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Cosmic Ancestry
“We’re about to begin a journey through the
cosmos. We’ll encounter galaxies and suns and planets, life and
consciousness coming into being, evolving, and perishing, worlds of ice
and stars of diamond, atoms as massive as suns and universes smaller than
atoms. But it’s also a story of our own planet, and the plants and animals
that share it with us, and it’s a story about us, how we achieved our
present understanding of the cosmos, how the cosmos has shaped our
evolution and our culture and what our fate may be. We wish to pursue the
truth no matter where it leads, but to find the truth, we need imagination
and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be
careful to distinguish speculation from fact. The cosmos is full beyond
measure of elegant truths, of exquisite inter-relationships, of the
awesome machinery of nature.”
“The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. On this shore
we’ve learned most of what we know. Recently, we’ve waded a little way
out, maybe ankle-deep, and the water seems inviting. Some part of our
being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can’t,
because the cosmos is also within us. We’re "made" of star stuff. We are a
way that the cosmos can know itself. The journey for each of us begins
here. We’re going to explore the cosmos in a ship of the imagination,
unfettered by ordinary limits on speed and size, drawn by the music of
cosmic harmonies. It can take us anywhere in space and time. Perfect as a
snowflake, organic as a dandelion seed, it will carry us to worlds of
dreams and worlds of facts. Come with me.”
-
Carl Sagan,
Universal Mind
This selection of documents is probably the most
disturbing to read. Within them you will find evidence that the six
billion (seven?) people on this planet are not the first humans in the Universe.
Instead there are likely trillions of humans living on billions of
planets
in billions of galaxies in many places of both space and time and why most
people on this planet will perish if they don't exist.
Time Enough for Life
By
Peter Backus,
SETI Institute, 16 October 2003
A team of SETI Institute scientists, as part of the NASA Astrobiology
Institute, is bringing together experts to reconsider the possibility of
life on planets orbiting small stars. Such stars are the most common. Over
three-quarters of all stars are less than half the mass of the Sun. If such
stars are suitable hosts for habitable planets, life may be far more
widespread than we ever imagined.
ET Visitors: Scientists See High Likelihood
By Leonard David,
www.space.com
Senior Space Writer, 14 January 2005
Now a team of American scientists note that recent astrophysical discoveries
suggest that we should find ourselves in the midst of one or more
extraterrestrial civilizations. Moreover, they argue it is a mistake to
reject all UFO reports since some evidence for the theoretically-predicted
extraterrestrial visitors might just be found there.
The researchers make their proposal in the January/February 2005 issue of
the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS).
Curious situation
Pick up any good science magazine and you’re sure to see the latest in
head-scratching ideas about superstring theory, wormholes, or the stretching
of spacetime itself. Meanwhile, extrasolar planetary detection is on the
verge of becoming mundane.
"We are in the curious situation today that our best modern physics and
astrophysics theories predict that we should be experiencing
extraterrestrial visitation, yet any possible evidence of such lurking in
the UFO phenomenon is scoffed at within our scientific community," contends
astrophysicist Bernard Haisch.
Haisch along with physicists James Deardorff, Bruce Maccabee and Harold
Puthoff make their case in the JBIS article: "Inflation-Theory Implications
for Extraterrestrial Visitation".
The scientists point to two key discoveries made by Australian
astronomers and reported last year that there is a "galactic habitable zone"
in our Milky Way Galaxy. And more importantly that Earth’s own star, the
Sun, is relatively young in comparison to the average star in this zone --
by as much as a billion years.
Therefore, the researchers explain in their JBIS article that an average
alien civilization would be far more advanced and have long since discovered
Earth. Additionally, other research work on the supposition underlying the
Big Bang -- known as the theory of inflation -- shores up the prospect, they
advise, that our world is immersed in a much larger extraterrestrial
civilization.
In late
February 2002 I replaced several pages in this section with the contents of
a research paper I am working on. The paper can be downloaded and read
off-line by clicking
here.
It’s an Acrobat
 PDF file about 520 Kb in size,
42 pages long, with at least 75
unique citations and entirely scientific.
The theory contains simplistic and easy to understand
explanations for things like why the Big Bang
Cosmology is nonsense and Hoyle and associates’ Quasi Steady State
Cosmology is more theoretically and evidentially valid. I answer 'redshift'
questions that no one has been able or willing to answer, what caused two
global mass extinctions on Earth 220 and 440
million years ago, how Saturn got it’s current rings, why the
Sun is
increasing its energy output and changing the
climate of Earth and Mars, the accelerating
rise in
standard IQ worldwide as well as the accelerating decrease in age of
sexual maturation, and disorders like Asperger’s, Social Anxiety, ADD and
ADHD. In my conclusion I make several
predictions that should help prove my theory.
I welcome any critical and constructive
feedback as I consider it a
work in progress. If my theory is correct (currently I’m 99% certain it is) then
perhaps others will see the war on terrorism as I see it, a naďve and
self-destructive distraction. I see the desire to control other
people, puddles of oil, piles of dirt, shiny rocks and scraps of paper
particularly meaningless. Here are some excerpted and condensed
citations to entice you to read the paper.
“The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may
be common in religion or in politics, but it is not the path to knowledge,
and there's no place for it in the endeavor of science. We do not know
beforehand where fundamental insights will arise from about our mysterious
and lovely solar system. The history of our study of our solar system
shows us clearly that accepted and conventional ideas are often wrong, and
that fundamental insights can arise from the most unexpected sources.”
-
Carl Sagan,
Cosmos television series
“Measurements of periodic red-shift bunching appeared in
the literature at least as far back as 1977 in the work of W.G. Tifft. The
implications of this phenomenon are apparently too terrible to contemplate,
for astrophysicists have not taken up the challenge. They may be forced to
take the phenomenon more seriously, because two new reports of redshift
bunching have surfaced.”
“First, B. Guthrie and W, Napier, at Edinburgh's Royal Observatory, have
checked Tifft's "bunching" claim using accurately known red shifts of some
nearby galaxies. They found a periodicity of 37.5 kilometers/second -- no
matter in which direction the galaxies lay.”
- William R. Corliss, From Science Frontiers #80, MAR-APR 1992,
Science Frontiers ONLINE, No. 80: Mar-Apr 1992, MORE EVIDENCE FOR GALACTIC
"SHELLS" OR "SOMETHING ELSE",
http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf080/sf080a04.htm
“From this discussion it is obvious that if two or more
quasars have the same value of z, they are at the same distance (though in
different directions) from the Earth. In other words, assuming the
cosmological red-shift hypothesis, the quasars in the 57 groups in Table I are
arranged on 57 spherical shells with Earth as the center. This is certainly an
extraordinary result. Some of the possibilities that we shall consider to
accommodate this result may be disturbing, but we must consider these
possibilities dispassionately.”
“We are essentially left with only one possibility - No.3...3. “The Earth is indeed the center of the Universe. The arrangement of quasars
on certain spherical shells is only with respect to the Earth. These shells
would disappear if viewed from another galaxy or a quasar. This means that the
cosmological principle will have to go. Also, it implies that a coordinate
system fixed to the Earth will be a preferred frame of reference in the
Universe....
- Varshni,Y.P.: 1976, Astrophys.Space Sci., 43, 3,
THE RED
SHIFT HYPOTHESIS FOR QUASARS : IS THE EARTH THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE?,
http://home.achilles.net/~jtalbot/V1976b/index.html
- Image from Hans Haubold, A. M. Mathai,
1998, Figure 10, GRAVITATIONAL INTERACTION: STRUCTURE OF THE MACROCOSMOS,
http://www.seas.columbia.edu/~ah297/un-esa/universe/universe-chapter5.html
NARRATOR: "The data showed that the distant supernovae
were dimmer and therefore much farther away than the team expected. Instead of
slowing down, the expansion of the universe has been speeding up with galaxies
moving apart at greater and greater velocities."
ADAM RIESS: "I was actually scared that I had made an
error. One by one, we started checking off sort of a long list of possible
errors and none of them seemed to be the case. Finally, we had to come to
grips with this unusual result. I no longer looked at it as a likely mistake,
but rather as something very bizarre that nature was trying to tell us. “
BRIAN SCHMIDT: "It was not something that I particularly wanted to be in my
data. And so I was horrified because I knew that it was going to be very
difficult to sell this to my colleagues, because my colleagues are the ones
who have educated me, and they…”
“NARRATOR: Brian's colleagues, along with the entire scientific community,
might have discounted his results, except that Saul Perlmutter's
group--working separately--announced the exact same conclusion.”
“The discovery seemed to contradict everything we thought we knew about
gravity and its impact on galaxies and stars.”
- A NOVA Production by Thomas Lucas Productions, Inc. for WGBH/Boston, © 2000
WGBH Educational Foundation, PBS air date: November 21, 2000, NOVA #2713:
Runaway Universe,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2713universe.html
"But to most theoretical physicists the cosmological
constant has seemed utterly mysterious and unnecessary, and many have been
reluctant to accept the results of the supernovae teams.
...Their results show that the universe is full of dark
energy, completely consistent with the earlier supernovae results. "It seems that Einstein did
not make a blunder after all -- dark energy appears to exist and to dominate
over more conventional types of matter," Efstathiou said. "An explanation of
the dark energy may involve String Theory, extra dimensions or even what
happened before the Big Bang. At present nobody knows. The ball is now
firmly in the theorists court."
- Royal Astronomical Society, 20 March 2002,
Universe Expansion is
Accelerating, UK and Australian Researchers Say,
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/universe_expansion_020320.html
“An unflinching determination to take the whole
evidence into account is the only method of preservation against the
fluctuating extremes of fashionable opinion.”
-
Alfred North Whitehead
Punctuated
Equilibrium
“The "punctuated equilibrium" theory of Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould
was proposed as a criticism of the traditional Darwinian theory of evolution.
Eldredge and Gould observed that evolution tends to happen in fits and starts,
sometimes moving very fast, sometimes moving very slowly or not at all. On the
other hand, typical variations tend to be small. Therefore, Darwin saw
evolution as a slow, continuous process, without sudden jumps. However, if you
study the fossils of organisms found in subsequent geological layers, you will
see long intervals in which nothing changed ("equilibrium"), "punctuated" by
short, revolutionary transitions, in which species became extinct and replaced
by wholly new forms. Instead of a slow, continuous progression, the evolution
of life on Earth seems more like the life of a soldier: long periods of
boredom interrupted by rare moments of terror.”
- F. Heylighen, Jul 22, 1999, Copyright© 1999 Principia Cybernetica,
Punctuated Equilibrium
More evidence for mass extinction - Lava flow twice the size of Europe covered
Siberia 250 million years ago
PHILIP BALL, 7 June 2002
“We knew it was big - but not this big. Geologists now suspect the
massive eruption of lava in Siberia 250 million years ago [250 is disputed]
was at least twice as large as they'd thought. This makes it even more likely
to have caused the biggest extinction the world has ever seen.”
“The Permian period ended with the extinction of 85% of all ocean creatures
and 70% of land ones - a toll three times greater than the extinction that
killed off the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous, 65 million years ago.”
Inner Earth Spews Superplumes
April 19, 2002
"Generally, it is assumed that only about 10 percent of the heat that comes
out at the surface of the Earth comes from the earth's core. This number may
thus be underestimated, perhaps as much as by a factor of two," she wrote.
Regions above the superplumes tend to bulge upward. The plateaus of southern
and eastern Africa are about 1,600 feet higher than most old continental areas
in the world, she pointed out. This is referred to as the "African superswell."
Also, she wrote, heat flow from the Earth's interior measured in a wide area
of southern Africa is higher than expected, indicating that an unusually large
supply of heat must be coming from underneath.
- Robert Roy Britt, 17 January 2001,
Meltdown: Satellites Show Accelerated Polar Ice Threat
- SPACE.com Staff, 29 May 2002,
Satellites Show Alarming Retreat of Glaciers
GEOPHYSICS:
Redistributing Earth's Mass
Anny Cazenave and R. Steven Nerem
Volume 297, Number 5582, Issue of 2 Aug 2002, pp. 831-833.
Since the end of the last glaciation, postglacial rebound of
Earth's crust has resulted in a net transfer of mass from the equatorial
regions to high latitudes. This small mass transfer has been monitored for 25
years. But a report by Cox and Chao suggests that since 1998, the mass
transfer has changed direction. In their Perspective, Cazenave and Nerem
discuss possible mechanisms that may have caused this change.
Mysterious Shift in Earth's Gravity Suggests Equator is Bulging
01 August 2002
Since the late 1970s, satellite measurements have shown that this
post-glacial rebound, as it is called, generates a corresponding rounding of
Earth's gravity field.
Suddenly the trend has reversed.
"Sometime around 1998, something began to make the Earth's gravity
field flatter," says Christopher Cox of Raytheon Information Technology and
Scientific Services. "The result is it looks as if post-glacial rebound has
reversed itself. But, we do not have any reason to think that post-glacial
rebound has in any way stopped or changed."
In effect, Cox said in an interview, while post-glacial rebound continues to
make the Earth rounder, some movement of mass on the surface of the Earth must
be making the gravity field flatter. It's not a change anyone could notice;
it's only revealed by sensitive satellite measurements.
The shift, however, is significant.
"The effect is twice as large as post-glacial rebound in terms of effect on
the gravity field, and it's in the opposite direction," Cox said. "Whatever
it is, it's big."
Black hole survey sheds light on galaxy formation
- SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE PHOTO RELEASE, Posted: June 5, 2000
“The results now show a close relationship between the black hole mass and the
stars that comprise an elliptical galaxy or the central bulge stars of a
spiral galaxy. But surprisingly, an even tighter correlation is found. "Other
observations of the entire stellar mass of the bulge show a very tight
relationship between a black hole's mass and the depth of the gravitational
potential well as measured by the magnitude of random velocities of stars in
the galaxy's hub. This bolsters the conclusion that the mass correlation is
real," says Gebhardt.”
Science lists
1998’s biggest breakthroughs - Weird discovery about our accelerating universe
ranks No. 1 in annual review
Alan Boyle, MSNBC, Dec. 17, 1998,
“The universe is not only expanding, but that expansion appears to
be speeding up. And as if that discovery alone weren’t strange enough, it
implies that most of the energy in the cosmos is contained in empty space — a
concept that Albert Einstein considered but discarded as his “biggest
blunder.” The new findings have been recognized as 1998’s top scientific
breakthrough by Science magazine.”
special relativity - Yahoo!
Reference: American Heritage® Dictionary
NOUN: The physical theory of space and time developed by Albert Einstein,... The theory has as consequences the
relativistic mass increase of rapidly moving objects, the Lorentz-Fitzgerald
contraction, time dilatation, and the principle of mass-energy equivalence. Also
called special theory of relativity.
“Global
warming -- the gradual increase in planet-wide temperatures -- seems to be
accepted by many scientists and people now as fact. Generally, this warming is
attributed to the increase of green-house gases in the Earth's upper
atmosphere.”
“However, some solar scientists are considering whether the warming exists at
all. And, if it does, might it be caused, wholely or in part, by a periodic
but small increase in the Sun's energy output. An increase of just 0.2% in the
solar output could have the same affect as doubling the carbon dioxide in the
Earth's atmosphere.”
- Stanford University, 1997, Global Warming - Does it
Exist? If so, is it Man- or Sun-made?,
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/glob-warm.html
- Image from Friis-Christensen, E., and K.
Lassen, "Length of the solar cycle: An indicator of solar activity
closely associated with climate," Science, 254, 698-700, 1991, found at
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/glob-warm.html
Since the late 1970s, the amount of solar radiation the sun emits, during
times of quiet sunspot activity, has increased by nearly .05 percent per
decade, according to a NASA funded study.
"This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could
cause significant climate change," said Richard Willson, a researcher
affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia
University's Earth Institute, New York. He is the lead author of the study
recently published in Geophysical Research Letters.
"Historical records of solar activity indicate that solar radiation has been
increasing since the late 19th century. If a trend, comparable to the one
found in this study, persisted throughout the 20th century, it would have
provided a significant component of the global warming the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change reports to have occurred over the past 100 years," he
said.
- Goddard Space Flight Center,
March 20, 2003,
NASA STUDY FINDS INCREASING SOLAR TREND THAT CAN CHANGE CLIMATE,
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0313irradiance.html
“A new study confirms a long-held theory that large
solar storms rain electrically charged particles down on Earth's
atmosphere and deplete the upper-level ozone for weeks to months
thereafter.
“When protons like these bombard the upper atmosphere, they break up molecules
of gases like nitrogen and water vapor, and once freed, those atoms react with
ozone molecules and reduce the layer.”
"A lot of impacts on ozone are very subtle and happen over long periods of
time," said Charles Jackman, a researcher at NASA Goddard Space Flight
Center's Laboratory for Atmospheres and lead author of the study. "But when
these solar proton events occur you can see immediately a change in the
atmosphere, so you have a clear cause and effect."
- Goddard Space Flight Center, August 1, 2001, Stormy Space
Weather Takes a Toll on Ozone,
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20010801solarproton.html
“ (12/02/2001) Scientists suspect global warming is
cause of "deeply worrying" 80-90% drop in Atlantic zooplankton; loss of bottom
of marine food chain threatens to cause widespread starvation and death of all
levels of marine life from fish to dolphins and whales, destroying entire
ocean ecosystem already being devastated by overfishing.”
"This is deeply worrying," said marine biologist Dr Phil Williamson, of East
Anglia University. "We don't know why zooplankton numbers have plummeted,
though global warming looks the best candidate. What is certain is that
removing the bottom link from the ocean food chain could have profound and
unpleasant results."
“(11/19/2000) Scientists say global warming cause of alarming 70% drop in
zooplankton off California coast since mid-1970s, warn impact on entire West
Coast marine ecosystem could be catastrophic. More than 70 percent of the
zooplankton - the tiny free-floating animals that are food for larger
creatures - have disappeared from the Pacific Ocean along the coast of
California since the mid-1970s, a phenomenon related to the overall rise in
ocean temperature due to global warming, say scientists at the Scripps
Institute of Oceanography. Plankton are critical to the survival of all marine
life from whales to sea birds, scientists warn, but warmer waters and changing
ocean currents mean less plankton for marine animals, which may be why harbor
seals, stellar sea lions and sea birds are disappearing.”
"What is going on in the ocean is large and unprecedented," said John
McGowan, an oceanographer at Scripps. "These are huge events. This is a new
kind of ecology."
- Earth Crash Earth Spirit, updated as of 1/24/2002, Global
Warming: Oceans, (citations from various publications),
http://www.eces.org/ec/globalwarming/oceans.shtml
"High-resolution images snapped by NASA's Mars Global
Surveyor show that levels of frozen water and carbon dioxide at the Red
Planet's poles have dwindled dramatically — by more than 10 feet — over a
single Martian year (equivalent to 687 days or about two Earth years)."
"We weren't expecting to see something nearly this large," said
Caplinger.
- Amanda Onion, Dec. 7, 2001, Red Planet Warming,
Images Show Mars' Ice Caps Are Melting Fast,
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/mars011207.html
"Like Galileo, I wrote in the common language of the laity-as an
educational measure. I realized that arguments in scientific societies are
not the way that the ideas of a culture are changed."
-
John C. Lilly, M.D
Shermer's Last Law,
By Michael Shermer, January 2002
“In Clarke's 1953 novel, called Childhood's End, humanity reaches something
like a singularity and must then make the transition to a higher state of
consciousness.”
"Nature shows that with the growth of
intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the
highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point."
-
Arthur Schopenhauer
“IQ scores are rising so dramatically, say researchers who study
intelligence, that a high proportion of people considered average at the
turn of the 20th century would be regarded as significantly below average by
today's tests.”
"It's a genuine mystery," said John Loehlin, a University of
Texas-Austin professor of psychology. "All of the explanations given are
probably true, but it's still hard to see how they would account for such a
large jump."
- Todd Ackerman, 3/15/1998, Copyright 1998 Houston Chronicle Science Writer,
Experts at loss to explain large jump in average IQ,
http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/page1/98/03/16/iq.html
“James Flynn, a political scientist working in New Zealand, observed in
the 1980's that the scores of different groups of people on standard
intelligence tests had consistently augmented over the past decades.”
“Since then, the so-called "Flynn effect" has been confirmed by numerous
studies. The same pattern, an average increase of over three IQ points per
decade, was found for virtually every type of intelligence test, delivered
to virtually every type of group.”
"The increase was highest, 20 points per generation (30 years), in Belgium,
Holland and Israel, and lowest, 10 points per generation, in Denmark and
Sweden. Although the data are limited, it moreover seems that the increase
is accelerating."
“One might expect that the Flynn effect would be more clear for tests that
emphasize culture or education. The opposite is true, however: the increase
is most striking for tests measuring the ability to recognize abstract,
non-verbal patterns. Tests emphasizing traditional school knowledge show
much less progress. This means that something more profound than mere
accumulation of data is happening inside people's heads. None of the
scientists who have studied the effect can offer a simple explanation.”
“For one type of test, Raven's Progressive Matrices, Flynn found data that
spanned a complete century. He concluded that someone who scored among the
best 10% a hundred years ago, would nowadays be categorized among the 5%
weakest. That means that someone who would be considered bright a century
ago, should now be considered a moron!”
- Principia Cybernetica Web, Increasing intelligence: the Flynn effect,
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/FLYNNEFF.html
- Diana Zuckerman, Winter 2001, When Little Girls Become Women: Early
Onset of Puberty in Girls,
http://www.cpr4womenandfamilies.org/children11.html
- Reuters Health, Sep. 13, 2001, NEW YORK, US boys may be hitting puberty
sooner: report,
http://www.drbobmartin.com/2001k_09_13news02.html
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