I don’t know about you but I’m getting pretty tired of SF novels that are really just action / adventure / war stories set in outer space. It seems to me that outer space is just too big and life in it too rare for alien civilizations to just start fighting the instant they encounter each other. That’s exactly what ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars ‘ is however, one long, very long novel of battle after battle with little rhyme or reason to it.
With all of the mystery and wonder there is waiting for us in outer space why does it seem like so many SF stories are just a lot of fighting? (Credit: CBR)
It starts out interestingly enough; Kira Navarez is an exo-biologist, a member of a team of explorers who are surveying the planet Adrasteia in a distant solar system in order to ascertain whether it would make a suitable colony for human beings. Kira is on a routine mission when she stops to investigate a strange outcropping of rock and before she realizes that it is an alien structure she is infected with an alien xenomorph, a thing that is part living and part machine.
Front cover of ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars’ by Christopher Paolini. (Credit: Amazon)
As her team members try to remove the xeno from her several are killed by it, including her fiancé Alan. If this part of the story kinda reminds you of the beginning of the movie ‘Alien’ get used to it. A lot of ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars’ will remind you of a lot of other stories.
The term Xenomorph literally means ‘alien shape’ and two of the best known are the ones from the movies ‘Alien’ (l) and Predator (r). The aliens in ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars’ have a lot in common with these two. (Credit: YouTube)
A military starship from Earth manages to seize Kira and put her in isolation where they begin to experiment on the xeno, and Kira. Suddenly an alien spaceship appears and the two starships immediately begin fighting. During the battle Kira manages to escape and in a space pod heads back to the nearest human colony where she expects that she will again be seized by the military.
Author of ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars’ is writer Christopher Paolini. (Credit: Twitter)
Instead she winds up on a broken-down half-space worthy ship called the Wallfish whose crew are a ragtag bunch of misfits. You know the type, rejects from polite society but who nevertheless have a heart of gold. It doesn’t take long to figure out that the Wallfish is just a bigger version of the Millennium Falcon crewed by a dozen different versions of Han Solo.
A rogue with a heart of gold. How many such characters have seen in movies or read about in a book and how many have you actually met in real life? (Credit: StarWars.com)
Meanwhile the aliens are now attacking humanity everywhere while Kira is forced to learn how to live with the xeno, which is a sort of skin enveloping her. As she begins to learn how to control it, a process that takes an awful lot of pages, you start to think of the thing as a kind of Iron Man suit and as the story goes on Kira gains more control over it becoming more and more powerful in the process.
In the first Iron Man film Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey jr, spends 10-15 minutes learning how to use his suit. In ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars’ the character Kira spends almost half the novel learning how to control her xenomorph. (Credit: The Wrap)
One thing Kira discovers is that the suit, whose name is the Soft Blade, allows her to understand the language of the aliens and she begins to put together a plan to somehow use the xeno’s power to stop the war. The aliens by the way are a sort of cross between squids and arthropods that the humans begin calling Jellies. Incidentally the Jellies did not make the Soft Blade but they want it for its power.
The first Aliens in ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars’ are described as kind of a mixture of squids and crustaceans. Sounds icky, well its supposed to. (Credit: Vector Stock)
Before Kira can even finish formulating her plan stop the war however another alien species appears and immediately begins to attack everybody, Humans and Jellies. These newcomers are vile, ugly, half made creatures that humans call Nightmares and the Jellies call the Corrupted. I quickly began to imagine them as the army of the Dead in Game of Thrones. Again the author just seems to throw in ideas from all over the place.
Although the second set of aliens are supposed to be made up of corrupted versions of many life forms their description reminded me of the army of the dead in Game of Thrones. (Credit: Game of Thrones Wiki)
The novel goes on and on like this for more than 800 pages, battle scene after battle scene, with Kira learning how to control the Soft Blade a little better between each fight. Another annoying thing about the book is that, during every fight there’s a point where Kira thinks that the situation is hopeless, there’s simply no way out until suddenly the cavalry arrives in the nick of time, or she somehow discovers a new power that the Soft Blade has. It all gets a bit redundant after a while.
In ancient Greek Theater they would often use a hoist to just drop in a god like character who would solve everything. This is Deus ex Machina or God from a Machine. In modern drama the cavalry arriving in the nick of time or someone just coming up with a great idea out of nowhere serves the same purpose. (Credit: Quora)
And to top it all off, after fighting her way across half the galaxy the author decides to get kinda mystic at the climax as Kira uses the Soft Blade’s true powers to sort of just heal everyone. Really, the ending left me feeling like, you couldn’t have done that about 700 pages ago?
After 700 pages of blood and gore Christopher Paolini suddenly decided to get metaphysical, really???? (Credit: Audible)
Still, if you are the sort who enjoys a good laser battle with starships firing anti-matter bombs at each other rather than a thought-provoking story you may enjoy ‘To Sleep in a Sea of Stars’. Be warned however, it is a long story with a lot of redundancy.
Solar energy derived from photovoltaic cells is of course one of the technologies that environmentalists hope will replace fossil fuels as a primary source of power for human society. In order to do that solar cells need to be as efficient as possible in converting the light of the Sun into useful electricity. That’s why for decades now scientists and engineers have worked and struggled to increase the efficiency of photovoltaic materials.
With all of the ways we’ve developed to generate clean, green energy why are we still getting 90% of our energy from fossil fuels, ‘Cause it’s cheaper that why! (Credit: Greenesa)
But visible light is not the only kind of electromagnetic (EM) energy; there are others such as radio waves, X-rays and Ultraviolet radiation. One kind of EM energy that could also be gathered as a power source is infrared (IR) radiation, also just known as heat radiation. There are many sources of heat both natural; such as geothermal, and industrial, like furnaces, that could be harnessed for their energy if there were a more efficient technology available.
Infrared light is just the heat that many things in the world generate. That light is energy, energy that we could use if we develop the technology to capture it. (Credit: Herschel Space Observatory)
Now there is, for the engineers at the National Renewable Energy Labouratory (NREL) have recently tested a thermophotovoltaic cell that demonstrates a 40% efficiency at converting IR energy into electrical power. That figure is fully 8% better than the previous record of 32% and is actually better than the efficiency of conventional boilers and steam turbines that are currently the most common technology for producing electricity in fossil fuel and nuclear power plants.
IR imaging inside a power plant. That light you see is energy going to waste. Capturing that energy will by itself make power plants more efficient and help cut down on polluting emissions. (Credit: Dornier Group)
The new type of photocells are manufactured in much the same way that the better known visible photovoltaic cells are except that they possess two light absorbing layers and the entire cell is backed by a reflective layer of gold while sitting on a heat sink to prevent overheating, which decreases efficiency. The version tested is optimized to absorb heat radiation from sources at a temperature of 2,400ºC but that can be adjusted by altering the thickness of the various semi-conductor layers. Thermophotovoltaic devices also have the advantage of not having any moving parts, which both makes them longer lasting while reducing maintenance costs.
Thermophotovoltaic cell developed at MIT and NREL. With no moving parts such a cell could provide years to energy generation. (Credit: Engadget)
The team at NREL hopes that adjustments to the reflective gold layer can increase efficiency further, to perhaps as high as 50%. Nevertheless the development of thermophotovoltaic cells is one more step in our efforts to make better, more efficient use of the energy we already have, one more way of reducing the amounts of CO2 emitting fossils fuels we burn.
Construction of the thermophotovoltaic cell. The back mirror is one of the key elements to the device’s efficiency. (Credit: EnergyPost.eu)
Of course the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere is not the only massive source of pollution we humans are currently generating, there’s all of that non-degradable plastic as well. Now in many ways plastics are a miracle of modern science and have improved our lives so much, we mustn’t forget that. They are cheap, can be made in an almost infinite variety of forms, are long lasting and at least initially biologically sterile.
Plastics are wonderful, we use them is thousands of ways. And then, when we’re done with them we just throw’en away. Where’s the harm in that???? (Credit: Plasticseurope.org)
The problem with plastics is that they don’t go away; technically they don’t decay chemically, not for hundreds or thousands of years. And since we use so much of them, and we’re only recycling a small fraction of what we use, they are really starting to pile up everywhere. Also, although they don’t decay chemically they will break down mechanically into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic, pieces that are getting into the biosphere, into the very flesh of plants, fish, birds, mammals and even us!
How harmful are microplastics? Well they killed this poor little fella, and how much longer before they start killing us? (Credit: Science Learning Hub)
Because of this scientists have for the last several decades been searching for better ways to recycle or break down plastic into its chemical components so that they can be reused or absorbed back into the environment. Those chemicals that can break down plastics are a special class of enzymes known as polyester-cleaving hydrolases and in 2012 an enzyme called LCC was discovered in Japan that showed some promise as a ‘plastic eater’.
The basis of all plastics is a polymer, basically just a long chain of identical molecules. Such polymers can be very stable, lasting for years if not centuries before breaking down. (Credit: Cosmos Magazine)
Now chemists at Leipzig University have found a new enzyme that has been found in tests to breakdown a common form of plastic twice as fast as LCC. The researchers, led by Dr. Christian Sonnendecker actually discovered the new enzyme, which they have named PHL7, while investigating the chemical reactions taking place in compost heap in Leipzig itself.
Dr. Christian Sonnendecker in his lab in Leipzig. (Credit: Phys.org)
In addition to breaking down plastics faster than LCC, the chemicals that remain after PHL7 has done its work are the exact same chemicals, terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol, from which the plastic was made in the first place, which means the chemicals can then be used to make brand new plastic, a completely closed cycle, the ultimate goal in recycling.
For billions of years life on Earth recycled everything, nothing went to waste and the only input to the cycle was energy from the Sun. We need to learn how to do the same. (Credit: Recycle Montana)
And speaking of plastics we can all do our part in trying to reduce the amount of plastics we use once and then thrown away, plastic drinking straws being one of the most obvious examples. Here in the US something like 200 million plastic straws are used every day, used once and then just tossed away. Each individual straw may seem like a very small thing, a harmless thing but 200 million a day adds up and the results are easy to see anywhere trash accumulates.
Straws may seem small and unimportant but they add up! (Credit: Vonastraws)
Also the type of plastic used for most straws is of a kind that isn’t easy to recycle, and again like all plastics it doesn’t decay in the environment. One way to solve the problem all those straws is to make them out of a material that is biodegradable, a substance that bacteria and other living things can break down and use for food, straws that can be composted and become fertilizer.
If only the plastic items we use everyday could become this after we’re done with them. (Credit: Better Homes and Gardens)
Now a new company called Loliware has done just that using seaweed as their basic material. The company, based in California’s Silicon Valley, has developed a process that takes dried seaweed and mills it down. Then, after combining it with minerals and colouring, the mixture is formed into seaweed pellets that can be used in the same machines that are used to produce ordinary plastic utensils. The look and texture of the seaweed utensils are very similar to their plastic counterparts and because much of the same equipment is used in their manufacture the cost is only slightly higher.
Straws made from seaweed! Once used they can even become fertilizer for your lawn! (Credit: Ecowatch)
So with all of the new, environmentally friendly technology being developed by so many creative scientists and engineers why does it seem as if we’re continually loosing ground in the fight to clean up our planet. Vested interests and simple inertia are the main causes. The oil industry is simply making so much money off of disposable, single use plastics that they can keep prices low, making it hard for biodegradable alternatives to gain a competitive advantage.
And with the Supreme Court now limiting the ability of the EPA to regulate the emissions of power plants it’s going to even more difficult to stop polluters from poisoning our planet. (Credit: Cleveland.com)
Inertia is even more of a problem. We’ve been doing the same things for so long and we just don’t see any reason to change, particularly change to a more expensive substitute. We humans can become so used to the things going on around us that even the massive buildup of CO2 and plastic trash throughout the world we feel is just a part of life, nothing for us to worry about. But the damage we are doing to the only planet we have is real and it’s getting worse all the time. We need for all of us to recognize the danger and if not do something to help then at least get out of the way!
It was on the 24th of June in 1947 that Idaho businessman and private pilot Kenneth Arnold was flying near Mount Rainier in Washington State when he observed nine objects flying in tandem above the hills and mountains. Reporting his sighting Arnold would describe the objects as being shaped like a pie plate cut in half with a convex front and a concave rear. He also described the motion of the objects as they flew along as ‘like a saucer skipping across water’.
Kenneth Arnold, the man who did not intentionally coin the term ‘Flying Saucer’ holding a picture of the aircraft he saw. (Credit: Seattle Times)
So was born the ‘Flying Saucer’ craze that even today has not let up; tens of thousands of similar sightings have been reported in the years since 1947 and probably many more have gone unreported. Because very few reported sightings actually looked like saucers, most are simple lights in the sky that ‘behave strangely’, a technical term was soon created where the things would become known as ‘Unidentified Flying Objects’ or UFOs.
What everyone knows a flying saucer should look like. Of course this one was ‘Made in Hollywood’. (Credit: RetroZap)
In many ways Arnold’s original sighting was typical of a ‘good’ UFO report. Arnold was a well regarded, reliable citizen, a skilled pilot with 9,000 hours of flying time. The report he gave contained many details of the objects, their number and shape, where they were seen in the sky, their direction and approximate ‘angular velocity’. (That’s important in UFO sightings because if you don’t know how far away an object is you really cannot say how big it is or how fast it’s moving, you can really only estimate its angular size and angular velocity.) Sightings with that kind of detail are usually either solved or if they remain unsolved they constitute strong evidence that something very unusual happened.
Arnold’s report. Competent observers giving details accounts of their sightings are still, after 75 years the best evidence that something really is out there but exactly what, no one knows. (Credit: New York Times)
In the early days of the UFO phenomenon there was considerable debate as to exactly what UFOs were. Right from the start alien spacecraft held the lead but secret Russian aircraft and even secret American aircraft were strong contenders. In time of course the Russians and Americans fell out of favour and today anyone who sees a UFO immediately knows it’s aliens come to Earth. Which if you think about it means that they shouldn’t really be called Unidentified should they?
Yes, the US Air Force did actually experiment with flying saucers but the program was dropped because, wait for it, they don’t fly very well! (Credit: Edwards Air Force Base)
Of course Hollywood has had a great deal to do with aliens going from being the favoured to the exclusive passengers on UFOs. After all how many movies have you seen where a Flying Saucer lands and out steps a Bug Eyed Monster or BEM, as opposed to many have you seen where a Russian or American steps out? And anytime a big Hollywood movie about Flying Saucers such as Steven Spielberg’s ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ or ‘ET, the Extraterrestrial’ are released the number of UFO sightings reported triples or quadruples for the next few years.
The Mother Ship from ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’. After ever big blockbuster UFO movie or TV show the numbers of sightings doubles or triples. So the question is, are UFOs out there or in our minds,or maybe both? (Credit: YouTube)
There have been many attempts to try to solve the mystery of UFOs. Undoubtedly the best known of which is the US Air Force’s Project Blue Book of the 1950s and 60s. In fact the term UFO was coined by one of the leaders of Project Blue Book Captain Edward J Ruppelt. It is important to remember that Project Blue Book was never tasked with finding out what Flying saucers were. Its job, as outlined in their budget request to Congress, was to determine whether or not UFOs constituted any threat to the United States. Blue Book was closed down in 1969 but since the United States is still here, there has been no alien invasion you have to agree that UFOs weren’t that much of a threat.
The man who did coin the Term ‘Unidentified Flying Object’ or UFO was Air Force Captain Edward J Ruppelt seen here with my well word copy of this book. (Credit: UAPSG / R. A. Lawler)
There have also been several scientists who have attempted to study UFOs; perhaps the best known of these was the astronomer Josef Allen Hynek who acted as a scientific advisor to the Air Force from 1947 to 1969. It was Hynek in fact who developed the ‘Close Encounter’ system of classifying UFO reports. During his time with Project Blue Book and for many years afterward Hynek came to believe that UFOs were an important subject that needed much more attention and resources than the Air Force was willing to commit to. After leaving Blue Book Hynek would found the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS).
Working closely with Project Blue Book was the University of Chicago astronomer Josef Allen Hynek who created the ‘Close Encounter’ classification system for UFO sightings and formed the Center for UFO Suudies. (Credit: University of Chicago)
One problem with trying to study Flying saucers is the tremendous number of bad UFO sightings, you know the type, ‘I saw somethin’ in the sky… must a been one of them Flying Saucers’. Even worse are the outright frauds and hoaxes that really make any empirical study of the subject all but impossible. Think about it, a prominent, important scientist, a Nobel Laureate let’s say, decides to investigate a famous video of a Flying Saucer. He decides that the evidence is so strong that, ‘There can be no doubt that this is a unknown phenomenon’! Only to have the video’s maker go on TV and declare it to be a fake while laughing at how he fooled a Nobel winner!
Some UFO hoaxes are easy to spot. Notice how the buildings are a bit out of focus while the saucer is really sharp???? That indicates that the saucer is actually much closer and rather small, in other the picture is a fake. Many such frauds have been created making real scientists unwilling to stake their reputation on evidence that could just be a lie! (Credit: CNET)
When scientists make measurements they do everything they can to make that data as accurate as possible, and they assume that other scientists do the same. Any scientist who is proven to have knowingly or even incompetently published inaccurate data quickly looses all of their reputation and no one will ever trust them again.
A UFO or just a hub cap thrown in the air? Strange things in the sky are so easy to fake you can’t be sure of anything when it comes to UFOs. (Credit: The Conversation)
If a scientist wants to study UFOs however they will have to trust the information provided by normal citizens, a small number of whom are only interested in publicity or sometimes even just making people smarter than them look stupid. Because of the possibility that the data coming from witnesses could be unreliable or worse, outright lies even scientists who think that there could be something interesting in UFOs won’t touch the subject and avoid making any statements regarding ‘flying saucers’.
The USA accounts for about 80% of the UFO sightings worldwide even though we have only 5% of the world’s population. So do ETs just prefer the US or are we the only country that refuses to accept the idea that something you don’t immediately recognize doesn’t have to be aliens! (Credit: The Washington Post)
Over the last seventy-five years there have been a large number of UFOs incidents that have become highly publicized. During the 1950s Flying Saucer reports even made headline news. Incidents such as the Lubbock lights in August of 1951 and the numerous radar contacts of UFOs over Washington DC during a two week period in July of 1952 forced the US Air Force to open an investigation into whether or not the phenomenon represented a threat to the security of the nation.
The Lubbock Lights were seen by hundreds of people in the city of Lubbock Texas in 1951. Turned out that they were a flight of B52 bombers practicing refueling at night. (Credit: TV Fanatic)
It was also during the 1950s that the first photo and first movie of a UFO were made. A farmer outside of McMinnville, Oregon took the first photo in May of 1950. Just three months later in August it was the manager of the Great Falls, Montana minor league baseball team however who made the first colour movie of two UFOs flying above the town. That film has been subjected to many years of analysis and even today represents some of the best evidence for there actually being something unknown flying in our skies.
Thirty seconds of film of two lights streaking across the sky of Great Falls Montana in 1950 is still some of the best evidence for UFOs. This film has been extensively studied and corroborated by other witnesses. But it’s still just two lights! (Credit: SportsLogos.Net.news
Of course the most famous UFO sighting of them all is the Roswell, New Mexico case, which grabbed headlines across the country just two weeks after Kenneth Arnold’s report. On July the 8th of 1947 the press officer at the US Army Air Core base outside Roswell, the Air Force did not yet exist as a separate branch of the military, announced that a Flying Saucer had crashed and the wreckage was in the Air Core’s possession. Just three hours later that initial report was changed to it being a weather balloon that had crashed.
The Headline that started the myth. Hours later the Army Air Corp would claim it was just a weather balloon but today even they admit there was more to it than that. What was it and will everyone ever accept the truth, who knows? (Credit: Smithsonian Magazine)
I’m not going to go into any detail about Roswell, too many lies have been told by both sides of the UFO debate for any truthful accounting of the facts to be presented now. I will just say that for the US government to have had a Flying Saucer in its possession for seventy-five years without some concrete evidence getting out is hard to believe.
Again many fakers have produced ‘evidence’ of the Roswell UFO. (Credit: KMPH)
Another aspect of UFO reports are the large number of people who have claimed to have been abducted and taken aboard the spaceships. One of the first such incidents was reported by Antonio Vilas Boas of Brazil in October of 1957. Probably the most famous UFO abduction however was that of Betty and Barney Hill who in September of 1961 were driving in New Hampshire when they were stopped by a huge floating disk and taken aboard by alien creatures where they were medically examined. It is worth noting that the Hills only remembered their encounter after suffering nightmares and seeing a psychologist who used hypnosis to ‘regain’ their memories making those memories suspect at the very least.
Betty and Barney Hill with a copy of their book “An Interrupted Journey”. It must be remembered that the Hills only remembered their UFO encounter when under hypnosis. (Credit: www.history.com)
Some UFOs sightings have been so spectacular that hundreds or even thousands of people have witnessed them at the same time. Such incidents include a Football match in Florence Italy in October of 1954 when a crowd of over 10,000 fell silent as a glowing light, traveling at high speed, came to a sudden stop directly over the stadium. Another mass UFO sighting took place in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania on the night December 9th of 1965 as a fireball passed over the town dropping debris and causing sonic booms. The likely impact area of the fireball was quickly cordoned off by the military and only years later did the government reveal that the UFO had actually been an early spy satellite returning from orbit.
The UFO that crashed in Kecksburg Pennsylvania was actually from outer space. It was an early version of a spy satellite. (Credit: Wired)
The interest and publicity generated by the early Flying Saucer reports soon inspired a few UFO researchers to begin to comb through the historical record. What those researchers discovered were accounts of strange sightings and even encounters going back centuries that were nearly identical to more modern UFO reports. Such incidents go back as far as the Old Testament in the bible where ‘Ezekiel saw a wheel’. The author Erich von Danikan even proposed in his book ‘The Chariots of the Gods’ that the deities and demons of ancient myth and legend were in fact extraterrestrial visitors who came to Earth in Flying Saucers and made contact with ancient humans.
Erich von Daniken made a lot of money from his investigations into ancient UFOs but whether or not he found any actual evidence of aliens here on Earth is debatable. (Credit: Best Buy)
The UFO phenomenon has continued until the present day. The release of TV shows or movies about aliens like ‘The X-Files’ or ‘Independence Day’ can cause an uptick in UFO sightings but they never really go away entirely, people just see strange things all the time. The publication last year of videos taken by US Navy aviators flying off of the aircraft carriers Nimitz and Theodore Roosevelt showing ‘unexplained aerial phenomenon’ has spurred new interest in flying saucers. However those same videos also highlighted the problems with the whole study of UFOs because they really provide no better evidence of just what the unknown objects are than did the Great Falls, Montana colour movie made back in 1950. That’s the plain fact, we really have no better evidence of what UFOs are than we did in the 1950s. All we really have is a large number of reliable, often trained observers who see something, and occasionally take pictures of something flying in the sky that they don’t recognize. Scientifically we’ve been stuck at the same place for seventy years.
The latest UFO flap is over a couple of short films taken by Navy Pilots of ‘something’. Really these videos are no better than the Montana film taken 72 years ago. (Credit: Wall Street Journal)
Still the recent, much publicized Navy videos have even prompted congress to take action. On the 17th of May the House Intelligence Committee began a series of hearings into UFOs in general and the UFO reports from military personnel in particular. Some of the hearings are scheduled to be held in public but others are going to be closed door for reasons of national security. Of course the true ‘UFO believers’ are going to claim that the real evidence is in the closed door hearings and the public sessions will be nothing but a cover-up. Still, you know that once congress gets involved they’ll have the whole matter sorted out in no time…yea right!
The one thing they are good at! (Credit: Radical Compliance)
Personally I’m confident that there is something out there, some unknown phenomenon. But I’m also confident that it is a natural, not extraterrestrial phenomenon. And I also think that this phenomenon should be studied scientifically, which is why I’m glad that Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb is setting up a project to gather new data about UFOs. I wish Dr. Loeb the best of luck but to be honest I don’t expect the question of UFOs to be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction during my lifetime, if indeed ever.
Anyone who is even a casual reader of this blog knows quite well that I am a big fan of dinosaurs. Fossil collecting is one of my favourite pastimes and I’m always on the lookout for any news about extinct species in general and dinosaurs in particular. And that’s not just in order to have something to write about in these posts, I really am very interested in paleontology and especially dinosaurs.
Poster for ‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ showing the Jurassic World Team, top, and the Jurassic Park Team, bottom. I’l bet even money this won’t be the conclusion of the Jurassic Ear!
So as you might guess any movie that stars dinosaurs is a must see for me. I happily admit that, as a kid I dragged my dad to see many a really bad movie simply because it had a dinosaur in it. If you’d like an example of this go to the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) and check out a film called “Dinosaurus’ from 1960.
Not Suitable for Children? I was six when I saw it and trust me there weren’t that many thrills, just two claymation dinosaurs. (Credit: IMDb)The big climax was when the claymation T rex fought a steam shovel. Sounds more exciting than it was! (Credit: Michael’s Movieplace)
Of course the difference now is that dinosaur movies back then were low budget “B” movies with actors no one ever heard of while today dinosaur movies are big budget blockbusters with a cast of “A” list stars. The new movie “Jurassic World: Dominion” is the latest example of this trend being the sixth in the “Jurassic Park” series and I for one am quite certain it won’t be the last.
The one that started it all, Poster for 1993’s ‘Jurassic Park’. (Credit: Prescott Park Arts Festival)
The big draw in “Jurassic World: Dominion” is that it takes a look backward to the first movie by uniting the main characters from the first three “Jurassic Park” movies with the main characters from the latter three “Jurassic World” movies. That list includes actor Sam Neil as Dr. Alan Grant, Laura Dern as Dr. Ellie Sattler and Jeff Goldbloom as Dr. Ian Malcolm. All three are reprising their roles from 29 years ago while Chris Platt continues his role of Owen Grady along with Bryce Dallas Howard as Claire Dearing and Isabella Sermon as Maisie Lockwood.
Along with human actors ‘Jurassic World: Dominion also stars Dinosaurs, maybe too many dinosaurs! (Credit: Variety)
And really that’s the start of the problems with “Jurassic World: Dominion” because the plot is really just intended to bring these two groups together while at the same time having them be threatened by a very long list of dinosaur species. In other words having a plot that simply made any kind of sense was not a primary concern of the scriptwriters. What plot there is concerns an evil CEO of a biotech corporation trying to use dino genetics to control the world’s food supply. Really, calling the villains in “Jurassic World: Dominion” cartoonish is an insult to cartoons. Wile E. Coyote from the old Roadrunner cartoons was a more fleshed out character than any of the bad guys in this movie.
When the characters in a movie become cartoonish the entire film becomes nothing more than a special effects extravaganza where you really don’t care what happens to anybody. (Credit: Vox)
And all of the contrivances that are employed to bring our heroes together strain credulity rather severely. Really, at one point the main characters are spread out in a large nature reserve in Italy where the biotech firm has its labouratories and yet they all somehow manage to just run into each other, ‘oh hi’!! The coincidences in “Jurassic World: Dominion” are just a bit too much.
Security at BioSyn, the evil corporation, can’t be very good if seven non-authorized personnel can go running all over the place. (Credit: Variety)
But of course the real reason to go to a Jurassic Park movie isn’t the plot or even the actors, it’s the dinosaurs and unfortunately even here “Jurassic World: Dominion” falls short. There are just too many different species, it’s as if the producers went through ‘A Field Guide to Dinosaurs’ and said, “we want one of those, one of those, and of course one of those.”
This really is pretty much the script to Jurassic World: Dominion. (Credit: Wikipedia)
In the original “Jurassic Park” movie the main characters were really only threatened by two species, a T rex and three velociraptors. That gave the dinosaurs a chance to actually develop as characters themselves. Not so in “Jurassic World: Dominion”, there are simply so many large, predatory dinosaurs trying to gobble up our heroes that you lose track of how many there are and again the whole thing comes off as cartoonish.
At the end of ‘Jurassic World: Dominion” a T Rex stands triumphant, which is as it should be! (Credit: Cinema Blend)
Still, there are dinosaurs and, just like when I was a kid, I still enjoy seeing dinosaurs, even if they are just CGI. “Jurassic World: Dominion” is supposed to be the last in the “Jurassic Park” series but let’s be honest, if it makes enough money there will be another one, even if they have to re-boot the entire series from scratch.
How many times has Batman been rebooted now? Do you really think they can’t do the same with Jurassic Park? (Credit: www.thebatman.com)
I have written about research into the origins of life on this planet several times now, see posts of 9 March 2019 and 25 September 2021. One of the leading theories of how life began is called the ‘RNA World’ hypothesis, which asserts that before DNA and proteins became the major components of living creatures it was strands of RNA that both carried genetic information and served as catalysts for the chemical reactions needed for life. The big problem with the RNA World concept was that, although RNA can serve as catalysts they are considerable less efficient than the protein enzymes used by all modern living things.
Messenger RNA or mRNA is a hot topic right now, many biologists hope that mRNA may lead to treatments for many different diseases as well as increasing our understanding of how living creatures work in general. (Credit: The Conversation)
Now a new study, published in the journal Nature from biochemists at the Department of Chemistry at Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany, claims to have solved that problem. The team began by looking at the way the proteins are manufactured in cells today. First a strand of DNA is copied as messenger RNA, mRNA. Then the mRNA moves to a structure within the cell known as a ribosome. As the mRNA moves through the ribosome it grabs amino acids from the surrounding tissue and, based on the information in the mRNA, builds a protein. The structure of the ribosome is therefore key in determining how the mRNA builds the protein, and curiously ribosome are themselves a combination of proteins and RNA strands.
Structure of a typical human cell. The Ribosomes are the sites where mRNA is used to manufacture proteins. (Credit: Pinterest)
The researchers therefore decided to fabricate their own ribosome out of synthetic RNA strands. This RNA only ribosome that the team produced was nevertheless able to synthesize a short pre-protein chain, called a peptide, from pieces of RNA. In this manner the team at Ludwig-Maximilians University have demonstrated a possible pathway for how an RNA based pre-living creature could have shifted from an RNA World to a more efficient RNA-Protein World. The chemists still have to work out how their RNA strands were able to eventually copy themselves into more stable DNA molecules but still the development of a proto-ribosome is a big step toward the goal of understanding how life began.
When two or more amino acids are combined they form a peptide chain. As a peptide chain grows longer it becomes a protein, the basic chemical of life. (Credit: Chemistry Learner)
To keep life going however eventually sex was developed as a method for multi-cellular organisms to replicate. Now we’re all familiar with how human beings reproduce but other types of animals have many different ways of carrying out sex. For example in many species of fish the female lays her eggs on a flat surface and then the male fertilizes those eggs when they are outside of the female’s body.
When most species of fish mate fertilization occurs outside of the body. (Credit: Two Fish Divers)
Paleontologists have lone sought to discover how early multi-cellular animals had sex and one of the earliest animals for which we have good fossil evidence are the trilobites. The exoskeletons of trilobites are very common as fossils because their top shell is reinforced with calcite making it hard enough to survive for hundreds of millions of years. Unfortunately the trilobites appendages, its legs and antenna, did not incorporate calcite so they are rarely preserved, and it would be among those appendages that we would be likely to find clues to the way trilobites mated.
Trilobites are a fairly common fossil and can be very beautiful, like this specimen here. Unfortunately the legs and other appendages underneath the animal were not made of the same hard material as the top shell and so are rarely preserved. (Credit: Digital Atlas of Ancient Life)
One of the few fossil locations where the delicate legs of trilobites are preserved is the famous Burgess Shale of British Columbia in Canada. Hoping to find some evidence of trilobite mating behavior Ph.D. candidate Sarah Losso and her adviser Professor Javier Ortega-Hernández of the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard examined every known specimen of the trilobite species Olenoides serratus found at the Burgess Shale that was known to have some of its appendages preserved. The specimen that showed Losso the smoking gun of mating behavior wasn’t very promising at first glance, the trilobite’s head was nearly gone as was almost half of the body. Where those missing parts should have been however there appeared nine legs in an excellent state of preservation.
The famous Burgess Shale site in British Columbia is a World Heritage site so only professional paleontologists can work there, and even they have to get a special permit to do so. (Credit: Trilobites.info)
Seven of those legs were typical trilobite legs used not only for walking but for breathing and chewing as well. That’s right trilobite gills were on their legs and since trilobites had no jaws they used the part of their legs close to the body to ‘chew’ their food.
Trilobite fossil from the Burgess Shale showing the animals legs. The longer appendages are the typical walking legs while the two shorter ones, kinda in the middle are the claspers that the animal used to grab its mate during sex. (Credit: New York Times)
The remaining two legs were different however, being shorter and lacking any gill structures. To Losso they clearly resembled the grasping appendages of modern male horseshoe crabs known as claspers that are used by the male to grab spines on the female’s shell and hang on as she lays her eggs allowing the male to immediately fertilize them. The shells of Olenoides serratus possess exactly the same kind of spines so it is highly likely that the male trilobite could have used his claspers in the same way during sex.
Reconstruction of the underside of Olenoides serratus, left. Note the two pairs of short claspers. Right is an artists impression of how O serratus would have mated. (Credit: SciTechDaily)
Now O serratus is only one of over 20,000 described species of trilobite, many of which do not have prominent spines for the males to grab during mating. Therefore it is probable that other trilobite species used other techniques during sex. Nevertheless the fact that one ancient species, O serratus who lived 520 million years ago, mated in the same fashion as a related species does today is a major discovery.
Did O serratus mate in the same way that Horseshoe Crabs do today? If they did it means that a style of mating has lasted for over half a billion years! (Credit: Seacoast Science Center)
Finally today I would like to mention the unearthing of a specimen of an ancient dog like animal that lived 2 to 28 million years ago and roamed the forests and plains of what is today North America. The fossil was found during work on a construction project at the Otay ranch area of San Diego County in California back in 2019. Encased in two large pieces of sandstone and mudstone was a nearly complete skeleton of a member of a group of species known as Archeocyons, which means ancient dog.
The ancestors of man’s best friend lived some 20 million years ago and probably filled an ecological niche not too different from what wild canines do today. (Credit: The San Diego Union-Tribune)The fossil Archeocyon found outside San Diego is now undergoing cleaning and study at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. (Credit: News Tribune)
In life the animal would have been the size of a gray fox and based upon the shape of its legs it was capable to running long distances much as a modern canine does. However the animal’s teeth were a curious mixture of flesh cutting incisors up front with grinding molars in back indicating that the animal also ate a considerable amount of plant material, unlike modern canines. It is not yet known if the specimen from San Diego represents a new species or not, the fossil bones are going to be examined by an expert in Archeocyons from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Nevertheless a nearly complete skeleton of an ancient canine will certainly tell us a great deal about how man’s best friend evolved.
Back in April NASA began its final testing of Boeing’s long awaited Space Launch System (SLS), the rocket that is going to take astronauts back to the Moon and even beyond. That final test, known as the Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) was to be performed as the mighty rocket stood on its launch pad. Once the WDR was successfully completed it was hoped that the first, unmanned launch of the SLS could take place at the end of this month.
The Block 1 configuration of the SLS which NASA hopes will be the vehicle that takes American astronauts back to the Moon and one day even beyond. (Credit: NASA Blogs)
Didn’t work out that way, after three attempts at the WDR the space agency called a halt, there were simply too many problems. It was therefore decided that the SLS would be rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) for repairs. The rollback was carried out on April 26th and the rocket returned to the VAB where it underwent repairs to an upper stage check valve along with a leak in the tail service mast umbilical plate housing. These repairs meant yet another delay in a program that was supposed to take four years but which has now taken eleven.
The Space Launch System (SLS) on its way back to Pad39B at Kennedy Space Center. (Credit: Engadget)
The repairs did go smoothly however and the WDR is now expected to take place on June 19th, and if there are further problems it could be much later. That means that the first actual launch of the SLS will not occur until July at the earliest, the earliest launch window would be July 26 to August 9. Any more delays could threaten the entire the schedule Artemis Program and America’s hopes of getting back to the Moon before 2030.
Mission plan for the Artemis 1 unmanned flight. (Credit: Space Center Houston)
Fortunately for Boeing there has been some better news as well. The aerospace corporation’s Starliner manned capsule, the planned competitor for Space X’s dragon capsule for the task of taking astronauts to Low Earth Orbit (LOE), is preparing for its second attempt at an unmanned test flight to the International Space Station (ISS). Starliner’s first attempt, known as Orbital Test Flight One or OTF-1, was back in 2019 when the capsule was successfully launched and recovered but a software ‘glitch’ prevented the capsule from being able to reach the ISS. Boeing thought that they had fixed all of Starliner’s problems last August and the capsule, sitting atop its Atlas V rocket was preparing to launch when a series of valve problems caused the flight to be canceled, further delays in a another Boeing program that has been plagued with delays.
Launch of the unmanned Starliner Capsule aboard its Atlas 5 rocket. This second OFT of Starliner has been declared a success even though there were a few problems with the spacecraft. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)
The second unmanned launch, OTF-2, took place on May 19th as Starliner was successfully lifted into orbit by its Atlas 5 / Centaur launch system. Just twenty-four hours later Starliner docked at the ISS but not without a few problems along the way. Two of the space capsule’s twelve maneuvering thrusters failed due to a drop in chamber pressure during the trip but thanks to built in redundancy the craft still succeeded in reaching the ISS. Starliner then remained docked at the ISS for about one week before the astronauts manning the station prepared it for its return to Earth.
Starliner docking at the International Space Station (ISS). (Credit: CBS News)
Starliner performed its reentry burn on the 25th of May and successfully touched down in New Mexico some 45 minutes later. At a press conference shortly after touchdown the OFT was officially called a success, despite the problems with thrusters. Now the capsule will undergo a through check out but it seems likely that the final, manned test fight of Starliner will take place sometime later this year. If that flight is also successful then starting next year NASA could have two separate vehicles, and two separate corporations providing those vehicles, transporting astronauts to the ISS. That was the original plan for the Commercial Crew Program that was initiated back in 2014.
After a successful mission Starliner landed in the desert of New Mexico. (Credit: Yahoo)
The flip side of the Boeing’s problems in the Commercial Crew Program is the success of Space X and its Falcon 9 reusable rocket along with the Dragon capsule. In a sequence that is now becoming a routine operation the Crew-4 mission carrying four astronauts to the ISS was launched to the ISS on April 26 and was followed by the return of the Crew-3 mission on May 5. Crew-3 had been launched back on 11 November of 2021 so Space X is now sending four astronauts to the ISS on a regular, every six month basis.
The Sixth successful manned mission for Space X was the launch of the CREW 4 astronauts for their 6 month stay aboard the ISS. (Credit: NASA Blogs)
And even while maintaining the official personnel of the ISS Space X also launched the first private, tourist mission to the space station. That flight, organized by Axiom Space Company took three scientists / engineers and a retired astronaut to the ISS for what was supposed to be a one week stay. Because of bad weather in Florida and scheduling conflicts however the Ax-1 mission was forced to remain at the ISS for two weeks. I’m sure the passengers were very upset at having to stay in LOE the extra week.
The launch of the Crew-4 mission means that Space X has now launched 26 astronauts into LOE, more than the nation of China. Thanks in large part to Space X LOE is starting to get a little bit crowded and with more space stations being placed into orbit over the next decade the Falcon 9 / Dragon system is going to be plenty busy.
On April 26th China also launched its fourth manned mission to its ,under NASA Space Flight)construction space station. (Credit:
But speaking of the ISS, political turmoil here on Earth, the war in Ukraine that is, may soon lead to a breakup of the international cooperation that has allowed the station to operate for over twenty years. The space agency Roscosmos has again declared that western sanctions against Russia because of its invasion of Ukraine may force it to pull out completely from the ISS. “The decision has already been made,” Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos told the Rossiya-24 TV network.
The Head of Russia’s Space Agency Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin has been threatening his country will pull out of the ISS consortium ever since western nations put sanctions on Russia for their invasion of Ukraine.Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)
Now Russia has not formally informed the other partners in the ISS consortium so Rogozin’s statement may just be more Russian posturing. The head of Roscosmos also promises that Russia will give NASA and the other space agencies a year’s notice, “…in accordance with our obligations.” Still, a year will be scarcely enough time to make the arrangements for the Russians to separate their core modules from the ISS.
Part American, Part Russian with bits and pieces from other nations the ISS is a very delicate piece of equipment that would take a long time just to figure out how to disassemble. (Credit: NASA)
Again, the Russians may just be making empty threats. With their current financial problems it’s hard to see how they could continue to operate their part of the ISS without help from the US and other countries. If Russia does actually go through with dissolving the ISS partnership it may very well result in the end of Russia as a space power.
The war in Ukraine is not going well for Russia and could mean the end of Russia as a great power, maybe even in space! (Credit: POLITICO)
For both Boeing and the Russians the future holds as much threat as promise. Only Space X seems to have what it takes to go forward into the new world of commercial as well as governmental manned space flight.
The concept of a ‘Multiverse’ has been proposed over many centuries by both scientists and philosophers as a means of understanding the almost random nature of reality and dealing with all of the ‘what ifs’ of history. You know what I mean, like, what if Hitler had died in World War I, would there have been a World War II?
Adolf Hitler, in circle, served in the German army throughout WWI, wounded twice he was awarded both Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class and rose to the rank of Corporal. What if he had died during the war, how much would history have changed and are there Universes where that actually did happen. That’s the literary attraction of the Multiverse concept! (Credit: BBC)
In 1952 physicist Erwin Schrödinger suggested the existence of an infinite number of universes as a means of eliminating the conceptual problems that arose in physics from Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and the Wave / Particle duality. Those problems famously include Schrödinger’s own thought experiment where a cat is placed in a box with a vial of poison gas. The vial is set to be triggered by the decay of a radioactive atom, an event that according to quantum mechanics occurs on a purely random basis. The question then becomes, is the cat is alive or dead while inside the box?
In Schrodinger’s famous thought experiment a triggering device, upper left, is set off by the decay of a radioactive element, in quantum mechanics a random event with a measurable half life. If triggered the device breaks a vial containing a poison gas killing the Cat. So, after a time equal to the half life, is the cat alive or dead, or both???? (Credit: Facebook)
According to a framework developed by Niels Bohr, and known as the Copenhagen Interpretation the cat is neither dead nor alive until you open the box and observe it. The idea was that, in Bohr’s view, all of the fuzzy quantum states of a particle, even a cat, collapsed into a single state whenever that particle was observed.
According to the Copenhagen Interpretation the wave function of a particle is fuzzy because of wave mechanics. The location of a particle becomes more precise only when we make a measurement of it, collapsing the wavefunction. (Credit: GlamBlog)
In the Multiverse view however the cat is dead in some universes and still alive in other universes. In fact every time a particle, any particle can occupy two or more quantum states then the same number of universes pop into existence. If you think about it, with all of the particles in the universe and all of the quantum states they can occupy every tiny fraction of a second there must be a whole lot of universes in that multiverse!
Are there an infinite number of universes, each just slightly different from all the others, floating like bubbles in a glass of Champaign? That’s the idea behind the multiverse concept. In some universes Schrodinger’s cat is dead, in others it lives, in most it probable never exists. (Credit: Live Science)
That’s why most physicists still think that the idea of a multiverse is an even worse notion than Bohr’s where everything is fuzzy until you observe it. Science Fiction authors however quickly became fascinated by the concept of the multiverse and whether it be parallel universes in the original ‘Star Trek’ or the ‘Conjunction of a Million Spheres’ in Michael Moorcock’s fantasy novels, along with many other stories, the multiverse is now a fixture in SF.
In the fantasy novels of Michael Moorcock each universe in the multiverse has its own champion, all of whom share a certain kind of fate. They are the Eternal Champion. (Credit: World of Books)
The latest version of the multiverse comes from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) with the movie ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’. Now Doctor Strange, played by actor Benedict Cumberbatch, experienced a bit of the complexities of the Multiverse in the last big Marvel movie ‘Spiderman: No Way Home’ where three Spidermen from different universes, played by the three actors who have played spidey in movies, join together to fight their villains from different universes.
Poster for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness from Marvel / Disney. (Credit: IMDb)
‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’, henceforth just ‘Doctor Strange’, begins with the mystic master rescuing a young woman from an extra-dimensional monster. Once the immediate threat is defeated the woman, whose name is America Chavez, played by actress Xochitl Gomez, tells Strange that she is being pursued because of her ability to travel through the Multiverse from one Universe to another. Strange is startled by the woman because he has seen her in his dreams but she replies that those dreams were realities from another universe where another Doctor Strange tried to protect her. As proof of her claims the woman shows Strange the corpse of the Doctor Strange who tried to protect her.
Recognizing that witchcraft is involved in the daemons who are chasing Chavez Strange decide to seek the aid of his fellow Avenger the Scarlet Witch only to realize that it is the Witch herself who is sending the daemons after Chavez. The Scarlet Witch, also known as Wanda Maximoff and played by actress Elizabeth Olsen, wants to use Chavez’s power to travel to a universe where her two sons, lost in the TV show Wandavision, are still alive.
Some of the events in the TV show Wandavision are carried over into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness but you really didn’t have to see Wandavision to figure out what’s going on in Doctor Strange, I didn’t! (Credit: Engadget)
Yes, I know it sounds confusing and it helps if you’ve seen the movie ‘Spiderman: No Way Home’ and TV show ‘Wandavision’ but they really aren’t necessary. You quickly pick up the idea that Wanda has gone bad and it isn’t long before Strange and Chavez are bouncing from one universe to another. In those alternate universes they encounter alternate versions of other Marvel superheroes, all while being chased by the Scarlet Witch who uses an ancient book of evil magic to occupy the versions of herself in those alternate universes.
In the Multiverse of Madness Benedict Cumberbatch plays Doctor Strange, the Good Guy, mostly. Elizabeth Olsen plays the Scarlet Witch who is the Bad Guy, mostly. That’s one reason why Marvel movies are better than the DC ones because the characters, good or bad, aren’t just one or the other but like real people are something of a mixture of both. (Credit: Hindustani Times)
In other words it’s a fun roller-coaster ride where all of the possibilities of the multiverse are rather cleverly displayed. The acting in ‘Doctor Strange’ is typical for a superhero movie, good enough to not detract from the action. And once again the writers at Marvel just seem to be able to give enough humanity to their characters so that, unlike the DC heroes, they do seem like real people, even with their powers.
To me it’s not just Superman’s powers that are hard to accept it’s his too good to be true personality. (Credit: DC Database)
I do have a few small problems with ‘Doctor Strange’, for one thing there are so many cameos by altered Marvel superheroes, along with four different Doctor Stranges and I think it was three different Wandas that it gets a mite confusing after a while, but that’s part of the fun of the multiverse. A bigger problem is that the outcome, for all three of the main characters, is pretty predictable. Finally there’s the whole question of how America is able to go from one universe to another. She doesn’t even know how she does it so we’re given absolutely nothing in terms of an explanation.
In real life a predictable outcome is a good thing. In a story, not so much. The fates of the three main characters in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness are pretty predictable even with the entire Multiverse to work with. (Credit: Bryson Brainstorming)
Still ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ is certainly a fun film, another solid entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that now encompasses the entire Multiverse. So, should we now start calling it the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse?
The supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy is quiet right now, that is, it is not actively feeding on nearby gas and dust, to say nothing of planets and stars. All of the supermassive black holes in the galaxies close to ours are like that, quiet.
Astronomers are convinced that every large galaxy, this is Andromeda, has a supermassive black hole at their center. So in the early Universe did supermassive black holes form galaxies around them or do galaxies form supermassive black holes inside them? That’s one of the questions the new James Webb Space Telescope was designed to help answer. (Credit: Space.com)
As we look at galaxies further away, the picture changes. The supermassive black holes in distant galaxies are usually surrounded by an ‘accretion disk’ of matter that is slowly falling into the black hole. The energy released by all of that matter falling into the black hole causes the accretion disk to shine as brightly as thousands or even millions of stars. These radiating objects are technically known as ‘Active Galactic Nuclei’ or AGN and are among the brightest objects in the Universe.
Here’s a galaxy with a very active galactic nuclei. The energy released by matter falling into the supermassive black hole at this galaxy’s center is outshining the billions of ordinary stars in the galaxy itself. (Credit: Think Big)
Now remember in astronomy the further away you look from Earth the further back in time the object you’re seeing is. The brightest star Sirius is about ten light years away so the light you see it by took ten years to reach your eye so what you are seeing is Sirius as it looked ten years ago. The same is true of the pole star Polaris, which is about 500 light years away. When you look at Polaris in the night sky you are seeing it as it was 500 years ago.
Every Boy Scout knows that to find Polaris, the pole star you use the front two stars of the Big Dipper. Now Polaris is about 500 light years away so the light we see at night left the star 500 years ago. Therefore today we see Polaris as it was 500 years ago. (Credit: BBC Science Focus Magazine)
So when astronomers see that the supermassive black holes in nearby galaxies are quiet, that is not feeding, while the supermassive black holes in more distant galaxies are more active it’s telling them that over time those black holes consumed all of the matter close to them and only stopped feeding because there’s nothing left nearby for them to eat. In this way astronomers have been able to model the life cycle of supermassive black holes going from actively feeding to quiet as they deplete the matter around them.
The various parts of an AGN. The Supermassive Black Hole pulling matter into itself powers the whole AGN. (Credit: NASA)
This transition from active to quiet takes a very long time, upwards of a billion years or more making supermassive black holes rather stable objects. It came as something of a shock therefore when in late 2017 the AGN at the center of galaxy 1ES 1927+654 suddenly increased in brightness by a factor of nearly 100 in the visible part of the spectrum. As stated by Nicolas Scepi, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and a member of the team studying 1ES 1927+654, “Normally we would expect black holes to evolve over millions of years.” So unusual was the change in that a large team of astronomers working across the electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves to X-rays was quickly assembled to investigate 1ES 1927+654 at every wavelength.
Image of the Galaxy 1ES 1927+654 (Credit: Poandpo.com
What the researchers found was that, even as the brightness of 1ES 1927+654 increased by a factor of 100 in both the visible and ultra-violet (UV) portions of the spectrum it decreased by a factor of 1000 in the X-ray spectrum. The observation that the intensity of UV and X-rays went in opposite directions was in itself a surprise, as the strength of X-rays and UV generally go hand in hand.
Some of the data taken of galaxy 1ES 1927+654 during the time when its AGN appears to have flipped its magnetic field. (Credit:
But that unexpected decrease in X-ray output was the clue that Doctor Scepi and his colleagues at the University of Colorado needed to solve the puzzle of 1ES 1927+654. In a paper published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society the astro-physicists argue that the magnetic field generated by the charged particles making up the accretion disk around the supermassive black hole flipped its north and south poles causing the change in the AGNs brightness.
Now scientists already know of two astronomical bodies whose magnetic field flips their poles on occasion. The Sun’s magnetic field flips as a part of its eleven year sunspot cycle. The Earth’s magnetic field also cycles back and forth although the cycle is much longer, the best estimates being about every 200,000 years and we are now overdue for such a flip. See my post of February 8th, 2017 concerning evidence that Earth’s field is currently starting just such a flip. Whether or not other stars and planets, Jupiter perhaps, also flip their magnetic fields is the subject of active research among astronomers and astro-physicists.
Earth’s magnetic field is very messy right now with a big piece of the north pole in the south while bits of the south are poking out of the north. Are these signs that the field is getting ready to flip? (Credit: Extreme Tech)
For the accretion disk of an AGN to flip its magnetic field was unexpected however. The theory put forth by Scepi and his colleagues suggests that new matter being pulled into the accretion disk possesses the opposite orientation of the existing magnetic field, weakening and then flipping it. The team’s calculations showed that the result of the flip would be an increase in the visible and UV spectra at the expense of X-rays, exactly what was observed in 1ES 1927+654.
The light our eyes can see is only a small portion of the Electromagnetic Spectrum. When galaxy 1ES 1929+654 grew in brightness in the visible and ultraviolet parts it also lost intensity in the X-ray portion so the total energy output remained pretty constant! (Credit: NOAA)
If one AGN can flip its magnetic field can’t others. The behaviour exhibited by 1ES 1927+654 may actually be fairly common, astronomers simply haven’t been looking for it. But they certainly will be now that they know what to look for. I think before long astronomers will have found few more oddly behaving AGN and they will provide more data to help the theorists refine their models of their magnetic fields.
Imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope project, the same team that obtained the first picture of a black hole, here is the Supermassive Black Hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy known as Sagittarius A. (Credit: CNN)
Even as I was writing this post the Event Horizon Telescope, the same group who gave us the first picture of a black hole back in 2019, see my post of 17th of April 2019, have accomplished the same feat with the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The black hole, known officially as Sagittarius A, is quiet now, its accretion disk is very small. Nevertheless the information gathered from the new image will tell us a great deal as we continue to try to understand the mysteries of Supermassive Black Holes.
I’m lucky enough to have a very vivid imagination. If I just shut my eyes by an act of will I can see, and hear President Kennedy giving his ‘…landing a man on the Moon…” speech. And for an image that I see every day, like Washington on a dollar bill, I don’t even have to close my eyes and I can see George’s face superimposed on everything that’s actually there. Back in Shakespeare’s time the imagination was known as ‘the mind’s eye’ because of the images it can conjure up, hence the quote from Hamlet in this post’s title.
The Mind’s eye is the world of the imagination, where anything, real or unreal can be visualized! (Credit: YouTube)
My imagination can even let me see things that I’ve never actually seen in real life. For instance whenever I’m reading a good novel my imagination goes into overdrive visualizing things that may have never have even existed. Consider Arthur C. Clarke’s novel ‘Earthlight’ for example. I haven’t read that book in at least ten years but I can see the battle sequence in my mind any time I want, that’s the impression it made on my mind’s eye.
In the Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Earthlight a battle takes place on the Moon. Obviously no such battle ever took place so it only existed in Clark’s imagination, and then mine! (Credit: Amazon.com)
As a scientist and engineer having a good imagination is definitely a benefit. I can often visualize what should be the results of an experiment, or a circuit, before I begin any testing and if something isn’t right I know it immediately. And any time I’m doing one of those math ‘word problems’ that everyone hates I can visualize what the problem is really about making it much easier to solve.
Growing up I had a lot of friends who hated word problems but I always loved them. I just never had any problem visualizing what the problem was about! (Credit: Made by Teachers)
Not everyone has such a vivid imagination. For some people trying to conjure up images from their own past life, the face of a deceased parent say, requires a considerable mental effort. There are even a small percentage of people, estimated at 1-3% of the population, who are simply incapable of forming mental images of any kind, people who have no minds eye at all.
When you imagine a rainbow in your mind how vivid are the colours. If you don’t see a rainbow easily you may suffer from aphantasia. (Credit: Cindy deRosier)
Such a condition is medically known as aphantasia and can usually only be detected by long a series of psychological tests, tests that are inherently subjective and can often lead to an ambiguous result. Now however a new study has been published in the journal eLife by researchers at the School of Psychology at the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia that details a direct, physiological technique for diagnosing aphantasia.
Previous tests for aphantasia were subjective, asking the patient to make judgement calls rather than an objective measurement. (Credit: Avoid Boring People)
The test begins simply enough, the patients are shown a chart with a bright figure set against a gray background and told to stare at the bright figure. Just as in a bright room staring at the bright figure causes the subject’s pupils to respond by contacting somewhat, and the size of the contracted pupil is then measured. The patients are then shown a similar dark figure set against the same gray background. As the subjects stare at the dark figure their pupils will expand, as they would in a dark room. As before the size of the expanded pupil is measured and compared to the earlier contracted pupil size.
The New test begins with the patient staring at a bight block against a gray background. After a minute or so the size of their pupils are measured. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)Second, the patient then stars at a dark block against the same gray background. Again the size of their pupils are measured and the difference between the two measurements is calculated. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)
Now comes the interesting, even kinda weird part. The patients are now asked to imagine the bright and dark figures they were shown earlier and their pupils should react as before, although maybe not to the same extent. By comparing the second set of results to the first however gives a direct value for the patient’s ability to form a visual image in their mind’s eye.
Finally the patients are asked to imagine the light block and then dark block and the amount by which their pupils react is a measure of the strength of their ‘Mind’s Eye’! (Credit: Study Finds)
If you’re thinking that all this smacks of mind over body, well that’s what I think is so interesting. The very idea of our imagination causing actual changes to our body actually isn’t that hard to believe; after all just thinking about sex can certainly stimulate some organs. Still the notion that our eyes will react by our just visualizing bright or dark objects is really rather eerie.
Like most cute sayings that’s not always true. Nevertheless we can accomplish so much more if we just make up our mind’s to do it. (Credit: Pinterest)
There’s an old expression that ‘the eyes are the window to the soul’. Well what the scientists in Australia have found is a way to use our eyes to measure the strength of our Mind’s Eye.
Are the eyes the window to the soul, probably not but when I see a beautiful pair like these I like to think so! (Credit: Beyond Pink World)
Physicists are always fascinated by symmetries in the world around us. For example there appears to be exactly the same number of positively charged particles as there are negatively charged particles. At the same time there are just as many north magnetic poles as south magnetic poles.
Our hands are of course the best example of symmetry. They look identical but in fact are exact opposites, mirror images of each other. (Credit: Charlie Fox Signs)One of the most fundamental symmetries in the Universe is that all magnets have both a north and a south pole. (Credit: Northeastern University)
Another big symmetry appears when we look at the distribution of galaxies throughout the Universe as a whole. In whatever direction we look there are the same sorts of galaxies in roughly the same density. In terms of space the Universe appears to be very symmetrical.
The Hubble Deep Field Image. In whatever direction we look the Universe is filled with countless galaxies, a symmetric Universe. (Credit: Hubble Space Telescope)
Not so in time. We know that the Universe is expanding; Carl Hubble made that discovery more than 90 years ago now. So in the distant past, billions of years ago, all of those galaxies would have been much closer together than they are today. And going even further back all of the matter in the Universe would have formed one big, dense hot cloud, a big bang. So why should time be different from space.
Starting with the Big Bang itself the Universe has changed over time, evolved. The Universe may be symmetric in space but it definitely not symmetric in time. (Credit: Owlcation)
After all Einstein’s Theory of Relativity tells us that time should really be treated mathematically in the same way as space, a principal know as covariance. And all of the experiments we perform in big atom smashers like the ones at CERN or Fermilab confirm Einstein’s ideas.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is the world’s largest and most powerful scientific instrument. Smashing elementary particles together at tremendous energies accelerators like the LHC have taught us much about the way the Universe works. (Credit: Forbes)
Another big lack of symmetry that has physicists confounded is that between matter and anti-matter, those mysterious mirror particles that have the same mass but opposite charge of the matter particles that form everything we know. Another curious fact about anti-particles are that when they come in contact with their ‘normal’ matter counterpart the two annihilate each other becoming photons of light. Matter into energy, just as Einstein said. Again, both our theories and the experiments performed at high-energy physics labs all tell us that anti-particles should be generated just as often as particles, that there should be just as much anti-matter in the Universe as matter.
The first evidence for the existence of anti-matter. The streak in this could chamber is an anti-electron, also known as a positron. (Credit: Twitter)
But there isn’t, certainly not in our Solar System because since the solar wind touches every planet, moon and etc. we’d see the energy from matter anti-matter annihilation if say Jupiter were anti-matter. And that also means that our galaxy can’t contain anti-matter since the interstellar medium touches every star system and again, we don’t see any sign of matter anti-matter annihilation.
Matter and anti-matter don’t get along. Whenever a particle meets its anti-particle the two annihilate each other to produce photons of light, pure energy. (Credit: Center for Astrophysics and Supercomputing)
What about different galaxies you ask? Couldn’t some of them be composed of anti-matter? Well maybe, but astronomers have also seen a number of galaxies that are colliding with other galaxies and once more there are no signs of the type of energy release that would indicate matter and anti-matter in contact. That leaves physicists with the question, where is all of the anti-matter?
So physicists are faced with two instances of non-symmetry, in time and in matter / anti-matter. And since physicists are clever people it isn’t surprising that someone thought to use one problem to solve the other. You see back in the 1950s physicist Richard Feynman suggested that the best way to think about anti-particles, his paper was explicitly about anti-electrons, was to consider them as normal electrons going backward in time. That way when an electron, going forward in time, collides with an anti-electron, going backward in time they turn into photons who, according to relativity, do not travel in time, perfect symmetry.
Feynman diagram of electron-positron annihilation. The positron. the anti-electron is the e+ portrayed as going down, that is backward in time. (Credit: Physics Stack Exchange)
So let’s go with that thought, let’s assume that all anti-matter is just normal matter going backward in time. Then what happened to all of the anti-matter that should have been created by the big bang? Well it went backward in time and exists before the big bang. The Universe before the big bang was made up of an amount of anti-matter equal to the matter in the Universe after the big bang. Perfect symmetry.
The anti-matter Universe on the left perfectly balances the matter Universe on the right, restoring symmetry in both time and matter/anti-matter. (Credit: Semantic Scholar)
Time symmetry is restored as well because whatever the Universe looks like at a certain time t after the big bang the Universe looked exactly the same way, on a large scale at least, at the same time t before the big bang. This new model of the Universe uses its anti-matter component as a mirror to fully restore symmetry.
In ‘Alice through the Looking Glass’ by Lewis Carroll Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum are not twins but rather right and left versions of each other, perfectly symmetric. (Credit: Vanity Fair)
This is the basis of a new paper by physicists Latham Boyle, Kieran Finn and Neill Turok of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo Ontario in Canada along with the University of Manchester in the UK. In doing their calculations the physicists also discovered that their new, symmetric model of the Universe had a couple of other advantages as well. For one thing the period of rapid expansion called inflation immediately after the big bang proposed by Alan Guth back in the 1970s to account for the almost perfect flatness of the Universe is simply not needed. The model proposed by Boyle, Finn and Turok provides a flat Universe full of particles naturally, without the ‘ad hoc’ insertion of inflation.
In order to provide the flat Universe we see today Alan Guth invoked what he described as ‘cosmic inflation’, but no one has been able to determine exactly what caused the inflation. The new matter / anti-matter symmetric Universe doesn’t need inflation to be flat. (Credit: Medium)
Another feature of the model is that it requires a fourth type of neutrino, those mysterious ‘ghost’ particles that very rarely interact with more normal particles. The researchers think that their fourth neutrino species could provide the basis for the missing dark matter, maybe solving yet another problem in astrophysics.
In order to observe any neutrinos physicists have to build enormous chambers whose walls are covered with detectors. Such experiments capture maybe one or two neutrinos a day! (Credit: Nature)
So, how do we go about proving that this new model is the correct one? After all it seems like new models of the Universe are being proposed nearly every week. Well, finding that neutrino would be a good start but physicists have been looking for ‘sterile’ neutrinos for a long time now without success.
The researchers also propose another way. Theories of inflation all predict that the rapid expansion at the beginning of the Universe should have produced large amounts gravitational waves, waves that the scientists at LIGO and Virgo gravity wave observatories may soon be able to detect. But if inflation didn’t happen, if the Universe is symmetric instead, then the search for primordial gravity waves will fail.
It is hoped that soon gravity wave detectors such as Virgo here in Italy may soon be able to detect gravity from the early Universe itself. That data may provide evidence for the Matter / Anti-matter Universe. (Credit: ResearchGate)
Of course it would be so much simpler if we could somehow look back before the big bang to see if there was an anti-matter Universe back then. But that’s impossible! Isn’t it?
