Yes, I know. I really should have reviewed this movie months ago, or at least before it won the academy award for best picture. To be honest I just didn’t get around to seeing ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ until after it won the Oscar. I just hope you can forgive my tardiness and that you’ll still find my review to be of some interest.
Even the best of us can get a bit behind sometimes. (Credit: Redbubble)
First off the film isn’t quite ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ but for a motion picture it certainly does pack an awful lot of action, in a great many different location, into two and a half hours. The idea behind ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ is that an opening in the Multiverse allows the characters to experience something of the lives of their alternate selves in other realities. I recently reviewed a novel by Blake Crouch entitled ‘Dark Matter’, see my post of 18th February 2023, that deals with the same idea and like the novel ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ is a breathtaking thrill ride full of wild ideas that will make you think.
The novel ‘Dark Matter’ by Blake Crouch deals with the same ideas as ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ using the Multiverse to question how our lives could have been different if we’d made different choices. (Credit: Goodreads)
Evelyn Wang, played by actress Michelle Yeoh, leads a rather boring existence. She and her husband Waymond, played by Ke Huy Quan, own, manage and live above a laundromat. The couple’s only child is a daughter Joy, played by Stephanie Hsu who has recently begun a lesbian relationship and who feels she simply cannot communicate anymore with her parents.
It is of course impossible to fully display the Multiverse in a motion picture, but ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ does a pretty good job of giving a small glimpse of it! (Credit: IMDb)
The Wang’s also live with Evelyn’s father Gong Gong, played by actor James Hong, who thinks his daughter ruined her life when she married Waymond. Oh, and by the way Waymond is planning to divorce Evelyn. To add to the troubles the Wang’s are being audited by the IRS, specifically by IRS agent Deirdre Beabeirdra, played by Jamie Lee Curtis.
In addition to winning the Best Picture Academy Award ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ received three best actor awards. From left to right Michelle Yeoh won for best actress, Key Huy Quan won for best supporting actor while Jamie Lee Curtis won for best supporting actress. (Credit: CBR)
It’s midway through the Wang’s audit that the Multiverse breaks in, as Waymond suddenly becomes an agent fighting the ultimate evil, the daughter Joy, in another Universe that only Evelyn can defeat. When Evelyn asks how she could possibly defeat anyone the other Waymond tells her that she is actually the least accomplished of all the Evelyns in the Multiverse and that allows her to assume the abilities of all the others. At this point don’t ask, just go with the flow as ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ becomes part Science Fiction, part Comedy and Part Action Movie.
Actress Michelle Yeoh has spent much of her career playing in such Kung Fu pictures as ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’. Her abilities as a martial artist were put to good use in ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’. (Credit: DGA)
Throughout ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ there are numerous references to other well known movies like ‘The Matrix’, ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and ‘The Terminator’. The big reference however is that in another Universe instead of marrying Waymond Evelyn became a star in Kung-Fu movies, which of course is exactly what actress Michelle Yeoh actually has been throughout her career.
Movies making references to other classic movies has become a thing nowadays. ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once ‘even reminds us of the origins of man section of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. (Credit: Peatix)
The action and dialogue in ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ is frantic and I think this is one movie I’m going to have to watch several times to really figure out everything that’s going on. To add to the confusion the Wang’s go back and forth between speaking English and Mandarin, sometimes in the same sentence. There are subtitles for the Mandarin but with all of the rapid fire dialogue you have to concentrate a bit to keep up. If at any time it all becomes a bit bewildering that’s O’k, this is the Multiverse and anyone who doesn’t find the Multiverse to be bewildering just isn’t paying attention.
The Multiverse will do that to a person. (Credit: Robotics and Automation Review)
In the end everything works out for the best, Evelyn reconciles with her husband, daughter and father, in fact the final scenes are a bit maudlin. Nevertheless ‘Everything, Everywhere all at Once’ is an intellectual roller coaster ride of ideas and action that is just a lot of fun to watch.
When the International Space Station (ISS) was first assembled in Earth orbit more than twenty years ago now the astronauts that made up its crew traveled there using either the American Space Shuttle of the Russian Soyuz manned spacecraft. After the Shuttle was retired there was a time when the only way to get to the ISS was aboard a Russian Soyuz. During that period NASA was busy working on its Commercial Crew Program where two private corporations, Space X and Boeing, would develop their own man capable spacecraft and NASA would pay them to take astronauts to and from the ISS.
The International Space Station (ISS) under construction with the space shuttle Endeavor docked on the left. (Credit: NASA)
One of these corporations, Space X has succeeded admirably. The first ever manned launch of a private space capsule took place on the 30th of May in 2020 and took two astronauts to the ISS for a three month stay; see my post of 3 June 2020. Since then Space X has carried out another six manned space missions. Five of those missions were a part of NASA’s commercial crew program but one was the first ever completely private space mission, see my post of 2 October 2021.
A night time launch is always spectacular! The launch of the Crew 6 mission on its way to the ISS. (Credit: Spectrum News 13)
Now Space X has launched its eighth manned mission, the sixth commercial crew mission to the ISS for a regular crew transfer. Liftoff took place on the 2nd of March with arrival at the ISS the next day. The astronauts aboard the Crew 6 mission are Stephen Bowen and Warren Hoburg of NASA along with Sultan Al Neyadi of Dubai and a Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaer.
Crew 6 Dragon capsule docking at the ISS. (Credit: Space Launch Now)
As with all of the ISS crew missions the four astronauts who took off aboard a Space X Dragon capsule are scheduled for a six month stay on the space station. Just a week after the crew 6 astronauts arrived at the ISS the crew five team, who have served aboard the ISS since October of 2022, returned to Earth aboard their Dragon capsule, splashing down in the waters off of Florida. The engineers at Space X have performed their tasks so well that another Space X mission to the ISS has now become rather routine.
Crew 5’s splashdown was also at night. (Credit: NASA)
Not so for Boeing and its Starliner man capable capsule. After years of delays the capsule finally launched on its first, unmanned test flight back on the 20th of December in 2019 only to have so many software problems that the capsule could not complete its mission to rendezvous with the ISS. After more than a year of corrections a second, successful unmanned test flight was conducted in May of 2022, see my post of 11 June 2022.
On its second unmanned test flight the Starliner capsule did succeed in reaching the ISS and docked with the station. (Credit: Mashable)
Now Boeing is preparing for the final, manned test flight of Starliner. Currently scheduled for mid to late April the final test flight will carry astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the ISS for a six day stay. Total mission length will be eight days. If successful NASA could finally have two completely different space launch systems for taking its astronauts to and from the ISS.
Scheduled for a launch in April, the Crew of the first manned launch of the Starliner capsule are (L-R) astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Eugene Wilmore. (Credit: Wikipedia)
Meanwhile the Russians have been having a series of problems with their venerated Soyuz space capsule. First flown back in 1967 the initial flight of the Soyuz capsule was a disaster as the cabin lost pressure during re-entry killing Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. After those early problems however the Soyuz spacecraft has become a reliable, if not exactly comfortable means for getting into Earth orbit.
Gas leaking out of the Soyuz capsule can be seen in the photograph. The current Russian crew at the ISS was supposed to use this craft to return to Earth. Obviously an alternate means of getting home is necessary. (Credit: Fox 9)
Until now, because the Soyuz capsule that took the current Russian crew to the ISS has sprung an air leak and is now incapable of returning those cosmonauts to Earth. Not only that but a recent Soyuz derived Progress cargo ship also developed a pressure leak soon after arriving at the ISS.
Based on their Soyuz manned capsule the Russians developed an unmanned cargo ship Progress to supply the ISS. The most recent Progress send to the ISS developed a leak similar to the one in the Soyuz capsule. Is there a connection? (Credit: Wikipedia)
This puts Russia in something of a quandary, how do they get their astronauts back down to Earth without a usable spacecraft, Russia’s space agency Roscosmos has decided that the leaking Soyuz module could be used in an emergency but would rather not use it at all if possible.
The Soyuz Rescue capsule arriving at the ISS. The current schedule is for this capsule to return the current Russian crew to Earth in September. Assuming this capsule doesn’t spring a leak! (Credit: NASA Spaceflight)
In the end what the Russians did was to launch another Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS to bring the cosmonauts home. That unmanned capsule was launched on the 23rd of February and reached the ISS on the 25th. The Russian crew, with their American colleague, are now scheduled to return to Earth in September.
However, should this third Soyuz type craft also experience problems the only viable backup plan would be for the Russians to pay Space X to send one of their Dragon capsules to the ISS as a rescue vessel. With all of the tension between Russia and the US happening now such a last resort would be a very costly embarrassment to the Russians, so I think Roscosmos will leave their cosmonauts stranded in space for a while if it becomes necessary.
Being stranded in Space is no fun as Mark Watney in ‘The Martian’ can tell you! (Credit: Outside Magazine)
One last little item before I leave. Back in the early days of the space age NASA carried out a very serious program to study the possibility of using nuclear rockets as a propulsion system for spacecraft. The program was called Project NERVA and did in fact develop several nuclear rocket engines that were successfully static tested on the ground. However, because of the danger posed by both the radioactive exhaust as well as the possibility of an explosion during launch spreading radioactive material over a wide area the program was canceled in 1972.
Basic design of a Nuclear Thermal Rocket. (Credit: NASA)
The idea behind a nuclear rocket engine is simple. Instead of using chemical combustion to heat the rocket’s exhaust the heat of a nuclear fission pile can be used to heat almost anything, even something as simple as water. Calculations, backed up by the tests carried out in project NERVA, have shown that such a nuclear rocket can provide 3 or more times as much ‘push’ as even the best chemical rockets. Which is why NASA was so interested in the concept.
Actual test of a Nuclear Thermal Rocket back in the early 1970s. (Credit: AutoEvolution)
Now NASA is teaming with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to revive the nuclear rocket engine. DARPA carries out research for the Department of Defense and as such is a natural partner for the development of a nuclear rocket. The initial schedule is for a test flight of a nuclear rocket is 2027.
Yea, I know, it’s the Pentagon but they have supported some really important technology over the years! (Credit: Internet of Business)
There will be some changes to NASA’s original idea for project NERVA however. For one thing we have a lot fewer explosions happening during the launch of a rocket so the danger of nuclear material being spread over half of Florida is much less. At the same time the nuclear rocket itself will not be used to lift a payload into orbit. Rather the nuclear rocket will only be used for deep space exploration outside of Earth orbit. That way no radioactive exhaust will be dumped into the atmosphere.
Proposed design for a Mars spacecraft. Two Nuclear Thermal Rockets are to the left while an Orion space capsule is docked with the crew habitat module to the right. (Credit: IEEE Spectrum)
The plan is of course to use a nuclear rocket to power the first manned missions to Mars, the space agency’s long desired goal. So hopefully, in about ten years or so, a spaceship assembled in orbit will ignite its nuclear rocket engine and begin a long journey to the red planet, mankind’s first trip to another planet.
I have in several previous posts mentioned the number of different species of wildlife that are now living in my neighborhood in northeast Philadelphia, one of the most highly urbanized areas of our planet. The intrusion of wild animals into cities and other highly populated areas is slowly becoming more and more of a newsworthy story as well as the subject of a number of episodes of nature and science programs.
Are you watching ‘Nature’ on PBS, it’s better than 99% of the crap on TV nowadays! (Credit: Dailymotion)
This trend is certainly going to continue and that is what makes the new book ‘The Accidental Ecosystem’ by Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara Peter S. Alagona so important. ‘The accidental Ecosystem’ is more than a description of urbanized areas as an ecosystem, more than a bestiary of those species that are adapting to life in our cities and suburbs. In fact Professor Alagona only describes a handful of illustrative species in detail.
Cover art for ‘The Accidental Ecosystem’ by Peter S. Alagona. (Credit: Big Bend Radio and TV Magazine)
What ‘The Accidental Ecosystem’ is about is the process of how our cities have become a home for wild species, what direction that process is likely to take in the near future, and how we humans can manage the situation to the benefit of all species. In other words ‘The Accidental Ecosystem’ is as much about urban planning as it is about ecology.
Meet the new neighbors! Most people still feel that wild animals don’t belong in cities and suburbs but with us taking over more and more of the planet all the time, where else do they have to go? (Credit: Forbes)Professor Peter S. Alagona in the kind of setting I’m certain he prefers! (Credit: University of California Press)
Professor Alagona begins with the beginning of cities themselves and makes the largely ignored point that animals have always lived in cities alongside human beings. I’m not just talking about dogs and cats, and rats either. For millennia horses, cattle, swine and sheep along with chickens, ducks and geese were kept in urban areas both for food and in some cases as a labour force.
Notice the pig and Oxen a bit to the left of middle. For most of human history animals lived in cities with us but they were domesticated animals that we brought in. What’s happening today is a different story entirely. (Credit: Scandinavian Archaeology)
It was really only with the beginning of the industrial age that the idea that cities were meant for people and our pets was really put into practice both for hygienic reasons while at the same time putting limited urban land to more valuable use. Only when horses and oxen were no longer needed for their muscle power, and the revolution in transportation allowed food animals to be kept outside urban areas until after they were slaughtered did the idea that cities were for people and our pets became practical. This concept of a city as something of a fortress against the natural world reached its pinnacle from about the 1930s through the 1960s.
Starting in the 1930s people began to dream of ‘The City of the Future’. There was no room for wild animals here, just humans and our pets! (Credit: Pinterest)
By the 1970s the situation had begun to change, the growth of the suburbs, with single homes on bigger lots, along with a recognition of the value of open, wooded spaces even in cities provided living space for a few animals at first. Add to that the resources that an urban area could provide, not only our food waste but also the gardens many people grow along with the seed we put out to literally ‘feed the birds’. The wildlife of the cities may have begun with rats, squirrels, pigeons and songbirds but before long they were joined by other adaptable species like raccoons and opossums. As more and more rural areas were developed for human habitation even large animals like deer and bears became citizens of places intended for people only.
We are willing to accept a few species of smaller animals like Squirrels living alongside us. (Credit: Battery Park City Authority)
‘The Accidental Ecosystem’ charts the development of our current situation while at the same time making suggestions as to how the problems of urban wildlife, and there have been many problems, can be addressed. As you might guess Professor Alagona dismisses the notion that the wild creatures living alongside humans could, or even should simply be exterminated. Such a war against nature he argues would be never ending. So long as cities provide space and resources that wild animals can exploit some will come into the cities to do just that. Also, with the growing environmental consciousness of many people such a policy would be politically controversial, to say the least.
But this is just going to far. Or is it just a omen of the future? (Credit: Alaska Fish and Game)
So ‘The Accidental Ecosystem’ spends a large part of its pages discussing those policies and programs that could help make the urban environment friendlier to both humans and its newer residents. Many of the policies discussed will themselves be contentious, as many people will balk at the idea of spending money to make the lives of ‘pests’ better. Nevertheless as Professor Alagona correctly points out, it is a growing problem that needs to be solved.
Thomas Holmes original plan for the city of Philadelphia. Maybe it’s time for us to start taking the needs of other species into account when we decide to change world to suit us! (Credit: Philadelphia Parks and Recreation)
I for one however hope that we do find ways to live with our wild neighbors. Often on summer nights you’ll find me outside of my house watching some of the skunks, raccoons, opossums, groundhogs, bats, and now even a fox, that live in my neighborhood. That’s why I recommend ‘The Accidental Ecosystem’ by Peter S. Alagona, for my sake as well as theirs.
For as long as people have looked up at the sky and wondered, we’ve thought about whether there is anybody living up there? A thousand years ago or more we thought that the gods lived in the heavens but today we look, and listen with our radio telescopes to see if we can find any sign of alien intelligences out there.
Is anybody there? With hundreds of billions of stars, anyone of which could have an Earth type planet, how can there not be other intelligences in the Milky Way? So where are they? (Credit: Unsplash)
After all there are simply so many stars in just our own galaxy the Milk Way, the latest estimate by astronomers is about 200 Billion! So even if only a very, very, VERY few stars have planets with civilizations on them there should be at least a hand full of other intelligent, technological species out there.
In the movies Alien Intelligences are always coming to Earth. Not so in reality. (Credit: Walmart)
In 1961 the astronomer Frank Drake even thought up an equation to ‘estimate’ the number of civilizations ‘N’ there should be in the Milky Way. The equation starts with the number of stars in the galaxy, 200 billion and then multiplies that by a number of different factors:
Astronomer Frank Drake and his equation. (Credit: Wikipedia)
P=The fraction of stars that have planets. Recent observations by the Kepler space telescope and other planet finding searches put this at least at 10% and perhaps as high as 50%.
During its life the Kepler Space Telescope showed us that there are at least thousands, more likely millions or billions of planets orbiting stars in the Milky Way. (Credit: NASA)
G=The fraction of planets that are in the so-called ‘Goldilocks Zone’ where liquid water can exist. Here on Earth wherever there is liquid water there is life so biologists think that liquid water is essential to life. At present we have very little data about the value of G but based on our own solar system it’s around 20%.
The ‘Goldilocks Zone’ is where a planet is just the right distance from its star for liquid water to exist. Not to close and hot, not too far and cold, just right! (Credit: NASA)
L=The fraction of planets with liquid water where some form of primitive life does arise. Biologists have no idea what the value of this could be; some say it is probably as small as a few percent while others argue it could be as large as 90%.
At what point does complex chemistry become life? We’re still trying to figure that one out. So how hard is it for simple life to form on other planets? (Credit: CK-12 Foundation)
I=The fraction of planets with some form of life where an intelligent, technically advanced species eventually evolves. The value of this fraction, your guess is as good as anybody’s.
What would a city built by alien intelligence look like? (Credit: Newsweek)
So the Drake equation looks like this:
N=200Billion * P * G * L * I
And again, even if F, G, P, and I are all quite small when multiplied by 200 billion there should still be a dozen or so intelligent species in the Milky Way. Which again begs the question, why haven’t we found any yet?
Oh, my mistake, I forgot one last factor. You see when Drake thought up his equation he also considered the average lifetime of an intelligent, technological species, the factor ‘T’. After all, even if we don’t like to think about it species do go extinct. The trilobites all went extinct, the dinosaurs went extinct, so did the wholly mammoths. If an intelligent species lived on another planet 100 million years ago but has since gone extinct then we certainly wouldn’t be receiving radio signals from them today!
In the movie ‘Forbidden Planet’ the alien Krell destroyed themselves a million years ago, but their machines still existed. (Credit: YouTube)
Recently a diverse group of thinkers, including space engineers, political scientists and just some smart people have taken a good look at that last factor and wondered, what if T is really small? What if being an intelligent, technological species is actually a short road to extinction? Remember out of the 4.5 billion years that Earth has existed our civilization has only been here for 10,000 years, a mere flicker of time. We have no real evidence that intelligent species survive any longer than non-intelligent ones do. Maybe they actually don’t survive very long at all.
Every species has its own particular niche, its own way of making a living in its environment. We have yet to see if Intelligence is actually a good long term niche or not! (Credit: Eco-Intelligence)
Evolutionary biologists talk about ‘survival strategies’, having a bony, internal skeleton would be one example. That certainly is a good survival strategy, there are thousands of vertebrate species on Earth and they’ve been around for at least 450 million years. What about flying as a survival strategy, again there are tens of thousands of flying insects, birds, bats and there used to be flying reptiles as well.
So is intelligence a good survival strategy? You would think so at first sight. After all we now dominate this planet as no other single species ever has. We are so dominate that we’re even killing off thousands of other species, destroying whole ecosystems while we covert the planet to suit our pleasures of today and pay no attention to what the world is going to be like tomorrow.
Just a few of the thousands of species we humans have driven to extinction. And will we be the cause of our own extinction? (Credit: Encyclopedia Britannica)
By now I guess you see where I’m going with this. Do intelligent species actually destroy themselves by developing technologies they haven’t got the wisdom to properly use? The researchers, led by Jet Propulsion Labouratory engineer Jonathan H. Jiang, have christened this idea ‘The Great Filter’ that filters out, eliminates those species that allow their own technology to destroy them.
Notice for a seminar by Jonathan Jiang at JPL. Sounds like fun to me! (Credit: YouTube)
This idea isn’t completely new; back in the 1960s a lot of people were afraid that a nuclear war would destroy humanity. In the original Star Trek series Captain Kirk several times described the threat of nuclear war in the 20th century as “Our weapons outgrew our wisdom”. That line would be an early version of the Great Filter concept.
Will this be humanity’s final, most enduring symbol? (Credit: Fair Observer)
And the researchers do include a nuclear war as one of the possible ways that an intelligent species could destroy itself. The paper, which has been published on Cornell University’s Arxiv pre-print site, see link below, https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2210/2210.10582.pdf, goes further however, including other man-made threats to ourselves like climate change and pollutants such as plastics and cancer causing forever chemicals.
Or will we simply poison ourselves. (Credit: Greenpeace)
Now the researchers also included one possible extinction cause that I’m going to have to argue against. In science fiction the idea of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) that supplants humanity is familiar from such movie series as The Terminator and The Matrix, and with the continuing development of cybernetics it is a definite possibility. However any such scenario would only represent one intelligence being replaced by another, perhaps better adapted intelligence. Such an event, whether here on Earth or on another planet would not cause the extinction of intelligence on that planet. Therefore I don’t think that AI should be included in the Great Filter.
If artificial intelligence does supplant us does that actually count as the extinction of intelligence? (Credit: Quora)
With that one exception I find the paper’s analysis to be depressingly logical. The threats we are causing by our own selfishness and stupidity are real and growing. That’s why the Doomsday Clock maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has recently been reset to a mere 100 seconds before midnight. There simply isn’t much time left for us to acquire the good judgment we need to solve all the problems we have created for ourselves. The wisdom we need to safely pass through the Great Filter.
So the big question is, does humanity have the wisdom it needs to survive? (Credit: Quora)
That dilemma could, indeed probably is true for all intelligent species anywhere in the cosmos. As we sit warm and comfortable here on Earth it’s easy to ignore the fact that the Universe is actually a very hostile place for life. And maybe it is even more hostile to intelligence.
