ETI Dreamworker (Passages from a Diary): Week One

Some honest alien abduction stories may be telepathically-induced, mental
experiences--not any less real for that, as the ETIs causing such abduction dreams
might well exist. They could be approaching us this way as a prelude to actual
physical contact--a means of breaking the ice, although the aliens acting in the night
vision may not necessarily be the same as those directing it.

Jane is the name of a sympathetic alien figure who came to me one night in a dream.
She was light-green in complexion with a rather sweet disposition, a round head and
big eye(s). I tried to think up a few cute rhymes for her name, and what I came up
with was "plane Jane", "strange Jane", "spare-some-change Jane", and "rearrange
Jane" (the last one not to rearrange her, rather that she is a rearranger of
things/matter).

She gave me a special massage using a bunch of little crackling, rolling balls of
electricity that felt really good. Jane indicated to me via a reference to the glimmering
starry belt she was wearing that she was from the thickly star-saturated Milky Way
belt of the night sky. So she's an intragalactic....I figure we'll see each other again.
Wormholing: Week Two
My wormhole-esque experience over the weekend: I had the sensation that my body
was becoming elastic, tapered and being sucked down into the bed. This happened
during a lucid sleep period in which I was semi-awake. It was rather fascinating, a bit
mystifying, not really scary, sort of like being on a smooth roller coaster in the G-
force sense, or inhabiting one of those Chagall painting where the people are floating
through the air.

I had a vision of the world as utterly riddled with countless numbers of wormholes,
most of them rather small.

What’s going on? Is it possible for one to be a time traveler in pre-time travel era?
Perhaps being taken while sleeping and brought back to (more or less) the same time
and bed place.
Tabloid headline: Man Wakes Up Covered with Tattoos (he thinks aliens may have done
it)

Now Back to You, Jane: Week Three and Beyond

Dream AM: Jane had evidently taken me on a trip to her home planet. I awoke
shortly before dawn, and looking out the window observed a brilliant stretch of the
galactic plane, a lengthy luminous belt of stars such as our view of the Milky Way
only much brighter, and so tightly packed together that individual stars were barely
distinguishable. Also evident was a band of dust along the plane's midsection. I
stepped outside with Jane and beheld, furthermore, an enormous spiral galaxy
reminiscent of the Andromeda Galaxy, only it was so close it covered roughly
the area of a large constellation.

At the time of this jaunt with Jane, I was unaware of the destined coming
together of our Milky Way Galaxy with the Andromeda--a localized anomaly
in this expanding universe. So when I happened to find out about that some
months later, it occurred to me that this resplendent vision I'd had of the night
sky could have been for real--a few billion years from now. I took this to be a
demonstration of Jane's time travel skills, as well as her sense of wonderment.

The Return
When you time travel via alien transport wormholes: when you come back,
you are generally returned to precisely the same place and time that you left,
possibly a few seconds before just in case there are complications.
Consequently, reports of "missing time" may indicate something gone awry,
or else abductors with poor time management skills. Some instances of deja
vu could be a result of being put back a bit early.
If for some reason the benevolent alien put-back misses the present instant,
that wormhole may close up of its own accord (as an energy conservation and
security measure).

At that point, it becomes expedient to put you back wherever that may be so
as to avoid having things happening to your temporary self (a kind of dummy
or shell—on automatic pilot) that you yourself would have no memory of later
since that real you is still in the wormhole foyer. Perhaps that's to be chalked
up to the learning curve, as one may have balked about coming back.

However, as the conditions might not be right everywhere for a wormhole to

be opened, it’s conceivable that the alien escort would thereby need to follow
your stand-in around until reaching a suitable location for popping the real
you back into "reality." Hence, the advantage of planning to stay in one's
room during expected travel periods and subsequently widening the circle—to
house, yard, block, neighborhood, etc.—while avoiding hazardous situations
like driving the car or operating heavy machinery.

There may be an assortment of largely inactive or inaccessible people-sized

wormholes scattered here and there. Many have rarely, if ever been opened,
but could become a much of a pipeline as something like the Egyptian
pyramids, given a reason for that. Depending on the sensitivity of the location
and the jurisdictional authority, “mothballed" or “virgin" wormholes can
more or less readily be opened. Picture a deflated balloon with two openings.

Certain wormholes may be utilized in a part-way open manner--as sensory

conduits. Something like a fine mesh netting would enable one to see, smell
and hear through the seam while preventing an intruder from actually going
through it. There may well be "escape hatch" wormholes that are kept
permanently accessible, perhaps after a fashion, such as occasionally
encountered inadvertently by boats and airplanes in the Atlantic Ocean's
Bermuda Triangle.

Out-of-body travel is found in the literature of 19th century novelist George

Eliot. Her title character in the rustic “Silas Marner was a weaver who
experienced habitual episodes of catalepsy. Of this trance-like state, Eliot's
narrator says "there might be such a thing as a man's soul being loose from
his body, and going out and in, like a bird out of its nest and back," The
narrator adds, rather suspiciously, "that was how folks got over-wise, for they
went to school in this shell-less state to those who could teach them more than
their neighbors could learn with their five senses and the parson."

Tabloid headline: Sleepwalker Wakes Up in Another Town (Evidently having

flagged down a cab)

Sleeping Arrangements
How to time travel through wormholes--methods: positioning may be important.
Try going to a place you know you were at in the past. Fall asleep there. This could
be sufficient to create a roundtrip passageway, although it may be necessary that
you actually slept there the prior time as well.

As for traveling ahead, it might simply require accurately projecting one's

future whereabouts. This should be rather easy for somebody who spends
much of their life in the same house, but more difficult for most people who do
not. They would need to ascertain and maintain an alternate stable site over
the years—say a particular suite at a well-established hotel.

Inhabitations
If it's possible to connect mentally over time with oneself in this manner, what
about with others? This might partly explain why so many people want to
know where George Washington slept. Obviously, Mt. Vernon is the chief
place, but tourists are not permitted to sleep in his bed there. They must find
inns and other homes where he reputedly stayed on occasion, or go to the sites
of former military encampments like Valley Forge.

When two or more wormholing ETIs want to get together they can probably
use live humans as vessels. The rendezvouers just need to maneuver their
respective transporters close enough to interface—like the Apollo-Soyuz
spacecraft did, only more briefly.

The Plane, Boss, the Plane

When seeking to understand unfamiliar realms, the dimensionally-challenged
Flatlander situation--a society of length and width but no height--is a good tool for
drawing analogies. Let's take an average Joe Flatlander--who we'll call Page. Fancy
Page's height-less neighborhood in Flatland suddenly intersecting, in a parallel
fashion, a 3-D world in the vicinity of an airport runway. Situate Page's world plane
up in the air a bit, so that aircraft would pass through it either ascending or
descending--depending on whether they're taking off or landing.

Now Page is an astute observer in the 2-D world. So she might, after seeing several
airplanes pass through, interpret the tilted (up or down) fuselage shape as a moving
oval, and the wings as a behavioral trait akin to extending one's arms.

Out of the Blue

But the rather abrupt appearance and disappearance of these oval objects would be
troubling. Where did it go? Page is puzzled. Things generally don't just appear or
disappear in Flatland out of nowhere. They've got to approach you from some
direction or other, unless they're hiding behind something. They don't just pop into or
out of existence.

Page proceeds to Flatland City and attempts to communicate the unfathomable to

fellow Flatlanders who are incredulous. The whole episode is written off by most as a
hallucination, since Page has no "rational" explanation for it—using the accepted
physics of Flatland.

But Page happens to have an old college friend who happens to be delving into
some rather unconventional realms of Extra-Flatlander physics while teaching at
The University of Pane, and alas, it turns out that cutting edge theoretical
physicists have been postulating just the sort of thing Page experienced.

We are in a similar situation today with respect to wormholes, higher dimensions,

and time travel. Until recently, they were considered sheer fantasy. But most
leading physicists are generally in agreement now that they are real (11 or so
dimensions) or at least possible (wormholes, time travel).

Page’s Flatlanderish perception of an airplane taking off as being some sort of

disappearing act sounds like how modern physicists envision a wormhole
operating. Yet for those beings accomplished at it, transportation via wormholes is
no more bizarre than an airplane is to us. The questions concern how we can
access these other realms and whether we are blocked by our inability to construct
adequate devices to do so or will be able to piggyback on advanced ETI
technology.

The Drake Equation and Kardashev’s postulates regarding intelligent extraterrestrial

civilizations--disccussed in the first chapter--are both products of the early 1960's , a
time when even the Moon seemed pretty far away. So it's not surprising that they
concern themselves with only our Milky Way--treating it as an island without much
likelihood of contact with outside civilizations. The distances between most
galaxies were seen as too vast to be bridged to any effect.

But a civilization capable of colonizing and/or surveying their entire galaxy will
probably not stop there if there is any way to proceed. It's rational to expect highly
advanced beings to have developed sophisticated means of transportation,
communication and control. These will have been achieved by the likes of
wormhole technology, by which one creates shortcut passageways between
distant points in space-time. Wormholes may sound farfetched for us now,
but that’s probably roughly comparable to how our present-day equipment
would seem to our own predecessors.

Caesar Commercialized
Take classical Rome, for instance, and then imagine giving Julius Caesar a
demonstration of modern telecommunications technology. With the pushing
of a few buttons, in a matter of seconds, he could communicate with imperial
administrators near and far, and even hold a videoconference with a bunch of
them at a prearranged time. Not in his wildest dreams had he even conceived
of anything so incredible! And everybody had been so impressed with his “all
roads lead to Rome” network of messenger highways.

Many physicists now believe that wormhole/domesticated black hole technology

will accomplish great things for the society that masters them. This would enable a
thriving Kardashev Type III civilization--in control of their home galaxy--to move up to
Type IV—in command of their own supercluster of galaxies. It should be possible to
continue the progression to Type V—universal dominion. Ditto for advancing to Type
VI--in command of a stable of universes. And finally on to Type VII--total control over
everything. Furthermore, somewhere along the progression, one likely develops the
ability to make universes.

Granted, at every level along the way, only the more proficient societies will proceed
further; the others will more or less plateau and a few might self-destruct or get taken
out by an extraterrestrial event (e.g. asteroid, supernova, gamma-ray burst, rocky
comet, solar flare-up). But if just one civilization has successfully obtained Type III
capability within our Milky Way Galaxy, or gained Type IV standing within our
supercluster of galaxies, or reached Type V status in our universe, or attained Type VI
in a nearby universe, or achieved Type VII power anywhere, then humanity—a mere
Type 0.7 (estimated)—is by definition now in their domain.

In fact, Type III+ civilizations are probably mostly benevolent, playing a nurturing
role to a large extent as there is very little that could actually threaten them, and in
order to have gotten that far they would need to be of a cooperative disposition. This
includes a respect for all life, great and small.

In the earlier times, a few billion years ago, the situation was up for grabs and so the
race was on to develop the best technology for maintaining security. Once that was
settled—on galactic and universal levels—and any power-sharing arrangements were
worked out, an overall sense of tranquility would likely prevail. Consequently, any
big battles for dominance are almost certainly ancient history, at least within our own
universe.

Every life-bearing planet in a cosmos like ours may be assigned a steward

who is responsible for monitoring the situation there. Should intelligence
emerge, a team of associate stewards would be added to the assignment,
and eventually a greeting party when a civilization takes hold and looks
to the stars. At an opportune and fitting moment, contact occurs
naturally—like lightning.

First public contact is probably, for that planet’s steward, like a doctoral
dissertation, in the sense that there is a premium on originality of ideas/approach,
immersion in the subject, and critical objectivity of analysis.

Sew Brilliant
Posited: The WormHole Web Weavers. This most intelligent, astute and diligent species of
Extraterrestrial has successfully developed total extent space-time travel capability, which
they have utilized to embroider a fabulously intricate network of connective matrices--giving
them the capability to go anywhere in the universe, at anytime, in the blinking of an eye, as
well as exert utter control over all matter(e.g. the movement, disposition, properties
thereof). In sum, absolute and total control over the entire universe has probably hinged on
the successful development of total extent time travel, which would have been developed over
time.

The Hitchhiker Paradigm: endeavoring to obtain highest possible technology for one's
own era. It's possible that early time machines can only go a short ways into the future. So
travelers to the future, assuming time travel is not a lost art, simply need to locate another
time travel apparatus to continue their journey.
That device is probably more sophisticated—so they could go further ahead. Continuing in
this manner, very early time travelers might theoretically get extremely far into the future--
perhaps even billions of years ahead—and then go back, using one of the most highly
developed future mechanisms, taking as much Knowledge with them as possible,
particularly pertaining to space-time travel technology.

The Big Bang Wormhole Web Weavers

It follows that the future technology thus obtained could be utilized anywhere in
time, even the remote past. To take this scenario all the way to its logical
consummation, the most sophisticated know-how of the future could be applied to
the infinitely dense, tiny concoction which became our Universe via The Big Bang.

The Best Way to Get Ahead--Thread!

An Advanced civilization of beings with outstanding time travel skill journeys far into the
past, to when the Universe is quite small and compact--at, near, and/or possibly even before
the moment of the Big Bang. Then, like a spider, surgeon, or seamstress, they weave together
incessantly all and sundry components of the Universe via an extensive array of wormholes,
which remains useable as the Universe grows and leaves them with the capability of going
just about anywhere on a moment's notice across the "vast" stretches of space. The process
may largely involve embedding the property of wormhole "webocity" into the Big Bang mix.

A key advantage to going all the way back in time, however you do it, is that
the wormholes readily woven then and there can serve as transportation
shortcut springboards for subsequent weaving activities in the larger later
Universe, when matter has coalesced into the familiar forms of, in this
universe, galaxies.

Helping Themselves
It may not be necessary for any wormhole-web-woven universe to be made so
from the ground-level-up. Because the Weavers have likely already made it back
to their own proto-universe via the black-hole hopping method and supervised its
concoction, they, realizing this, would simply need to tap into the network of their
own devising--the ultimate free lunch, perhaps. At any rate, once the Weavers,
having figured out what works, start mass producing universes, the feature of
“wormhole webocity” can be imbued into them (or not, at their discretion).
It's possible that a nano-technological and/or microbiological operation of
precision designing would send a plethora of miniature robots and/or bio-
engineered beings on a majestic wormhole weaving program linking subatomic
particle to subatomic particle with relentless comprehensiveness. A virtually limitless
assortment of invisible wormhole connections might be embroidered into the primordial Universe to
achieve this intricate lacing of the pre-Bang substance, which could be super-cooled to
prevent stitching errors that would otherwise be caused by particle vibration.
The ideal situation would be to make it so that every particle can interact with every other one,
as directly as feasible. Funnelling might be applied to streamline matters. And future
knowledge can be utilized to weave extremely poignant and detailed wormhole bundles in areas
of expected great interest. Basically, one way or another, it should be possible to have
exhaustive coverage of pertinent areas such as life-bearing Earth via a wormhole network, on
various scales from global to continental to county to acre to tabletop to subatomic.
Overall, the project might be so d i f f i c u l t that many tacticians would try it
and f a i l . But as the history of science can attest, trial and e r ro r u l t i m a t e l y
get results. Take what major strides our own society has achieved,
technologically speaking, during the past couple hundred years and envision a
highly intelligent civilization working diligently f o r up to several billion
years ( i f need be) towards mastering their technique. The inevitability of
a wormhole-web-woven Universe thusly becomes evident to the common
sense.

Gauging from mankind's own rate of technological progress and the likely large head-start other
civilizations, it appears virtually certain that at least one highly advanced "alien" civilization in our
universe has succeeded in devising, unlimited omni-directional space-time travel capability. It could be that
many have done so but for the purpose of this argument, the number need only be one.

Furthermore, who was first has assuredly made this achievement evident throughout the space-time
continuum--as all times and places are ultimately accessible to this project-and the matter is already
settled in past, present and future (these three terms being somewhat arbitrary distinctions to begin
with). Being #1, as in sports championships and elections, is a lot more rewarding than being #2, #3, #4, etc....,
i.e. there is one winner, and all of the others are also-rans.

If any single civilization has mastered the art of space-time travel, any-where in this universe, then
everything in existence, anywhere in space-time, is subject to being shaped, shepherded, controlled and
inhabited by them.

The earliest ETIs in our universe have had a considerable head-start. Try to fathom
what's attainable with several billion years of successfully harnessing the potential of
A.I.--integrating it with one's own intellect, and you're looking at beings that are
pretty certain to be many, many, many times--incomprehensibly--smarter than us
now.

In pondering the intelligence of ETI, we should factor-in the apparent

exponential/geometric growth in intelligence which we are on the cusp of—the
virtually limitless information storage and thought generation capability of Quantum
Artificial Intelligence. Just imagine the scientific breakthroughs obtainable from
beings into whom have been downloaded at birth entire disciplines of thought—
something we'll probably be capable of in 50—250 years.
If these ideas sound f a r f e t c h e d , remember we are contemplating the behavior
of the U n i v e r s e 's single most greatly advanced civilization at i t s absolute
pinnacl e, out of likely quadrillions of candidates--a staggeringly mind
boggling intelligence (a quadrillion is a 1 followed by 15 zeros; see
Appendixes A, B and C for derivation of this figure).

UT, The "Ultraterrestrial"

Doubters might here interject that these super-smart creatures must have little interest
in humanity, then. Accordingly, it's in effect the same thing as if they did not exist. One
may counter that, to the contrary, the WormHole Web Weavers' role in our world is
intrinsic. They haven't been especially noticed because people have no experience
otherwise.
If there exists an experimental "control" universe in which these beings are not
engrained in the system, humanity has had no contact with such a place. Mankind's only
frame of reference is the WWW-dominated one being presently occupied and considered
"normal." A better descriptive term for the WormHole Web Weavers, rather than
"extraterrestrial,” might be "UltraTerrestrial Intelligence," (UTI) in the sense that they are
both in and above the world.

Skeptics might say that, if we live in a wormhole-web-woven universe, then where are all the
wormholes?

The answer is that because we are not officially part of the network, the wormholes are largely
inaccessible to us, and maintained beyond our powers of perception. It's like a Christmas tree—say the
one at Rockefeller Center, New York—-all covered with light bulbs before having been turned on.
From a modest distance, if you didn't know about them, you wouldn’t be cognizant of the brilliant
display that might be immanent.

Security!
In this universe, one can feel confident that at least one advanced civilization will
have mastered space-time travel and utilized that to spread out throughout space and
time if for no other reason than to protect their own core civilization by monitoring
potential threats and nipping them in the bud if necessary. The first civilization(s) to
attain this superior space-time travel capability will, therefore, quite surely not ever
disappear but will remain a vigorous, dominant presence for all time.

Imagine taking a tour of an elegantly constructed, furnished and managed mansion-—where the
guide describes everything as though having become that way by chance. Such an assessment
would be questioned. Conventional scientific wisdom, so anxious to steer clear of Theology, has
overlooked the plausible inevitability of genuine genius asserting control over space-time and matter.
For its part, conventional Theology's distaste for matters rigorously scientific, as these often seem
aimed at overthrowing cherished aspects of religious dogma, tends to perpetuate dichotomies, s u c h
a s Creationism vs. Evolution, rather than resolve them.

Metaphysics
So, as neither Physics nor theology has been able by itself to completely explain everything we
marvel at about the Cosmos, one might feasibly suggest that both disciplines have overlooked
one most important feature: the intrinsic involvement of a super-intelligent, ultra-creative,
stupendously powerful space-time traveling extraterrestrial civilization. The discovery of the
WormHole Web Weavers resolves this apparent dichotomy between Science and Religion
concerning ultimate matters.

Deity ETI
God is extraterrestrial, by definition. "Extra" meaning in addition to or beyond,
plus "terrestrial" meaning Earthly, equals "extraterrestrial" that which is in addition
to or beyond the Earth. It's a fundamental aspect of any belief in God. Not every
extraterrestrial is God, but any God must be, among other things, extraterrestrial.

The conventional wisdom that God and ETI are necessarily two separate
phenomena has much to do w/our way of representing them. God is seen as an old
man w/white hair and a beard; ET are viewed as Little Green Men, Grays, ET The
Extraterrestrial, or Martian monsters out of some special effects lab. These are all
fictitious (with the possible exception of Grays).

Omni-Manifestationability
Highly advanced ETIs, such as the WormHole Web Weavers, are probably quite capable of presenting
any physical presence they desire, or be invisible. They likely can change their appearance quite
dramatically even from instant to instant, as effortlessly as a person typically creates the diverse sounds
of speech from phoneme to phoneme.

Universal Pictures
To say that the ways of God are unknown is not to say they're unknowable. The
split between theology and physics in recent centuries has come as mankind’s
knowledge of the extent and processes of the Universe has grown while our
conception of God has stagnated. Science has kicked God out of modern man’s
life, but to truly understand the big picture, it may be necessary to bring God back
in. Like when you’re trying to understand "Starry Night", it's useful to know that it
was painted by Van Gogh.
Surviving the Scientific Revolution
The absurd yet widely-held notion of God as a non-scientific being is an artifact of
human history. Since belief in God preceded the coming of age for science by
many centuries, specific belief systems that had nothing to do with science had
ample time to get well-established in a variety of cultures.

Tradition being rather conservative by definition, the tendency has been for
society’s admittedly incomplete knowledge of God to lag in keeping up with the
times. That’s man’s shortcoming, not God’s. But because of it, since the
Enlightenment, science has assumed believers to be ignorant. But now, with what
we’ve learned about the precision honing of the cosmos, it's becoming
intellectually respectable again to acknowledge higher power(s).

God is spry as well as ancient, hip as well as wise, brilliant as well as loving and
caring. If everything in the Universe is in a constant state of flux, then what right
have mere mortals to insist that Almighty God wear the same face from age to age?
God was not born when humankind discovered Him/Her. God transcends time,
has transcended time, and will continue to transcend time indefinitely.

Monotheism, Not Myotheism

Monotheistic religions that are at odds with each other should be asked “Why?”,
because it doesn’t make logical sense. Opposed sides agree that there is one and only
one God, so either they are all right, in which case they by definition are worshipping
the same Being--just by different names--or they are all wrong, in which case all
would be deluded.

For a believer to be upset about other ethnic groups, nationalities or cultures

worshipping God in different ways, with different rituals and holidays, is a childish,
possessive and irrational approach. It’s like a youngster who can’t stand it when a
parent pays any attention to other siblings, or a spouse who won’t let their partner
have any friends.

One God, Many Faces/Hats

We wouldn’t expect a civilization on another planet to have the exact same “take” on
God as any of us do. We would likely consider any belief system fascinating. So
why can’t we feel the same way about our fellow human beings? God, though One
unified Force, is a complex entity, and so far superior to us that we have difficulty
understanding God in totality. We are like the proverbial group of five blind men
trying to comprehend an elephant, each touching the big pachyderm in one spot--it
helps to compare notes.

An all-powerful God is quite able and quite likely to reveal Him-/Herself to a variety
of peoples and eras in ways which are suitable for them. So because any two
worshipers probably have a slightly different take on God doesn't mean that one is
worshipping the true God while the other is worshipping an imposter.

Rather, each is worshipping the same God in a personal way, based on experience. Live
and let live. Of course, in a world with limited material resources, conflicts tend to arise where
societies rub up against each other. People tend to assume that God will play favorites--them,
naturally--confusing God’s interest in their spiritual welfare with their own interest in their own
material welfare--at the expense of those other believers.

The world of the 20th century was torn by a rift between the scientifically-
minded and the religiously-minded. This has turned out to be a false
dichotomy. There is plenty of room in science for God, and plenty of room in
religion for rationality. When we now ponder the act of Creation by a Big
Bang, we can see the possibility of it being a conscious act of God. When we
consider the processes of natural selection and evolution, we can in the 21st
century understand that our God may well have designed this universe to
feature life--green-lighted to improvise. This scientifically-adept God would
thus be an Extraterrestrial being intent upon making a universe where life
should flourish.

Furthermore, the natural world and the spiritual world need not be viewed as
mutually exclusive domains. Organic beings can evolve into spiritual beings,
and/or be visited by them. Spirituality may be seen as potentially involving
technological forces utilized by powerful superhuman beings.

When we grasp that this universe is biocentric and not anthropocentric--that

it's focused on life in all its splendor rather than just human life--and that our
"civilization" has arisen after the universe was long underway (about 13.7
billion years following the Big Bang of Creation).

then it becomes rather certain that humanity is more like the bakers'-dozenth
child of a very large family than a lonely orphan. And so we've got some
getting up to speed to do.

God is a great scientist--with abilities far beyond what we consider possible.

God has a tremendous mastery of science so advanced that we do not
recognize it as such. Much of what we call "supernatural" is science by God.

The Weaver God

I call them the Big Bang WormHole Web Weavers, and they are Whom one is referring to here
when speaking of both God and the highest form of extraterrestrial intelligence. The Weavers are
the Supreme Beings, Who have mastery over this universe, among other things, and in such a
way as to be intricately involved with it throughout all space and time.

The WWW are capable of doing whatever they want, whenever they want,
wherever they want, to whomever they want in space-time. And they're just as
adept in the other 7 or so dimensions that we are oblivious to. They possess complete
mastery of mind over matter--omnipotency. The thoroughness of their intellectual
activities makes them omniscient, and their use of such for travel
enables them to be present at any point in time--omnipresent.

God's technology probably includes the use of invisibility, FTL, wormholes, black
holes, 11-dimensional activity, and so on. In other words, what we perceive as the
unexplained has an explanation in advanced technology. Our prayers are
answerable because God has the technological capability to answer them.

The Weavers are probably responsible for most legitimate metaphysical,

supernatural, paranormal, occurrences. A diverse array of phenomena--guardian
angels, miracles, answers to prayer, deja vu, karma good and bad, poetic justice,
it's a small world, telepathy, acts of God, cosmic design, jinxes, hexes, voodoo,
spells, omens good and bad, what goes around comes around, luck good and bad, ESP,
"shadow people", ghosts, coincidences, organ transplants with memory, 9 lives, some crop circles,
etc. are all potentially explainable by them.

Q--About how many people would you say have already made contact with
extraterrestrials?

A--As a conservative estimate, I'd say a couple of billion plus.

Q--A couple of what?

A-- The figure is in the billions because anybody who has ever sincerely prayed to God is
included. You see, by definition God is Extraterrestrial. Now that doesn't mean that every
extraterrestrial being who comes around is God or a god. Rather, it means that the one
true God that people of all monotheistic faiths pray to, if existing, is "extraterrestrial."
"Terrestrial" means pertaining to the Earth, and "extra" means over and above and beyond.
Ask believers to describe God and they will doubtless use expressions like: God rules over
the Earth from a Heavenly throne up above us; God's greatness is beyond human
comprehension.

Father Knows Best

We 21st Centurians take the concept of our Big Bang universe for granted, but it
wasn’t even proposed until the late 1920’s by Georges LeMaitre, a Belgian priest.
He apparently was the first to actually theorize that the universe began in an
extremely tiny and compact state and has been expanding spatially ever since, at a
varying rate. For this, he is considered to have fathered big bang cosmology,
although the actual term “big bang” was coined by another astronomer--Fred
Hoyle-in a pejorative, if not disparaging way during a 1950 radio broadcast.

The purgatory-esque aspect of ghosts--that they seem to be suffering/troubled/in-

between realms/out of sorts, but not totally despairing or tormented as would be if
in hell or doomed to going there--can support the theory that ETI inhabitors of
humans constitute our souls, and that these are evaluated at the end of each human
life (by higher-up ETIs) in determining their next assignment (or not) a la karma.

Q--Some who’ve examined the Shroud of Turin recently say that it truly seems to
be evidence of a miraculous event. That you don’t get that kind of stain just from
blood drying or by any known fraudulent means of application or photography.
Could the WormHole Web Weavers, acting as God, have raised Jesus from the
dead?

A--Absolutely! The translucent, holographic-like risen image of Jesus recounted in

the Gospels--enabling Doubting Thomas to poke a hand into his abdomen, and to
materialize in a room without detected entry--is within the Weavers’ repertoire of
good deed doing. In his life, Jesus had earned their highest favor, and so was
ascended to forever enjoy their company and join their station.

Spider God
Quoting from The Dictionary of Symbols, the multicultural entry for "spider" goes:
"The Great Mother,...as weaver of destiny, is sometimes depicted as a huge
spider...Moon goddesses are spinners and weavers of Fate. The Cosmic Spider,
(also known as) the Great Spider, or the Great Weaver is also the Creator who spins
the thread of life from its own substance and attaches all men to itself by the thread
of the umbilical cord...(binding) them to, or (weaving) them into, the web of the
pattern of the world.
The spider at the center of the web also represents a world center; it can also either
be the sun surrounded by its rays, radiating in all directions, or the moon as the
life-and-death cycle of the manifest world, or the year, weaving the web of time.”

*Those cultures referenced for representing the spider as “weaver of the world”
include: Egyptian (Neith), Greek (Athene), and Sumero-Semitic (Ishtar).

*Fate, the spinning of destiny, is seen associated with the spider in the Teutonic
(Holda and the Norns), Greek (Persephone, Harmonia and the Fates, the Moirai),
and Sumero-Semitic (Atargatis) cultures.

*Asian weaver/spider-gods include: Inktomi, Kokyangwuti, Tsitsicnako, and

Sussistanako.

*The English classification word for spiders--arachnid--is derived from a demi-god

of Greek mythology--Arachne.

*In some Oceanic islands, it is pointed out, the Old Spider is considered the
Creator of the Universe. This seems rather surprising for people whose lives
revolve around the ocean.

*Hindu and Buddhist culture have viewed the spider as the weaver of the web of
illusion (Maya), and also as the Creator--weaving the thread of existence from
their own substance. Quoting the Mundaka Upanishad “Even as a spider sends
forth and draws in its thread, even so the whole creation arises from the Eternal.”

Fractal Web
An organizational system for travel via wormholes. within a universe: multi-hubs-with-spokes
system. For one just entering this universe, each first-tier hub could be a galactic supercluster,
each spoke from such leading to 2nd-tier hub in a particular galaxy, each spoke from these
leading to 3rd-tier hub representing a particular star system, and so on. The spoke systems
could be spherical on the hub, with possible factoring-in of time component somewhere,
possibly at the outset, or at the final destination, with the former option probably making
more sense.

How the wormhole web likely works spatially for an insider. It’s a series of
wormholes. The first step might be as simple as going to the local bus
stop/subway station. You enter the local wormhole and proceed to a spot
where all of the wormholes in your county meet. You can go from there to
another location in your county or proceed to the next level.
If doing the latter, you will then encounter a meeting hub of all the counties in
your state. So now you can go to one of those counties or proceed to the
subsequent tier. That would be the state level, from which you could travel to
any state of the US or step up. Then you have the international level, the
interplanetary level, the star system level, the galaxy level, the supercluster
level.

A short trip might take about a minute in the wormhole network, a long one
perhaps ten minutes in there. Customized wormholes connecting locations of
high or highly important usage might bypass the multi-hub system.

The Wormhole Web Weavers might utilize their woven network to travel with instantaneity: basically,
time is used as a function for travel purposes, with the most popular time being the beginning
point, or as close to that as is possible, since distances are the shortest then. So what they do is,
wherever they are, go back in time to the beginning, then go in space to the place they want to go,
which is automatically a miniscule distance since all points at that time are packed within a
microscopic-sized space, and then go ahead in time to when they want to be in their destination point,
and they're/there, in the blinking of an eye, connecting any two points in the space-time continuum.

A Wormhole Web Weaver’s network could have at least three main functions:
communication, transportation and conveyance of influence. In this sense it is
like a building where the hallways carry people to and fro from room-to-
room-and the walls (the space behind them) carry the utilities to similar effect.
In terms of layout it is like the circulatory system of an animal in the sense of
accessing every individual cell by means of a hierarchical artery-to-capillary
system. As regards the actual nuts and bolts of wormhole connections and
time, think of piping that's infinitely elastic, thereby capable of extreme
contraction or expansion in the fabric of space-time.

These models may serve primarily as a way for us to think about what can be
achieved via the wormhole. The actual structural underpinnings of a
wormhole system are likely far beyond our powers of comprehension. For
instance, while it’s true that sizeable wormholes as theorized about now by us
would require an enormous amount of energy to keep open for any extended
period of time, it may be surmised that the very best wormhole builders
should be able to overcome this issue--perhaps, say, by pulsating at very high
speeds.

It makes perfect sense for us to speculate on technologies far beyond our

present capability--not only as potential targets for our researchers to steer
for, but also as potentially applied on ourselves and others by those intelligent
beings who have already developed them, given the multi-billion-year
advantage likely enjoyed by numerous civilizations over humanity. We may
be able to enjoy some of the fruits of their technology if we join a universal
system. We may not have to invent everything ourselves, just as we don't all
need to build a car before ever driving one.

Advanced Portal System

The wormholes—more than simple space-time shortcuts—could serve as
delivery systems for all kinds of sophisticated technology. The opening of a
wormhole anywhere might be likened to installing an electrical outlet in your
home—enabling you to plug-in and use a myriad of appliances--anything
from, say, a popcorn popper to an electric guitar.

That‘s right, from Hamilton Beach to Fender Stratocaster. If you can fire it up
Anywhere—in let's say your basement studio apartment—you could pop the
popcorn to somebody w/an appetite for it on the other side of the universe, or
jam w/a band from a distant world. Or use something like a vacuum cleaner
to control the weather elsewhere--thereby demonstrating a great, voodoo-
dollish flexibility in scale. It should be possible for those enabled and so
inclined to exercise control over matter from the submicroscopic level to the
intergalactic level.

Of course, it's inevitable that wormhole technology--like the Fender

Stratocaster and cell-phones---will go wireless. And like "Star Wars"--"may
the Force be with you” the best of the Weavers have probably become so
adept at wormholing and other technologies that these are now a part of their
genetic makeup. So they take the forces with them wherever they go, and
don’t need to commission a “Star Ship” or hunt for a “Star Gate” to transport
them.

Put it all together and there's probably next to nothing that's beyond the
capabilities of the best Wormhole Web Weavers. When you're one of them,
the universe of space-time (and all other dimensions, for that matter) is your
playground, like blue whales frolicking in the deep blue sea--sans harpoons.

Wormholes facilitate the precision application of a plethora of forces which

the Weavers have mastered. They can displace an object, protect as with a
barrier, break a fall, effect change invisibly from a higher dimension, affect
the flight path of an object, manipulate speech articulation and sound waves,
transfer thoughts, and so on.

And the Weavers can interconnect a diverse array of events, objects and
thoughts (events of the mind) throughout space-time, in such a way that defies
conventional notions of timeline causality.

It seems logical to infer that the Wormhole Web Weavers extensively utilize air pressure
differentials in exercising control over universal matter. As the motion of particles can be
influenced by discrepancies in air pressure--for example wind currents, a wing's lift
property, a baseball pitcher's breaking ball--the ability to change pressure translates
into an ability to change the direction in which something is moving and/or induce motion.
WormHole Web Weavers are perfectly capable of "freezing time" so as to make otherwise
difficult-to-achieve results readily accomplishable, say a home run off of that pitched
baseball, for instance. To enable a batter to hit a home run, the Weavers might freeze the
pitch at various points along its trip towards the plate, making slight adjustments in the
ball's trajectory so that it ultimately winds up squarely aligned with the batter's swing
which, likewise, could be tinkered with if so desired.
Good Shepherds
The Weavers may allow things to occur naturally, then rewind, step in to make
telepathic/telekinetic connections, then step back and see how the drama unfolds based
on their hookups. Depending on the disposition of the stewardship, they will at
times influence matters more or less as they see fit, endeavoring to make it appear as
natural as possible. Major interventions of a strictly terrestrial nature are generally
only made in a manner that can be justified as a field experiment, instructive
bifurcation, act of God, potential game over scenario or matter of outright necessity
What might actually be happening when athletes/musicians/etc, get in the so-
called "zone" is that they are relaxing conscious control over certain key
aspects of the activity, thereby enabling the subconscious to take over, which is
capable of being directed by the Weavers.
If any being is capable of creating (and managing) bifurcations of time, that would
be the Wormhole Web Weavers. Basically, the Weavers might allow highly interesting
developments to serve as forks-in-the-road. As bifurcations are not a frivolous matter the Weavers
may become somewhat annoyed with time traveler hijinks, which probably are motivated simply by
a sociobiological desire to spread humanity (in the case of human time travelers) around like an
investor putting assets in a diverse portfolio of stocks, bonds, CD's, bank accounts-- so their eggs
aren’t all in the same basket.

Another possible explanation for some deja vus: the Weavers

decide to allow a bifurcation, but then upon seeing one of them
going quite badly, decide to segue it back into the other. The
process might be likened to a car exiting a freeway whose driver
decides to abort the move before heading up the ramp, and so is
able to merge with the incoming ramp’s traffic onto what is now
clearly the better road.
Of course, in most bifurcations, one doesn’t know right away which
option is the superhighway and which is the dead end. That
highway to heaven might fizzle out in a bridge out or road-closed-
due-to-construction scenario. And of course, much depends on
what the bifurcator is looking for--the quickest route home or a
scenic drive.
But regardless, memories from the detours might remain latent--in
a dormant state until one happens to pass through that particular
area again. The familiarity with it--from the experience that was
ostensibly erased--triggers the deja vu. That time track no longer
exists but it’s still possible to have residual memories from it.

When an experimental bifurcation is unsatisfactory, the project administrators might decide to

fold it back into the original timeline. They would take note of those persons who are off-base
from where they need to be for a smooth segue. They then try to prompt those individuals to go to
where they should be or where they should will be (or if they are already where they should will
be ahead of time to stay there). Because otherwise, someone might have to wake up in a different
place from where they went to sleep in order for the transition to happen. It may be possible for a
segue be accomplished on a sub-planetary level, i.e. piecemeal.

A discontinuity event/collective blackout (a la the TV series V) may be a sort of

deus ex machina segue location in space-time enabling the reconciliation of two or
more time tracks.

Sophisticated connective technology may be combined with any number of the

others that the Wormhole Web Weavers have surely developed to “pull the strings”-
-exert behind-the-scenes control--over, for instance, the weather by utilizing air
temperature and pressure differentials. They can direct a hurricane to make a U-
turn as easily as a child blowing bubbles in a gentle breeze. The Weavers are quite
capable of influencing powerful global geologic phenomena like earthquakes and
volcanoes and such extraterrestrial-based entities as comets and asteroids.

It is hoped that our universe is a largely peaceful place, and one can envision how
a highly mobile wormhole system could serve to deter aggression. Take the
example of the TV program “StarGate SG-7”--where American soldiers are
constantly dashing into their wormhole to put out some brush fire in another corner
of the galaxy, and getting ambushed on the other side in-out--the monumental,
uncamouflaged gates serving as bulls-eyes for the enemy. They're hamstrung by
the anachronistic immobile infrastructure.

But the sophisticated peacekeeper--a mobile wormholing soldier--doesn’t even

need to emerge from protective cover which behaves in a dualistic one-way
manner—sensory data "in-only", military hardware "out-only”--and is in no more
danger of actually getting shot than a kid in a videogames parlor.

One advanced mobility application for the Weavers is sentient being inhabitation.
The Weaver God may be innately in all of our brains. Weavers are not tied to their
body, or anybody's body, for that manner.

The Weavers, being immortal, and being capable of doing more than one thing at a
time, are quite capable of paying attention to, playing with, guiding, even
inhabiting individual beings such as humans. By definition, immortal beings
cannot waste their time. They have "all the time in the world" and then some.

There are enough of them that they can easily distribute themselves roughly one
per person on as humble a place as Earth as a sort of project/program. Mostly, of
course, they are not detectable by our conventional five senses since they don't
want to intrude. Most of the time they're just hanging out, monitoring the thoughts
and behavior of humanity. It's probably reminiscent of how we monitor wild
animals with tracking devices and "ani-cams"---ramped up.

Sometimes they may utilize their abilities in ways that, while routine for them, may
appear to the human carrier, and perhaps others, as paranormal/supernatural. They
might also use humans to perfect/train/demonstrate certain advanced skills "in the
field". And they may play various games with each other a la Dungeons &
Dragons--using our reality as their virtual reality. It's possible that we are to the
Wormhole Web Weavers what virtual reality avatars are for us.

Rules of the Game regarding Weavers inhabiting people, with respect to

karma/nine lives: each Weaver will have, say, nine lives on average, per person
inhabited. But that Weaver is free to divvy those lives up as sees fit. An individual
deemed interesting might merit 12 lives; offsettingly, a bore could get counted out
at six lives. Of course, Weavers all have their own criteria for allocating lives, so
there is no litmus test that an observer could used in estimating the number of lives
any particular person will wind up yielding.

Humans of particular
interest/greatness/power/character/goodness/beauty/charisma/etc. would, naturally,
merit more intensive scrutiny. Some of these--the very best--might well be lifted
up to join with the Weavers--become one of them/one with them. Such as in the
Biblical accounts of Jesus and Elijah, and others. A Weaver guardian angel, acing
as a best-case scenarioist, might lead a person on a strange journey. the shortest
path to a desired objective may involve some ups and downs.

Q--You've talked about human society being transplanted to

another star system in the future. I’m sure that’s all doable over
a billion years or so, but what if the Sun starts acting up next
week, what could be done then? What about shifting Earth’s
orbit so it’s further from the Sun?

Desperate Measures: “Chop, Chop”

A--Widening the orbit, as a stopgap measure, might work for a
little while under some circumstances. Now if the Sun was
about to flare-up dangerously, and ETI overseers had hoped to
get us out of here, but we weren’t ready, they might wormhole
Earth to another similar star, although we would notice the
difference quite readily in the night sky and freak out unless
we'd been told what had happened.

Q--How might this sort of emergency relocation project be

accomplishable?

A--Ideally, you would want to be able to "wave a magic

wand" in such a way that the planet, in its entirety, is
instantaneously transported somewhere else. The achievement of this
sort of engineering feat would likely be rather complex for human understanding.
It may involve something like finding a way to get the wormhole opening
extremely wide--the way a snake swallows prey larger than itself--or else dicing
the planet up and reconfiguring it on the other side.

If they feel like they've done about all they can in their universe, or just want to
experiment around a bit, it seems reasonable to surmise that a society highly
accomplished in space-time locomotion technique could probably locate an
appropriate beginning point for another universe. I say appropriate here because to
begin a new universe at a random location inside one's own could be considered
somewhat inappropriate, particularly if the formulator is inexperienced, as well as
dangerous.
A universe-within-a-universe risks overtaking its predecessor, especially if the first
one is expanding rather slowly or contracting. Like a drag racer entering a
metropolitan commuter bottleneck, the result could be devastating collisions.
Hence, it could be advisable to pitch a proto-universe into the nearest black hole--
let the thing get started in there, where it cannot come back out towards you and
“blow up in your face.”

It would be a fascinating story to be born in a black hole, but one

could probably participate in the creation of a new universe simply
by somehow mingling subatomic particles of a new universe with
oneself--perhaps by swallowing it and hence, digesting/absorbing
some and passing out the rest. It sounds like a rather hair-raising
experience, but such opportunities don’t grow on trees.

Back to the notion of being born in a black hole—imagine being

raised, actually living there for an extended period of time.
Going even further, fancy a black hole ecosystem, where
creatures who opt to abide there develop in ways adaptive to
this environment. All sorts of extreme beings might be found in
a maturely-niched black hole environment.

For those concerned about over-/under-crowding issues: Universes can be conveniently classified right
off the bat according to how much stuff they’re made of--a finite or an infinite amount--and how vast
they are--bounded or unbounded.

*Infinite and Bounded: a misfit universe. If you thought that sending the Titanic into the North Atlantic
in early April was the ultimate Recipe for Disaster, then you’ve got another thing coming.

Either Off the Wall or On the Rebound

Imagine a universe as a room filled with rubber balls that have been tossed in there willy nilly and where
no speed is lost upon ricocheting. With a decent number of balls, and a decent amount of time, any ball
will have hit at least one other, and yet as the odds of a direct head-on collision are rather small, they will
mostly be rebounding from glancing blows at an observation time--experiencing “English”.

Now perhaps if you were to shoot the balls out of an array of cannons, spaced them apart and aimed them
all in parallel lines, there could be a significant period of time during which the balls would not collide
(like air show pilots doing the “Delta”)...but to perpetuate that you’d probably need to program the balls
with evasive movement capability.

*Infinite and Unbounded: Imagine a universe like some little trinket that a girl keeps in a drawer of a
dresser in her bedroom, taking out once in a while to look at. And what if her world were likewise a kind
of exquisite collectible that another girl keeps in a similar dresser drawer in her bedroom. Who lives in a
world that also happens to make up the constituent particles of an ornate itty-bitty gizmo that a young
boy keeps in his dresser, and so on ad infinitum.

*Finite and Bounded: How enjoyable it would be might depend on how tight the fit is. One could feel
claustrophobic near the border.

*Finite and Unbounded: It just seems like a lot of the space would be wasted.

We don’t know for sure whether our universe is finite or infinite, bounded or unbounded. If it is finite
and/or bounded we could conceivably find that out someday. If it is infinite and/or unbounded we may
never know.

Yo-yo Universe?
Another parameter, at least for unbounded universes, is whether they’re a forever-
expander or an oscillator. The appeal of the “Slinky” model lies in the possibility
of being reincarnated through another Big Bang--and another, theoretically ad
infinitum down an endless staircase. Edgar Allen Poe, in the mid-19th century
essay "Eureka!", was among the first to propose such an outcome, albeit in a non-
technical manner.

The Inevitable Whimper

In practice, each version of a yo-yo universe may be a bit of a long shot. A
universe could happen to yo-yo a couple of times in a row, but sooner or later the
streak will likely be broken. In a natural system--without some sort of intervention
or programming--no two yo-yo contractions will be exactly the same. Hence, no
two subsequent expansions will be identical. There are probably many more
outcomes that either contract right away or wind up expanding eternally.

Not Exactly Gulliverean, But As Disturbing

Our universe is considered one of the latter type. But if universal expansion were an unchecked
phenomenon, then, one might think that everything--including us and our surroundings--would be
getting progressively larger at the same rate. If gravity were similarly changing, would anyone
who is part of the Universe (so also expanding) notice? Wouldn’t all instruments
for measuring stuff, similarly, be getting bigger? What exactly is an "inch", when
you get right down to it? For instance, one might say that it's the measurement of
16 sixteenths of an inch on a ruler. But a 16th of an inch is simply some arbitrary
amount of space in-between two parallel lines on your ruler. So an inch could be
any size — as big as the universe, as small as the smallest perceivable subatomic
unit, and neither you nor I could tell the difference.
A Mixed Bag
The explanation, according to astrophysicists, is that three of the four fundamental forces of nature-
-the strong and weak force, which are subatomically active, and gravity--manage to prevent that
expansion on every level up to the supercluster (there is some doubt as to whether the galactic
clusters within a supercluster tend to be gravitationally bound together or not). Mysterious "dark
matter" may be a substantial factor in intragalactic cohesion.
The reason the ultimate fate of our universe is expected to be highly dispersed is
due to the powerful outward propulsiveness of pervasive dark energy, which seems
to be out-influencing gravity’s inward pull, as far as cosmologists can now tell, on
a grand scale.

Cosmic acceleration is believed to have begun about five billion years ago. This
roughly corresponds to the likely emergence of the first super-intelligent
civilization(s). It's like a marker, and perhaps also a tactic to make the task of
unification more difficult for any johnny-come-lately potential usurpers.
If the Big Bang theory is true, then there could be a point in space-time where
ancient light from the expanding universe pivots, around and starts closing in on
us the older it is. Because, one might think, as you keep looking further and
further back in time the size of the universe is smaller and smaller, continuing to
shrink until it’s inside of you if you don't catch it. So perhaps, in looking for the
Big Bang, we need not look farther than ourselves.

The Big Bang was everywhere in the Universe all at once. The problem with
seeing it today, according to astronomers, is that there's a kind of curtain around
100 thousand to 400 thousand years after the Big Bang, through which we cannot
see to earlier times. Apparently, stuff was packed together too tightly to be seen.
Although we can detect the ubiquitous cosmic background radiation from that
earlier time, it's mostly in the infrared spectral range.
Chef Ramsay
Making a universe may be likened to preparing an elaborate delicious meal. It
takes all the right ingredients in all the right places at all the right times and with
all the right heat settings at just and for just the right times, along with the
appropriate stirring/flipping to spell "success" in the cooking department. Then
there are the matters of portioning, presentation, along with considerations of
service, furnishings, decor, lighting, acoustics--particularly if you're doing this
professionally.
Our "Biothropic" Universe
You’ll need to decide how many fundamental forces your universe will have and
what their relative strengths will be. For instance, in ours there are four basic
forces: electromagnetism, gravity, strong, and weak. The latter two operate on the
subatomic level; the former two are more macro-oriented, and in fact have
infinitely vast ranges. The relative strengths and ranges of the fundamental forces,
and other factors such as the initial ratio of matter to antimatter (one billionth part
more matter than antimatter) were key in determining how our universe turned
out. If any of several values were even slightly different, one or more of the
things essential for life that we take for granted--galaxies, a variety of star types,
inhabitable planets--would not have been possible.

Consider all of the things that could go wrong in the preparation of a fine meal if
the head chef was a monkey or an absent-minded "drunken ass", and cover every
scale of the universe--from the subatomic all the way up to superclusters of
galaxies.

Tough Love
For example, note the exquisitely balanced key roles played by supernovas and
their frequent outcome--black holes--in our universe. Though dreaded for their
destructive power, without them the universe would likely be formless and barren.
Supernovas in their explosive heat are responsible for the forging and spewing out
of much of the heavier elements (Red giant stars also contribute some) that are
necessary for the formation of rocky planets like Earth which are capable of
providing a foothold for life (including oceanic) as we know it.

Conglomerating super-massive black hole jets also do a substantial amount of

spreading fertile materials around. Moreover, these big black holes are probably
integral to galactic structuring--along with dark matter--by serving as gravitational
focal points--both within and between galaxies.

But if there were slight differences in the relative balances of the fundamental
forces, then supernovas (and the subsequent black hole) might not occur or would
occur too early and often for the universe to be hospitable to life.

Underground Universe
Many cosmologists assume that some random process is largely, if not entirely
responsible for making our universe. Yet astrophysicist Alan Guth has theorized
that a super-powerful intelligence could probably successfully engage in the
enterprise of manufacturing new universes in a (basement) laboratory.

This leads one to speculate that perhaps our own universe was tailor-made in that
way, and to furthermore surmise a likelihood that such well-honed universes would
be abundant and in short order come to predominate over randomly generated
universes which would tend to be misfits 99+% of the time, judging from how
many things can go awry. This isn’t to claim that our universe is the only kind
amenable to life, just that it is one of relatively few models where the many
parameters are balanced in a manner that gives anything a chance to develop.

Just try imagining universes modeled after a washing machine, a clothes dryer, or
a blender. These would be a bit more choppy/turbulent/dicey/chancy than our
kind, but not rule-outable for the advanced universe maker on a lark.

There are other possible models for universes, most probably misfit: pinball
machine, shooting gallery, ricochet, Wipeout, random time, inconsistent time, LA
freeway, house of mirrors, house of cards, negative gravity, bubble gum, vacuum
cleaner, molecular time, triangular atomic particles, Rube Goldberg, sprinkler
system, popcorn popper, amusement park, Seinfeldian, one-size-fits-all, continuous
amnesia, Alzheimer's, house of horrors.

In the Seinfeldian universe, multiple separate plotlines would intersect and get
tangled together--with hilarious results. Another model is the 3-D Discontinuity
Universe, in which the three dimensions we're all familiar with (length, width,
depth) do not apply to the same place. They are separated, perhaps by filaments
of curled-up mini-dimensional space. It's a kind of variant on string theory.

It's reasonable to surmise that a super-intelligent civilization will routinely engage

in the concoction of new universes regardless of whether its own universe was
made by another civilization, a random process or (by time travel looping) itself.
Consequently, the number of intelligently-made, life-friendly universes will
increase exponentially while the number of viable ones arising at random will
continue to grow at only a roughly steady (more or less) rate, quite possibly hardly
even a replacement-level rate.

This disparity will occur regardless of how many random processes are at work or
how rapidly they operate, since randomly produced universes do not logically lead
to more of the same but to the contrary lead eventually to more intelligently
produced universes emerging from those that happen to be viable.

Random Generation Aloof

So, while random processes might have resulted in the generation of the first
XYZ# of universes, once great intelligence emerged, the torch of the leading role
was passed. A random generator by definition doesn't follow a pattern, however
good or bad. There is no such thing as a legitimate success-/failure-oriented
random generation process as it is aloof from any feedback unless rigged, in which
case it wouldn't be random at all.

Thus, while the emerging super-intelligences are cooking up viable universes, with
their own as a model to emulate and do variations on, the random generating
system will just keep churning out a broad array of mostly lifeless universes, not
knowing any better or anything at all for that matter.

And as each prolific universe (tailor-made or generated spontaneously) is likely to

lead to more super-intelligences, it becomes that much more likely that, once
multi-universal matters are underway, intelligent manufacturing of universes will
tend to predominate, trumping and/or shepherding the non-sentient process.

Granted one could easily surmise the existence of a spontaneous (e.g. quantum)
process of universe-making unguided by any intelligence just churning 'em out
w/no particular set of specs in mind (being mindless), but where we are now is
most probably quite far removed from that. Seeing how precisely honed our
universe is, it's most logical to surmise that somewhere along the line a form of
intelligence has asserted itself and taken charge of at least keying in the defining
values.
Since it's probably safe to surmise that a Random Universe Generator does not
learn from its own mistakes/successes, then, unless/until some being steps in to
fine-tune/commandeer/take charge of the process, it's going to keep on spewing
them out-with a rather low success rate in all likelihood.
Thus the being(s) that involve themselves in the Universe Creation business will
probably outpace the random generator(s). How rapidly this occurs depends on
the number of random generators and their frequency of output, along with the
shape of the learning curve for intelligent creators.

Furthermore, the subsequent involvement of sentient beings in the affairs of any

given universe should extend to those randomly generated, as long as it's logical to
infer that all universes (of relevance, at least), will be accessible to one another via
direct and/or indirect linkage.

Perhaps the mindless generating "process" spewed out several billion misfit
universes with various values for the pertinent factors until finally it produced one
capable of developing intelligent life. Judging from humanity’s own rather rapid
progress in physics—at least in understanding how things work, it's a good bet that
a super-intelligence in one of the first several intelligence-bearing universes was
smart enough to get "outside the box" and delve into the universe production field
themselves—either by taking over the surmised ongoing random process or
starting their own operation up from scratch.
Fine-Tuned Universes
Then, looking at their own universe, like we can do now with this one, they'd pop
out whole bunches of universes, keeping the variables in most cases fairly well
aligned --tinkering here and there—using cookie cutter-esque devices and whatnot,
so that after a while they'd have a pretty good handle on what works and what
doesn’t.
This universe, with its plethora of ten to the 40th power (e.g. length of a nucleon x
10 to the 40th = width of observable universe) would seem to be one such slight-
variation-on-a-theme universe—they basically plugged-in that value throughout,
knowing it to be a successful type for life, worked in a few interesting details, and
sent it out. Using the Copernican principle (of anti-self-centeredness), it's a pretty
good bet that we are several generations along in the pan-universal scheme of
things.
This universe is, to be humble, like a piece of paper in an office file that's a
standard form w/certain specifics penciled-in pertaining to the individual
application for the paper, and so is probably not the original of that form but rather
in large part the equivalent of a photocopy made--one of a batch of fifty or so.
There’s an art to it, though--like Cezanne’s Mt. St. Victoires or Monet’s Rouen
Cathedrals--each painting being one of a series yet the individuals are nonetheless
marvelous.

In arguing for an intelligent force guiding the creation of universes, believers can
surmise that black holes all are randomized in their characteristics so that any one
of them is capable of leading to any type of universe--viable or unviable. The
assertion is that it's likely that an intelligence has gotten ahold of the process of
generating universes. There is a big reward for that intelligence which does so.
The random generation process doesn't care about its success rate.

Evolutionary cosmologists counter that if fit universes tend to have black holes that
lead to fit universes, then these universes would be selected-for naturally and hence
predominate without any need for help from a higher power.

The believers respond that there would have to be some mechanism for favoring
viability in a random system. Granted, the viable ones are the only ones that have
offspring, but that doesn't alter the fundamentally chaotic nature of black holes.
Getting a viable universe is like you pick a winning number in the lottery. The
randomness of the procedure is not altered by you having won. You are no more
likely to win the next time--because it's still random.

But the evolutionary cosmologists counter that it might be possible for a mutation
to occur that would result in a universe where a higher percentage of the black
holes tend to lead to viable universes This would lead by slippery slope to an ever
greater number of viable universes by evolution. After awhile nearly every new
universe will be spawned from a prolifically viable breeder. From this viewpoint,
the only chance for another outcome would be if there were some negative
baggage associated with prolific universal breeding--something like an STD.

By multiple-universe “hopping” via inter-universal black/white/wormholes, it

could be possible to eventually reach the birthing of your own universe in a
roundabout fashion. The exquisite design of a universe like ours could represent
the doing of a well-informed entity. It could even be an inside job.

The first part of the journey can take place anywhere, as you don't need to go
anywhere in space--just back in time. All points in space at any given time are
equidistant from the big bang. Go back in time as far as you can. Then when the
heat gets too intense escape via a black hole to another universe. Transit-friendly
black holes, by the law of averages, should connect from time to time with older
universes.

In case most black holes are literally dead-ends, we would probably have to rely
initially on very smart, highly durable, yet disposable robots--an organic being
simply could not be expected to survive a journey into a typical black hole.

Spin-Off
Upon emerging on the other side via a white hole: determine that universe's
maturity, and see if you can continue back in time there sufficiently. Query that
universe’s controlling power (look for signs) so as to determine if this is your
mother universe. If so, locate the appropriate laboratory, and then start weaving. If
not, proceed to another black/wormhole and continue the adventure.

From there, it’s just a matter of time before these explorers develop a map of
interconnecting universes—the multi-/meta-verse.

Grapes on the Vine

Given the good odds that most full-blown universes tend to occur at least as parts
of a cluster--be they random or manufactured or some of both--they should be
accessible to each other, directly or indirectly. A successful wormhole web
weaving civilization, having secured their own universe, would logically proceed
to other viable ones where they would either encounter fresh territory for weaving
or a universe already woven by another.
It is believed that civilizations capable of such feats would respect one another
enough and be inclined to communicate peacefully so as to avoid trying to take
each other over or, defensively, resorting to booby-trapping their own white holes.
The ultimate result would likely be an ever-growing Wormhole Web Weaver
consortium led by several great master weavers.

Tacking After Ahab

Since we have detected a substantial number of black holes, astronomers might
wonder where the white holes are in our universe. The simplest explanation is
probably that those who use them for transportation prefer to keep them hidden.

The “missing” white holes may be explainable as “baggage” of misfit-universe-

spawning black holes. There could be countless numbers of such universes
containing one white hole--its inception. So it could be that most standard white
holes are the birth points of universes. Only most are stillborn in the wild,
unfortunately.

There need not be an exact one-to-one correspondence between black and white holes
for any given universe. But in an interconnected multi-verse, where the total number
of black holes should equal the total number of white holes, it seems logical to
surmise that most healthy universes would have roughly equivalent numbers of
them. Perhaps it's necessary to differentiate between black holes that simply lead to
other universes via white wholes and those which are the original source of another
universe. However, if all black holes are universal fountainheads, then the Big Bang
might be our one (and only possible) white hole.

Wormhole web weaving may account for the strings of string theory. Vibrating
strings convey at minimum one solid piece of information-a note. Played in
groups, their interrelationships can communicate increasingly complex ideas--like
chords. Furthermore a wound string has all that space inside--like a wormhole.

We're all familiar w/four dimensions: length, width and depth of space, and time.
Now we may be able to identify at least one more clearly—the string/wormhole
web network—which interconnects all points within the space-time fabric defined
by the first four dimensions. This, dimension is structural yet highly flexible. It is
generally undetectable by our five senses (i.e. silent, invisible, odorless, tasteless,
incorporeal) and yet can be accessed through the mind-largely in an intuitive kind
of way for most of us. This networking dimension conveys influence and energy
back-and-forth. It is an integral component of our universe, just as much as the
other four we know about and the six or so that remain unidentified.

It’s a Small World After All

As knowledge of the existence of a dimension of this nature contributes to an
understanding of the universe as more organized/unified/integrated than previously
thought possible, it may lend some support to the contention that the entire
universe is the product of a fabulous ingenuity.
Chapter 7

COSMIC CONNECTIONS

"Grandma...wound the web around my wound, and then my bleeding stopped

almost at once. Since that day, learning to love the doubleness of things, I think the
spider silk is in my blood"--Eric Ormsby, contemporary North American poet.

Greek philosophers of the "atomist" persuasion, as early as the 5th/6th century

B.C., elucidated some key fundamental properties of nature.

*The Earth and objects in outer space are cut from the same cloth.

*All matter is composed of the same basic, tiny building blocks--atoms.

*The atoms are characterized by constant motion.

With highly advanced scientific instrumentation and theorizing, these three ideas of
the atomists became pillars of 20th century physics.

A couple more big atomist notions also are still debatable:

*The Universe is infinitely large in extent.

*There exists a universal Mind.

If polled, a majority of cosmologists would probably contend that, while our

universe is of finite mass, it is of potentially infinite extent since there is no force
here powerful enough to limit its expansion or any known boundary. Their take
on the existence of a universal Mind would likely be a skeptical "show me."

One could possibly figure out what a person is thinking by having each brain cell
wormholed to an "empty slate" which would be triggered by the activation of that
cell. Complex thoughts, involving many cells, would just need to be pulled
together. Or you get someone with a brain capable of being hypnotized into a state
of perpetually "drawing blanks,” you wormhole the key brain to this person's
brain, and have them narrate ongoingly what they’re thinking--so that the hidden
thoughts are expressed by this hypnotized "dummy".

Brain links within an individual’s brain via synapses, and between various
people/creatures/things via wormhole telepathy: to maximize utilization of brain
cells, want to hook as many together in as many ways as can, each to each, unless
that would be too confusing.

"Streamers of consciousness," the wormhole as neuron, God's brain a network of

wormholes?

Advanced alien civilization stewardship using a multi-scale-/multi-time wormhole

network could explain "interconnectedness" of things, psychic phenomena, etc. If
one's brain is connected to the brains of others in an intricate way, telepathy, and
thought installation can be rampant.

To time travel enjoyably just hook up with somebody who's there--telepathically.

The strings of cosmic string theory may comprise an intelligently designed web
that connects everything in space-time, functioning, as a sort of unifying 5th
dimension, and potentially tapping us into other dimensions as well. The vibrations
of the strings act like neurons in the brain, transmitting influence and ideas. This
may account for some of the dark energy that has been so mystifying. Furthermore,
cosmic strings, being tubular in nature and possibly made of exotic matter, may be
akin to wormholes.

Thus cosmic string theory may involve a web of wormholes--a space-time travel
and communication network for intelligent beings throughout the universe—that
includes us. It may be through this dimension of the string web network that
mental telepathy operates. Thus it is a likely method of first contact between
highly advanced societies and emerging ones like ours.

Physicists assert that quantum entanglement is a demonstrable aspect of reality

only on extremely small scales. However, there may be means of entanglement on
more macro levels that we just haven't discovered yet. An extremely powerful
being(s), could well interact with our situation by means of other dimensions and
wormholes in such a way as to produce entanglements perceptible to us.

Solar System: “bet you didn’t know that...”

The great Greek Aristarchus of Samos during the 3rd century B.C., is the first
person known to have proposed that the Earth "revolves about the Sun" and not the
other way around--about 18 centuries before Copernicus. This heliocentric
hypothesis was recorded in brief by his friend, Archimedes. Precisely what logic
Aristarchus used is unclear as the papers detailing his argument were lost. So we
don't know whether he actually proved it or was just making a good guess outside
the box.

It's actually quite difficult to conclusively disprove the Earth-centered, geocentric

theory. Copernicus, Galileo and some other Renaissance free thinkers argued
against it, but the geocentrists were undaunted. Even Galileo's telescopic
observations in 1610 that Jupiter was encircled by four smaller bodies and that
Venus cycled through phases obviously keyed to the Sun weren't entirely
persuasive.

The geocentrists could simply turn to hybrid models--part geocentric, part

heliocentric. For example, they'd put Venus (and Mercury) in a mini-orbit around
the Sun which still went around the Earth. Similarly, they'd admit that Jupiter's
moons went around it, but maintained that the whole complex orbited Earth. The
geocentric theory wasn't officially written off until 1838, when precise stellar
parallax observations clearly indicated the Earth's cyclical motion.

Here Comes the Sun

There is no global matter more important than the Sun: at least 99% of life on
Earth depends on the Sun. Sunlight was so precious to the God of Genesis that
He/She invented it twice: on the first and fourth days of Creation (Genesis 1 v.3-5,
14-19). This could be seen as foreshadowing/establishing the dual nature of light--
as both particles and waves--ascertained scientifically in the 20th century A.D.

On Day 1, according to Genesis, God said "Let there be light!" (my exclamation
mark) and "separated the light from the darkness." Then on Day 4, God said "Let
there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let
them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let there be lights in
the expanse of the sky to give light on the Earth...God made two great lights--the
greater light to govern the day (Sun), and the lesser light to govern the night
(Moon). (God) also made the stars."

Light "Wavicles"
Evidently it takes a paradox to solve a paradox. Why would God have made the
same fundamental thing--Sunlight--twice. At first blush, it might seem that the
author of Genesis chapter one didn't realize that Daylight and Sunlight are
basically equivalent: that Daylight is Sunlight, and Sunlight is Daylight. But
along comes quantum physics with the fantastic concept that Light has a double
identity and--behold: the enigmatic truth, and perhaps a window into inspiration.

The relationship of innermost planet #1 Mercury's orbit (their year) with spin (their
day) is another captivating phenomenon. Timing-wise, for every two trips around
the Sun, Mercury--the Roman messenger god as well as the god of commerce and
thievery (note the symbolic horns)--completes three pirouettes. This is known as a
2/3rds--.666--resonance relationship.

What this means for Mercury is that a given point on the planet faces the nearby
blazing Sun for about two months of our time at a time, followed by two months of
darkness. As there is precious little atmosphere to moderate temperatures, they
swing from 845 F. to -300 F.--a mercurial thermometer. It’s an ongoing
phenomenon of hell alternating with hell freezing over. Appropriate for a god who
customarily served as escort to the underworld.

Planet #2 Venus’ rotation correlates closely with the revolutionary relationship of

herself and #3 planet Earth. On every other revolution around the Sun, the
speedier, shorter-tracked Venus will be lapping Earth and will be showing virtually
the same face towards Earth as she did the last time they were so situated. The
same-face-at-superior-conjunction phenomenon occurs on every third rotation of
Venus. So it's another 2/3--or .666--demonstration: two Earth revolutions
corresponding to three Venusian rotations, and equaling one conjunction period.

“Global ‘Hotting’” on Venus

Venus’ pattern of presenting the same face (beneath the cloud covers) to Earth at
each perigee to it might lead some to think the Roman love goddess has got the
“hots” for her nearest neighbor. Venus’ surface temperature informs us that she is
one “smokin’” body--867 degrees F.--pretty much uniformly hot all over due to the
highly insulating properties (greenhouse effect) of those thick clouds. The
accumulation of such a high level of gaseous carbon dioxide as has caused the
runaway heating is attributed by some geologists to a boiling away of Venusian
oceans. To illustrate, by contrast, most of Earth’s carbon dioxide is present in
limestone sediments, having been precipitated there by seawater.

The second half of 2010 was notable for planetary conjunctions involving Venus,
the Moon, Mars and Saturn in the vicinity of that very special star Zavijava (beta-
Virginis). A perfect equilateral triangle comprising the crescent Moon, Mars and
Zavijava illuminated the Western sky on the evening of July 15, 2010 for the West
Coast of North America and the East Pacific. As the bodies shifted (the Moon
mainly), the shape segued into a perfect equilateral triangle with crescent Moon,
Mars and Saturn as the points--and Zavijava within it--into July 16 for Australia
and East Asia.

Rock My World
Coinciding with this sky display, we felt an earthquake here in metropolitan
Washington D.C. that was the most powerful for the area in 35 years, and the
strongest ever recorded at the Capitol Dome governmental headquarters.

Brilliant Venus nearly occulted Zavijava on August 3-4, 2010. Coinciding with
this was the arrival of high energy particles in our atmosphere coming from a
substantial solar eruption involving a coronal mass ejection that whipped by Venus
(inferior conjunction coming up October 29) en route to Earth.

Love Triangle (or The Fifth Element)

On August 6-10, Venus, Mars and Saturn formed a nice isosceles triangle, with
Zavijava just to the viewer's right of Venus. The goddess of love was clearly the
dominant player, shining at magnitude -4.2.

Love Conquers All

On August 12, 2010 Venus, Saturn, the crescent Moon and Zavijava formed a
perfect cross (a la the Southern Cross) standing upright in the West. It was a good
grouping as all four objects are pale yellow. Saturn (the rings like a crown) was at
the head of the cross, the crescent Moon was at the foot, Venus was the cross' right
arm (of the cross facing us) and Zavijava was the left arm. For the sake of the
formation, nearby Mars was relegated to observer status.
No one ever refers to Venus as The Red Planet--that nickname has long been
applied to Mars, which, like Venus, is actually more orange than it is red. The
extreme heat has prevented any human from ever seeing firsthand with their own
eyes the skin of Venus--behind the suffocating clouds--but it has been revealed by
unmanned space probes sent down under their cover and onto to the Venusian
surface. Most of this is believed to be of volcanic origin (all but the real highlands)
and rather recent--just about 600 million years ago. That must have been quite an
episode.

Invisible Beings
Might it be possible to make oneself invisible simply by
boiling? If this sounds outrageous, consider how different
substances have different melting, boiling temperatures. It
follows that boiling need not be assumed to necessarily
annihilate/kill an organism. We consider ourselves solid, but
are nevertheless dependent on liquid bloodstream.

*Life forms on places like super-tropical Venus may have even evolved in/into a
gaseous state so as to endure the high temperatures there.

Take the jellyfish: solid or liquid? Solids/liquids/gases of

the same molecule just are spaced more loosely as one moves
from solid through liquefaction to gaseousness. A being in a
highly variable star system might evolve so as to
accommodate wide variations in temperature by being viable
in two or even three states. A being from a very cold
climate normally, yet highly adaptive, might be gaseous
while visiting Earth, hence not readily recognized by our
minds’ eyes which are accustomed to seeing life only as solid
forms.
LaNd FoRmAtIoNs
Hot Enough to Fry an Egg
There are large volcanic formations on the Northern (Lavinia) plains of Venus that
display such a resemblance to fried eggs that an astronaut who happened to see
these for the first time while descending from orbit, might have second thoughts
about landing near there, dreading an encounter with a giant hen or, perhaps, the
hen's "farmer.”

For human beings, trying to survive on any of the other bodies of the solar
system without mechanical assistance would be a nightmarish proposition.
It's doubtful that even the most rugged extreme sportsman could last more
than a few minutes. Earth really is a Paradise, or at least was one.
Earth: International Geographic---The Americas
Letter to the Editor: When I look at telescopic photographs of the North American
Nebula, I see Central America as well. Shouldn’t the name reflect this. Answer:
The equator passes just south of where Central America connects to South
America. That means that all of Central America lies north of the equator.
Q--Why do we say “North” and “South America”--why not just “America?”
A--Obviously, all of the Americas are joined in modern times. Otherwise, it
would not have been necessary to build the Panama canal to connect the Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans there. However, during much of Earth‘s history, North and
South America were not joined. Before the human species emerged, North and
South America were separated and there was no Central America per se. And in
the future, much of Central America may be underwater due to global warming
and/or continental drift.
EurAsia
Europe and Asia are traditionally listed as separate continents when in fact they
have been one land mass--Eurasia-- for at least 200 million years, and are projected
by geologists to remain so indefinitely. The Indian plate has crashed into Eurasia--
creating the Himalayas--but is not expected to rip it in two.

What's In a Name?
Consider the following list of names of/involving the founders of several major
religions that originated in Eurasia and their Deity.
"Brahman" is the Hindu Creator, forming a Trinity with Vishnu the Preserver and
Shiva the Destroyer.
"Abraham", "Ibrahim" (meaning father of many nations) was the patriarch of
Judaism and Islam, respectively.
"Barabbas" was the pivotal prisoner pardoned by Pontius Pilate so Jesus could be
crucified. "Bahira" was a Christian monk who foretold to Muhammad his
prophet's calling.
"Muhammad" (meaning praiseworthy), a descendant of Abraham, was the founder
of Islam. "Allahu Akbar" (meaning God is Greatest) is their prayerful refrain.
"Mahda" is the expected Muslim Redeemer who will accompany Jesus on
Judgment Day.
"Bahaullah" (meaning Glory of God) founded the monotheistic Bahai Faith in the
nineteenth century. They say "Allah u Abha" (God is Most Glorious) when
greeting each other ("Baha" is considered by them to be God's greatest name).
Sacred Signature?
One might expect to find some common roots amongst these names, after all, they
all started in Asia within a range of just two thousand by one thousand miles (at
widely varying times). But there is no etymological explanation for any of these
resemblances, aside from the obvious widespread use of "Allah." And of course,
"Abraham" and "Ibrahim" refer to the same Biblical person.

Weight Matters, or Throwing Their Weight Around: Big Stones Around the World
Maximum Stone Weight (must have been transported):
Baalbeck, Lebanon--800 tons (Roman wall)
Rome, Italy--455 tons (Lateran Obelisk) (raised)
Puma Punca, Peru--440 tons
Sacsayhuama, Peru --130 tons (some stones elevated and set)
Easter Island, Pacific Ocean--86 tons (sculpted busts)
Giza, Egypt--80 tons (granite); limestone 15 tons (stones set, elevated via built-in
ramp)
Coral Castle, FL--35 tons (some stones elevated and set by one man--how not
known)
Stonehenge, Britain--26 tons (some stones elevated)
Parthenon, Greece--15 tons (most stones elevated and set)

Dragon Intuition
One of the mysteries of the mighty dragon mythos--of monstrous, winged lizard-
like creatures--is that it predates any known discoveries of enormous flying beasts.
The concept of the dragon, which dates back to at least Biblical times, was as
fanciful a hybrid as the centaur or Pegasus. Winged dinosaurs--e.g. Pterosaurs
(up to 20' wingspan), Archaeopteryx, Diatryma, and Quetzalcoatlus (up to 40'
wingspan) are all modern era fossilized discoveries of the past two centuries.
Another big flyer--Teratorns--may have been known about earlier by native
Americans, but Old World dragon tales date from well before there was any
substantial communication link between the two hemispheres.

It's possible that Chinese explorers sailed to the Americas--via Africa--several

centuries before the Europeans got there. And it's known that Chinese excavators
had unearthed dinosaur bones before they were discovered in Europe. One can see
knowledge of such fossils--if not the fossils themselves, passing from East to West
in Eurasia via the great Silk Road.

The Shrew Was Us

Or there may just be a deep-seated, hard-wired sense of dinosaurs in the collective
unconscious brain of humanity. We are all descendants of the rodent-like first
mammals who coexisted with the big dinosaurs at their peak, and thus as a matter
of survival would have passed along an instinctive dread of them--like “get the hell
out of their way!”--to their offspring, us. The part of our brains concerned with not
becoming road-kill on Dinosaur Alley might be next to a nexus of neurons
concerned with how best to flee a raging wildfire. And maybe where these two
areas intersect you get the fire-breathing dragon...

Paradise Lost: Gulf of Mexico, Hawaii

In TV's most talked about show in recent memory was the Last Episode of the
network drama Lost--filmed in volcanic Hawaii. The focal point was a large stone
plug in the Earth that was pulled out by the character Desmond--releasing a large
amount of radiant energy--and subsequently put back in by the show's lead
character (Jack). These were Herculean endeavors. The plug site was deep in a
cave, accessed by a running brook including a waterfall estimated at 50-100 feet.

This aired in May 2010, about five weeks after the tragic Gulf of Mexico Oil Rig
Disaster that became the leading news story of the year in the US. Most nights
from late April through mid-August, the networks led with "Deepwater" in their
evening news and the situation only worsened.

The oil company was unable to plug up the oil-spewing hole on the gulf floor--
about 500 feet below sea level--or effectively clean up the mess. Nothing they tried
(steel condom, drinking straw, toxic dispersant, blame game, mud pies) was very
effective during this time.

In the finale of Lost, the heroic plugging/unplugging is seen as pivotal to the

islanders as they eagerly ask one another "did it work?" or state "it worked" or "it
didn't work." (The show was notoriously hard to pin down).

By conventional logic, the script for Lost's last episode could not have been
influenced by the oil eruption because it must have been filmed before that. Time
disjunction was an ongoing, major underlying theme of the show.

Blown-away by the Segue or Art Imitates Art

On the Retro-TV network one summer night: Alfred Hitchcock Presents opens
with Hitchcock holding a hand grenade. He holds onto it throughout the
introduction to the episode Night of the Execution. It just so happens that the
climactic scene in the preceding show was an episode of It Takes a Thief in which
Robert Wagner's character throws a ceremonial ball out of the palace window and
it explodes--foiling an assassination plot.

It reminded me of a few years earlier watching a rerun of an episode of the TV

comedy Frasier. At the very end, they turn on their TV set and it's playing an
episode of M.A.S.H. Well, it just so happens that this particular rebroadcast was in
fact followed by a rerun of a M.A.S.H. episode on that channel.

20th Century Dinosaurs

There's a certain amount of nostalgia for the golden days of broadcast TV, which
ran somewhat in parallel to the golden era of ufo sightings--both roughly the
second half of the 20th century. Tall buildings and other structures doubled as
signal transmitters before largely being replaced by fiber optic cable and satellites.
Relics from that brash era include:

Towers on Earth with Saucer-like Tops: North America

Seattle, WA—Space Needle, setting for Frasier series. Featured in at least one
episode--where Frasier has to walk there for some ceremonial speech.

Toronto, Canada—CN Tower, was tallest structure in the world for awhile. Next-
door to the Blue Jays' major-league baseball stadium--the SkyDome.

New York City (Flushing, Queens)—World's Fair observation tower.

Las Vegas, NV - - with a roller coaster.

San Antonio, TX--hometown of the Alamo.

Gettysburg, PA—battlefield tower (possibly commemorating the actual use of

lighter-than-air hovercraft ---balloons in this case--by Union forces to track enemy
troop movements).

Skylon Tower, Niagara Falls, Canada--520 ft., with an observation deck (open-
window) and revolving restaurant (enclosed-window).

Vancouver has one, too.

In a clash with aliens, these might be safe structures as neither party would likely
shoot at them--avoidance of friendly fire. However, in a battle between alien
forces, all bets might be off.

Paris, France in the 1820's

The term "black hole" was used by Jean Rhys in her 1929 novel Quartet. The lead
character, Marya, has a big night out on the town drinking. When she arrives
home, "sleep was like falling into a black hole." Marya manages to survive the
experience unscathed. She awakens intact the next morning on the same page--in
the next paragraph, in fact. The publisher of a 1957 reprint edition inserts a single
tiny black star between those lines. It's a standard way to mark off sections within a
chapter, but oddly foreboding in this case. In 1968, cosmologist John Wheeler
coined the term "black hole" to describe tiny black stars on a bender.

The Art and Architecture of the Arch: Provence, France to St. Louis, Missouri
French post-Impressionist painter Paul Cezanne, in his turn-of-the-(19th-20th)
century painting The Large Bathers, utilizes oddly bent trees to form an arch over a
riverfront scene in a manner that bears an uncanny resemblance to the Gateway
Arch in St. Louis, Mo., built more than a half-century later on the Mississippi
River (See Pictures). Trees do not ordinarily form an arch since they tend to grow
towards the Sun. St. Louis was initially settled by the French and served as the
capital of New France's Upper Louisiana territory, later purchased by the USA.

The design of the Gateway Arch--a slightly elongated inverted catenary--was the
doing of Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen. There is no reason to suspect
that he ever saw the Cezanne painting, so one might speculate that either Cezanne
was visionary or Saarinen was channeling the artist. The only clue that Cezanne
might have had the USA in mind is the fact that he placed 13 bathers in the
foreground--as in the original number of states in the original American union.

Sun Studios: Memphis, Tennessee

Elvis Presley and time travel/future knowledge: he tips off that something's up by
his vocals on "Love Me Tender". It supposedly goes "...take me to your heart. For
it's there that I belong and will never part...", but what the King actually distinctly
sings is "...For it's then that I belong..." (the vowel is clearly an "air", not a short-
"e" rhymes with "pen." So he switches "there" with "then"--a possible indicator of
future knowledge of space-time travel, perhaps a signal to himself that he is a time
traveler.

Singin' In the Rain (Or Not): Cambridge, England to New Orleans, Louisiana
The popular 1980's-90's British rock/new wave band Katrina and the Waves' name
seems to forebode Hurricane Katrina, whose waves devastated much of New
Orleans and vicinity in 2005. The band's biggest hit in the US was, ironically
buoyant "Walking On Sunshine," which swept over the Atlantic across the Gulf
Stream and took America by storm in 1985.

Athens, Greece
The bizarre assault on the marathon race leader in the 2004 Summer Olympics
seems oddly foretold by a song by 1980's American postpunk band Breaking
Circus. The song, titled "Knife In the Marathon," describes an attack and closes
with the words "I'll see you in Rome." Turino, Italy was the site of the next
Olympics--Winter of 2006. And Rome is the name of the reporter who wrote the
article referenced here. After the attack, the victimized runner said the thought
crossed his mind that the assailant might have a knife. The attacker had a sign
referring to the fulfillment of prophecy.

Baltimore, Maryland and Buffalo, New York: Lightning Strikes Twice

In a National Football League (NFL) sporting contest on November 18, 2007,
Cleveland Browns field-goal kicker Phil Dawson's game-saving effort versus the
Baltimore Ravens became a spectacular double-bank shot score. It looked like the
kind of trick shot performed by pool hall aces like Minnesota Fats. Dawson's kick
glanced off the left upright and through, then hit the crossbar support stanchion and
bounced back onto the playing field. It was initially ruled a miss, and some of the
Ravens left the field thinking they'd won. But the officials got together and
decided--correctly--that it should count. That tied the score, and the Browns won
in overtime.

None of the broadcasters could remember ever seeing such a kick. But then, later
the same day, it was like deja vu in another NFL game. The Buffalo Bills' Ryan
Lindell's field goal kick directly hit the crossbar support stanchion--right where a
network TV camera was mounted. That made two scoring scenes for the highlight
reels featuring the same out-of-the-way, out-of-bounds location--in one afternoon.

Running Scared (While Trying to Pass): Dallas, Texas

Something fishy: Pepsi TV commercial, broadcast often in the latter stages of the
2007/8 National Football League (NFL) starring Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry
Jones, coach Wade Phillips and quarterback Tony Romo. The plot was a
breakdown in communications leading to a sacking of the QB by blue-jerseyed
opponents. It's rare to see any sports franchise ridiculing itself in a commercial,
much less the one called "America's Team."

Dallas Downfall
But the commercial seemed to prefigure what actually happened in their offensive
meltdown versus blue-jerseyed New York Giants January 13, 2008 in Texas
Stadium. In that playoff game, the Giants, despite being heavy underdogs, pretty
much manhandled the Cowboys for the win and went on to the Super Bowl
championship. The Giants' ferocious pass rush harried Romo to the point of
distraction during the second half of the game.

Capital Offense: New York, New York and Los Angeles, California
On the November 18, 1993 episode of TV's Seinfeld show, set in New York City,
Elaine's boyfriend has a problematic name. It's Joel Rifkin--identical to the
notorious NYC serial killer who'd been prominent in the news since being
captured and accused that Summer. After an awkward incident in public, Elaine
urges her friend to change his name to something more innocuous. Flipping
through a sports magazine, she cries out "Oh please please please change your
name to O. J.! Please, it would be so great!"

But in June 1994, legendary Buffalo Bills football player O. J. Simpson was
accused of a brutal double homicide which included his wife. His trial on murder
charges in 1995 was the most highly publicized in history. So, had Elaine's friend
chosen to switch to O. J., it would have been about the worst possible move--like
going out of the frying pan into the fire. But it's just the sort of ironic twist of fate
that was typical of the show--you can just hear them saying "that guy has got a real
killer instinct when it comes to names!"

The JF Kennedy Assassination: Dallas Malice

There's some spooky business pertaining to another famously tragic event. An
American Airlines travel brochure--Your Holiday in Dallas 1962 at Hotel Adolphus (a copy of the
brochure is posted on YouTube)--appears to eerily foretell the assassination of President Kennedy, in
several ways.

Gunsmoke
*The bold trajectory line pierces sheriff’s throat--a JFK wound location--on the
brochure cover illustration. You can infer he’s the sheriff because of the star badge.
In his role as President, Kennedy was the country’s top law enforcement figure--
the nation’s sheriff, or marshal, you might say.

*The follow-up killings of Dallas Police Patrolman J.D. Tippit by Oswald may also be inferred from
the trajectory line on the cover. Tippitt, too, was a law enforcement officer.

In the Sketch of Hotel Entrance

*It oddly features flagless flagpoles, hence the view from upper floors to the ground is unobstructed--as a
shooter would like it to be. Moreover, the absence of the Stars & Stripes would be oddly appropriate for a
“coup de etat” (among JFK’s final words).

In the Panoramic Skyline Photo

*The circle superimposed on building facades (ostensibly to identify the hotel), looks like a forensics
tool for locating the position of a sniper.

*The airplane trail over skyline (may not be visible in reproductions) crosses the next-to-uppermost floor
of windows on skyscraper. Oswald fired his rifle-from a sixth-floor window of the seven-story Texas
School Book Depository.

*The airplane’s path terminates over Dallas skyline. President Kennedy flew into, and was scheduled
to fly out of Dallas, as part of a multi-city Texas tour. Consequently, the manner of the plane's
depiction could be seen as representing a trip being cut off short.

*A building at the extreme edge of the skyline photo bears a startling resemblance to TSBD in height and
arched windows on the top floor. TSBD is just a five-minute drive from the hotel.

In the Bottom Row of Photos

*One photo shows a rodeo cowboy getting violently bucked off his “ride.”
*In the monorail photo, people queued up at the monorail resemble a line of mourners
viewing a coffin.
*Photo of runway models captures them in rather strangely frozen poses--as if
witnessing a shocking event a la the always fashionable Jackie O.

What’s In a Name
*Finally, the hotel’s name partitioned syllabically--”Adolph us”--implies an
identification with Hitler, hence a potential murderous threat for non-Aryans.
Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic US President, was perceived by some as a risk
to global WASP power domination.

A Second Look at It, or Double Trouble: New York, New York and Dallas, Texas
Here is another bit of fishy business about the assassination of President Kennedy.
They were two of the most popular and beloved figures of the 1960's: JFK and
John Lennon assassination similarities.

* Kennedy was 46 years old; Lennon was 45.

* Both were given the name "John" at birth.
* Both of their surnames feature double-"n" in the middle.
* Both were shot in a major US city.
* Both cities of assassination have a double-letter: Dallas (double-"l") and
Manhattan (double "t").
* Both sustained multiple wounds.
* Both were rushed to hospital but were virtually D.O.A./unresponsive to heroic
life-saving efforts.
* Both were moving targets.
* Both kill shots came from behind (according to official reports--multiple-shooter
theorists argue that the last shot at JFK came from in front and to the left side).
* Both victims were out on the street: Lennon on a sidewalk having just gotten out
of a car and Kennedy riding in one.
* Both vehicles were limos.
* There was a prominent grassy area in the immediate vicinity (the "grassy knoll"
at Dealy Plaza; Central Park), and both limos passed in front of them.
* Both ostensible shooters dropped their weapon on the spot and of their own
volition.
* The shooting dates (Nov.22, Dec.8) are both in the latter stages of autumn.
* Both were with their wives at the scene.
* Jackie Kennedy screamed "Oh no" (according to Walter Cronkite news
broadcast); Lennon's wife was Yoko Ono.
* Both left behind two children, one of whom (Caroline Kennedy, Sean Lennon)
was five years old at the time.
* Both had gone from being part of an elite team to being their own boss: JFK
from US senator to president; Lennon from the top R&R band (The Beatles) to
being mostly a solo artist.

These next points are a bit more elaborate.

* Oswald shot at Kennedy from the Texas School Book Depository Bldg.; JFK had
published a Pulitzer-prize-winning book (Profiles in Courage, 1957). Chapman
was carrying his favorite book with him when he shot Lennon (Catcher in the Rye,
1951), and was reportedly triggered in part by books about Lennon/The Beatles
he'd stumbled upon in a Hawaiian (the 50th state) library.

* Hawaii's state motto "Aloha" means both "hello" and "goodbye"--hence it can be
used both coming and going. Chapman was stalking Lennon and saw him leaving
the Dakota residence. He approached Lennon and got him to autograph an album
cover. Then Chapman waited around for Lennon to return--several hours later--
and shot him dead. "Goodbye, hello", "Hello, goodbye": sounds familiar to any
Beatles fan, a la "you say 'goodbye' when I say 'hello.'" This song also includes the
fateful phrase "oh no" sung by John Lennon. The dual aspect of "goodbye/hello" is
relatable to Kennedy's most famous speech line "Ask not what your country can do
for you. Ask what you can do for your country."

* Lennon also sang "All we are saying is 'give peace a chance'" regarding the
Vietnam War; Kennedy gave peace a chance in resolving the Cuban Missile
Crisis, was less hawkish than subsequent presidents on Vietnam, and founded the
Peace Corps.
Fabulous Heights: more NYC, possibly
Several US military standard banners of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
century display what look like late twentieth century urban landscapes--such as
New York City's--featuring large arrays of skyscrapers in what is supposedly a
sunburst design (See YouTube video). These seem to demonstrate some future
knowledge, or at least an uncanny intuition by the designer. Note how some of the
“rays” appear to have windows.

Moonshine
The Sun, as we all know, marks the day, the year, and the seasons. What does that
leave for the reflected sunlight of the Moon?

By the Dozen
Quite a bit, actually. Our Moon Luna--the Roman goddess of the Moon--is
potentially “the measure of all (or at least many) things” as far as humanity is
concerned. The key is the number 12. Early man noticed that the Moon
completes 12 cycles of phases (29.5 days) per solstice year (with a little bit left
over). Eventually, societies gave each of the guaranteed dozen full moon of the
year an identity, such as, in order: wolf, snow, worm, pink, flower, strawberry,
buck, sturgeon, harvest, hunter's, beaver, cold. Modern man has mostly adopted a
12-month calendar (with various methods of figuring-in the extra days).

Furthermore, it’s possible that the lunar-12 had something to do with our
partitioning of the zodiac into 12 signs (though technically there are 13 because the
serpent bearer Ophiuchus steps across the zodiacal belt with his right foot between
Sagittarius and Scorpius). And then we divide each day and night into 12 hours
apiece--AM and PM--a custom traced to ancient Egypt and Babylon and attributed
either to the Moon or to the rising times of 36 stars.

King Big Foot

Ultimately, the vast majority of human societies fell into an everyday counting
system based on units of 10 (after our 10 digits--fingers and toes) rather than units
of 12 (which could also employ the hands by counting the 3 joints times the 4
fingers besides the thumb) like the Egyptians had. This happened even though a
base-12 system (duodecimal) is more useful since 12 is a multiple of 1,2,3,4,6 and
12, whereas 10 is a multiple of only 1,5 and 10. An exception was the Frankish
King Charlemagne's monetary system, which was based on 12. For the English
into modern times, 12 ounces=1 troy pound and 12 pence=1 shilling. And of
course, their/our foot measurement is set at 12 inches, even though such a big foot
is rare on people.

It may be a bit of a stretch, but the 12 tribes of Israel also seem to tie-in to the lunar
cycle in the sense that the human fertilization period closely corresponds to it, and
each tribe is comprised of offspring from one of the 12 sons of Jacob (Israel). The
number of Jesus’ apostles--12--wittingly or unwittingly, mirrors this. Note how all
of the apostles were male. Only one daughter of Jacob is recorded in the Biblical
text--Dinah (Genesis 46 v.15). She may be paralleled by Mary Magdalene, the
unofficial 13th original apostle (another baker's dozen).

The Moon is not immune from the dark side of Christian numerology. a lunar day
equals 27.321666 of our Earth days. This conjures up thoughts of the Dark
Side of the Moon. The only problem is, sorry, Pink Floyd fans, but you can't find
Dark Side (or Light Side, for that matter) on any legitimate map of the Moon. The
appropriate technical terms are Near Side of the Moon and Far Side of the Moon.

The Moon keeps virtually the same side facing Earth at all times while they spin
around together due to gravitational ("tidal") locking. The side always facing Earth
is called the Near Side, and the side always facing away from the Earth is the Far
Side. As a result of this phenomenon, the Moon cannot possibly keep the same side
facing away from or to the Sun's light at all times. In fact, the Dark Side of the
Moon and the Light Side of the Moon are constantly changing over the roughly
month-long period of the lunar orbit. Almost every location on the Moon goes
from being part of the Light Side to being part of the Dark Side and vice versa 12
to 13 times a year.

If some Internet alien claiming to be in a rock band insists upon meeting you on
the Dark Side (meaning Far Side) of the Moon, beware, nights are long on the
Moon--lasting for about 14.77 Earth days (354 hours). No human has ever actually
experienced nighttime on the surface of the Moon, as the Apollo project timed their
missions to coincide with daytime--easy enough since they had such long days to
work with. There is no video of the astronauts going about outside with
flashlights. So take care and prepare if you go there. And bundle up--it gets mighty
cold in the lunar night.

The Twilight Zone

A temperate strategy for Moon survival might be to straddle Sunrise or Sunset lines--in one
direction is brightness, in the other darkness. The two lines take nearly a month to encircle the
lunar globe create a pair of creeping bands that are temperature transition zones. The incredible
extremes of hot and cold are, by definition, mitigated in these mobile locations. NASA says that
the temperature swings between +224 F. and -298 F at mid-latitudes. Somewhere, the temperature
range in-between must exist at any given time. Obviously some of this is hospitable. One need
only be able to move quickly enough in order to stay always in an ever-changing spot where the
temperature is acceptable. Hence, one need not rule out life on such a planetary surface simply on
the basis of temperature extremes.
Moonwalking
Borderline inhabitants: there might be different kinds, as the speed factor would
vary according to latitude. Those abiding anywhere near the equator would need
to be pretty fast movers by human standards. At the lunar equator, one must cover
about 115 miles each Earth day--at an approximate rate of 4.8 MPH. Those
dwelling closer to the poles could proceed more leisurely.

Of course, they’d need to more or less compensate for any time lost due to
stationary activities and inactivity. So slumber patterns, particularly for those near the
tropics, would probably consist of frequent naps in sleeping bags. Anyone able to sleepwalk
would be at a competitive advantage. Sit-down meals would be wolfed-down
quickly, and desserts would be taken on-the-go. For a food source, some of the
straddlers might cultivate tumbleweed-like plants and kick them around. It could
resemble the final act of Macbeth--when the forest seemed to be moving because
the army’s foot soldiers were carrying it.

Polar Bridge Scenario

Takeover bids between Sunrisers and Sunsetters might proceed via the poles.
Equatorial speedsters could ally with same-band neighbors on up/down to one or
both poles--as far as life-sustainable--camp with them briefly and then sneak across
to the other side's polar region, evading those there and proceeding towards the
other side‘s midsection.

Alternatively, romance could blossom across the bands, as perhaps a photo gets left behind
somewhere, stumbled across by an other sider who falls in love, perhaps leaves something of self
at same spot. They communicate in this manner, and eventually a meeting is arranged at one of
the poles, which may function as a sort of customs area if the two bands are on friendly terms.
They might even share permanent dwelling structures and equipment there. Natural selection
would favor those able to make the rounds. Some beings there would likely develop a kind of
retractable set of wheels.

Leonardo Was Here

Of course, many people thought in earlier times that much of the Moon was
covered with water. The great Leonardo da Vinci seemed pretty sure of it. "The
countless images which are reflected by the innumerable waves of the sea from the
solar waves that strike upon these waves, cause a continuous and far-reaching
splendor upon the surface of the sea," Leonardo wrote in a notebook (cerca 1500),
describing the brightness of the Moon.

Celebrity Moon Faces

Enormous strange portrait-like features have been spotted
on the surface of the Moon using obscure NASA photographs
from the 1960's (See Pictures).
A bearded Jesus, Marilyn Monroe ("Moonroe") wearing a top hat (like
in her movie with that name), a stringy inside-out baseball face, a
couple pairs of fish, and a caped devil with horns were among the first
discovered.
The roster of famous figures seen depicted now includes such notables as Albert Einstein, John
Lennon, Willie Nelson, Tom Selleck, Bill Clinton, Saddam Hussein, Adolph Hitler, Charles
Chaplin and Babe Ruth. Also on display are the likenesses of Bozo the Clown, the cartoon
character Shaggy, a goat boy and Pinocchio.
Furthermore, there are representations of a royal procession (including the British royal guard), a
Star of David, an American Indian chief and an Egyptian sphinx. Animal sculptures such the fish,
a dalmation, and a deer with antlers are also evident.
Though any of these could have been produced by natural means, it's
also possible that they were designed by powerful
extraterrestrial intelligent beings, such as the Wormhole
Web Weavers, say, as a sort of art class project
involving expression, of "native Earth culture” in a geological
fashion. Their control over material things and the forces of
Nature allows them to create immense and expressive works
without any difficulty or need for crude mechanical devices such as bulldozers and
fork-lifts. Their work is virtually indistinguishable from natural forces.
Meet Me on the Moon, Marilyn
Nicknames for the sculptures include: the aforementioned Marilyn
Moonroe, Magmoon P.I.(Selleck), and Albert Moonstein (Einstein).

It's possible that some of the moon faces are part of a publicity stunt by
time traveling moviemakers who used actors from different periods together--for
example Tom Selleck and Marilyn Monroe in a James Bond-style thriller with a
title like Double-Platinum Blonde. Some DPB scenes may have been set on the
Moon--and even shot there. The rock faces might perform a function somewhat
similar to those building-sized billboard advertisements that are common today
in places like NYC and LA.
What is truly astonishing is the life-likeness, complexity and richness of the sculptural works.
They are in another league from the so-called “face on Mars” (planet #4), which is, by comparison,
rather generic and poker-faced--more like a nickel-and-dime-store mask. The faces and figures on
the Moon are demonstrable evidence of beings capable of controlling the trajectory and impact of
asteroids, meteors and comets, as well as having a profound understanding of human facial
dynamics.
These marvelous artworks are site-specific, and so are intended to be seen in their natural setting.
Naturally, the appearance of any stationary, sunlit sculpture from a distance will vary depending
on the time of (lunar) day--angles and shadows. Nonetheless, as there has been precious little
geological or orbital change with the Moon in the few decades since these photos were taken, nor
any weathering phenomena such as high winds or rain, they should be repeatable by 21st century
lunar orbiters' cameras in the right place at the right time(s).
Harmony of the Spheres
The occasional perfect total solar eclipse by the Moon visible from Earth’s surface
is a bit of a long-shot. For the apparent (or “angular”) size of the two bodies to be
the same, their actual sizes must have the same relationship as their distances--in
this case, from Earth. It just so happens that the Sun is 401 times larger than the
Moon (radius-wise) and ranges from 363 to 418 times farther away, depending on
orbital variations within the Earth-Moon system and with respect to the Sun (No
two eclipses are exactly alike).

However, incomplete (“annular”) total eclipses are gradually becoming more the
norm as a consequence of the Moon moving farther away from Earth at a rate of 3”
per year--so that the last perfect total solar eclipse will occur about 22 million years
from now. So our emergence is in a rather narrow window for observing and
experiencing this phenomenon.

Due to the absence of a round satellite on any of the other planets from which the
Sun appears as a disk (Mercury, Venus, Mars) rather than just a very bright home-
star, there is no other possibility of a meaningful perfect solar eclipse anywhere
else in our solar system during the period of its viability. When one considers the
integral role played by the Moon in stabilizing Earth’s rotation as well as in driving
the tides, both key for the emergence and development of life here, our lovely lunar
companion might be likened to a bright gold party balloon alternately flashing
“Welcome”, and “You’re Welcome” high above the clouds.

The Weavers could very well have overseen the collision event and subsequent
accretion that led to the Moon's formation some 40 million years after the dawn of
the solar system. Thus they would have had control over her location, size and
orbital plane--the factors whose interplay accounts for the marvel. They didn’t
bother to do anything similar elsewhere in the solar system as there wouldn’t be
anybody there to benefit from and enjoy it.

Now imagine you’re a Near Sider standing on the moon looking up at the night
sky. The dominant object, up there, would of course be Earth--an impressive
sight, 13.5 times larger than the Moon from Earth, going through phases at the
same rate as the Moon from Earth, but hovering up there and whirling on its axis
(complete cycle 24 hours) like a basketball being spun on the tip of an invisible
giant’s finger. The Earth-Ball would only change its position in the sky when you
moved around. A bit reminiscent of the Biblical Cloud above the Tent in the Sinai
Desert (Numbers 9, v.15-23). Although in that situation, the Cloud always moved
first--and the Israelites responded.

Tabloid headline: Amusement Park Planned for the Moon (It will include a fantasy waterpark in one of the
Mares)

Conspiracy Theories On the Moon

Some bystanders might like to read something into NASA's apparent fear of the
Far Side of the Moon. Not a single one of Apollo's moon-landing missions
ventured a touch-down on the Far Side. Others might counter that it made practical
sense simply because the astronauts couldn't have kept in constant radio contact
from the Far Side. The lunar orbiter, serving as a relay most of the time, would
have periodically passed behind the moon, thereby completely isolating the crew
from Earth for a period of at least a few hours every day--not so good if there were
an emergency--like a wardrobe malfunction or a stubborn door.

Still, there’s something fishy about the absence of accessible photos, the
involvement of the Defense Mapping Agency, crash landings of
early spacecraft, the intense quarantine concern w/astronauts, the
abandonment of the lunar program. NASA may have
encountered an extensive alien occupation of the Far Side—perhaps
astonishing to behold, and yet the news was covered-up out of
fear of public alarm. They may have been told in no uncertain
terms—"this is our turf!"

Why didn't the Apollo missions check out any of the crash
sites of prior unmanned spacecraft? Is it because aliens
dismantled them? You'd think we'd have wanted to see what
effects exposure would have had on them.
Might the visits by UFOs to Washington, D.C. in the Fifties have
inspired the government to shoot for the Moon--in order to check out
a suspected alien encampment of the lunar Far Side?
Tabloid headline: Noah's Ark Is Found--On Mars!
We could find life on #4 planet Mars that isn't technically alien or extraterrestrial
from our point of view--if it's from Earth originally via a meteorite. On the other
hand, we and the other creatures inhabiting Earth may be extraterrestrial in origin--
having arrived here via comet/asteroid/a Martian meteorite. We Earthlings may be
of Martian descent.

In fact, astrobiologists will want to rule out as best they can any connection to
Earth if and when they analyze future findings of life on Mars. While it would be a
newsworthy feat if some organism got carried from Earth to Mars (or vice versa)
and survived and possibly even propagated there, it's not as game-changing as a
finding that life had arisen on Mars independently.

The characterization of life on Mars as extraterrestrial will be easier if it's not life
as we know it. But this brings up the issue of how adeptly we will recognize life as
we don't know it. We have no known experience of such, at least not in the
affirmative. There is no way we can know how many, if any, instances of meeting
life as we don't know it have occurred but not been--at least not officially--
recognized as such.
The True Martian Horror Story: how mankind may have murdered innocent little Martians "in the name
of science" is documented in news accounts from 1976 Viking extraterrestrial probe that landed on Mars
in July (Viking 1 of 2). In one of three experiments for signs of life there, the USA craft heated a soil
sample to 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit in order to break down any organic cells and vaporize whatever
living matter existed there.
Now is that any way to treat one's next-planet neighbor? How would we feel if bigger Martians, that
may have been in hiding underground, gave us a taste of our own medicine? When a civilization’s first
forays into other worlds entails such “bad P.R.” behavior, it probably makes smart otherworldly beings
a bit leery about getting involved with us. The killing of tiny Martian organisms could well have
transpired, as multiple experiments apparently detected life, although the project's scientists later
reversed themselves on the matter to avoid opening a potential Pandora’s Box there.
Mars Vacation: A Child’s Dream
“All aboard, first manned flight to Mars,” announced the pilot. We
climbed onto the Mars-ship, buckled our seat belts, and prepared for
takeoff as the runway was cleared. Our interplanetary craft was twenty
feet high, thirteen feet wide, and seated three-hundred sixty. Then we
took off: for ten long days, the Earth got smaller and smaller for us. During that time, we ate automatic food
supplies, and at "night" our seats turned into beds. We had everything a person could want, including a great
view!
Finally the Mars-ship got there! But before stepping outside, first we needed to put on our Mars-shoes, our
life-support packs, and the rest of our suits. Our group spent eleven exciting days on the Red planet altogether,
and I took thirty-six pictures while exploring every inch of ground for a full mile in each direction. Then, when it
was over, we headed back to Earth and landed flat on the runway.
Painted Black
If and when those pictures are processed, our young friend may be asked to regurgitate those words, or
at least one of them--“Red” Planet--because all of the color photos taken by our probes there show an
orange surface, interspersed with swaths of black--the famed “canal phenomenon” of early telescope
viewing. Blended together by the naked eye, the orange and black may appear reddish from a distance
like Earth’s range.

Romantic Getaway: Mars, Venus

Martians, intent on visiting, if not colonizing Earth, get wind of Venice, Italy. The
vast canal system reminds them so much of their own once glorious waterways that
they flood the place on holiday. Consequently, some Venusians who had planned
to vacation in Venice, when told by Venetian hotel management of the situation,
reroute their trips to Mars. They figure the Martian sights will be less crowded
with so many of them traveling to Earth.

Human Astronauts on Mars Scenario

“There seem to be a lot of Martians out there!"(peering out of just-landed spacecraft's window).
“Are you sure it isn’t those Martiniqueans we crossed paths with on MoonLuna—
you know they'll go anywhere for a good party!”
"Wait a minute, 'Martians'? We are 'Martians’!”
"OK everybody, you heard the man: we're home now, so we can drop that silly 'Earthling' routine."
“Yeah, but what if some of those darn femme fatale Venusians snuck in here while we were away?”

Balancing the Scales

An interior interplanetary fun fact: the Earth’s mass is greater than the combined
mass of the other three inner planets--Mercury, Venus and Mars. Although they
have a higher volume, Earth is more dense, considerably more than Mars.
However, if for some reason we add the mass of Earth’s Moon to the equation on
the side of the other bodies and, while we’re at it, the two satellites of Mars, it’s
nearly a perfect balance (99%).

AfterMath
Mars' two satellites are known as "Deimos"--meaning Terror and Phobos --
meaning Fear. As such they are appropriate companions for war god Mars,
although there would be a language gap since Mars is Roman and the others Greek.
English writer Jonathan Swift's amazingly accurate description of the two Martian
Moons was written long before there were powerful enough telescopes to see them.
Did he benefit from some kind of future knowledge? Both “MarMoons” are puny,
potato-shaped objects, and as such are now considered likely captured asteroids, so
perhaps he intuited that, one might think. The only problem with this explanation is
that the first occupant of the asteroid belt--which lies between Mars and #5 planet
Jupiter--wasn’t discovered until 1801--56 years after Swift’s passing in 1745.

That would have been the planetoid Ceres, named after the Roman goddess of
fertility and agriculture. Her spherical, 588-mile-wide frame carries about a third
of the asteroid belt total. Ceres could have originally had a substantial partner that
succumbed to Jupiter’s mighty pull or some transient phenomenon. Evidence for
the past existence of a planet(oid)ary body large enough to have had volcanoes
and been intact some 4.5 billion years ago has been associated with the asteroid
Vesta, which geologists surmise contains material from its crust. Much of the
asteroid belt may be primordial clumps that Jupiter’s powerful gravity prevented
from ever cohering together in the first place.

Painted Red
The reddest body in the entire solar system, judging from true-color photos,
actually seems to be the tiny Jovian (i.e. Jupiter's) satellite Amalthea. What’s odd
about this is that Amalthea actually gets its coloration from adjacent satellite Io---
which, like Mars, is more orange than red. Volcanic eruptions there spew forth
material that Jupiter’s strong gravity draws inward.

Amalthea’s orbit lies en route so it regularly gets splattered--like a mobile Jackson

Pollock painting in-progress. The at least partial probable explanation for the
greater redness of Amalthea than Io--the source of the color--is that Amalthea is
tiny in comparison with Io and so is more saturated with the lava than Io overall.
If you look at an actual volcanic sites on Io, the more lava-saturated area around
the immediate perimeter is a deeper orange.

Art of Ganyemede?

The surface of Jupiter’s largest satellite Ganymede presents a highly animated

appearance--etched in stone. Notable is a shape evocative of your stereotypical
gray alien being--who seems to be dancing or throwing something--that stretches
across a vast area of the planetary surface (See YouTube video). It's mostly
highlands that separate Marius Regio and Marius Galleo. Ganymede has another
section chock-full of shapes suggestive of faces and figures--the area north of the
Colchis region. There's a smiley face in one corner, and more elaborate forms
emerge throughout for the keen viewer.
Jupiter's four large satellites (Io, Europa, Ganyemede and Callisto) were discovered
by the Italian Galileo Galilei in 1610 with his itty bitty telescope. Consequently,
they have come to be known collectively as "The Galileans". One wonders
whether any parents have named their children after the set. Presumably, Callisto
would go by "Cal".

ReGalia
Actually, Galileo called the foursome "The Medicean Stars", and named them after
members of that royal family--Cosimo II, Duke of Tuscany, and his three brothers.
It was a way of ingratiating himself to a potential patron, though also fitting since,
after all, Jupiter is the Roman king of the gods. The four Galileans are all figures
in Greek mythology; two of them are royals. Io was a river maiden turned cow,
Europa was an abducted princess, Ganymede was a princely cupbearer, and
Callisto was a nymph turned bear. They were chosen for these moon assignments
because their lives were all impacted in a major way by Zeus (the earlier, Greek
version of Jupiter). The same goes for aforementioned Amalthea--the foster-
mother of Zeus.

By whatever name--how about The Jovian Five--these moons are still quite
breathtaking to behold, even in a small telescope. You can see what Galileo saw--
and follow the changing positions of the four moons around Jupiter from night to
night. Oftentimes, only three moons are visible--indicative of a passage behind the
big planet and/or its shadow, or a transit in front (a moon and its shadow are not
visible in a small telescope during a transit).

As noted earlier, the discovery of the Jovian system was a nail in the coffin for
geocentrism. There's another nail lying around that apparently was not used--
involving Jupiter. It's is the changing size of Jupiter's disc as Earth goes from
being on the same side of the Sun as Jupiter to being on the opposite side of the
Sun--and back--all in about 13 months. (The apparent angular diameter of Jupiter
reportedly ranges from 29.8 to 50.1 seconds of arc--a variation of 68%. By
formula, its apparent circumference thus goes from 94 to 157 arc seconds, and its
apparent area ranges from 706 to 1963 square arc seconds). This phenomenon
should be noticeable, even using a small telescope. Galileo, and others, may have
been so intent on documenting the nightly repositioning of the moons that the
gradual expansion and contraction cycle of Jupiter's image escaped detection. In a
strict geocentric system, the apparent size of Jupiter from Earth shouldn't vary at
all.
Weather report from Jupiter: "today--cloudy; tomorrow--very cloudy; next day--
totally cloudy; next day--expect clouds to persist; next day 100% likelihood of
cloud cover; next day--overcast; next day--no sun for you!; next day--sunscreen
unnecessary,...Oh, and by the way, we've got a category 7 storm coming through
tonight with winds up to 285 MPH winds!"

Less than 1/3 Jupiter’s mass yet still 95 times more massive than Earth, #6 planet
Saturn emanates a strong gravitational field--if not enough to blow up an adjacent
planetoid, perhaps enough to dismantle one or more of its own satellites, and/or to
have caused their formation process to miscarry. In Roman mythology, Saturn,
ruler of the Titans, is also associated with agriculture and time (his Greek name is
Cronus)--evident in his symbol the scythe (i.e. the harvester/reaper).

Saturn--the planetary body--is often overshadowed by its own rings, except when
viewed edge-on., which renders them imperceptible from a distance. A bit like the
Edgar Allen Poe Tale of The Tell-Tale Heart —the "thump, thump, thumping" a
dead-giveaway, so the murderer imagines, although none hear it but him. A guilty
conscience, perhaps, on display—the exploded satellite that, rather than going to
"smithereens", wherever that is, decided to stay in orbit. Accordingly, what
presents itself is a sort of "haunting", and, as often is the case w/such the "haunter"
is larger-than-life. What was probably a rather insubstantial, run-of-the-mill moon
has become, post-mortem, one of Nature's greatest marvels.
Poor Saturn! All that anybody ever seems to pay any attention to is the rings.
Lovely as these may be, one should note that, technically speaking, Saturn's rings
are an adornment, therefore dependent on the planet for their existence, not vice
versa. Remove the rings (not that anyone would have the heart to do such a thing),
and Saturn remains essentially the same. But remove Saturn, and the rings
dissipate since force of the planet's gravity would no longer be present to guide the
multitude of particles.
One supposes they would scatter, although it might be fascinating to see just what
would happen to all those moons as well as the ring system's material in the event of a
sudden disappearance by the gas giant. What if planets were like people watching TV who,
every once in a while need to leave the room for refreshments --“don't anybody move, I'll be
right back."' What does a juggler do when Nature calls or the phone rings, or somebody is at the
door?
Imagine living on one of Saturn's several dozen satellites, and going to bed each night with a
prayer that those stupendous rings stay intact for a while longer—"God bless the shepherding
moons"—or consider the speculative business of "ring particle insurance." There are enough
rocks rollicking around in those rings for every member of a civilization to have one with
his/her own name on it.
Ur‘nus
Moving along--Uranus, planet #7: actually may have begun as #6 but got bounced
out by Jupiter and Saturn double-teaming. The most important thing seems to be
how you pronounce it without offending people. Try--“You’re an ‘Us’”, with the
primary accent on the first syllable, secondary accent on the third syllable, and the
“a”-vowel short/schwa, not long. Ur’nus, discovered in 1781 by English
astronomer William Herschel, is named after the Greco-Roman god who ruled the
heavenly skies, was castrated, and now spins sideways to its orbital plane.

Even though early cosmologists greatly underestimated the size of the solar
system, a stationary Earth-centered-system’s requirement that the planets and fixed
stars whir around it every day is physically doable--for the planets visible to them,
anyway. Saturn, which has the furthest to go among those known to the ancients,
would make it all the way around in about 8 hours at the speed of light (Sol), so
could do it in around in a day at roughly 1/3 SoL.

But alas, the theory breaks down in modern times with the discovery of the more
remote planets. Distant #8 planet Neptune would lag the field noticeably even at
extremely high speeds--taking more than 26 hours to complete a circuit at SoL--
and so would be lapped by the field in less than two weeks’ time. Discovered in
1846 by a quartet of Europeans, the real Neptune, a relative plodder, will finish its
first full loop around the Sun (and Earth, incidentally) as a known planet in 2010.

Crisscrossing “Outskirtsers”
One last orbital period 666er pertains to the outermost planet Neptune (the Roman
sea god) and planetoid pair Pluto and Charon (their god of the underworld and his
ferry operator). It's interesting because one of the Beasts of the Book of
Revelations is described as "coming out of the sea" (Revelations 13 v.1).

Neptune's orbital period—164.79 Earth years--is almost exactly 2/3rds (.66537--so

round-offable to .666 within a margin of error) of Pluto/Charon’s--247.68 Earth
years. The timing for the orbits of these two particular planetoidal bodies is
pertinent because they overlap--at least two-dimensionally--in such a way that
Pluto/Charon’s tilted ellipse brings them closer to the Sun than Neptune for about
20 years per cycle.
A Little Respect
Pluto and Charon are mutually tidally locked--meaning they each keep the same “face”
towards the other while they spin around each other in their mutual orbital dance about the
Sun. They are the only instance of such in the current solar system, the other tidal lockings
being all just one-way. It’s because Pluto and Charon are much more equal in mass. The
relationship of the next-closest-to-equal-size pair--Earth and Moon Luna--is projected to
eventually go from one-way lock into mutual lock.
Letter to the Editor: “You say Pluto & Charon ' s ‘axial rotations
are synchronized owing to tidal forces between these
closely orbiting neighbors.’ At about 3 billion miles from the
Sun, isn’t it a bit cold out there for that?” Reply: Actually,
gravity--which tidal locking is an expression of--is pertinent
to all matter regardless of circumstances like temperature. A
solid body can be “locked” just as well as one with lots of
liquid.
A Parting Shot
Removing Pluto, discovered in 1930, from the roster of planets based largely on its
size doesn’t make perfect sense. Mercury, which nobody suggested de-listing is
actually smaller than two “mere satellites”: Ganymede (Jovian) and Titan
(Saturnian) (4.9/5.3/5.2 thousand km diameters, respectively). The other major
factor held against Pluto--that it’s locked-with respect to its satellite Charon--
would put the Earth in jeopardy of being de-planetized when, several million years
down the road, it locks onto the Moon. Furthermore, putting Pluto out means that
fantasy baseball fans no longer have a full lineup of nine planets. Who is going to
play right field?

Space Odyssey
Looking beyond our own solar system: some cool (or hot) stellar names for kids,
and the constellations they're located in: Aldebaran (Taurus), Altair (Aquila),
Antares (Scorpio), Arcturus (Bootes), Bellatrix (Orion), Capella (Auriga),
Fomalhaut (Pisces Austrinus), Procyon (Canis Minor), Regulus (Leo), Rigel
(Orion). It helps to pronounce them correctly. These are among the top thirty
brightest stars in our night sky.

The brightest of these--Sirius (alpha-Canis Majoris)--is a mere 8.6 LY distant.

Sirius (aka the Dog Star) is also about 23 times more luminous than the Sun, which
is to say that if somebody out in space happened to be midway between Sirius and
the Sun, Sirius would be 23 times brighter.

Significant Star in Cygni

That may sound like a lot but it's not. Take the real superstar of our region of the
galaxy--Deneb (alpha-Cygni)--signifying the tail-feathers star of the constellation
Cygnus the Swan. Deneb is quite prominent, particularly in mid-Northern
latitudes. As one of the three points of the famous Summer Triangle--along with
Vega and Altair--it soars high overhead during that season of greatest outdoor
activity.

Most of the bright stars we see are only a few dozen to a few hundred LY away.
However, Deneb is 19th brightest despite being 1.5 thousand-plus LY away.

Deneb is 60 thousand times more luminous than the Sun!

It turns out that Deneb is a hot supergiant kind of star. It is estimated to be 2.6
thousand degrees Celsius hotter than the Sun. Size-wise Deneb's circumference is
about equal to the Earth's orbital path around the Sun. If Deneb were a basketball,
the mighty Sun would be a pea!

Light of the World

Cygnus is also known as the Northern Cross, in which case Deneb represents the
head of Jesus Christ. This is remarkable because the early Christians who dubbed
Cygnus the Northern Cross could not have possibly known--by conventional
means--just how imposing a star they had selected.

Transformations
Another interesting cultural parallel with this constellation is that, in ancient
mythology, Zeus once disguised himself as a Swan, in a manner similar to
Christian belief that Jesus is God become man.

The term "swan song" clearly parallels the mortality meaning of the cross.

Furthermore, the upside-down aspect of it--Christ's head being where the bird's tail
is situated--could be seen tying into the Roman policy--begun with the apostle
Peter--of sometimes crucifying followers of Jesus that way. And it taps into the
notion of simultaneously coming and going that is at the crux of the Christian
belief in resurrection and redemption.

The Gospel of Matthew reports that "Magi from the east came to Jerusalem"
seeking the newborn king since they "saw his star in the east". After an audience
with King Herod, "the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it
stopped over the place where the child (Jesus) was. When they saw the star, they
were overjoyed" (Matthew 2 v.1-10).

In the Northern Hemisphere (including the town of Bethlehem) during late

December and early January, the Northern Cross stands more or less upright just
above the horizon in the early evening (around 8-9 PM) looking to the Northwest.
So coming from the East, like the Magi, looking ahead towards Bethlehem, that's
what you'd see--with Deneb at the head of the Cross.

Deneb probably wasn't that star--which is variously speculated to have been a

supernova, comet or planetary conjunction. But these are all ephemeral
phenomena--no longer visible after a few weeks. Deneb, and Cygnus/Northern
Cross, serve well as a steady reminder--a sort of commemorative for Christians of
birth, death and rebirth--year after year.

Deneb lies in the galactic plane--on the same looping outer arm as the Sun. So
there are a lot of faint background stars around it, which means a plethora of nova
candidates. Granted, the expanse of the Milky Way is most densely packed
looking inwardly--in the direction of Sagittarius and Scorpius--but those aren't in
the night sky during the Winter...

Something in the Milk

Captain Ripley's Believe It or Not: prohibitionists and dieticians beware--the very
center of our Milky Way galaxy has a bar running through it. The Milky Way Bar
is well-stocked with stars and is likely a gradually developing feature typical for
mature spiral galaxies. The bar appears to be more or less straight, and the result
of its turning is a sort of pinwheel effect.

One might think that barred spirals would tend spin themselves out of existence,
but their integrity is maintained, cosmlogists theorize, by the gravitational
contribution of a lot of dark matter, which tends to invisibly cohabit with the
galaxy's form. It's possible that some dark matter could involve other dimensions,
a wormhole web network, alternate planes of reality, even a spiritual realm (Some
of these terms may be merely different ways of describing the same thing, or
different aspects of such).

Through the Past, Darkly: Premonition or Spin?

*The concept of dark matter seems to have been prefigured by French multi-
disciplinarian Rene Descartes' thinking--in the seventeenth century--that
everything in space is going around in dense, ethereal, jostling circles. The term
"dark matter", and "dark energy" for that matter, didn't even exist until the
twentieth century. Yet Descartes envisioned the cosmos filled with unseen streams
of corpuscles.

*Furthermore, Descartes’ word for star system--“vortex" (in translation)--sounds

like the closest term out there to “black holes,” the ultimate vortices of twentieth
century cosmology.

*Eighteenth century Swiss-German mathematician Johann Lambert’s concept of a

"dark regent" abiding at the center of each “milky way” prefigures the current
theory that black holes are present at the core of most galaxies, may in fact have
been integral to their formation, and will continue to shepherd the processes of
intra-/intergalactic consolidation.

Overkill?
Our galaxy appears to fit this profile. Astronomers have found, at the center, a big
black hole devouring stuff like a Pac-man maniac. The archer constellation
Sagittarius points his arrow directly at this central region. A Greco-Roman
mythologist might agree that it's a poignant location. Sagittarius, one of two
hunting centaurs in this patch of sky, has drawn his bow to shoot Scorpius, which
had fatally bitten Orion. The great giant has been revived by medicinal healer
Ophiuchus and placed safely afar.

In historical depictions, Ophiuchus is practically draped by a serpent large enough

to encompass three constellations. This prototype physician was educated by
Sagittarius--known for his wisdom. One day, Ophiuchus saw a snake bring a herb
to another snake presumed dead. The herb revived this snake and the two happily
slithered off together.

After that incident, Ophiuchus regularly employed serpents in his therapies--

allowing them to roam freely about the infirmary. This seems to presage the use
of antivenoms, which were invented about two millennia later, in 1895, by French
bacteriologist/immunologist/toxicologist Albert Calmette for the Indian Cobra.
Note that both situations involve snake domestication for healing, and so involve
the use of what is generally perceived as a dangerous animal--snakes--as an
innocuous curative agent (bringer of the herb, provider of the venom used to make
the antivenom). Subsequent concoctions have been developed for scorpions,
spiders and other venomous creatures. Interestingly, the standard procedure for
generating antivenom involves using an inoculated horse (the Sag. connection) to
produce the antibodies.

The words "inoculate" and "innocuous" phonetically share their first three (out of
four) syllables and are both derived from fifteenth/sixteenth-century Latin. Yet
they have no common root component. "In-nocuous" traces back to "not harmful";
whereas "inoculate" traces back to "graft on a plant part" from "bud, eye". So
etymology cannot account for the fact that an inoculation uses that which is
innocuous (antibodies) in its essential act. And thus you can use the word
"innocuous" in the body of the definition for "inoculate" without there being any
valid charge that you are defining a word in relation to itself. In fact, you could
even say that you are using the word "innocuous" innocuously in doing so.

Back in Lambert’s time, those persons interested in extraterrestrial matters were

being drawn ever further afield in endeavoring to understand the cosmos. But it
didn't happen overnight. When French astronomer Charles Messier in 1774--using
his four-inch refractor telescope--first cataloged the numerous fuzzy “nebulae" in
the sky, they were all treated the same. He simply wanted to account for them so
they would stop being mistaken for the much more exciting (for him, anyway)
ephemeral cometary phenomena that occasionally appear on the scene. Messier's
list, with a little help from friends, totaled 110 objects in its final version of 1781.

This nebular identification thread was picked up by William Herschel (discoverer

of Neptune). In 1783, Herschel built an 18-inch reflector telescope; a few years
later he added a 49 1/2-incher. He and his son John used them to compile a general
catalog of nebula and clusters that exceeded five thousand objects.

It shouldn't be surprising that these smudgy shapes of Messier turn out to be

several different things. The roster includes star clusters (open clusters like the
Pleiades M45 and the Beehive M44, or globular like the Great Globular Cluster in
Hercules M13), star nursery areas (like the Great Orion Nebula M42), and
nova/supernovae eruption remnants (like the Crab Nebula M1).

In the late nineteenth century Englishman William Huggins used spectroscopy to

differentiate those nebulae that represented gaseous clouds versus those that were
collections of stars. But eighteenth century Englishman Tom Wright, may have
been the first to surmise a universe filled with numerous galaxies of which our
Milky Way was one and some of the nebulae were others. As it turns out, fully
one-third (37 out of 110) of Messier's objects are in fact entire other galaxies.
a big step towards that realization occurred in the 1920's, when American
astronomer Edwin Hubble got busy using the one-hundred-inch Hooker reflector
telescope at Mt. Wilson Observatory in California. He analyzed the brightness of
the light from measuring-stick Cepheid variable stars within certain nebulae.
Hubble determined that some of them--such as those in the Great Spiral Nebula in
Andromeda M31--were off the charts. They were farther away than the estimated
size of the whole Milky Way. This was stunning because until then it was
generally believed that our galaxy was the whole enchilada.
And so M31 became the Andromeda Galaxy, M51 could be spun as the Whirlpool
Galaxy, M63 shone as the Sunflower Galaxy, M64 could be seen as the Black Eye
Galaxy, M82 could be rolled out as the Cigar Galaxy, M101 could be spun as the
Pinwheel Galaxy, and M104 could be cast as the Sombrero Galaxy. In addition to
these spiral galaxies, numerous elliptical shapes were likewise determined to be
whole galaxies. Thus nebula such as M49, M59 and M60--all in Virgo--were
tabbed elliptical galaxies. (Since elliptical galaxies tend to be less distinctive-
looking, they typically haven't been given proper names).

The next big step was up to the galactic cluster level. Already, back in the
eighteenth century again, German philosopher Immanuel Kant, building then on
Wright’s ideas, could be considered the first to envision the organizational levels
of galactic clustering and superclustering. We now know, thanks to some really
big telescopes, that certain groups of faint objects in constellations like Coma
Berenices, Perseus, Virgo and Hercules are in fact clusters of galaxies, and that
many of these seem to comprise superclusters. The Milky Way is part of a small
cluster--called the Local Group--that also includes the Andromeda Galaxy, the
Triangulum Galaxy, and several little galaxies. The Local Group itself is a tiny
part of the Local Supercluster (aka Virgo Supercluster), which is dominated by the
enormous Virgo cluster.
Multi-Galactic Foliage: a Field Notebook
Linking the terrestrial to the cosmic: the speckled leaves of the cultivated
evergreen shrub Aucuba japonica Variegata (aka Gold Dust Plant) bear an
astonishing resemblance to deep-field telescopic images (See Pictures). This
includes, notably, the Hubble Space Telescope's Ultra Deep Field (HUDF)
photograph. That image used a ten-hour exposure to peer far into space and found
an abundance of galaxies.
The markings on the Gold Dust Plant's leaves are evocative of stars, star clusters,
assorted nebulae, galaxies (spiral, elliptical and irregular), comets, even asteroids.
Also, the leaf spines can look like meteor streaks or spiral galaxies viewed edge-
on. Some of the leaf images even appear to mimic the phenomenon of
gravitational lensing. All these effects can be particularly impressive when the
leaves are viewed in black & white, as on a photocopier--where it's also possible to
enhance the view with motion (which can boost nebulosity).
However, the horticulturalists who bred this attractive ornamental plant predate
deep-field astronomy by centuries. Native to a large swath of Asia, the
characteristic Aucuba japonica "variegated with yellow spots" was described by
Swedish naturalist Carl Peter Thunberg in his 1783 botany catalog following
extensive journeys in the Orient. By the way, A.j. Variegata does well with some
shade and can form hedges.

There are several hundred billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. The total number
of stars estimated in our known universe--several sextillion--is roughly that
galactic number squared. So you could say that in this regard our Solar System
(one star) is to our Galaxy what our Galaxy is to our Universe.

Little Miss Peapod

So much revolves around starlight. The photosynthesizing, astrally-clad A.j.
Variegata leaves seem to embody the idea that our Universe is one big ecosystem.
Starlight enables plant life, which leads naturally to animal life. You have a top
predator--black holes--and you have top-notch connectivity--ever-branching
wormholes. The stellar population and the elements for life are regularly
replenished from remains of prior generations--like in a healthy old-growth forest.
To be a part, however small, of this greatness can be a joyful and thrilling
experience.
PICTURES

Cezanne’s Large Bathers, Arch

 MagMoon, P.I. (with sunglasses and goatee)

Marilyn
Moonroe
Royal Guard (in profile, facing <left)
Multi-Galactic Aucuba Leaves Collage
M
ulti-Galactic Aucuba Leaves Collage
Multi-Galactic Aucuba Leaves Collage.
For more Celebrity Moon Faces and Multi-Galactic Aucuba Leaves, go to You
Tube and key in this book’s title. You’ll also find there videos containing: the
Hotel Adolphus 1962 Dallas travel brochure; NASA photos of Venusian fried eggs
and Jupiter’s moon Ganyemede; 19th century banners with skyscrapers; a sketch of
MoonLuna’s orbit; a full-color world map showing suggested regional
breakdowns. These are all more or less mentioned or discussed in the text—a good
picture can be worth a thousand words.
TECHNICAL APPENDIXES

APPENDIX A

What We Know Today:

Some Key Dates/Ages and Figures
From the Big Bang to the Present--the Road to Us
And Other Cosmic Matters (all best estimates)

origin of this universe=13.7 bil. yrs. ago

first proto-galaxies formed=13.6 bil. yrs. ago
first stars formed=13.3 bil. yrs. ago
probable first supernovae=13.2 bil. yrs. ago
oldest known quasar =13.0 bil. yrs. old
oldest known planet (gaseous)=12.7 bil. yrs. old
first traditional galaxies formed=12.7 bil. yrs. ago
our Milky Way Galaxy formed=11-12 bil. yrs. ago
most galaxies formed=7.7--12.5 bil. yrs. ago
oldest known supernova=10.7 bil. yrs. ago
transitional era from Population II stars (largely without rocky planets) to
Population I stars
(many with rocky planets) in our galaxy=8-9 bil. yrs. ago
origin of our solar system=4.56 bil. yrs. ago
origin of Earth/Moon system=4.52 bil. yrs. ago
oldest Earth rocks (on Earth)=4.0 bil. yrs. old
first known life on Earth=3.8 bil. yrs. ago (single-celled fossil)
first known complex multi-cellular plants=1.2 bil. yrs. ago, and animals=590 mil.
yrs. ago
first hominids=6 mil. yrs ago
first homo sapiens sapiens=200 thousand yrs. ago

Galactic Measurements
breadth of Milky Way galaxy=100 thousand LY
thickness of Milky Way galaxy =12 thousand LY

Star Counts
number of stars Milky Way=400 billion
number of galaxies in the visible universe=a few hundred billion full-sized galaxies
(most with 200-800 billion stars) and several trillion dwarf galaxies (most with a
few dozen million to a few dozen billion stars).
number of stars in the visible universe=multiple sextillions (e.g. 30 sextillion,
which is 3 x 10 to the 22nd power (meaning a 3 followed by 22 zeros))

Dark Stuff
Percentage of Universe that is Dark Matter=22-24%
Percentage of Universe that is Dark Energy=72-74%
Percentage of Universe that is conventional Matter=4-5%
(according to the standard model of cosmology)

Infrared research suggests that 90% of the conventional-matter Universe may be

optically hidden from us by dust (shouldn't change the above percentage figures).

Likely Life History

Astronomers estimate that star systems very much like our solar system--featuring a
healthy retinue of planets--probably were able to begin forming in a big way in the
Milky Way at least eight billion years ago, as heavy metal elements became more
prevalent. However, our Sun is a more recent arrival, forming just 4.56 billion years
ago. That leaves us with an astonishing 3.44-billion-year gap between us and the first
planetary systems in the galaxy.

Furthermore, if we use the law of averages/bell curve/etc., then some of those earlier
planets where intelligent life develops quicker than on Earth could probably add up
to, say, 1.5 billion years to their lead. This results in a 4.94-billion-year spread
between the likely very first emergence of intelligent civilizations in our universe
and us.

So, even using the fairly conservative numbers of Harrison (50 million years to
survey the galaxy), it's probable that well-organized, sophisticated, highly mobile
ETIs have been in this neighborhood for as much as 4.93 billion years and may have
been monitoring the Earth/Moon system from its inception some 4.52 billion years
ago around the Sun.

APPENDIX B
The Drake Equation (a formula for estimating the number of intelligent,
communicative civilizations in our galaxy):

R(*) x f(p) x n(e) x f(l) x f(i) x f(c) x L=N

Taking it one variable at-a-time:

R(*): the average # of stars made per year in our galaxy that are suitable for
planetary life

About 20 stars are made per year in our galaxy. A substantial majority (an
estimated 2/3 to 3/4) of these are cool, slow-burning red dwarfs; most of the rest
are more or less average stars like the Sun; only about 5% are the giant and super
giant stars--the biggest, brightest and hottest--that wind up going supernova at a
young age. Early stellar blowout pretty much disqualifies the big stars, as the
multi-billion-year route to intelligence would get nipped in the bud by their going
belly-up after just something like 800 million years.

Astrobiologists have come to believe that red dwarf systems, once considered poor
candidates for life-bearing planets, may be good incubators after all. The tendency
for planets to lock onto the red dwarf (i.e. constant light side/dark side) may be
moderated by a thick atmosphere’s distributing warmth around the planet. This
atmosphere could also shield the planet from flares which occur frequently on
some red dwarfs, particularly early on.

Life there would likely derive energy from geothermal sources, of which there
should be no shortage given the typical proximity of red dwarf planet to star. The
high percentage of red dwarfs makes 16 a reasonable estimate for this figure.

f(p): the fraction of stars that are formed with accompanying planetary systems.

The discovery by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of a 12.7-billion-year planet in

a globular cluster in Scorpius stunned many astronomers. It had been widely
thought that planets were not formed that long ago as there couldn't have been
much metallic, planet-forming material around yet. Heavy metals are only
manufactured by supernovae--the death throes of massive stars. One billion years
after the Big Bang, not that many stars had died, so went the reasoning. Globular
star clusters, made mostly of ancient stars, were considered likely to be largely
bereft of planets.
However, it is now thought that the earliest generations of stars (formed as long as
13.3-13.6 years ago) included a substantial number of super-massive stars that
would have gone supernovae in as few as a million years.

Among younger stars, some giant stars in open star clusters appear to effectively
sweep their environs clean of potential planetary material that could otherwise
enrich subsequent generations of stars.

But otherwise planets are likely a regular feature of the star formation process, and
thousands have already been detected around nearby stars. Plug-in, conservatively,
1/3 for this factor.

n(e): the average # of planets (or satellites) per star (those with one or more
planets) that are suitable for life.

Some multiple-star systems and some variable stars have no conventional

habitable zone. So any planetary bodies would be wastelands. Many planetary
systems may be inhospitable due to irregular orbits, collisions and ejections.

However, findings on Earth of chemosynthetic and non-solar photosynthetic life

forms in places like ocean-floor thermal vents have expanded our awareness of life‘s
frontiers. In one such ecosystem, a species of bacteria (audaxviator) thrives by
getting energy from uranium, nitrogen from rocks, and carbon from dissolved
carbon dioxide. In Mono Lake, CA, some bacteria have been able to use arsenic to
perform the metabolic functions normally done by phosphorus.

Ponder the great variety of life processes on Earth. There are at least lists nine
possible or known chemical reactions that microbes use to live and grow. Bacteria
can hibernate for multi-million years, live for 250 million years, survive
temperatures as low as -10 C. (14 F.) for 2-3 million years, and grow at
temperatures as high as 121 C. (250 F.). It's believed life can exist at up to 140-5
C. (184-95 F.).

Conventional wisdom says that rocky planets are more suitable for life than those
that are mostly gaseous. Our solar system has four of each. Earth is the only rocky
one within the habitable-life-belt distance from the Sun. Mars is borderline; Venus
is a near-miss However, geothermal activity on some of the satellites of the gas
giants could make these moons habitable as well. The four gas planets do have
small rocky cores, but the surfaces of these are not believed likely to support life
due to extremes of temperature and pressure there. Strictly airborne life forms are
remotely possible, for example, in the mid-altitudinal cloud layers of Jupiter.

Consider the possibility of life on planetary satellites that do

not have the extreme pressure issue and can obtain moderate
heat and energy from geological activity such as volcanism
and seismic warping caused by proximity to another body. The
roster of candidates includes: Io--caused by Jupiter and Europa;
Enceladus--caused by Saturn and Dione; Europa--caused by Io
and Ganyemede.

Space probes have also found indications of extraterrestrial water on or in several

solar system satellites. This includes Saturn's Enceladus in diluted form as geysers,
and Jupiter's Europa and Ganyemede in ice water surfaces and potential subterranean
liquid water. The Earth's Moon has been found to contain some frozen water that
got there as water vapor during primordial volcanism.

Mars' polar ice caps contain considerable quantities of frozen water. Elsewhere,
its surface shows signs of substantial liquid water there in the past. NASA
describes features there as evidence of "river channels and stream
valleys,...tributaries,...springs,...lakes,...local seas." Beneath the surface ice water
still probably exists. However, it seems too acidic and salty to support or have
supported life.

If and when a mission to Mars discovers evidence of life there (past and/or
present), the research team will have to contain their glee until they can rule
out Earth as a source of the life via a meteorite. This could be very difficult to
do. We are most prepared to detect and recognize life as we know it--Earthly.
But the closeness of Mars to Earth makes it fairly likely that any widespread
life on one would have found its way to the other in a hardy and/or fossilized
form. There's just been too much debris exchanged between the two planets,
particularly in their early years. Ditto regarding Earth's moon, which might
be a good place to look for Martian fossils.

It's amazing the harshness and variety of conditions in which life exists on Earth.
It would be helpful to know how the extreme-condition life forms on Earth got
started. To call a harsh alien landscape suitable for life because certain organisms
on Earth have developed adaptations enabling them to fill an equivalently rough
niche here may be presumptuously putting the cart before the horse.

NASA says that Saturn's large moon Titan may well resemble the primordial Earth,
albeit a cold one. Based on gas flows imaged by the Cassini flyby probe,
astrobiologists have posited that Titan could be inhabited by hydrogen-breathing
acetylene eaters. No one has actually seen Titan's surface yet due to persistent
thick clouds.

While it may be the case that our solar system has several bodies suitable for life,
we know that our view is not representative of stellar systems since we are here.
We know that there is guaranteed to be at least one suitable body here--our Earth--
otherwise we wouldn't exist to do this survey. But many systems, having no
suitable bodies, must also be considered. Let's just suppose that for every 1-/2-/3-
/4-/5-suitables there are 1/2/3/4/5 zero-suitables. So we'll be moderate and use a
figure of 1.0 for this factor.

f(l): the fraction of those suitable planets on which life has actually appeared,
either having arisen of its own accord or having arrived on a meteor/comet/asteroid
(hardy bacteria).

A biologist can concoct amino acids in a laboratory setting mimicking the

primordial Earth, but these conditions may be more favorable than those
prevailing, over any length of time, on your average “suitable” planet. On the
other hand, organic molecules seem to be abundant throughout the galaxy. The
amino acid glycine was found on comet Wild 2 by NASA's Stardust probe. Life
emerged on Earth almost as soon as it was possible. So we’ll call it a 1/4 for this
factor.

f(i): the fraction of those life-bearing planets where a certain degree of intelligence
is attained.

There are probably many borderline fertile planets where “primitive” life is able to
just hang on for a while by the skin of its teeth and nothing more complex ever
emerges (what many expect we'll eventually find on places like Europa, Mars and
Titan). Particularly on planets that lack a strong partner--such as Earth's Moon--
there is probably not enough tidal activity to ferment life.

Furthermore, “intelligence”, as generally defined by us (humans) as human-

equivalent intelligence (Datable as emerging between 2.6 million and 40 thousand
years ago. Take your pick: first elaborate tools=2.6 million years ago; discovery of
fire=1 million years ago; first homo sapiens sapiens =-200 thousand years ago; first
art=60 thousand years ago; large surge in brainpower=40 thousand years ago) is
hardly a prerequisite for success--witness the roughly 150-million-year reign of the
dinosaurs, or the flourishing insect populations today. So make this factor 1/50.

f(c): the fraction of those planets sprouting an intelligence where they develop an
outwardly communicative technical society (capable of and interested in making
contact with us).

This factor is datable in our own example to the 20th century. This seems like a
rather normal developmental step to take over time, not a terribly big leap. Note
how, in our case, the foundation of our scientific culture as put forth by the ancient
Greeks was not extinguished despite the efforts of subsequent prevailing powers,
but was disseminated sufficiently to survive the Dark Ages and reemerge in the
Renaissance. And other ancient civilizations, such as the Egyptians, might well
have been on the verge of cosmic understanding at their pinnacle. However, one
can imagine planets with very thick atmospheres whose intelligent beings never
develop any knowledge of or interest in other worlds. Let’s say 2/5 for this factor.

L: the average lifetime of such communicative societies.

A civilization may peter out if it fails to develop sufficient renewable energy. Or it

may nuke itself to ruins. Or it may commit "ecocide"--slaying itself in the process
of exploiting environmental resources. These are issues humanity is confronting
today.

That said, many theorizers likely underestimate the odds that a given planet, once
sprouting an intelligent civilization, will still have an intelligent civilization on it at a
subsequent given point in time. It need not be the same civilization. It may be only a
remnant population, it may be part of an intra-/inter-galactic empire, it may be of a
different species, hybrids, artificial intelligence, organic & inorganic meld, and
whatnot.

For civilizations on planets of mid-sized stars like the Sun, the limited lifespan of
the star may threaten the longevity of the civilization, provided they haven't
established themselves elsewhere in space..

While some civilizations may be rather short-lived, those that are long-lived are
likely to be very long-lived (following the Bell curve). Given the natural tendency
of civilizations to explore and colonize (by whatever means--
rocketry/wormholes/something else), after several hundred million years, such
societies will tend to be effectively ineradicable--having put their eggs in a lot of
baskets.

One could surmise that most any civilization that lasts for, say 1 billion years, will
become effectively immortal. They will have spread themselves around a bit so
that no single catastrophe, or even series of catastrophes, can put much of a dent in
their numbers. Even if they remain linked to planets, they would be focused on
those around red dwarfs, which can burn nourishingly for up to several hundred
billion years.

But to include this level of maturity in our calculations now would diverge a bit
from the point of Drake’s equation--assessing the current situation. Most of the
oldest indigenous intelligent civilization in our galaxy may be only about 5 billion
years old. So, for the purpose of making this count conservative, we'll calculate
using 10 billion years as a maximum figure, knowing it could well be much longer.

So, if, say, 1 in 10 of these civilizations successfully goes mobile, the mean
average lifetime is going to be in the billions of years no matter how poorly the
other nine perform. However, if civilizations tend to stagnate and fall like empires,
if they tend to become uninterested or highly selective in communicating with
outsiders, or if there is some difficulty with the process of diffusion--such as stiff
competition or a strict intragalactic quota policy that limits the percentage of big
shot civilizations to perhaps 1 in a thousand--then the average lifetime is more
likely in the tens-to-hundreds-of-millions-of-years. Going more or less down the
middle, we arrive at 100 million for this factor.

N: the number of intelligent, communicative civilizations in our galaxy at this

time.
Plugging-in all of the aforementioned factor estimates--one arrives at a figure of
1.07 million potentially communicative intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way
galaxy.
Here's the math:
R(*) x f(p) x n(e) x f(l) x f( i) x f(c) x L========N.
16 x 1/3 x 1.0 x 1/4x 1/50 x 2/5 x 100 million=1.07 million--Author’s estimate
2010.

Scientifically-minded users of the Drake Equation typically arrive at figures

ranging from several thousand to about a million. This includes notable
personalities: Frank Drake himself estimates 10 thousand communicative Milky
Way civilizations, sci-fi author Isaac Asimov suspects about 100 thousand, and
cosmologist Carl Sagan surmised 1 million of them.

Although these numbers might sound high, that's only because our Milky Way
Galaxy is a huge pool to draw from---400 or so billion stars. A million
civilizations means only one civilization per 400 thousand stars. That's
roughly the number of stars within 300 light years of us. Thus we might
expect our nearest indigenous contactable neighbor to be about 300 light years
away--a needle in a haystack.

The Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) plans to utilize the Allen
Telescope Array (ATA) to eventually survey up to 10 thousand stars per year.
Their stated goal is to make contact by 2025 or so. They intend focus on good
candidates--mainline stars of Sun-like luminosity to red dwarfs, multiple star
systems with a habitable life belt, and stars identified as having Earth-like
planets.

Rare Earth Coverage

Subscribers to the "Rare Earth hypothesis": your concerns are more or less
addressed in the preceding discussion. That is to say, most of the variables in
"Rare Earth's" hypothesis overlap in some way with those of the Drake
Equation. For example: Rare Earth's "fraction of stars in 'galactic habitable
zone'" is included in "fraction of stars with planets."

Rare Earth's "fraction of planets that are rocky, not gaseous" is a component
of Drake's "fraction of planets that are suitable for life". Similarly, Rare
Earth's "fraction of planets with microbial life" comes under Drake's
"fraction of suitable planets on which life actually appears."

Likewise, Rare Earth's "fraction of planets with complex life" is part of the
Drake factor "fraction of life-bearing planets where a certain intelligence is
attained".

And Rare Earth's "fraction of planets with a large moon", "fraction of star
systems with a large, Jovian-style planet" and "a sufficiently low number of
extinctionary events" are considerations in Drake's "fraction of planets
suitable for life", "fraction of suitable planets where life actually arises",
"fraction of life-bearing planets where a certain intelligence is attained" and
"average lifetime of an intelligent civilization."

Rare Earth uses 11 variables to cover less ground than the standard Drake does
with just seven.

Rare Earth leaves out Drake's "L" factor. This means that, by default, it considers
the average communicable lifetime of an intelligent civilization to be one year.

Earth may well be very rare--one in 400 thousand without being Rare Earth rare--
one in 400 billion.

Rare Earth seems to confuse sufficient conditions with necessary ones. To

illustrate, ponder all of the things that you did this morning prior to arriving at
work. What Rare Earth does is look at the process and conclude that every part of
it is a requirement for the result.

Superstition
So, in hindsight, the number of lanes in the streets you drove, the type of place
where you stopped to get breakfast, the color of your car, the style of shoes you
wore, the kind of tie/scarf you wore, whether you brushed your hair in the
bathroom mirror, the side of the bed you awoke on, etc.--every one of these
happenstances, is held to be utterly essential for not only your successfully getting
in to work, but for anybody's.

Advocates of the Rare Earth hypothesis are reminiscent of those who for centuries
propounded the belief that Earth was, uniquely, the center of the Universe. Despite
an ever-growing body of contradictory evidence, geo-centrists clung to their view
of Earth's privileged status. They devised increasingly elaborate, Rube Goldberg
models of the solar system to attempt to account for observations. They were
simply unable to wrap their minds around the concept that Earth might not be at
the center of everything. It didn't make philosophical or religious sense to them.

APPENDIX C

More on the Star Zavijava and Some Other Lesser Possibilities for Contact

The formula for contact star possibilities a la the Jodi Foster-Carl Sagan movie
Contact is: LY away x 2 (round trip signaling) + 1936 (year TV got going) + 2 to 8
(years for them to detect our signal, take in a stream of content, debate, formulate
and deliver a response)=earliest years we could receive response from them.

Figuring for Zavijava: 35.6 x 2=71.2 + 1936=2008 + 2 to 8=2010 to 2016. That's

right about now.

The #2 candidate, HR 6998 in Sagittarius, is 42 LY away. So that's 42 x 2=84 +

1936=2020 + 2 to 8=2022 to 2028. That's a little ways off.

The Sun-like star HR 7722 in Capricorn is, at just 29 LY away, closer than
Zavijava. However, it's about 7 degrees off the center of the ecliptic (vs. about
0.55 of a degree for Zavi.)--so borderline at best in that key aspect. And it's also
barely visible to the naked eye under optimal viewing conditions, though that's not
necessarily a deal breaker.

At any rate, Zavijava is the only sun-like star virtually spot-on the ecliptic that
could be contacting us this decade in response to our transmissions--which is a
plausible scenario.

Culturally, Zavijava, or Al Zawiah, means angle or corner of the kennel of the

barking dogs in Arabic. In its Greco-Roman mythological role of beta-Virginis, the
star is positioned as the left shoulder and/or wing base of the maiden facing us.

Between Two Superstars

Of course, knowing where to look in the sky for Zavijava would be helpful, as it's
not particularly bright (magnitude 3.61). Familiarize yourself with the brilliant
blue star Spica (alpha-Virginis, magnitude 0.98 in the constellation Virgo).
Moving westward, the next really bright star over is regal Regulus (alpha-Leonis,
magnitude 1.36--in the adjacent constellation of Leo). Zavijava is the star of
modest brightness most exactly midway between Spica and Regulus.

Anyone needing help finding Zavijava around mid-March 2012 can benefit from
the presence of two bright planets. Look for Saturn pairing up with Spica, and
ruddy Mars pairing up with Regulus. So you've got four of the brightest objects in
the sky bracketing this star. It's a can't-miss opportunity.

Being on the ecliptic makes Zavijava seem like a sort of landmark for the planets
as they go passing through. It would be quite a story if some amateur astronomers
flipping through photographs of nice conjunctions look at an image they've taken
and detect an anomalous brightness in one of the pictures--right where the star
Zavijava should be barely visible.

In 2015, Venus, Mars and Jupiter will form a tight 3-in-a-row (a la Orion's belt)
pointing almost directly at Zavijava, although not at the time of opposition--on
October 22 and 28. The three also form a tight near-perfect isosceles triangle
pointing directly at Zavijava along one of the long axes on Oct 15.

Candidate Rosetta Star List

Nearby single, Sun-like stars along the ecliptic (that might host habitable planets or
moons of planets):
*Zavijava (aka beta-Virginis): RA 11.50.41.7, DEC +1.45.52.9 (ecliptic dec. is
approx. +2 at that RA), type F8 or F9, 35.6 LY away, magnitude 3.61, will be
occulted by Venus in 2069, #12 TPF target.
*HD 172051 (aka HR 6998) (in Sagittarius): RA 18.38.53.49, DEC -21.03.06.7
(ecliptic dec. is approx -23 at that RA), type G5, 42 LY away, magnitude 5.86, #98
TPF target.
*111 Tauri: RA 5.24, DEC +17.23, (ecliptic dec. is approx +20 at that RA), type
F8, 48 LY away, magnitude 5.0, #40 TPF.

Nearby single, Sun-like stars fairly near ecliptic (that might host long-term
habitable planets or moons of planets) :
*HD 192310 (aka HR 7722) (in Capricorn): RA 20.15, DEC -27.01 (ecliptic dec.
is approx. -20 at that RA), type K0, 29 LY away, magnitude 5.73, #72 TPF.
*Iota Piscium: RA 23.39, DEC +5.37, (ecliptic dec. is approx. -2 at that RA), type
F7, 45 LY away, magnitude 4.13, #23 TPF.
*Psi Capricornus: RA 20.46, DEC -25.16, (ecliptic dec. is appprox. -18 at that
RA), type F5, 48 LY away, magnitude 4.13, #29 TPF.
*HR 7898 (in Capricorn): RA 20.40, DEC -23.46 (ecliptic dec. is approx.18 at that
RA), type G8, 48 LY away, magnitude 6.36.
*Chi Cancri: RA 8.20, DEC +27.13, (ecliptic dec. is approx. +20 at that RA), type
F6, 59 LY away, magnitude 5.13, #59 TPF.

Known nearby single stars along the ecliptic that are not like the Sun (but could
conceivably host habitable planets or moons of planets--excludes flare stars)
*Teegarden's star: RA 2.53.00.85, DEC +16.52.53.3 (ecliptic dec. is approx. +16.3
at that RA), type M7 in Aries, 12 LY away, magnitude 15.
*Von Maanen's star (in Pisces): RA 00.49.09.8892, DEC +5.23.19.007 (ecliptic
dec. is
approx. +6 at that RA), warm white dwarf (6750 K), 14 LY away, magnitude 12.3.

Nearby single star fairly near the ecliptic and not like the Sun (but still considered
possibly conducive to life):
*Gliese 876 (in Aquarius): RA 22.53, DEC -14.15, (ecliptic dec. is approx. -7 at
that RA), type M4, 15 LY away, magnitude 10.17.

Besides Zavijava (aka beta-Virginis) There are 4 other single, Sun-like stars within
40 LY in the zodiac constellations (+Ophiuchus): 54 Piscum, 12 Ophiuchi, 61
Virginis, 107 Piscum. None are anywhere near the ecliptic (All are 10+ degrees
off--16, 20, 11, 10 degrees off, respectively).

Within each group, stars are listed from near to far. Magnitudes are apparent.
Variable stars are excluded.

Abbreviations: RA=right ascension; DEC/dec.=declination;

approx.=approximately; TPF=Terrestrial Planet Finder mission.

APPENDIX D

Some Notable Global Mass Extinctions: When, Probable Cause, Geological

Timing, Note(s)
(selections, in chronological order)

* 650 mil. yrs. ago--cause unknown--late Precambrian--affected bacterial and other

microscopic life forms.

* 544/554 and 523 mil. yrs. ago--causes unknown--from Neoproterozoic to

Vendian and from Vendian to Cambrian--impacted soft-bodied sea creatures.
* 443 mil. yrs. ago--supernova (possibly a GRB)--from Ordovician to Silurian--the
next-to-worst one.

* 409/410 mil. yrs. ago--cause unknown--from Silurian to Devonian.

* 363/374 mil. yrs. ago--cause unknown--from Devonian to Mississippian--one of

five-worst, believed to have been a one-two knockout punch.

* 251 mil. yrs. ago--asteroid impact in Antarctica + Siberian volcanic chain--from

Permian to Triassic--the worst one.

* 201/214 mil. yrs ago--Atlantic volcanism--from Triassic to Jurassic--one of five-

worst.

* 65 mil. yrs. ago--asteroid impact in Yucatan Peninsular area of Mexico--from

Cretaceous to Tertiary--famous for wiping out the dinosaurs; one of five-worst.

* 34/35 mil. yrs. ago--cause unknown--from Eocene to Oligocene--shellfish were

the hardest-hit.

* .05 mil. yrs ago to present (ongoing)--mostly human activity--from late

Pleistocene to Holocene (which we're still in) --across-the-board losses. Projected
loss of 25% to 50% of all species by century's end. Tens of thousands of species
have been snuffed out already, including many large animals. Several thousand
species, most of them tiny, are eliminated every year before they are even
discovered by man.

The list above includes the most widely identified major and semi-major extinction
events. They are estimated to have been the undoing of up to 60 to 90 percent of
those then present.

The most likely candidates for “unknown causes” are those already mentioned:
asteroid/comet hit--throwing up an enormous dust cloud; nearby supernova
radiation; extended period of volcanic chain activity leading to global
warming/oxygen depletion/hydrogen sulfide upwelling & poisoning, and global
cooling. Also possible: a monstrous solar flare, which may be responsible as well
for undocumented global mass extinctions predating these. Climate change may
be triggered or exacerbated by catastrophic events. Many global mass extinctions
are associated with a pattern of global warming.
Aforementioned "human activity" includes (but is not limited to)
industrialization, habitat degradation and fragmentation, deforestation, over-
development, toxification--air soil and water pollution, climate alteration,
globalization's exotic species' importation, over-consumption, overpopulation,
over-fishing, over-hunting, poaching, overeating, unsustainable agriculture,
monoculture, car culture, war culture, consumer culture, imperialism,
anthropocentrism.

APPENDIX E

Intergalactic Travel

We tend to think of SoL as exceedingly fast because we are predisposed to evaluating

it in our own situation--on the surface of the Earth, where the planet's gravity and the
atmosphere slow objects down. Beyond Earth's orbit, the Sun remains an influential
gravitational force for a short while. But in interstellar space, there is precious little
outside force that a projectile needs to deal with--nothing in space to slow us down.
And one's own mass should not be so burdensome in a (near) vacuum. One is in
freefall.

Using figures from Appendixes A and B: if we can extrapolate from our galaxy to
the universe at-large in terms of contactable civilizations in the universe now, there
would be many quadrillions of them out there.

Using ourselves as an example, after we've surveyed our own galaxy (Chapter 1), the
next level of organization for exploration would be the Local Group. That's the
50 or so nearby galaxies--mostly small satellite galaxies--of which our Milky Way
is the second-largest member. A majority of the cluster's stars outside the Milky
Way are in the Andromeda Galaxy, so that would be the major focus. Traveling at
1/10 SoL, we could reach the Andromeda (2.5 mil. LY away), in about 25 mil.
years. It's about 200 thousand LY across. Navigation would likely be based on the
spiral galactic structure

A multi-pronged approach would be implemented from the outset of the Local

Group project. The paths taken by the exploratory teams would reflect the
geometry and demographics of the area. The 15 galaxies of our Local Group that
are satellites of Andromeda, and the 12 or so that are satellites of the Milky Way
could be surveyed in batches. We would probably be able to explore the entirety of
our Local group (radius approx. 4 mil. LY) in, say, 100 mil. years.

The next level of organization to explore is that of the supercluster. We are

considered part of the Virgo Supercluster, which encompasses the Virgo Cluster,
our Local Group Cluster, and several other clusters. We could piggyback on the
Local Group Cluster missions, and/or send out a fresh team from Earth with
improved technology. To reach the main part of our Local Supercluster from the
periphery of our Local Cluster (Virgo--52 mil. LY away) traveling at 1/10 SoL
would take us about 500 mil years. To simply transit the Virgo Supercluster
(about 100 mil. LY across)--fly through it in a straight line--would take about 1
billion years. To explore it thoroughly would take much longer, of course, so we'd
probably diversify itineraries again and fan out in multiple stages.

Other nearby superclusters, such as Perseus and Coma Berenices lie a few hundred
million LY away. At 1/10 SoL, they could be reached in a few billion years. As a
thriving civilization's transportation technology continues to advance, they may
find themselves sending out missions that eventually leapfrog their own prior
epoch's vehicles. There are about 10 million superclusters in the visible universe,
whose breadth is estimated at 150+ billion LY. It is believed that the expanse of
the visible universe is but a small portion of the actual total universe.

Regarding propulsion methods, promising technologies include: antiproton-

catalyzed micro-fission (ACMF)--as in such as Penn State's ion-compressed
antimatter nuclear prototype spacecraft (ICAN-II)--and antiproton initiated micro-
fission/fusion (AIM).

The speed of light (SoL), far from being a limit, may really be more like the speed
beyond which things start to get interesting. Faster-than-light (FTL) travel, by
definition, commences immediately above SoL, as would tachyons if they exist.
Top-of-the-line ETI craft, reportedly observed moving at speeds well in excess of
your conventional spacecraft, could be FTL-capable. Note that receding FTL
objects may be perceived by a “stationary” observer as blinking lights, with the
blinks decreasing in frequency if the object is accelerating.

At instantaneous speed, time travel by definition kicks is. The further forward or
backward one goes in time, the more faster-than-instantaneously one is traveling.
Wormholes may be utilized for rapid space-time travel, although a short-distance
wormhole could simply be a spatial shortcut--thus may be even sub-luminal.
Advanced wormholes can probably function as elaborate space-time travel
conduits approaching infinite speed capability.

APPENDIX F

ETI probes likely have been monitoring, among other things, our TV and
radio transmissions emitted freely into the atmosphere. So they would know
quite a bit about us from that alone. They are probably capable of sifting
through the flotsam and jetsam with search engines. So they could google-up
something like "planet Earth movie aliens encounter humans" and get a
decent idea of how we view them.

Recent Historical/Pop Culture Timeline (of note regarding ETI and us,
stewardship, etc.)

1858--Charles Dickens publishes A Christmas Carol (time travel/alternative reality

prefigured)
1865--HG Wells publishes From the Earth to the Moon (in a craft launched by a
cannon)
1865--Lewis Carroll publishes Alice in Wonderland (wormholes prefigured)
1889--Mark Twain publishes A CT Yankee in King Arthur's Court (time travel
prefigured)
1891--Carroll's Through the Looking Glass (future knowledge, alternate reality
prefigured)
1895--Wells publishes The Time Machine (popularizing time travel as a sci-fi
concept)
1898--Wells publishes The War of the Worlds (alien invasion theme)
1903--Wright Brothers' first manned flight
1907--Hague treaty bans bombardment "by whatever means" of undefended towns
1908--Huge fireball over Tunguska, Siberia, knocks down forest
1910--Earth passes safely through the tail of Halley's Comet
1919--League of Nations established
1936--First substantial electronic TV broadcasting (Germany, USA, Great Britain)
1938--Orson Welles' panic-inducing radio broadcast adaptation of The War of the
Worlds
1939--Wizard of Oz film released (a sort of parallel universe is explored)
1939--First airplane bombardment of civilians (by Germany on Polish town
Wielun)
1943--Philadelphia Experiment (alleged--invisibility, time travel possible firsts)
1945--Atomic bomb tested and used on Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki
1945--United Nations organization established (named after Allied forces)
1946--It's a Wonderful Life film released (alternate realities)
1947--Roswell (NM) incident (gov't PR nightmare a la Hamlet "to ETI or not to
ETI")
1952--UFOs Over WDC (made newspaper headlines)
1952--First H-bomb detonated (much more powerful than A-bomb)
1957--First satellite (Sputnik I) put into Earth orbit
1957--First animal (dog--Laika on Sputnik II) put into Earth orbit
1959--First spacecraft on Moon (Luna 2--a deliberate crash-landing)
1959--First photo of far side of the Moon (by Luna 3)
1961--First man (Gagarin) goes into Earth orbit
1961--Huge H-bomb (the "Tsar") detonated in mid-atmosphere by Soviets
1962--Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring (environmental movement manifesto)
1966--First spacecraft to have a survivable hard-landing on the Moon (Luna 9)
1966--First spacecraft to have a soft-landing on the Moon (Surveyor I)
1966--First photos of Earth from the orbit of another world--the Moon (by Orbiter
I)
1966--Star Trek TV series debuts
1969--Zager & Evans song In the Year 2525 tops pop music charts (eco-futurism)
1969--Apollo 11 puts first men on the Moon (Armstrong, Aldrin)
1970--First Earth Day celebrated
1972--First spacecraft (Pioneer) to leave solar system launched, carrying greeting
into space
1973--Arecibo radio telescope transmits first intentional radio greeting into space
1973--First space station (Skylab) established
1976--Viking 1 probe performs first test for extraterrestrial life--on Mars (hung
jury)
1977--First Star Wars film released (part IV)
1977--Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind film released
1982--ET The Extraterrestrial film released
1985--Back to the Future film released
1988--First detection by astronomers of an extrasolar planet
1993--Hubble Space Telescope gets going
1997--Contact film released
1997--Phoenix (AZ) lights observed
2000--John Titor, supposed time traveler, posts on the Internet
2006--Chicago (IL) O'Hara Airport UFOs observed by airline personnel
Note: most, if not all of the films listed were broadcast on TV within a few years'
time.

APPENDIX G

Acronyms, Initialisms & Abbreviations

A=answer
A-bomb=atomic (fission) bomb
ACMF=antiproton-catalyzed micro-fission
A.D.=anno Domini (year of our Lord)
A.I.=artificial intelligence
AIM=antiproton initiated micro-fission/fusion
A.j. Variegata=Aucuba japonica Variegata, a plant
approx.=approximately
apps= application(s)
ATA=Allen Telescope Array
AZ=Arizona
aka=also known as
B.C.=before Christ
BETA=Billion-channel Extra-Terrestrial assay
bil.=billion
C (degrees)=Centigrade (or Celsius)
CA=California
CEO=chief executive officer
CRPS=Celebrity Rescue & Preservation Society
CSI=crime scene investigation
CT=Connecticut
DD=large-cup brassiere size
DEC/dec.=declination
DNA=deoxynribonucleic acid
DPB=Double-Platinum Blonde
D.O.A.=dead on arrival
ECO=concerned with ecology
e.g.=for example
EMP=electromagnetic pulse
EST=Eastern Standard Time
ET/ETI=extraterrestrial intelligence
F (degrees)=Fahrenheit
Fig.=Figure
FTL=faster than light speed
G-force=gravitational force
gov't=government
GPS=global positioning system
GRB=gamma ray burst
HAL=Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer
H-bomb=hydrogen (fusion) bomb
HG=Herbert George (Wells)
HR=Revised Harvard Photometry Catalog
HST=Hubble Space Telescope
HULD=Hubble Ultra Deep Field image
ICAN=ion-compressed antimatter nuclear
i.e.=that is to say
IL=Illinois
IQ=intelligence quotient
JFK=John Fitzgerald Kennedy
K=degrees Kelvin
km=kilometer
KT=(K)Cretaceous/Tertiary
LA=Los Angeles
LY=light year
M=Messier object (followed by a catalog # from 1 to 110)
META=Mega-channel Extra-Terrestrial Assay
mil.=million
MPH=miles per hour
N.Am.=North America(n)
NASA=National Aeronautics & Space Administration
NFL=National Football League
NIMBY=Not In My BackYard
NJ=New Jersey
NM=New Mexico
NY=New York
NYC--New York City
OBE--out of body experience
OJ=Orenthal James (Simpson)
Q=Question
P.I=Private Eye
PIA=a picture classification system
PR=public relations
RA=right ascension
RDRP=Red Dwarf Resettlement Program
sci-fi=science fiction
SERENDIP=Search for Extraterrestrial Radio Emissions from Nearby Developed
Intelligent Populations.
SETI=search for extraterrestrial intelligence
SoL=speed of light
STD=sexually transmitted disease
TSBD= Texas School Book Depository
TV=television
TX=Texas
type O/B/A/F/G/K/M=star types hotter to cooler
UFO=unidentified flying object
US/USA=United States of America
UT/UTI=ultra-terrestrial intelligence
UV=ultraviolet
WDC=Washington, District of Columbia
WV-=West Virginia
WWW=(Big Bang) Wormhole Web Weavers
XYZ=generic proper name
yrs.=years
Zavi.=Zavijava

This list does not include several all-lowercase acronyms of fictional scenarios.
These acronyms are used only in the paragraph of and/or following their
introduction.
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References Chapter 7
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References Appendix A

Alpert, Mark, Red Star Rising; article in Scientific American, November 2005;
Scientific American, Inc., New York, NY, 2005.

Baade, Walter, Evolution of Stars and Galaxies; Harvard University Press,

Cambridge, MA, 1963 (source Harrison).

Britt, Robert Roy, Primeval Planet: Oldest Known World Conjures Prospect of
Ancient Life; Space.com, July 10, 2003.

Comins, Neil, What If the Moon Didn't Exist? Voyages to Earths that Might Have
Been; HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 1993.

Courtland, Rachel, Ancient supernova is oldest and most distant found;

NewScientist Space (website), July 8, 2009.

First Stars (and other beginnings); Sol Company (website), 2009.

Greeley, Ronald and Batson, Raymond, The Compact NASA Atlas of the Solar
System; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 2001.(p. 30, 84, 91-4)
Grzcyrgba, Walter Baade in Everything2 (website) 2002.

Harrison, Edward R., Cosmology--The Science of the Universe; Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge, England, 1981.(p.49, 349)

Hecht, Jeff, New Quasar Is the Oldest Yet; in New Scientist Space (website),
June 7, 2007.

Irion, Mark, A Quasar in Every Galaxy?; article in Sky and Telescope, July,
2006; 2005; New Track Media, LLC, Cambridge, MA, 2006.

Kanipe, Jeff, Chasing Hubble's Shadows; Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, New York, NY, 1986.

Loeb, Abraham, The Dark Ages of the Universe; in Scientific American

November 2006; Scientific American, Inc., New York, NY, 2006.

Nadis, Steve, Tales from the Dark Side; article in Astronomy, September 2006, Kalmbach Publishing,
Inc., Waukesha, WI, 2006.

O'Hanlon, Larry, Moon Over 4.5 Billion Years Old in Discovery News/News in
Science, December 15, 2005 (website).

Oldest Known Planet Identified; NASA News Release # STSci-2003-19

(HubbleSite website), July 10, 2003.

Ornes, Stephen, Probe Snaps Baby Picture of the Cosmos; article in Discover, January 2007, Discover
Media LLC, NewYork, NY, 2007.

Powell, Richard, Atlas of the Universe (website), 2006.

Ronan, Colin A., The Natural History of the Universe; MacMillan Publishing. Co., New York, NY, 1991.
(p.38, 48-51, 102, 159)

Universe Has Billions More Stars Than Thought; Discovery News--Space News
(website), March 24, 2010.

SolStation.com, First Stars (and other beginnings); SolStation.com (website), 2002-

09.
References Appendix B

Alpert, Alpert, Mark, Red Star Rising; article in Scientific American, November
2005; Scientific American, Inc., New York, NY, 2005.

Ananthaswamy, Anil, No Moon, no life on Earth, theory suggests; New Scientist

(online), March 18, 2004. Presents research findings by Lathe.

Arnett, Bill, The 8 Planets (website), accessed 2008..

Astrobiology Magazine, The Great Debates Series, throughout 2006.

Bada, Jeffrey L., State-of-the-art instruments for detecting extraterrestrial

intelligence; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA, Jan. 30,
2001/vol.98 no.3.

Boss, Alan, The Crowded Universe; Basic Books, New York, NY, 2009.

Brahic, Catherine, Goldmine bug DNA may be key to alien life, New Scientist
magazine, October 2008.

Britt, Robert Roy, Primeval Planet: Oldest Known World Conjures Prospect of
Ancient Life; Space.com, July 10, 2003. Describes research findings led by Steinn
Sigurdsson.

Britt, Robert Roy, The Universe Measured, Space.com, 2004.

Carson, Rachel, The Edge of the Sea, 1955.

Comins, Neil, What If the Moon Didn't Exist? Voyages to Earths that Might Have
Been; HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 1993.

Drake, Frank, The Drake Equation Revisited, Part I; Astrobiology magazine

Sept. 29, 2003.

Evidence of Water Found Deep Within the Moon; Science Daily (website),
July 10, 2008.
From toxicity to life? Arsenic proves to be a building block; e! Science News
(website), December 2, 2010.

Gato-Rivera, Beatriz, Is Planet Earth Embedded in a Large Galactic Civilization?

on Unknown Country website, Sept. 17, 2003.

Gorman, Steve/Greene, Gordan, Building Block of Life Found on Comet;

Reuters.com, Aug 17, 2009.

Greeley, Ronald and Batson, Raymond, The Compact NASA Atlas of the Solar
System; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 2001.

Harrison, Edward R., Cosmology--The Science of the Universe; Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge, England, 1981.

Harwood, William, Space Odyssey, Voyaging through the Cosmos; National Geographic Society,
Washington, DC, 2001.

Heath, M. Joshi, R. Haberle, T. Reynolds, Simulations of the Atmospheres of

Synchronously Rotating Terrestrial Planets Orbiting M Dwarfs…and the
Implications for Habitability; in Icarus 129, 450, 1997.

Henney, Paul, How Earth and the Moon interact; AstronomyToday (website),
2009-10.

Hughes, Paul, Beyond Kardashev--Exotic Civilizations: A Possible Answer to

Fermi's Paradox (website), 2004.

Hyman, Scott, The Physics of Water in the Universe; Sweet Briar College website,
undated.

Johnston, Lisa R., Early Universe Shows Signs of Life; article in Sky & Telescope,
November 2005; New Track Media, LLC, Cambridge, MA, 2005.

Krekorian, Rob, Giving SETI Definition; The SETI League (website), March 6,
2010.

Libby, W.F., Life on Jupiter?; SpringerLink (website), undated.

Lineweaver, Charles, article on galactic habitable zone in Science journal

summarized in Milky Way stars may support 'advanced life'; Sydney Morning
Herald, Jan 2, 2004.

Minard, Annie, Early Mars Too Acidic, Salty for Life, National Geographic News,
February 2008.

NASA's Kepler mission discovers two planets transiting same star;

Astronomy.com, August 26, 2010.

PBS, Mysteries of Deep Space: Pulse of Alien Life, and Search for Alien Worlds;
documentary film, cerca 2005.

Powell, Richard, Atlas of the Universe.com, 2006.

Richest planetary system discovered; Astronomy.com, August 24, 2010.

Sagan, Carl, Cosmos; Random House, Inc., New York, NY, 1980.

Sasso, Anne, Photosynthesizing Life-Forms Exist Without Sunlight; article in

Discover, January 2006; Discover Media LLC, New York, NY, 2006.

Schirber, Michael, Did Comet Crashes Spark Earth Life?; Space.com, September
24, 2009

Shiga, David, Hints of Life Found on Saturn's Moon; New Scientist--Space

(online), June 4, 2010.

Sinnott, Roger W., Biggest Galaxy; Q & A section of Sky & Telescope, August
2007; New Track Media, LLC, Cambridge, MA, 2007.

SolStation.com, The Stars of the Milky Way; also First Stars (and other
beginnings), 2002-09.

Thompson, Andrea, Moon Water: A Game-Changing Discovery; Space.com

(website), September 24, 2009.

Wikipedia; "Aurelia and Blue Moon" (regarding National Geographic

documentary, 2006).
Also on wiki "Kardashev Scale" and "Rare Earth ."
Williams, Megan Mansell, Life Turns Up In the Most Unlikely Places; article in
Discover, January 2006; Discover Media LLC, New York, NY, 2006.

Wirsen, Carl, Is Life thriving Deep Beneath the Seafloor?; Oceanus online
magazine, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Vol.42, No.2, 2004.

The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2006-10; World Almanac Education Group,
Inc., New York, NY, 2006-10.

Zimmer, Carl, Next Up: Mars, Titan and Beyond; article in Popular Mechanics,
September, 2006; Hearst Communications, New York, NY, 2006.

References Appendix C

Corbet, Robin H.D., Synchronized SETI--The Case for "Opposition"; Astrobiology

magazine, Mary Ann Liebert Inc., July 5, 2004.

Doyle, L.R., Deeg, H.J. and Jenkins, J.M., Discovering Worlds in Transit;
Astronomy mag., 2001.

Kaler, Jim, Zavijava; on Stars website (accessed 2009).

Neave, Paul, planetarium website, 1999-2009.

Powell, Richard, Atlas of the Universe (website): Stars Within 50 Light Years, last
updated July
30, 2006.

Red Dwarf Stars Within 10 Parsecs; Sol Company (website) 2005.

Scheffer, Lou, Aliens Can Watch 'I Love Lucy'; Contact in Context v2i1/lucy.pdf
(website), accessed 2009.

Shostak, Seth, Cheap Communication Schemes for ETI; SETI Institute (online),
April 1, 2004.
Shostak, Seth, Making the Search Simple; SETI Institute (online), December 14,
2006.

Skindrud, Erik, The Big Question; Science News Online, September 7, 1996.

Sol Station.com, Zavijava (beta-Virginis) (website, accessed 2009).

Team Hopes to Use New Technology to Search for ET's (SETI Institute website),
June 2, 2008.

Terrestrial Planet Finder article in State Master Encyclopedia (online),accessed

2009.

Wikipedia, List of Extrasolar Planets; Occultation; Zavijava (online encyclopedia),

2009.

References Appendix D

Beatty and Chaikin, The New Solar System; Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, England, 1990. Cites studies by D. Raup and J. Sepkoski; M. Davis,
P. Hut and R. Muller; D. Whitmire and A. Jackson; D. Whitmire and J. Matese; M.
Rampino and R. Stothers.

Big Bang in Antarctica: Killer Crater Found; Science Daily (website), June1,
2006. Discusses research by Ohio State Univ.

Burns, Linda, New Theory: Did a Prehistoric Comet 'Kill' North America?;
The Santa Barbara Newsroom (website) June 4, 2007.

Comins, Neil, What If the Moon Didn't Exist? Voyages to Earths that Might Have
Been; HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 1993.

Davis, Wade, Shadows of the Sun; Island Press/Shearwater Books, Washington,

DC, 1995.

Earth's Biggest Asteroid Impact Ever: Did It Occur in Antarctica? NASA Gravity
Maps Point to "Yes"; The Daily Galaxy (website), March 8, 2010.
Earth's five major extinction events; Skeptical Science, April 16, 2010.

Eldredge, Niles, The Sixth Extinction; ActionBioscience.org,, June 2001.

Evolution Natural History in Soho, Geological Time Chart; New York, NY, cerca
1992.

Hooper Virtual Paleontological Museum (website).

Olson, Dan, Species Extinction Rate Speeding Up; Minnesota Public Radio
(website), February 1, 2005.

Regents of the University of Michigan, Threats to Global Biodiversity

(website), January4, 2006.

University of York, Fossil Record Supports Evidence of Impending Mass

Extinction; Science Daily (website), October 24, 2007.

Ward, Peter D., Impact from the Deep; article in Scientific American, October
2006; Scientific American, Inc., New York, NY, 2006.

References Appendix E

O’Neill, Ian, Milky Way Transit Authority; Discovery News (website), 2009.
Discusses research by Samuel Arbesman.

Behrendt, Kenneth W., How and Why Extraterrestrials Visit Earth; Cosmic Vault
(website), September 17, 2003.

Behrendt, Kenneth W., A UFO Propulsion Primer; Cosmic Vault (website), August
5, 2003.

Darling, David, Advanced propulsion concepts rocket engine types: antimatter

propulsion; The Internet Encyclopedia of Science, undated.

O’Neill, Ian, Milky Way Transit Authority; Discovery News (website), 2009. Discusses research by
Samuel Arbesman.
Powell, Richard, Atlas of the Universe (website), 2006.

Ronan, Colin A., The Natural History of the Universe; MacMillan Publishing. Co., New York, NY, 1991.

References Appendix F

Greeley, Ronald and Batson, Raymond, The Compact NASA Atlas of the Solar
System; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 2001.

International Law on the Bombing of Civilians; website of treaties compiled by

Gene Dannen, 1995-99.

The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2006-10; World Almanac Education Group,
Inc., New York, NY, 2006.

What started the race to the Moon?; space race US-USSR panel4cover.pdf
(website).

Note: many of these events are discussed in the text. Their references can be
found in the list for the pertinent chapter.