Those Oops In Physics: Part Two

Some physical scientists – professional skeptics – are quick to jump on what in their opinion are the flaws inherent in what they term pseudoscience or the paranormal. Perhaps they should gaze at their own navels first before criticizing others, as the following hopefully points out.

Continued now from yesterday’s blog…

Oops in Causality     

Causality (the future is contained in the past), cause-and-effect, has to operate across the board if Mother Nature is to be predictable, and prediction and predictability is at the heart of what makes science, science. Yet, some scientists insist some phenomena have no causality. Lack of causality implies that what happens is the result of some sort of ‘free will’ (or variations thereof) which is absurd. That would imply that an electron or a radioactive uranium atom has an independent ‘mind’ of its own. Lack of causality alone in IMHO is nearly sufficient evidence to justify the hypothesis that we are ‘living’ in a simulated (virtual reality) universe.

# Big Bang: Apparently the creation of the Universe (the Big Bang event) happened for absolutely no rhyme or reason at all. That means there was no first cause attributable for the effect that was Big Bang event. Does that strike anyone besides me as odd, as in absolutely impossible?

# Radioactivity: That two identical radioactive (unstable) nuclei will decay (go poof) at different times despite both being in the same place, in the same environment, at the same time. That’s therefore because of the ‘fact’ that an unstable radioactive nucleus will go poof for absolutely no reason at all. If there is no causality behind radioactive decay, then obviously any two identical radioactive nuclei can go poof in a totally random way. But random events shouldn’t result in a precise mathematical relationship, which is what is claimed by observation – the concept of the half-life.

# Electrons: That an electron will drop to a lower energy level by emitting a photon for absolutely no reason at all is strange given that an electron will jump to a higher energy level by absorbing a photon’s worth of energy. There’s no causality in the downward direction; there’s causality in the upwards direction. That’s nuts!  

# Pane in the Glass:  You have one light source. You have one normal everyday clear and clean pane of glass. Some of the light (photons) from the light source will pass clear through the clear glass, but some of those identical photons will reflect off the clear surface of the pane of glass. One set of circumstances yields two differing but simultaneous outcomes. That violates cause-and-effect. That’s crazy, but it happens as you can verify for yourself. 

Oops in Probability     

# Electric Charge: The electric charge of the proton is exactly equal and opposite to the electric charge on the electron, despite the proton being nearly 2000 times more massive. There’s no set in concrete theoretical reason why this should be so.

# Fine Tuning: In fact, you tend to a violation in probability when it comes to numerous examples of fine-tuning – the fine-tuning that allows the Universe to be bio-friendly. For example, if the force of gravity were slightly stronger, the Universe would have re-collapsed into a Big Crunch rather quickly, and thus there would have been no time allowed for life to form and evolve. If the force of gravity had been slightly weaker stars and galaxies wouldn’t have formed. No stars and galaxies: thus, again, a lifeless Universe.       

Oops in Theory vs. Observation

# Matter & Antimatter: Theory predicts there should be equal amounts of matter and antimatter in the Universe. Observation shows that there is a massive predominance of matter over antimatter. Something is screwy somewhere.

# Vacuum Energy: Theory suggests a certain value for the vacuum energy. Experimental observation shows quite a different value for the vacuum energy. In fact, the difference between theory and observation is 120 orders of magnitude. Something is definitely screwy somewhere.

# Protons: Some theories suggest that like an isolated neutron, the proton is, over the long term, unstable and should go poof and decay. Alas, experiments, and there have been many of them, have failed to detect even one proton decay event. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

General Oops: WTF?

# Inflation: In addition to the above, the Big Bang event as a standalone event raised lots of problems, collectively known as the flatness problem; the horizon problem; and the monopole problem. To resolve those issues, a secondary theoretical and rather ad hoc expansion event, termed Inflation, was proposed. Alas, it lacks any shred of actual independent and observational evidence (apart from dealing with the Big Bang issues as noted), and has its own set of problems, not least of which there are many variations on the Inflation theme; how and why Inflation started and how and why Inflation stopped. If the Big Bang were really a comprehensive theory of everything with respect to the origin and early evolution of the cosmos, there wouldn’t be a horizon, flatness and monopole problem requiring an ad hoc tack-on.

# Dark Matter: There apparently isn’t enough mass contained within our galaxy (and others as well) to account for its structure and how it stays together as a collective conglomerate of stars, planets, interstellar dust, etc. So, with a wave of a magic physics wand, physicists and astrophysicists invent out of thin air an ad hoc explanation – all that missing matter must be “dark matter”, matter which we can’t see, can’t detect, and haven’t a real clue as to what it might be

# Cosmic Rays: Cosmic rays tend to be very high energy particles like electrons and positrons, protons and antiprotons, alpha particles and other atomic nuclei that originate from beyond our solar system. After that, things get iffy. Their actual point(s) of origin are anywhere and everywhere and to be honest their origin(s) are rather mysterious. You name the astronomical object and someone will have tagged it as a, if not the, source of cosmic rays. Among the candidates are supernovae, active galactic nuclei, magnetic variable stars, quasars, gamma-ray bursts, even the Crab Nebula (a pulsar) and the radio galaxy Centaurus A. It all seems to be a case of picking a number out of a hat or throwing a dart at a dartboard labeled with astronomical structures. Your guess (and that’s what they are) is as good as mine.

# The Fine Structure Constant: The mysticism over the number 137 (i.e. - actually 1/137) – the Fine Structure Constant – has the same sort of cultist fascination and impact on some physicists and the physics community in general as the dimensions and mathematical relationships and their significance inherent in the Great Pyramid (at Giza, Cairo) has to occultists, numerologists, mystics and pseudo-archaeologists. Then there’s all that endless numerological speculations on and significance of 666 to Christians. A rose by any other name applies here.

Conclusions

As we have seen, there are many ghosts that haunt the academic corridors of academic physics. Physicists need to exorcise those demonic spirits first, before trying to inflict their exorcisms on the rest of the irrational world.

* What can escape from a Black Hole is called Hawking radiation, but in that massive a Black Hole, the one required for a pinhead sized start to the cosmos, that radiation leakage would take a very, very, very long time to ooze out; hardly what you’d call an explosive event.

     

Some Interesting Reading

Baggott, Jim; Farewell to Reality: How Modern Physics Has Betrayed the Search for Scientific Truth; Pegasus Books, New York; 2013:

Jones, Sheilla & Unzicker, Alexander; Bankrupting Physics: How Today’s Top Scientists Are Gambling Away Their Credibility; Palgrave Macmillan, New York; 2013:

Smolin, Lee; The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of Science and What Comes Next; Penguin Books, London; 2006:

Woit, Peter; Not Even Wrong: The Failure of String Theory and the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics; Vintage Books, London; 2007:



The Physics and Philosophy of Time: Part Two

“What is time?” That is a question that has been pondered and debated for probably thousands of years by some of the finest philosophical and scientific minds ever produced, without any definitive resolution. So, I’m NOT going to pretend that this is THE ANSWER – the be all and end all to the question. It’s some of my thoughts, which hopefully are as valid as anyone else’s!

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

How Old Are You? Well that’s obviously an easy question. You were born on such-an-such a date; today’s date is such-an-such; therefore you are such-an-such old.  Well ‘yes’, and well, ‘no’. The late astronomer Carl Sagan noted that we are all made of ‘star stuff’. That is, with the exception of hydrogen, all the higher chemical elements, which ultimately comprise us (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, etc), were cooked up in the heart of stellar interiors, at extreme temperatures and pressures. When stars explode (nova and supernova) those elements get spewed out into the cosmos, ultimately to clump together as the stuff from which new solar systems, planets, and life are formed.

However, we can go one step beyond that since, on the other hand, you are ultimately comprised of  fundamental particles like electrons and quarks which in turn make up those chemical elements (atoms) which can combine to form molecules, even the complex biochemical molecules which make you, you. 100% of you ultimately consist of these elementary particles, all of which were created or spewed out when the Universe was created. That’s currently estimated at 13.7 billion years ago, in the cosmological event called the “Big Bang’. In other words, you, being formed out of the elementary particles that collectively make up ‘you’, are the same age as the Universe, some 13.7 billion years old!  So, get in contact with your inner self, meditate with your inner electrons, quarks, hadrons, fermions, leptons, bosons and baryons, and discover the history of the universe, for they were there!

“Play It Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By’”:  We’ve all heard of the ‘arrow of time’ which points in one direction – from past to present and present to future. It’s related obviously to the concept of entropy, that this left to themselves, things go from an orderly state to a disorderly state – a clean desk gathers dust! A teenager’s bedroom loses neatness as time goes by. One way of dramatically illustrating this concept is to look at a film of some event which runs from past to present to future, and thus looks normal, and then look at the same film running backward – i.e. from the present to the past. We’ve all seen films of a broken egg and associated mess on the kitchen floor mysteriously reassembling, leaping up into the air, and gently landing on the kitchen table top. We KNOW we’re seeing the wrong arrow of time; we know we’re seeing entropy as it isn’t – going from a disordered state to an ordered state. Nature doesn’t happen that way. Or does it?

We’ve all seen paint dry. We can film paint drying. We can tell if that film is running backwards because we know dry paint doesn’t turn into wet paint.

We’ve seen films of a thunderstorm. The lightning flashes, the thunder rumbles, and wind howls, and the rain pelts down. That film in reverse would be obvious, because the thunder rumbles, then the lightning flashes, and though the wind still howls, the rain is pelting upwards!

What if you had a lump of coal? It obviously has some amount of radioactive carbon-14 in it, which slowly but surely decays. If a film showed the amount of radioactive carbon-14 increasing in the lump of coal, you’d guess that the film was being run backwards.

Take a piece of paper and set it on fire. If you saw a film showing the reverse, ashes burning and turning into paper, you’d be pretty dense not to know something wasn’t quite right.

Take a container with a divider in the middle. In one half, fill it with hot coffee. In the other half, fill it with hot cream. Lift out the divider and start filming. Pretty soon the white cream and the black coffee produce a uniform brownish/grey mix. If you saw that film in reverse, you’d be bewitched, bothered and bewildered, because things don’t happen that way.

Lastly, let’s film your life – birth, childhood, teenager, young adult, adult, mature aged citizen, elderly, [until death was finally on the near horizon]. Again, you’d immediately know someone put the film in backwards of you saw yourself growing ever more visibly younger.

Now, instead of filming the BIG PICTURE – drying paint, a thunderstorm, radioactive carbon-14 in coal, burning paper, that nice cup of coffee with cream, and this is your life, let’s film just one elementary particle or atom or molecule contained within each of those events. If you focused on just that one bit particle / atom / molecule, and then ran the film backwards, would anything seem strange? The answer is ‘NO’.

The molecule of paint is there whether of not the wetting agent is arriving or leaving, and the wetting agent, say an alcohol molecule, can potentially arrive just as readily as leave as a molecule of same.

A water molecule (making up a rain drop) can rise into the atmosphere just as readily as it can descend.

Atomic particles can impact and turn an ordinary non-radioactive carbon atom into a radioactive (carbon-14) one. I mean radioactive carbon was somehow created in the first place, so the reverse process obviously can happen. So, even if a particle decays into other particles, the reverse is not anomalous as particles can merge – think of hydrogen fusing into helium (plus energy) in the Sun for example.

The carbon in a molecule of cellulose (paper) will, when the paper is burned, remain an atom of carbon, either as carbon ash or as carbon dioxide. But then carbon, or carbon dioxide, can be incorporated into cellulose, so filming in reverse breaks no laws of physics or chemistry. In other words, chemical reactions are reversible. Hydrogen and oxygen can combine in a ratio of two to one for form water. Water in turn can be broken down by electrolysis into hydrogen and oxygen.

There’s nothing unusual if a molecule of cream goes to the left and a molecule of coffee right next to it goes to the right (i.e. – cream and coffee components separate).

Lastly, each and every particle, atom or molecule in your body doesn’t age. Film any particle, atom or molecule that’s part and parcel of your body, view it backwards, and you wouldn’t notice anything anomalous from the time it becomes part and parcel of you until it leaves. Viewed forward or backward, particles, atoms or molecules enter your body, do their thing, and ultimately get replaced by other particles, atoms or molecules.

So, if the micro components of these macro systems don’t exhibit any preferred arrow of time, or exhibit entropy, or have some sort of inevitable destiny, then in theory, the macro systems can defy the arrow of time or entropy or their inevitable destiny. Paint can un-dry; rain can pelt upwards; atomic particles can make something non-radioactive, radioactive; carbon atoms can participate in reversible chemical reactions; creamy coffee can separate into coffee and cream; and lastly, you don’t apparently have to age (but you probably will anyway). Or, put another way, an electron is immortal, so even though you will age and die, not that its much of a consolation, but all your component particles, etc. ultimately live on (and on, and on) to strut their stuff again, and again.

In conclusion, it would appear that there is a very fundamental difference between time in the macro-universe and time in the micro-universe. It’s almost as if there were two highly different software packages written in order to run the overall Universe, one with an arrow of time and entropy, and one without!

Further recommended readings about time:

Carroll, Sean; From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time; Dutton, New York; 2010:

Davies, Paul; About Time: Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution; Penguin Books, London; 1995:

Hawking, Stephen & Penrose, Roger; The Nature of Space and Time; Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey; 1996:

Le Poidevin, Robin; Travels in Four Dimensions: The Enigmas of Space and Time; Oxford University Press, Oxford; 2003:

Lockwood, Michael; The Labyrinth of Time: Introducing the Universe; Oxford University Press, Oxford; 2005:

Mahid, Shahn (Editor); On Space and Time; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2008:

UFOs & the ETH: Summation Arguments: Bibliography

Further readings: Unidentified Flying Objects

Adler, Bill (Editor); Letters to the Air Force on UFOs; Dell Publishing Company, N.Y.; 1967:

Alexander, John B.; UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities; Thomas Dunne Books,, N.Y.; 2011:

Evans, Hilary & Spencer, John (Editors); UFOs: 1947-1987: The 40-Year Search for an Explanation; Fortean Tomes, London; 1987:

Evans, Hilary & Stacy, Dennis (Editors); A World History of UFOs; Red Sparrow, Potts Point, NSW; 1997:

Fuller, John G. (Editor); Aliens in the Skies: The New UFO Battle of the Scientists: The Scientific Rebuttal to the Condon Committee Report: Testimony by Six Leading Scientists Before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics July 29, 1968; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, N.Y.; 1969:

Harkins, R. Roger & Saunders, David R; UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong; Signet Books, N.Y.; 1968: [Saunders was a member of the University of Colorado UFO Study.]

Hough, Peter & Randles, Jenny; The Complete Book of UFOs: An Investigation Into Alien Contacts and Encounters; Piatkus, London; 1994:

Hynek, J. Allen; The Hynek UFO Report; Dell Publishing Company, N.Y.; 1977: [Dr. Hynek was a scientific consultant to the USAF UFO investigations.]

Hynek, J. Allen; The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry; Henry Regnery Company, Chicago; 1972: [Dr. Hynek was a scientific consultant to the USAF UFO investigations.]

Jacobs, David Michael; The UFO Controversy in America; Indiana University Press; Bloomington; 1975:

Jacobs, David M. (Editor); UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge; University Press of Kansas, Lawrence; 2000:

Kean, Leslie; UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record; Harmony Books, New York; 2010:

Maccabee, Bruce; UFO-FBI Connection; Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, Minnesota; 2000:

National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP); The UFO Evidence; NICAP, Washington, D.C.; 1964:

National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP); United States Air Force Projects Grudge and Bluebook Reports 1-12 (1951-1953); NICAP, Washington, D.C.; 1968:

Page, Thornton & Sagan, Carl (Editors); UFO’s: A Scientific Debate; Cornell University Press, Ithaca, N.Y.; 1972:

Pope, Nick; Open Skies, Closed Minds: For the First Time A Government UFO Expert Speaks Out; Simon & Schuster, London; 1996: [Nick Pope was the former UK UFO investigations officer for the British Government.]

Pope, Nick; The Uninvited: An Expose of the Alien Abduction Phenomenon; Simon & Schuster, London; 1997: [Nick Pope was the former UK UFO investigations officer for the British Government.]

Randle, Kevin D.; Project Blue Book Exposed; Marlowe & Company, N.Y.; 1997:

Redfern, Nicholas; The FBI Files; Simon & Schuster, London; 1998:

Ruppelt, Edward J.; The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects; Ace Books, N.Y.; 1956:

[Ruppelt was a former head of the USAF Project Blue Book.]

Sachs, Margaret; The UFO Encyclopedia; Perigee Books, N.Y.; 1980:

Smith, Marcia S. & Havas, George D.; The UFO Enigma; Congressional Research Service; The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; 20 June 1983:

Spencer, John (Compiler/Editor); The UFO Encyclopedia; Headline Book Publishing, London; 1991:

Steiger, Brad (Editor); Project Blue Book: The Top UFO Findings Revealed!; Ballantine Books, N.Y.; 1976:

Story, Ronald D. (Editor); The Encyclopedia of UFOs; Dolphin Books, Garden City, N.Y.; 1980:

Tacker, Lt. Col. Lawrence J;  Flying Saucers and the U.S. Air Force: The Official Air Force Story; D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc.; Princeton, N.J.; 1960:

UFO History Group; UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry; Anomalist Books, San Antonio; 2012.

University of Colorado & Gillmor, Daniel S. (Editor); Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects Conducted by the University of Colorado Under Contract  to the United States Air Force; Bantam Books, N.Y.; 1969: [The Condon Committee Report.]

UFO Censorship and Cover-Ups: Part Two

From nearly day one of the modern UFO era, the subject has been associated and clouded with all sorts of conspiracy theories – official censorship and deliberate cover-ups of information and releases of disinformation (red herrings). Roswell (1947) is often citied as an example, but since I’ve dealt with Roswell before, I’ll focus elsewhere. Still, Roswell was part of the beginning, and in the beginning there were definitely national security and defence issues associated that required security classifications. But once started, censorship and cover-ups, well it’s a slippery slope that’s hard to climb out of.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

4) Case History: Area 51, etc: If a government, any government of any country, had possession of alien technology, say the remains of a crashed flying saucer, there is little doubt that the powers-that-be would try to 1) figure it all out and b) keep it secret from other foreign powers-that-be. That would be the case as well if say the Americans were to obtain terrestrial technology with military applications from captured Russian or Chinese or for that matter even Australian hardware. Thus, it would come as no real surprise that such a government would have one or more top secret sites where such back engineering would be done, and secrets kept. However, even if no government had any alien technology, they still would have top secret sites for producing, testing, and etc. terrestrial technology vital to national security. Thus, the existence of Area 51 (also known as Dreamland for some reason) does not of necessity prove that the United States (in this example) has alien technology in its possession. But, if you accept Roswell (and/or other tales of captured alien technology), then Area 51 (or akin) follows of necessity.

Take Area 51 (Groom Lake, Nevada). Even assuming that the location has bugger-all to do with UFOs doesn’t negate secrecy going on. There’s no denying the place exists. That’s on the public record. Satellite and ground photographs exist. There’s no getting around the fact that signs are posted around the site that there will be ‘no trespassing’ and that if you do, ‘use of deadly force is authorised’ to keep you out. [That includes SETI scientists!] That too is on the public record, filmed and documented. Translated, there are things going on at Area 51 the American government doesn’t want anyone to know about. Pine Gap in Central Australia is another such location. Many more exist throughout the world. You want cover-ups, censorship and related – call it what you will. Well, something that immediately comes to mind was the Manhattan Project. Then there’s that U-2 spy plane (and a whole range of stealth military aircraft that remained top secret while in development). Likewise, the Project Mogul package designed to detect foreign nuclear weapons testing, launched to high altitudes by balloon, as beloved as an explanation for Roswell. (I’m sure Project Mogul existed, whether it really explains Roswell is quite another matter.)

Nobody can deny that the military has levels of classified security ratings ranging from confidential through to secret and top secret. Anyone suggesting that the Americans (or British, Australians, Chinese, Russians, etc.) don’t have skeletons in their respective closets are in serious denial or in delusion mode. A UFO case might even be classified not so much because it’s a UFO, but because the surveillance equipment, type of radar or spy satellite, etc. might be classified.

The number of classified confidential / secret / top secret projects worldwide must number in the tens of thousands. The total number of classified confidential / secret / top secret documents (plus photos and films and related) must be in the millions, probably multi-millions if not more. The number of multi-decades old classified projects and documents are unknown, but some surely exist. Something old by itself doesn’t equal declassified. And it’s not just the military – all sorts of government civilian and diplomatic projects and decisions remain under wraps for a whole variety of reasons.

There’s no doubt in my mind that UFOs could be one of hundreds to thousands or more topics somewhat too-hot-to-handle and pretty much under classified wraps. That’s a conclusion that’s fairly obvious to me when it came to light, after much denial by the CIA, but pressured via Freedom-of-Information requests, that the CIA had some quite considerable interest in UFOs. Alas, FOI not withstanding, a vast percentage of the text from those released documents are blacked out. And that too is on the public record.

When it comes down to all things classified (a fancy word for cover-up because classified things are covered-up and tucked away out of sight) there is a phrase called ‘need to know’. If you don’t need to know, and you want to, that’s a cover-up as far as you’re concerned. Now Australia had a very long serving Prime Minister (John Howard) who was finally defeated in a 2007 general election, and left politics. I’m sure he knows many secrets – military and diplomatic – from his years in the top job. But, like all good citizens, he’s not telling tales out of class. Ditto all American ex-presidents and Commonwealth PM’s and all other manner of retired statesmen.

There’s also the aspect or concept of ‘the superiority complex’. The ‘I know something that you don’t know’ – ha, ha, ha – that helps feed our egos. Maybe someone does have THE knowledge and THE proof positive of what UFOs are, but why should they share it with you hence share the Nobel Prize? Or, maybe they are just internally satisfied that they alone are blessed with THE answer and that’s the be-all-and-end-all of the matter.

5) Case History: Washington, D.C. 1952:  In July 1952, on two separate occasions, separated by one week, UFOs buzzed America’s National Capitol, making long term incursions over restricted air space. They were tracked, independently, by various civilian and military radars. Military jet fighters were scrambled to intercept and identify the UFOs, but were outmatched and didn’t succeed, although they were witnessed by the pilots. The objects were also witnessed from the ground. USAF Major-General John A. Samford, at the largest Pentagon press conference ever held since WWII, in late July 1952, made the statement with respect to the recent Washington D.C. UFO flap that these sightings were made by “credible observers of relatively incredible things”. It’s on the public record.

Now of course these sightings had to be explained by any means necessary since you just cannot admit to having unknown aerial objects fly over restricted air space. So the idea of ‘temperature inversions’ explained all - hogwash. It’s amazing that the common occurrence of ‘temperature inversions’ had never before, and never since, caused such commotion.  

One other point, SETI scientists poo-poo the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) saying there’s no PHYSICAL evidence. Eye witness testimony counts for absolutely nothing. Well of course there is PHYSICAL evidence for the UFO ETH of the exact same nature as that would satisfy a SETI scientist of E.T. – after all SETI scientists look for a PHYSICAL signal which they can study at their leisure, not an actual E.T. in the flesh. Well, UFOs have produced PHYSICAL evidence because they too can, and have, produced a PHYSICAL signal – radar returns, and there exist a fair few bona-fide radar returns of UFO events that have, after due investigation, remained unidentified. Now the PHYSICAL evidence left behind by bona-fide UFO radar cases, those unexplained radar cases, deserve intense respect, and the operators that interpret those radar returns. If radar operators can be trusted to distinguish a flock of birds from an incoming ICBM or foreign miliary bombers intent on doing us a mischief, the reason the radar DEW line was established and manned during the Cold War; if radar operators can have entrusted to them the lives of military and commercial pilots, crew and passengers, then they must have the ability to distinguish a radar echo from a temperature inversion from a solid object – in this case the aircraft. If you fly, you entrust your very life to the ability of those radar operators to tell who’s who; distinguish what’s what. Sorry, but UFO radar returns are solid PHYSICAL evidence for the reality of unidentified flying objects.  

6) Stargate: SG-1 / USAF / UFO Connection: Considering the number of movies and TV shows (not to mention documentaries) that accent UFO censorship or cover-ups or disinformation, etc. well the idea has obviously struck a responsive chord. That so much has been made of this via motion pictures and TV shows is suggestive that either the public don’t trust the government to tell the truth, and/or that the governments (way more than one government since the beginning of the modern UFO era) have failed pretty miserably in convincing the public it has disclosed all and has nothing to hide. Anyway, we’ve had blockbuster movies like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Independence Day” which highlighted the issues, and wasn’t “E.T.” treated pretty badly by those government types? On the TV front we’ve had “Dark Skies”, “Taken”, “Roswell” and “The Invaders”. Then we had “Stargate: SG-1”.

“Stargate: SG-1” was a TV spin-off of the feature film “Stargate” that ran for ten seasons and featured several alien races that in the main had links to ancient terrestrial mythology. One such race was the Asgards, and as the name suggests had connection with our Old Norse mythology. The interesting bit was that in appearance, the Asgards just happen to look exactly like the standard ‘greys’ of modern UFO (Roswell and abduction, etc.) lore. This was I’m sure quite by design and no coincidence. This fictional show also confirmed several times over that Area 51 both housed and studied alien/extraterrestrial technology. And so, the fact that both ‘greys’ and Area 51 feature on the show makes one other observation and interesting observation. That other interesting bit is that the stargate in “Stargate: SG-1” was a (fictional) USAF top secret enterprise. The TV show featuring the stargate had the endorsement and cooperation of the actual USAF, probably because the TV show portrayed the USAF in a positive light. In fact, two actual then currently serving USAF Chiefs of Staff (4-star generals) appeared in the actual TV show as themselves! How’s that for endorsement? So, we have the actual USAF assisting (by providing an advisory role, aircraft and personnel to the show) and endorsing a TV show that prominently featured UFO ‘greys’. Okay, I’m probably reading way to much into that. In all probability the USAF connection probably had no actual relevance to any indirect approval of the UFO ‘greys’ in the show by the USAF. That ‘endorsement’ is just pure speculation on my part. So I do have to admit that there’s probably no deep meaning underlying this connection, but I still find it interesting.

Further readings:

Darlington, David; Area 51: The Dreamland Chronicles: The Legend of America’s Most Secret Military Base; Henry Holt & Company, New York; 1997: 

Dolan, Richard M.; UFOs and the National Security State: Chronology of a Cover-up 1941-1973; Hampton Roads, Charlottesville, Virginia; [Revised Edition] 2002:

Dolan, Richard M.; UFOs and the National Security State: The Cover-up Exposed 1973-1991; Keyhole Publishing, Rochester, New York; 2009:

Friedman, Stanton T.; Top Secret / MAJIC; Marlow & Company, New York; 1996: 

Good, Timothy; Need to Know: UFOs, the Military and Intelligence; Sidgwick & Jackson, London; 2006: 

Jacobsen, Annie; Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base; Little, Brown & Company, New York; 2011.

Kean, Leslie; UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record; Harmony Books, New York; 2010:

Maccabee, Bruce; UFO FBI Connection: The Secret History of the Government’s Cover-Up; Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, Minnesota; 2000: 

Patton, Phil; Travels in Dreamland: The Secret History of Area 51; Orion Media, London; 1997:

Randle, Kevin D.; Project Bluebook Exposed; Marlowe & Company, New York; 1997: 

Redfern, Nicholas; A Covert Agenda: UFO Secrecy Exposed; Simon & Schuster, London; 1997: 

Steiger, Brad (Editor); Project Blue Book: The Top Secret UFO Findings Revealed; Ballantine Books, New York; 1976:

UFOs: The Condon (University of Colorado) Report

Assuming one or more extraterrestrial civilizations with advanced, interstellar spaceflight capability exists; then they know about Planet Earth. Say ‘hi’ to those pesky UFOs, a concept either dismissed or ignored by the general scientific community. Part of that scientific snub is in no short order due to what’s commonly called ‘The Condon Report’, a scientific study into UFOs undertaken by the University of Colorado on behalf of the U.S. Air Force (USAF).

Why do scientists tend to shy away from more active consideration of the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) issue?

Scientists to this day don’t identify themselves seriously with the UFO ETH, probably in part because, from the get-go, 1947, UFOs (then flying discs or flying saucers) were NEVER a science issue. They were a national security issue. From the get-go UFOs were assumed to be nuts-and-bolts technology, albeit terrestrial – Russian or Chinese in the minds of those responsible for America’s national security. That’s why investigation, analysis, etc. was controlled by the military, not handed over to a university or civilian research institute.

From the early days of the modern UFO era (1947+), the United States Air Force (USAF) took charge of investigating the flying discs or saucers, later tagged ‘unidentified flying objects’ on the grounds of national security and coming to terms with violations of American air space.

By the time it became obvious to blind Freddy that the flying discs had bugger-all to do with foreign technology (the Russians thinking they were American), the New Age rot had set in with the contactees, their tales of being invited and taken for rides in spaceships to the aliens’ home planets of Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, etc. which was total rot to any scientist worth his or her salt even back then, and telling their endless sermons of cosmic messages of universal brotherhood, etc. from those aliens – their ‘space brothers’.

However, the more serious UFO ETH didn’t start to enter the picture until some five or so years after the flying disc phenomena began, for despite the claims of the contactees, an extraterrestrial origin started to become viable as a process of elimination began to weed out the terrestrial nuts-and-bolts hypothesis and thus alleviate concerns over foreign powers invading American airspace. And concerns there originally were.  

But at the height of the Cold War era, the military had to downplay any possibility that the flying discs could be foreign technology – reds under the beds sort of stuff; the McCarthy era. Thus, the military put the emphasis on hoaxes, natural phenomena, misidentifications, anything but nuts-and-bolts that could belong to a foreign power.

Ultimately that proved to be a PR disaster when it became fairly obvious that many official explanations of UFO sightings as prosaic phenomena were more far out than the UFO ETH. By the early 1960’s, the public’s perceptions of the USAF competence in handling their UFO investigations (under the code name Project Bluebook) was proving to be a public relations nightmare, capped off by the J. Allen Hynek (who was the main scientific consultant to the USAF on the UFO issue) ‘swamp gas’ fiasco or debacle.

A whole series of UFOs were reported in various localities in Michigan in March 1966. They (the reports) received a lot of press coverage, and the public wanted answers. The USAF had to provide them, and Hynek was their bunny that had to front and centre. Totally unprepared on really short notice to ‘please explain’, the only possible prosaic explanation that popped into Hynek’s mind was ‘swamp gas’, and said that was the answer at a widely attended press conference. That really generated media coverage as the witnesses concerned just could not and would not accept such a glib explanation for what had been seen over many nights by many people.

That ‘swamp gas’ episode was a turning point for now the USAF UFO Project Bluebook investigation was becoming a real public relations disaster. The more the Air Force tried to downgrade the issue, the more the public smelled whitewash. Since the USAF knew the UFOs were not a national security issue – no alien invasion had resulted after two decades – it was time to exit gracefully from any involvement relating to the UFO issue. The question was how to accomplish that in an apparently open and in the public eye manner. Well, what about a totally independent study by an established university headed by a well known and respected scientist (or at least someone well known and respected by the scientific community – most scientists don’t tend to be household names).

So, in order to bring in qualified, independent experts, restore credibility (and get a reason to get out of the UFO business) the USAF turned to a number of credible universities to do an independent study, all to no avail. Universities didn’t need the government’s money that badly as well as the negative image UFOs would provide. Except one finally, and that expression of interest was the University of Colorado, and respected physicist Edward U. Condon, to head the team that would look into the UFO issue.

And so it came to pass that the military (USAF) finally contracted out the University of Colorado (and Edward U. Condon) to conduct a study that would give them a graceful out of the UFO business, since by that time national security via-a-vis any terrestrial foreign power had no credibility.

Unfortunately, Dr. Condon, as head of the independent investigation, ultimately proved to be more a liability than an asset. Staffers uncovered a memo by his higher echelon administrator that strongly suggested that he (Condon) had already made his mind up even before the formal and serious study began, that suggested UFOs were a non-issue and that they somehow had to ‘trick’ the public into thinking that they were going to do a bona fide study, when in reality they all knew they were just wasting their time, but marking time, collecting the government’s money, thank you very much.

That lower echelon staff uncovered, hence leaked that ‘trick’ memo showed that Condon, despite being a scientist, had a closed mind on the subject.  That produced such dissention in the ranks, with resultant media publicity, that the internal politics just about shattered any credibility to the investigation, as if it had any in the first place. Some members quit and offered scathing rebuttals to the inner (office politics) workings of the University of Colorado study.

And true to form, the final report apparently dumped poo on the UFO subject, or at least the introductory / summary chapter written by Condon himself dumped poo on it. However, his summary was something his staff never saw until the report was actually published. His staff had actually uncovered something sweeter smelling that poo

Now Condon was clearly 100% anti-UFO before the study even began, but any read of the lengthy actual report relative to Condon’s summary (what the press, etc. took note of being short and first up) - well Condon said there was nothing to the UFO ETH; but the actual report compiled by his staff couldn’t explain over 30% of the cases it studied.

Now of course when you issue a 1000+ page report to the press, who have deadlines to meet, all they have time for is to digest the introductory / summary and write their articles from what that summary says. What that summary said is that there’s no meat on the bone; the USAF should stop wasting time on the subject – which is exactly what the USAF wanted to hear – and bail out from this PR nightmare. Subject closed. Unfortunately, things didn’t quite turn out that way.

What you’ll find in the non-Condon written bulk of the University of Colorado report is that case after case (well about 30% of cases in fact) are unexplainable. How Condon can say that there’s nothing to the subject in the summary, while his team suggested that 30% of what they investigated was anything but ‘nothing’, remains a perplexing historical mystery.

So I don’t want anyone to tell me that the University of Colorado UFO investigation on behalf of the USAF, the Condon Report, closed the book on the UFO ETH subject – not unless you have real the entire report and not just that introductory / summary first chapter. There is no similarity between the questions the actual report raises and the summary conclusions reached by boss Condon as given in that first chapter. Few people have taken the time to separate the wheat from the chaff in the Condon Report. The first chapter is the chaff; the bulk of the report contains the wheat.

So, read the entire report – do so, and then talk to me! Contrary to popular opinion, the Condon report proved the need for heightened investigation, not the need to abandon the investigation.

But in hindsight the Condon Report proved to be a pivotal point in the history of UFOs. It provided a reason for the U.S. Air Force to get out of the UFO business – publicly at least; it provided a disincentive for scientists to further seriously study the UFO issue. Condon set back the scientific study of UFOs by decades – it probably still hasn’t recovered from the debacle. And thus, to this day, scientists shy away from the UFO ETH issue. As far as the scientific community is concerned, the case is closed, and Condon closed it.

In conclusion, for the first 20 years of the UFO phenomena, scientists weren’t involved in any major way with the issue. UFOs was under the jurisdiction of the military. The subject had been tainted by the New Age cultists and cranks, and then Condon put the final nail in the coffin. Any scientist after that wouldn’t touch the subject – they weren’t involved from the beginning; the subject was tainted; nobody much bothered to read beyond Condon’s anti-UFO ETH summary (even though the actual report contained a lot of meat and potatoes). Translated, no scientist starting out on their career path would now dare consider the topic. The negatives have snowballed and been self-reinforcing ever since.

Further readings regarding the (University of Colorado) Condon Report:

Fuller, John G. (Editor); Aliens in the Skies: The New UFO Battle of the Scientists: The Scientific Rebuttal to the Condon Committee Report: Testimony by Six Leading Scientists Before the House Committee on Science and Astronautics July 29, 1968; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, N.Y.; 1969:

Harkins, R. Roger & Saunders, David R; UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong; Signet Books, N.Y.; 1968: [Saunders was a member of the University of Colorado UFO Study.]

University of Colorado & Gillmor, Daniel S. (Editor); Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects Conducted by the University of Colorado Under Contract  to the United States Air Force; Bantam Books, N.Y.; 1969: [The Condon Committee Report.]

UFOs: The Fermi Paradox

Where is everybody?" was a question posed by physicist Enrico Fermi. The 'paradox' is that extraterrestrials should be here, yet there is no indisputable evidence to support that. Or is there? Those pesky UFOs just will not go away!

The Fermi Paradox (after physicist Enrico Fermi) briefly goes as follows. Extraterrestrial intelligences with advanced technology and interstellar spaceflight capability exist. Sub-light interstellar spaceflight violates no laws of physics. Adopting the mantra of quantum physics, ‘anything that’s not forbidden is compulsory’. The time it takes to explore every nook and cranny of our Milky Way Galaxy via sub-light interstellar spaceflight is a tiny fraction of the age of the Galaxy. There’s at least one universally valid reason to boldly go – species survival. No star, no solar system lives forever. We (Planet Earth) can’t hide from alien exploration and/or colonization. So, where is everybody? [By analogy, terrestrial life forms like bacteria, ants and cockroaches, birds, and of course humans, have explored and colonized Planet Earth in tiny fractions of the time that Earth itself has existed.] So again, where is everybody?

I can hear screams of ‘objection, objection’ now. It’s obviously too far and takes too long to get from there (wherever that is) to here. Well, life wasn’t meant to be easy! Seriously, if you think about it a while, methinks you protest too much!

Firstly, aliens could have a very long natural lifespan relative to us carbon-based terrestrial bipeds. There’s no natural law that confines intelligent life forms to an existence of just three score and ten.

Secondly, advanced extraterrestrials may have perfected various hibernation techniques. Put your spaceship on autopilot and sleep the long journey away. 

Thirdly, there’s that way old sci-fi chestnut, the multi-generation interstellar spaceship. While I feel that’s an unlikely concept, especially for exploration, it might not be quite so far out if the objective is interstellar colonization.

Then there’s bioengineering, turning an organic body into something that’s more machine than flesh and blood, perhaps akin to Doctor Who’s Daleks. Given advances in artificial body parts for humans, albeit it hip replacements or dentures or even mundane tooth fillings, that’s certainly a valid possibility.

Fifthly, why stop there? Send 100% machines – artificial intelligences in the form of cybernetic ‘organisms’ or robots or androids or tiny nanotechnology machines. One obviously things of Data from ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’, or something akin to the original ‘Battlestar Galactica’ Cylons. Think of the savings in not having to provide life support and other life essentials for biological organisms. We’ve made a start already down this path. There’s nothing different in principle between a Cylon and our Pioneer 10 & 11; our Voyager space probes. It’s just that a Cylon is a lot more sophisticated. The day will come when our Pioneers and Voyagers will morph into something approaching a Cylon, or any one of multi-dozens of similar ‘beings’ in the sci-fi literature. Since AI is nearly immortal (relative to flesh and blood), that takes care of travel time arguments, and the possible environments fit for relative easy exploration (colonization?) are expanded greatly.  

Lastly, maybe, just maybe, a sort of warp drive, faster-than-light ship is possible. Aliens whose science is thousands of years more advanced than ours just might have gotten around Einstein’s speed limit. I wouldn’t want to wager any money on it, but I’d be less than open minded not to admit the possibility, however remote.  Add to that, theoretical but allowable ‘gateways’ between distant points of our Universe, maybe even to other universes – wormholes and Black Holes. Maybe, just maybe, an advanced alien civilization has the ways and means to manipulate such objects and forces to facilitate easy travel in space (and time too maybe).  An excellent hardcore science based sci-fi novel that doesn’t rely on pseudo techno-babble that illustrates this is Carl Sagan’s “Contact”.

So yet again, where is everybody?

Answers include (but aren’t really limited to) general concepts that suggest that…

They don’t exist; never have and never will. What’s wrong with that? Well, given the vastness (100,000 light-years across) and timelessness (over 12 billions of years minimum) of our Milky Way Galaxy’s entire expanse, the odds that we are the proverbial IT, the one and only, is extremely unlikely. It’s a massive violation of the Principle of Mediocrity or the Copernican Principle.

We’re the first kids on the block, not the new kids on the block. What’s wrong with that? Again, the odds that in all the vastness of our Milky Way Galaxy we should happen to be the first, is unlikely in the extreme. Our Solar System is but 4.5 billion years old; our Galaxy is way, way, way, way older than that.

They exist but don’t care to explore space, to seek out new life and new civilizations. They don’t want to boldly go or seek communications. They want to be left alone – isolationists. What’s wrong with that? That might be true for one, or several alien civilizations, but to extrapolate and suggest that that applies across the board to each and every extraterrestrial civilization is illogical.

They boldly go, but haven’t come our way yet. What’s wrong with that? Again, it doesn’t take that long to explore the entire Galaxy. It would be a fluke if we hadn’t of been noted and logged in some other civilization’s database.

They’re here, but leave us alone. What’s wrong with that? Again, that might be true for one, or several alien civilizations, but to extrapolate and suggest that that applies across the board again strikes me as illogical. There is such a thing called the Zoo Hypothesis to explain the Fermi Paradox. It’s both a Star Trek ‘Prime Directive’ concept combined with that of a zoo. Aliens (the zoo keepers) don’t interfere with us (though of course every now and then the zoo keepers have to interact with the animals (humans) in the zoo), don’t allow others to interfere with us, yet probably wouldn’t allow us to escape the cage (meaning probably the confines of our solar system – I mean we have been allowed to travel to the Moon).

They’re here and interact with us and our environment - UFOs anyone? What’s wrong with that? Absolutely nothing!

UFOs are a perfect answer to the Fermi Paradox!

Further readings: The Fermi Paradox

Hart, Michael H. & Zuckerman, Ben (Editors); Extraterrestrials: Where Are They?; Pergamon Press, N.Y.; 1982:

Hart, Michael H. & Zuckerman, Ben (Editors); Extraterrestrials: Where Are They? [2^nd edition]; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 1995:

Verma, Surendra; Why Aren’t They Here? The Question of Life on Other Worlds; Icon Books, Cambridge; 2007:

Webb, Stephen; Where Is Everybody? Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life; Copernicus Books, N.Y.; 2002:

It’s About Time – For a Change: Part Two

Introduction: The real nature of what we call ‘time’ is one of the Big Questions. It’s been debated ever since humans evolved thought and language. That puzzlement remains true to the average person today, although ‘time’ has become the professional subject or province of philosophers, metaphysicists, and theoretical physicists, not to forget many a science fiction author! Here’s my two cents worth – ‘time’ is an illusion!

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Travel through Time? The question remains despite my earlier negation; can you revisit and experience a past event? Can there be an instant (or not so instant) replay? Take the example of the now dispersed ink in the bowl of water. If all the ink bits (particles) were to exactly retrace their movements (that’s just so highly improbable that you’d wait longer than the age of our Universe to actually see it), they would eventually come together as an ink drop. If they now retrace those retraced movements (ditto on the statistical improbability) you get back to the exact same configuration of dispersed ink bits in the bowl of water. You will have witnessed an instant (or not so instant) replay of a past event. You would have in a sense travelled back in time to ‘record’ an event that had already happened. Of course you would have ‘time’ travelled with respect to that specific event and only that event.

Ah, that word ‘record’. Of course you could have filmed the original ink drop to dispersed ink event then watched the film at a later date, but that’s cheating a bit, don’t you think?

Assuming for a moment that time is actually something tangible and that travel through it is possible (that’s in agreement with Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity). Einstein’s Relativity aside, I’d maintain that travel backwards in time is probably nonsense.

If you go back in time with a view to either preventing something from happening or inaugurating something and you succeed, then when you return to your own present time the original motive to go back in time in the first place has ceased to exist. That’s because in your now altered present, there’s nothing motivating you to go back in time and so you don’t, but if you don’t then you couldn’t have changed the past in the first place. That actually suggests that your actions have split the Universe and generated two timelines (or universes), one in which you go back to fix something, and one in which you don’t because there’s nothing that needs fixing.

If you don’t succeed, if you can’t tamper with the past* then it’s all an exercise in futility and so there’s no point being a damn fool about it. If at first you don’t succeed, give up!

If you go back in time just to observe (as historian, scientist or even tourist), your very presence in the past has introduced a change that didn’t previously exist, and any change has a ripple effect which will change, even if only slightly, your own present, in you’re your before-the-fact time travelling present was different to your after-the-fact time travelling present, which could, as we’ll see, generate a paradox. You may not care about the alteration, but other people may not be so happy and laid back with your inadvertent meddling.

But wait a second. Those other people probably wouldn’t know or be aware that anything had altered. Having reset the clock when you went back in time, the ripples would have become part and parcel of their world view, so only you, upon your return (having bypassed all the rippling) would notice the change.

But what if you go back in time only to materialize in front of a speeding train and are killed. Of course that doesn’t affect your ancestors so presumably they still meet and marry and breed and ultimately your born – again – only to go back in time and get hit by that train!  

Or, you materialize back in time and so startling someone of that era into failing to notice that train and gets killed. Now say that someone was your father-to-be; your father before he met your mother. Now you have two universes – timelines – again. One timeline is where you went back in time and presumably returned; one in which you were never born.

That’s one of many variations on the ‘grandfather paradox’ which in general has as a plot where you go back in time and somehow prevent your own birth by say, killing your grandfather before he met your grandmother, or in a less gruesome way, prevented them from ever meeting. When I was a teenager I remember writing a short story (never published) where a group of scientists travelled back in time some four billion years to just after the Earth formed and solidified and cooled. One of the scientists was a pipe smoker, and after finishing his smoke, tapped out the pipe ashes into a small puddle of water. Of course that puddle was the very puddle that was to have given rise to that first proto-cell, but the pipe ash polluted the puddle and so that origin of life event never happened, and so back in what would have been the 20^th Century, the sun shone down on a sterile planet! The only trouble with the story was that four billion years ago, there was no oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere so one couldn’t smoke. Still, it was the mother of all grandfather paradoxes!   

Here’s another time travelling curve ball coming your way. You have a set of coordinates with respect to Planet Earth – latitude, longitude, and altitude. But you also have a set of coordinates with respect to the Moon – lunar latitude, longitude and altitude. You have a set of coordinates with respect to the Sun (solar latitude, longitude and altitude). Ditto Mars, and ditto the nearest star and ditto the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy, etc. In fact, although they change from moment because of relative motions of all the bodies concerned (that also applies to you and Planet Earth since you move around), you have a set of coordinates with respect to every bit of matter in the Universe. The question is, when you time travel, what set of coordinates do you take with you? Where exactly do you end up? It’s taken for granted in works of fiction that its Earth’s coordinates, but is it necessarily so? What if you retain your exact position (relative to where exactly is a mystery) but travel in time. Then presumably when you materialize else-when, the Earth will have moved far away, and there you are flailing around in empty space, breathing a deep vacuum!

So we see that while time travel stories are a staple of the sci-fi authors’ bag-of-tricks – they stir up those little grey cells – there doesn’t appear to be much chance of time travel in any physical reality we know of. Time travel is only a reality in the imagination. We in fact have a version of the Fermi Paradox here. While the Fermi Paradox referred to aliens that should be knocking on our collective doors (“where is everybody?”), if time travel were possible, as astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has so absolutely pointed out, then where are all those gawking time travelling tourists and historians from our future?

*Akin to astrophysicist Stephen Hawking’s Chronology Protection Conjecture which states that there is as yet some undiscovered principle in physics which will make it impossible to travel back in time and thus make the Universe safe for historians.

Further recommended readings about time and time travel:

Carroll, Sean; From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time; Dutton, New York; 2010:

Davies, Paul; About Time: Einstein’s Unfinished Revolution; Penguin Books, London; 1995:

Gott, J. Richard; Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time; Phoenix, London; 2002:

Hawking, Stephen & Penrose, Roger; The Nature of Space and Time; Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey; 1996:

Hawking, Stephen W. et al.; The Future of Spacetime; W.W. Norton and Company, N.Y.; 2002:

Le Poidevin, Robin; Travels in Four Dimensions: The Enigmas of Space and Time; Oxford University Press, Oxford; 2003:

Lockwood, Michael; The Labyrinth of Time: Introducing the Universe; Oxford University Press, Oxford; 2005:

Mahid, Shahn (Editor); On Space and Time; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2008:

Randles, Jenny; Breaking the Time Barrier: The Race to Build the First Time Machine; Paraview Pocket Books, New York; 2005:

Toomey, David; The New Time Travelers: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics; W.W. Norton & Company, New York; 2007:

Origins and Ultimate Questions: Part One

Who are we; where did we come from; what is my purpose in life; why is there something rather than nothing, etc. has probably been pondered by most of us at one time or another. One universal blanket answer is God (or in earlier times, the gods). A rival answer is that the abstract concept of Mother Nature can equally explain all, even if sometimes in the negative – the Universe and you have no ultimate purpose. It, you and I just are.

Cosmological Origins & Considerations: Did God create the Universe?

To be honest, cosmologists have no need of a God Hypothesis to explain the origin of our Universe, be it the standard model of the Big Bang event or a variation thereof (and there are cosmologists who don’t buy into the standard model) and you won’t find any mention of the God Hypothesis as a plausible possibility in their textbooks and given in university lecture halls.

Still, ‘In the beginning’ - that’s a good place to start, although I actually prefer the phrase ‘once upon a time’ for reasons that will become apparent. The standard cosmological model outlining the origin or our Universe via the Big Bang event is, well let me just say I don’t accept a word of it and I won’t go into massive detail about it. It’s very easy to get hold of any number of popular accounts that detail the standard Big Bang scenario. However, in extreme briefness, the standard Big Bang event postulates the origin of all matter where no matter existed before; the creation of all energy, where no energy existed previously; the creation of time itself where previously there was no time; and lastly the creation of space where before-the-fact there was no space. To add insult to our intelligence, the Big Bang was also a quantum event, so you are forced to believe that the entire contents of our Universe were once crammed into a space the size of an atom or less. Sure it was! In fact there’s so much philosophical baggage for the standard Big Bang scenario to have to lug around that even the standard Biblical account is slightly, ever so slightly, more believable, but only just – barely just.

In proposing an alternative scenario, I can’t really throw the Big Bang baby out along with the philosophical bathwater, because there’s too much real observational evidence in support of some sort of Big Bang event. My alternative just postulates that the Big Bang event happened in pre-existing space and time, and that the matter and energy of our Universe is just a recycling of the contents of a previous universe that, in the reverse of our expanding Universe, contracted until it all came together in a Big Crunch so warping the fabric of space and time that it ended up spewing the contents out in what we see as our Universe. Oh, the transition from a previous Big Crunch universe to our Big Bang Universe was a macro event, not a micro (quantum) one.

Anyway, either our Universe had a beginning (the Big Bang), and will have (based on current cosmological observations) an ultimate, albeit long drawn out termination (a Heat Death or Big Rip), or the Universe is infinitely cyclic (Big Crunch – Big Bang – expansion – contraction – Big Crunch – Big Bang – etc.).

In the former case, what’s the point of God creating and ruling over a Universe that’s ultimately going to spend an eternity in a very cold and dead state, or for there to be a Heaven (or Hell) that exists within such an ultimately dreary Universe? The realm of God, of Heaven and Hell, has ultimately got to be part of our Universe and subject to the same sort of fate as the Universe overall will share.

In the latter case, with infinitely cyclic universes, there is no need for a creator God at all. Or, maybe God, over an eternity, has created lots of various universes, one after the other, for His amusement, and perhaps like a kid tired of a new toy, abandoned it (or destroyed it via a Big Crunch) after a time. Our Universe could be but the latest in this series of amusements, sort of like a child playing with a doll house and dolls for a while. Perhaps God is akin to a child and we are toys to be played with and manipulated. God can sure throw tantrums like a spoiled brat! [Recall the original ‘Star Trek’ episode ‘Squire of Gothos’ for an illustration of what I’m on about – the episode illustrates a very similar idea.] Regardless, perhaps this is yet another interesting variation of the cyclic or oscillating universe scenario where there are lots of universes in turn, but supernaturally, not naturally created. However, I’d ultimately have to argue that if Mother Nature can create one universe, Mother Nature can create more than one universe. And while God can create as many universes as He likes, what’s the logical point of doing so? Isn’t our Universe a big enough playground for Him? 

The Origin of Life on Earth (or Elsewhere): Did God Create Life?

The upshot is that those biologists and biochemists who study the origin of life, whether an origin indigenous to our planet, or one arriving from the depths of outer space via a panspermia scenario, have not required resorting to supernatural explanations for the creation of life. You won’t find the phrase ‘and then a miracle occurred’ in the textbooks between discussions that link pre-biology with biology.

Life, even microbial life, is still very, very complex (try making a microbe from scratch if you doubt it). The fact that life arose from scratch on Earth within a very, very short span of geological time after the planet formed is a bit suspect IMHO. But what if Earth were seeded by microbial life forms already in existence from space (or deliberately seeded by extraterrestrials as the Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick has proposed)? Now I realize that just puts off the origin of life question to another time(s) and place(s). However, given the vastness of the cosmos is far greater than that of our finite globe, and given that the cosmos existed for vastly longer periods of time before our sun, solar system and home planet came into existence, such additional time and space easily turns the improbable into a near certainty. And once established somewhere, life could spread throughout that time and space, until it reached us.

Earth arose billions of years after our Universe and our galaxy had evolved, ample time for life to have arisen elsewhere, and seed the early Earth. This is the concept of panspermia. We know that comets, meteors, and the cosmic dust within outer space are chock-o-block full of complex organic molecules. We know that simple terrestrial life can survive the outer space environment if suitably shielded – and it doesn’t take much to do the shielding. We know that surface bits from planets and their moons can be ejected into space, carry a cargo of microbes, and land on another planet, even eons later with the microbes still viable. Of course 99.999% of all such microbial life will be doomed to forever wander in space or crash onto a cold, surface of a planet with no atmosphere or water, or plunge into a star, etc. But, sheer numbers, like terrestrial plant seeds, will insure that now and again some microbes will land on a hospitable abode and be fruitful and multiple and evolve. The interesting bit is that if then, then now. And thus panspermia will be happening today. Certainly some meteorites which have impacted Earth have inside them ‘organized elements’ suggestive of microbial structures – the Murchison Meteorite from Australia is one such stone. The problem is terrestrial contamination as there are often lengthy time periods between their fall and their discovery. As an aside, if Fred Hoyle & Chandra Wickramasinghe are correct (and I believe they are), microbes (bacteria and viruses) impacting Earth today are largely responsible for some select and various disease epidemics or pandemics, past, present, and no doubt future.

Further readings:

Crick, Francis; Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature; Simon and Schuster, New York; 1981: 

Davies, Paul; The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin of Life; Allen Lane, Ringwood, Victoria; 1998:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Lifecloud: The Origin of Life in the Universe; J.M. Dent  & Sons Ltd, London; 1978:

Hoyle, Fred & Wickramasinghe, Chandra; Diseases from Space; J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London; 1979

Ponnamperuma, Cyril (Editor); Comets and the Origin of Life; D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland; 1981:

Seargent, David A. J.; Genesis Stone? The Murchison Meteorite and the Beginnings of Life; Karagi Publications, The Entrance, NSW: 1991:

To be continued…