The End of Time – Lent 2025: Day 26

Science has no clear answer as to how the Universe (this Universe?) will end. In a Big Crunch (galaxies collapsing into their black holes which then go on to swallow one another in an ever contracting universe that ends up in a singularity)? Or in Heat Death – galaxies flung further and further apart by dark energy at an ever-accelerating pace, over time losing all contact with each other, and then, one by one, their stars go out? And atoms stop spinning until there's nothing with which to measure time? Or in a Big Rip (dark energy becomes stronger and stronger, eventually tearing apart galaxies and indeed all matter)? Or in Vacuum Decay, when the stability of the vacuum of space suddenly decays into a lower energy state, resulting in a bubble of lower-energy vacuum expanding at the speed of light through the universe, destroying everything in its path? We don't know.

Below: Google Gemini Imagen 3.0, prompted to illustrate the four competing theories of how the Universe will end.

And when will this all happen? The first three are due in around 10¹⁰⁰ to 10¹²⁰ years from now, so no immediate worry. Unless it's vacuum decay, which could happen at any time. Though even if it started a billion light years away, it would take a billion years to reach us. And given that we're some  46.5 billion light years in any direction from the edge of the observable universe, we seem to be statistically quite safe.

[Well before then, the Sun's increasing luminosity will make life on Earth impossible somewhere between a billion and 1.2 billion years' time; humanity will need to evolve and move on. This is around 3,000 times longer than Homo sapiens has existed as a species, so there's no great rush.]

But will the end of the Universe (however it happens) mean the beginning of a new one? Certainly, proponents of the Big Crunch theory suggest that after everything comes together in a singularity, it immediately kicks off the next Big Bang. And so on, ad infinitum. Sir Roger Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology posits that once the last atom ceases to vibrate at the universe's heat death, time runs to an end; without time there is no space – and from that begins, yes, the next Big Bang. So two of the models foresee a universe of infinite duration, with new ones arising from the ashes of the previous ones. Two don't. They envisage a total annihilation of all matter.

But what would happen to consciousness, both small-'c' and the large-'C' ,when space-time runs out? Will we be safely gathered in? Will we be saved? I shall speculate on this tomorrow.

Lent 2024: Day 26
Understanding the esoteric
(In which I dream of the Random Number Veneration Generator)

Lent 2023, Day 26
The Ghost in the Machine

Lent 2022: Day 26
The End of Times

Lent 2021: Day 26
Physical Immortality

Lent 2020: Day 26
Intimations of Immortality

Reality – as we perceive it, and as it is – Lent 2025: Day 24

Into the second half of Lent, downhill towards Easter. Going nicely. Today, I want to turn my attention to what we consider to be our 'reality'. Solid things, people, places, arranged in space and time – we feel we know exactly what reality is. We can sense it all around! But do we truly understand?

We can all agree that everything's made out of molecules, which in turn are made out of atoms. Yet none of us have ever seen an atom – even nuclear physicists will only have seen something that's a representation of an atom. Yet within those atoms exist smaller particles; electrons forming a probability cloud around a nucleus, which scientific consensus assures us is made of protons and neutrons, each made of up quarks and down quarks, though how that works (gauge bosons, gluons, leptons, whatever) is way beyond the understanding of all but the most dedicated specialist. So we end up take the Standard Model on trust, rather like in early times, mediaeval people would take the existence of Jesus Christ as the only begotten son of God on trust. 

Below: how Google Gemini's Imagen 3.0 pictures the sub-atomic (not very accurately, but try illustrating a cloud of probability) and the pangalactic.

We scarcely give any thought to the fact that the chairs we sit on consist of atoms that are essentially empty space. And yet they are. A hydrogen atom is about 99.9999999999996% empty space. If the nucleus were the size of a pea, the atom would be about the size of the dome of St Paul's Cathedral. Looking out over a landscape we're seeing fields and forests, fences, clouds and sky – what we're really gazing at is unimaginable numbers of atoms.

And the planet on which we live is whizzing around our local star, one of between 100 billion and 400 billion stars in our local galaxy. Which is just one of 200 billion to 2,000 billion (or two trillion) galaxies in the observable universe.

Just as we are unable to grasp the subatomic nature of reality, we cannot grasp the galactic scale either. Yes, we can recite the numbers, how very tiny and how very huge they are, but our imaginations struggle. 

You may try to deny the reality of reality, but to do so would be to question the physicalist model agreed upon by science. No rational thinker in the Middle Ages would question the existence of God either.

As human beings, we have evolved in the meso-scale; that is where we are; what lies above and below is of no evolutionary consequence to us. Finding food, finding a mate, avoiding predators. If you can do that, you are biologically fit. 

Cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman argues that in the same way as our laptop screens show us, via a graphic user interface, icons, words and images so that we can operate our devices, which are essentially voltages running through silicon, we relate to the world around us via a 3D graphic user interface in our mind. This interface, says Prof. Hoffman, evolved to perceive reality in a way that works best in evolution. Escaping tigers is more useful than seeing inside of an atom or scanning distant galaxies. Natural selection selected the optimal model for us to interface with reality.

Yet despite this, we cannot deny the existence of the subatomic or the innards of a black hole.

I would posit that much the same can be said about the reality of consciousness; all we know of it is what we experience at our own subjective level – qualia; units of the awareness of being. You know what it feels like to be you; you can imagine what it may be like to be me, but we'd both struggle to imagine consciousness at the subatomic or the cosmic level.

We can but intuit; reaching up to try to understand the nature of the Divine Consciousness is akin to gazing at the heavens without a telescope. 

Lent 2024: Day 24
The Ego Alone

Lent 2023, Day 24
We are all Sentinelese? 

Lent 2022: Day 24
Memory, identity and reincarnation

Lent 2021: Day 24
Reconciling science and spirituality

Lent 2020: Day 24
Refutation (II)

Aligned

A rare alignment in the heavens – you will need to click to enlarge this image  of ulica Ogrodowa in Sułkowice last night in a new tab, then open in new tab to see full size. Look into the top right; you will see a crescent moon, between its horns (barely visible but there) is Saturn; then in a straight line from Saturn, through the Moon, you'll see Venus. Saturn, the Roman god was described as a god of abundance, wealth, agriculture. Saturn's mythological reign was depicted as a Golden Age of abundance and peace. Venus, the Roman goddess, was the Roman goddess of love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity and victory.

These days, living indoors in big cities bathed in nocturnal light, we lose the old familiarity of the night sky. Our forefathers would have easily been able to point to most of the constellations in the sky. And alignments as unusual as this one, would have been endowed with a special significance – a portent.

What could such a sign... mean?

On my walk this evening, another frosty night (-4.5°C) I was followed home by a kitten. My first thought was that it had escaped from one of the farms along the main road through Jakubowizna. So I walked the length of the road and then back again, pausing at each house, at each gate along the way to see whether the kitten would pop through the railings having found its way back home. But no – it would shortly reappear and chase along after me. We did this right to the station, and the past the last house it followed me along my lane, to my działka. The kitten, about five months old, is (according to Moni) a calico (tortoiseshell white)/tabby female. I took a mugshot of it and posted it on the Chynów community Facebook page, advertising a kitten found. Two people immediately reposted. I will go back to check whether any posters have appeared along the street in Jakubowizna – if no one responds, it looks like I will have been adopted by a cat.

Now, given that Moni's late cat was called 'Jowisz' (Jupiter), this one has to be named after a planet too, and given the propitious alignment of Saturn and Venus in the heavens, and that it's a female, the only name she can have is 'Wenus', diminutive 'Wenusia' or just simply – 'Nusia'. Below: her markings make for good camouflage at this time of year.

If an ad does appear for a lost kitten, Nusia shall be returned. (Having lost cats in Jeziorki, it's good when someone does respond to a 'gone missing' poster.) If not, it seems that fate has brought us together on a frosty winter's night when Venus, the Moon and Saturn were aligned.

This time last year:
2023: A year in travel

This time two years ago:
Letters to the Postman

This time three years ago:
Progress at Warsaw West station
[The end is in sight – this summer]

This time six years ago:
From West London to South Warsaw

This time nine years ago:
Anger and hate have no place in political discourse

This time 11 years ago:
Is Conservatism rural or urban in nature?

This time 12 years ago:
Poland's roads get slightly less deadly

This time 13 years ago:
It's expensive being rich in Warsaw 

This time 15 years:
Winter commuting in colour and black & white

This time 16 years ago:
Zamienie in winter

This time 17 years ago:
Really cold (-12C at night)

The Spirituality of Cosmic Life - Lent 2023: Day 23

Given the vastness of the Universe - not just our own galaxy, the Milky Way, but across all galaxies to the furthest fringes of what we can observe - there simply must be life.

Yet all we know for certain is that the Big Bang, the origin of all we see in the night sky, happened 13.8 billion years ago, and that life has emerged here on our planet. 

In our feeble attempts to define 'God', a supernatural or metaphysical reason and purpose for Everything, we must acknowledge that were the Universe more than just a random thing that exists, God must indeed be universal. Like the laws of physics - present in the same way across the Cosmos.

Our understanding of the fringes of the observable universe are filtered by the fact that we're seeing how it looked billions of years ago, before our solar system was even born. So the development of sentient life, and then civilisations, outside our own galaxy is not something we can observe  in anything like real time. And remember, the Milky Way is but one of around 200 billion galaxies that we can observe.

The panpsychists' notion of consciousness connecting all matter requires it to act superluminally (faster than the speed of light) - indeed supercausally. This requires a leap of faith, abandoning the accepted limit that nothing with rest mass can be accelerated to the speed of light, with massless photons being the only particles capable of travel at that speed. Accelerating matter to speeds approaching those of light requires increasing amounts of energy that would approach infinity. 

But the panpsychist's consciousness is by its nature massless, like a proton or (unconfirmed) graviton. That would match my intuition. A universal substrate upon which, through which, matter moves, interacting with it. As I say, this is nothing more than a hunch, but an idea I'd like to see taken further.

Assuming that consciousness is universal, massless and superluminal and indeed supercausal, it must affect all sentient life on whatever planet of whatever star system of whatever galaxy it finds itself. And indeed, on interstellar (or interdimensional or intertemporal) craft.

Can interstellar craft travel faster than light? Well, there is the Alcubierre drive, a theoretical idea in which space is warped (compressed ahead of the craft, expanded behind it). Objects can't accelerate to lightspeed within normal spacetime so the Alcubierre drive shifts space around an object so that it arrives at its destination more quickly than light would in normal space, without breaking any physical laws. This would of course break the laws of causality; the craft would arrive at its destination before it had even departed. Literature about UFOs frequently mentions propulsion systems based on electrogravitics or anti-gravity, or other ideas from science fiction. 

But even if superluminal speeds were the ultimate barrier, any civilisation that was, say, a billion years advanced compared to us, has still had time to explore the galaxy using robotic self-replicating probes (as posited by John von Neumann as early as 1948) travelling at a small fraction of lightspeed. These ought to be everywhere by now - except they're not - or we've not seen them. There are many explanations to the Fermi Paradox (given how much life there should be out there - where is everybody?); two possibilities are the Zoo Hypothesis ('don't interfere with creatures less evolved than you') and the Shadow Biosphere Hypothesis (they are here, but we humans don't see them).

So - whether aliens are here or not, there is a vastly more likelihood that intelligent life exists across the Cosmos; the next question is - how does that life refer to the question of spirituality?

If could ask an alien one question, it would be regarding its worldview - ultimately reductionist-materialist, or spiritual? Does all sentient life in the Universe share one God - one reason, one purpose?

[Today marks the halfway point of Lent.]

Lent 2022: Day 23
Matter and materialism

Lent 2021: Day 23
Near-death experiences and the Afterlife

Lent 2020: Day 23
Refutation I

God, Aliens and the Unfolding Universe - Lent 2023: Day 22

These are just my half-baked thoughts on the subject. The vastness of our observable Universe - the sheer number of stars and exoplanets - and the relative youth of our industrial civilisation, lead me to believe that there are many advanced civilisation in our corner of the galaxy, and that some at least have visited us. Or that there are other dimensions of time and/or of space, from which aliens visit.

Science mocks such assertions (less so today than in the past); the consensus will state that we are alone on our planet.For many with an interest in the subject, it is clear that it's not something that can be brushed off or laughed at. The sheer volume of eyewitness accounts over the past 80 years, from all over the world, suggests that there's something going on, but we don't know what it is.

Individual cases, individual witnesses, can be debunked, ignored or derided. But when so many testimonies exist, it's hard to dismiss it all. [If you are interested, watching films on the Eyes on Cinema YouTube channel is required viewing. These span many years and many countries, and what grabs me is the consistency of the reports, the seriousness and credibility of the witness, who include police officers and pilots.]

Over the decades, saucer-shaped and cigar-shaped craft have given way to black triangles and glowing orbs; in the small percentage of cases where aliens are observed, they are either small grey beings with large heads or tall humanoids. 

Documents purportedly from the US government that have surfaced as a result of the Freedom of Information Act suggest retrieved alien craft and unsuccessful attempt to reengineer the technology, which seems to be guided by consciousness, with propulsion systems that our physics cannot fathom. And most worrying are the testimonies of those who claim to have been abducted by aliens and subject to invasive medical procedures.

I've never seen one, so I don't wish to speculate, but looking at well-documented cases going back decades - the ones that still bear up to scrutiny and haven't been rejected out of hand as hoaxes or misidentifications - it's clear that this phenomenon should be taken seriously.

Personally, I don't think that we as a society, as a species, are ready for the existential shock of learning that we are being visited, so I can understand why governments are not keen to let the cat out of the bag. Rather, I believe that we are being slowly - over generations - being acclimatised to the notion; in the words of Dark Skies creator and UFO podcast host Bryce Zabel, disclosure in the form of a slow dissolve rather than a jump-cut. No rush.

The ontological repercussions of knowing (not just speculating) that advanced beings from another world are here with us would be shocking to science, technology, business, society and religions.

If such beings exist - would they have a God? How much more Godlike would they be than us - not just in their ability to do things beyond our understanding of physics - but in how they see the Cosmos, its past and its future.

Earthly religions would cope in different ways - fundamentally, the split would go within faiths rather than between them. Anyone who believed in the literal word of their religion's holy book would have huge problems in dealing with this new reality. Those who saw their scriptures as a metaphor, something that needs interpreting and adapting to our modern reality might find it easier. Those who see religions in a metaphysical sense, seeing their highest common factors, will cope best.

I intend to delve further into this topic during this, the fourth week of Lent, in an attempt to define a Supreme Purpose in the Universe - one that would apply to all forms of sentience across the Cosmos.

More ufological spirituality tomorrow!

Lent 2022: Day 22
The Good Lord and the Environment

Lent 2021: Day 22
Muscle Memory, Mindfulness and Metaphysics

Lent 2020: Day 22
Repeatable Metaphysical Experiences

Intuition, Consciousness and the Physical Universe - Lent 2023: Day 18

Here's an intuition I jotted down in my notebook five days ago, captured on paper as soon as I had it: "Intuitions pass through you like neutrinos; most pass straight through you, some you catch and let go and forget, some you catch and hold." Those words, noted on the morning of Monday 6 March.

Intriguing! Like neutrinos, eh? 

I check.

"Neutrinos are abundant subatomic particles famous for passing through anything and everything, only very rarely interacting with matter. About 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second."

The vast majority of neutrinos are a byproduct of nuclear fusion in a star's core. There are also (rarer) neutrinos born in supernovae. But to me, the most interesting form is the relic neutrino, found in the Cosmic Neutrino Background. 

From Wikipedia: "The cosmic neutrino background (CNB) is the universe's background particle radiation composed of relic neutrinos. The CNB is a relic of the Big Bang; the CNB separated from matter when the universe was just one second old [my emphasis]. As neutrinos rarely interact with matter, these relic neutrinos still exist today." It is estimated that relic neutrinos make up about 1% of all neutrinos in the universe

So - every second. 10¹⁴ neutrinos pass through your body. Proportionately, even if only 2 x 10¹² pass through your brain (occupying 2% of the body's volume), and only 1% of all neutrinos are relic neutrinos, that still leaves us with 2 x 10¹⁰ relic neutrinos passing through the brain every second.

But it's the 'very rarely interact' part that's interesting. 

How rarely is 'very rarely'? I ask ChatGPT: "The probability that a neutrino will interact with matter is incredibly small, typically less than 1 in 10 billion." Expressed in orders of magnitude that's less than 10^-10.

OK - now we're getting somewhere! We are now in an order of magnitude where in theory, a relic neutrino could be interacting with the matter within your brain twice a second.

What is the nature of that interaction? Chat GPT again: "The interaction of a neutrino with matter is described in terms of the weak nuclear force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature. The weak force is responsible for the decay of subatomic particles, and it is the force that governs the interaction of neutrinos with matter. When a neutrino interacts with matter, it typically exchanges a W or Z boson - the particles that mediate the weak force." All very dry. Can you feel that relic neutrino triggering a Z boson exchange? It happens twice a second or so...

Now I step in with a controversial proposition. What if relic neutrinos have some part to play in Consciousness? What if they are the basic building block of consciousness, or carrier of consciousness, or are in some other way linked to the phenomenon that we experience as consciousness? What, if in their incredibly rare interactions with biology, they spark... intuition?

This is all flaky stuff, built on nothing but the most basic knowledge of physics and cosmology, and above all - on intuition. But it is something - a modest attempt at least to engage with the Hard Problem of Consciousness in a non-Dualist way.

Lent 2022: Day 18
Zen in the Art of Meditation

Lent 2021: Day 18
Possibilianism

Lent 2020: Day 18
Teetering on the Edge of Chaos

The Puddle’s Reality – Lent 2023: Day eight

 [Inspired by a chat with Felix last night]

“The puddle thought to itself. ‘How amazing. I am exactly the same shape and size as the hole I fill. How much of a coincidence is that?! The hole I find myself in must have been made to have me in it!” 

This analogy, from British sci-fi comedy writer and radical atheist Douglas Adams, is often used as an argument refuting the anthropic principle and fine-tuned universe, about which I wrote in my previous post.

If the Universe didn't fulfil all the conditions necessary to form and expand, it wouldn't be here - but if conscious observers weren't around to observe it - it wouldn't matter whether it was here or not. So - did the Universe just happen to be? Did our consciousness just happen to emerge?

Are we looking for meaning where none necessarily exists? Do we seek metaphysical explanations where perfectly rational ones will do?

Let's look at Adams' puddle analogy. The list of conditions that a puddle must fulfil to perfectly fit its space is short (the fluidity of water, the impermeability of the hole; gravity). Rainwater will create a puddle to fill any hole, whatever its shape; a Universe will only give rise to conscious life if all the specific conditions are met. 

But then for you to exist in the form you are now, you will have to multiply the chances of a Universe suitable for life forming (low) by the list of conditions that every one of your ancestors had to fulfil to reproduce in an unbroken chain (infinitesimally low); trillions of consecutive successful reproductions long, for you to be here reading this now. 

A miraculous you in a miraculous Universe.

My personal intuition bends towards miracle rather than chance. Although I cannot prove this in a laboratory experiment, nor in an equation, I feel there is an intention standing behind it all. 

Whose intention? Certainly not an anthropomorphic male God as presented by many religions. I don't believe our intellects are anywhere near powerful enough to perceive the underlying reality and purpose and destination of our Universe, we can merely intuit. 

A daily sense of connection, an awareness of the statistical improbability of one's conscious existence, however is necessary. Thinking to oneself: "I am. How miraculous, that I am. Here I am, in a miraculous Universe, which I can see unfolding!" And then to feel gratitude for it.

The odds are so vast, they cannot merely be put down to coincidence.

But sometimes coincidences do happen. Yesterday I was in motion; running around town from meeting to errand to office to dinner, long walk around Warsaw, then catching the night train to Szczecin. Today on the train back to Warsaw, I checked yesterday’s paces on my health app. Not bad! 19,101. I entered it into my spreadsheet. My 2023 daily walking target that I set myself on 1 January was 11,800 paces. As I entered yesterday’s score and pressed enter, I was amazed that the average number of paces I walked daily across January and February was… exactly 11,800. But noticing this (and keeping a spreadsheet for the tenth year) is a bit on the Asperger’s spectrum, and I want to dive deeper into this topic during the second week of Lent – Spirituality and Neurodiversity.

Next though - physical reality vs. the metaphysical.

Lent 2022: Day eight
Body and Soul

Lent 2021: Day eight
Guilty of feeling guilty

Lent 2020: Day eight
Salvation - or peace of mind?

A Universe hand-crafted for us all - Lent 2023: Day seven

This post should logically third in this series, as it is a continuation of my thoughts about the entire Universe, and again, the utter miracle that as a result of the Big Bang, galaxies and suns and planets have come to be, at least one of those planets hosting sentient life.

The odds against there being a Universe at all - rather than an inchoate cloud of random subatomic particles - or nothing at all, as matter and anti-matter destroy themselves mutually - are astronomical.

Yet there is life, and that life is sophisticated enough on our planet to have given rise to a technological civilisation. Looking at the barren rock that is our moon, or our (so far) unsuccessful attempts to find life on Mars or Venus, it's clear that when in the orbit of a star that's neither too small or too big or too unpredictable, there's only a narrow zone that favours life. And the same for any galaxy - there's a habitable zone, a sweet-spot, outside of which the evolution of life would be greatly limited.

So here we are in the right zone around the right sort of star in the right part of the galaxy. Yet there's more to the notion of a world fine-tuned for life than that. 

Just a small change in a handful of fundamental physical constants would make the entire universe quite different. The laws of science as currently understood, are underpinned by fundamental numbers, such as the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron which make it seem that they have been set precisely to make possible the development of life.

Let us look at one of these constants, the strength of the force binding protons and neutrons into nuclei, denoted by the symbol Epsilon, (ε). The value of ε is 0.007. If it were 0.006, no other atom other than hydrogen could possibly exist, and complex chemistry would be impossible. Yet if it were above 0.008, no hydrogen would exist, as all the hydrogen would have been fused shortly after the Big Bang; without hydrogen, life could not possible exist. 

All the other fundamental physical constants are similarly fine-tuned for life. Water freezes from the surface down rather than from the bottom up, unlike other liquids. That the energy state of the carbon atom allows for its abundance throughout the cosmos, a building-block of sentient life. Gravity is neither too strong nor too weak.

Had any one of these fundamental physical constants differed only slightly from those observed, the evolution of the Universe from its early state to where it is now would have proceeded quite differently and life as it is understood may not have been possible.

British astronomer, Fred Hoyle (famous for coining the term 'Big Bang' - ironically something in which he didn't believe) argued for a fine-tuned universe: "The list of anthropic properties, apparent accidents of a non-biological nature without which carbon-based and hence human life could not exist, is large and impressive".

So - you can either consider these many factors creating conditions to be mere chance, without all of which we would simply not be here to marvel at the fact - or we can begin to ask why the Universe has been set up in such a way. A miracle here, a one-in-a-billion chance there, a statistical improbability over there. [Some scientists posit that myriad Universes have failed to form because their fundamental constants were wrong.] But our Universe is here, because we are here to observe it. And the statistical improbability of the universe existing multiplied by the statistical improbability of you existing (see this post if you've not read it already)

Yet both are in place, the Universe, and you. Allowing life to exist here on our planet, at this particular time, and be observed by you.

This should raise the question of Purpose - why are we here, and why is the Universe unfolding the way it is. The odds that you are alive today, given the trillions of a misstep along the way, in a Universe that should not have arisen, leads me also to ask - would your consciousness still exist if your parents hadn't met?

Lent 2022: Day seven
Monism, dualism and non-dualism

Lent 2021: Day seven
How much spirituality do we need in our lives?

Lent 2020: Day seven
Build your own Religion - the Trappings of Faith

The Nature of Reality (Pt 2) - Lent 2023: Day three

Yesterday I wrote about the inner space within the atom, of the force holding the quarks that form the neutron together, the nature of reality at the subatomic level, billions of billions times smaller than anything our eyes can see. The fundamental building blocks of our universe.

Yesterday I was juggling extremely small numbers, such as the diameter of a hydrogen atom. And something ten billion times smaller than that - the smallest distance that's theoretically possible - the Planck length (1.616 x 10^-35 meters). 

Today, we will be zooming right out to the furthest fringes of the observable Universe. Today I write about outer space - our solar system, our galaxy, and the 200 billion or so galaxies that make up what we currently perceive as the observable universe.

Since last year's Lent, the James Webb Space telescope has been successfully deployed. It has been transmitting stunning images of distant galaxies, as well as discovering exoplanets and trawling through our own asteroid belt. It is expected that it will deliver as many cosmological discoveries as the Hubble space telescope did before it, expanding the size of our observable universe.

One thing I learnt this past year from the numerous astronomy talks I've watched on YouTube is that the Oort Cloud, a shell of icy particles lying beyond furthest fringes of our solar system, extends out to some 3.2 light years from the Sun. This is about three quarters of the way between us and the nearest star system to ours - Proxima Centauri. Now, Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star, one-eighth of the mass of our sun. If it has its own equivalent of an Oort Cloud, this should extend out to less than half a light year from Proxima Centauri. Near neighbour on our doorstep, in other words.

Proxima Centauri is located about four and a quarter light years from our sun. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is 87,400 light years across, and contains up to 400 billion stars. The nearest galaxy to the Milky Way is Andromeda, 2.5 million light years away. We are seeing it today as it looked during the Early Pleistocene epoch on earth, before the emergence of the earliest hominids. Andromeda contains around a trillion stars. The Milky Way and Andromeda are just two galaxies in the Virgo Supercluster, our local supercluster, which contains around 100 galaxies. It's 110 million light years across.

The observable Universe stretches 41.5 billion light years in each direction from us and contains around 200 billion galaxies (each of around 100 million stars on average). Beyond the edge of the observable Universe? We just don't know; light from beyond that distance isn't observable. It could be bigger - much vaster, but finite - or else it could be infinite - or it could be one of a number of universes, an infinite number even. We don't know.

However, we do know that just under 5% of our observable Universe is made up of matter - the atoms I wrote about yesterday, protons and neutrons, each made up of three quarks, bound together by the strong atomic force in a nucleus, surrounded by an electron shell [remember, hydrogen has no neutron]. We can postulate that the rest of the matter and energy of the observable Universe consists of dark matter (holding galaxies together) and dark energy (pushing galaxies away from one another). Although no one has detected either dark matter or dark energy, they are calculated to make up around 27% (dark matter) and 63% (dark energy) of the contents of the Universe - the 95% that isn't ordinary matter.

We know that Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago. So why is the observable universe more than 13.8 billion light years in radius? It suggests that spacetime has expanded three times faster than light...

Trying to work out how fast the Universe is expanding isn't easy. The Hubble Constant, used to determine the speed with which galaxies are flying apart, has been variously calculated as being between 63 and 73 kilometres per second per megaparsec, is proving hard to hammer down into a number which squares with all observations. Again, right now, we don't know.

The reality of the observable Universe remains unknown to science ('the crisis in cosmology'), yet it's the same science that works so well on our human scale, that brings us such civilisational advances as the laptop and internet on which I am currently writing.

To help me put the subatomic and the galactic into perspective, I asked ChatGPT how many cubes, with each side one Planck length long, would fit into the observable Universe. Here's its answer:

The Planck length is approximately 1.616 x 10^-35 meters, and is believed to be the smallest measurable length scale in the universe.

To calculate the number of cubes with each side being a Planck length that can fit into the volume of the observable universe, divide the volume of the observable universe by the volume of one cube. The volume of one cube with each side being a Planck length is (1.616 x 10^-35)³ = 4.224 x 10^-105 cubic meters.

Dividing the volume of the observable universe (4 x 10⁸⁰ cubic Planck lengths) by the volume of one cube (4.224 x 10^-105 cubic meters) gives: (4 x 10⁸⁰) / (4.224 x 10^-105) = 9.47 x 10¹⁸⁴ cubes.

Therefore, you can fit approximately 9.47 x 10¹⁸⁴ cubes, with each side being a Planck length, into the volume of the observable universe*.

That's the biggest meaningful number in our Universe - of course you could continue multiplying it by successive orders of magnitude - but so what?

***** ***

The reason that I have been in recent years fascinated by physics and cosmology boils down to my quest for a better understanding of God.

If we are to reconcile science and spirituality, we need to start with an understanding of the physical nature of our reality, at the smallest and largest levels imaginable. And then to look for purpose - why all this came into being - and why our consciousness is here to observe it?

* UPDATE 2024: I asked Google Gemini the same question. It came up with exactly the same order of magnitude, but preceded by the number 5.44 rather than 9.47, and with a more subtle answer: 

In reality, packing identical spheres (analogous to cubes here) efficiently into a larger space leads to wasted space. The best known packing efficiency for spheres is around 74%, achieved by the Kepler conjecture. Applying this factor reduces the number of cubes by 26%, resulting in about 3.96 x 10¹⁸⁴ cubes.

Lent 2022: Day three
Gratitude and Consciousness

Lent 2021: Day three
Would the Universe exist without us?

Lent 2020: Day three
Define your Deity

Behold the Wonder of the Commonplace

1. Ninety-three million miles (150,000 million km) from us shines our Sun. Did it have to be there for us? Without it, no earth, no life on earth.

2. The sun emits light and heat from a massive thermonuclear reaction at its core; radiation from the sun takes eight minutes to reach us.

3. That light and that heat makes plants grow on our planet. Plants such as grasses, fruit and vegetables.

4. These plants convert that energy from the sun into food which we can eat, and which can be eaten by animals, birds and fish, which we can also eat. This gives us energy to move and to think and feel.

5. Our star, Sun, formed 4.6 billion years ago from a molecular cloud, 9.2 billion years after Big Bang. What happened before Big Bang - science can only hypothesise. We do know, however, that our planet began to form around 4.5 billion years ago, in an orbit around our Sun that was just right for life to emerge.

6. Life on our planet began 100 million years after that. The jump from non-life (gas, water, rocks) to life (self-replicating forms that can grow, react, transform energy and transfer information into next generations) is also something about which science can only hypothesise (abiogensis). As far as we know, the jump from non-life to life occurred only the once.

7. Our last universal common ancestor lived 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago, and from this one organism evolved all forms of life on our planet - plants, animals, bacteria, funghi, slime moulds and archaea.

8. There is an unbroken chain of reproduction that runs all the way from the very first life to emerge on this planet to you. Many billions of generations. Had just one of those reproductions failed to happen - your body would not be alive today. (But - I believe - your consciousness would still be here, albeit inhabiting a different organism.)

9. The fact that you are alive on this planet of ours is an absolute miracle, the odds against it being billions to one. But here you are! Conscious! Aware of your awareness! Relish every moment! Give thanks for it!

10. Modern urban life disconnects us from these truths. It is time to reconnect. Plant your bare feet on the soil. Look up at the starry skies. Look at the moss growing, look at clouds forming. Hold a leaf, a blade of grass, in your hand (don't pull it away from the tree or the ground!) - examine it, feel it feeling alive. Re-establish contact with nature. Express gratitude. Be hopeful. 

Your journey from Zero to One is infinitely long. But we will get there.

This time last year:
The force-field of fate

This time two years ago:
Hot in the city

This time three years ago:
Resting with the heroes

This time five years ago:
Polish employers' demographic challenge

This time nine years ago:
The rich, the poor, the entrepreneur

This time ten years ago:
Food: where's the best place to shop in Poland? 

This time 11 years ago:
Bittersweet

This time 12 years ago:
Commuting made easy

This time 13 years ago:
Work starts on the S79/S2 'Elka'

This time 14 years ago:
Warsaw's accident-filled streets

Aliens, angels and daemons - Lent 2022, Day 11

The biggest single thing that has changed in my thinking since last year's Lenten reflections has been the mounting body of evidence that craft from other worlds are here, on our planet. The report to the US Congress from the Director of the Office of National Intelligence made public on 25 June 2021 was revelatory. The US military admitted that it has recordings of unidentified physical craft not of any known human-made origin. This was followed up by the Gillibrand-Rubio amendment to the National Defense Appropriation Act for 2022, which required the Pentagon to log all data pertaining to unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and release a report by 31 October of this year.

Even a cursory examination of what's happening - from the 2017 release of the so-called 'TicTac' video on - suggests that simply ignoring the issue of unidentified flying objects is unwise. Scientists who for decades have ridiculed UFOs are beginning to approach the subject with a more open mind - Avi Loeb, astronomy professor at Harvard being one example, Stanford's Garry P. Nolan being another. 

There's a lot going on, if you're prepared to look. In essence, the US military now admits to having many documented cases of UAP recorded on multiple sensor platforms (radar, infra-red cameras, eyewitness accounts from aircrew etc) that it is unable to explain away in rational terms (data anomalies, digital artefacts, Venus low in the sky, flocks of geese, weather balloons etc). This leaves the possibility of adversaries' technology (highly unlikely), US technology (unlikely given the presence of UAP in restricted airspace, posing a danger to pilots) or alien craft.

So this leaves the last explanation - craft from other worlds - as looking increasingly probable.

What are the spiritual implications of the existence of other beings (who could just as well be from another solar system, another time or another dimension)? Why are they here, visiting Earth - what is their purpose? Are they benign, malignant or just neutral observers? Assuming the Pentagon's so-called 'five observables' (instantaneous acceleration/trans-medium travel/no visible form of lift (wings/ rotors)/no visible exhaust/some form of cloaking), they are beyond our current understanding of physics, and may be demonstrating technology thousands of years ahead of ours. So what is their understanding of the Universe - indeed, of consciousness, of life, of a Deity?

Where do they fit into humanity's views of God and Heaven? 

Consciousness is the key here. Imagine beings that are millions of years in advance of us, who can guide their craft by mind power. ("Internet of things? We have telepathy of things.") Tapping into the fields of quantum spin to will desired outcomes from out of myriad possibilities. Powers that we can barely imagine, the result of being millennia of evolution of consciousness ahead of us. Where do we fit in? 

Constructing a cosmology that accepts the presence of alien life here on Earth will require a shift in our perceptions greater than those required when Copernicus proved that mankind was not at the centre of the Universe, but that our planet was one of several orbiting our sun. And far greater than those shifts required when Hubble stated that our galaxy is merely one of billions in the known universe

The Fermi Paradox ('if the Drake Equation is correct, where is everybody?') is explainable in terms of the North Sentinel Islands, inhabited by indigenous people who have been protected by the Indian government. A 'no-contact' policy has been enforced, and no one is to approach within three miles of the islands, allowing the North Sentinelese to live without any external interference.

This would seem to be the case with alien entities and mankind An exception - perhaps - being that aliens might intervene to prevent planetary destruction by nuclear holocaust. This theory is proposed by those ufologists who point to numerous historical sightings of UFOs over nuclear weapons bases.

I can accept the notion of an alien presence on earth, and even tales of alien abductions of humans and some form of hybrid alien-human breeding programme. The classic 'greys' - four foot tall, big heads and eyes, skinny arms and legs - could be biological drones, von Neumann machines, built of local material (human DNA), to be sent off into space to explore distant star systems. We are clueless. Maybe our governments know more than they can let on to, for fear of social disturbance. One part of that disturbance would be to our science - the other part, to our religions.

This time last year:
Reconciling science and spirituality

This time two years ago:
The metaphysical journey as I see it

This time five years ago:
Spirit of Age, spirit of Place

This time six years ago:
The crux of the matter

This time eight years ago:
10,000 steps is a lot for one day

This time nine years ago:
Bary mleczne - Warsaw's cheap eateries

This time 11 years ago:
Old Town, another prospect

This time 12 years ago:
W-wa Śródmieście - commuters' staging post

This time 13 years ago:
Filthy ul. Poloneza

This time 14 years ago:
A sight that heralds the coming of spring

The Year of the Phenomenon

It was on 1 June when a former colleague from work back in the Old Country sent me a link to a YouTube video about an interesting UFO case in Wales (thanks Nick!). After watching it, YouTube helpfully posted some more UFO-related links, including one that alerted me to the fact that on 25 June, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence would report to Congress about what the Pentagon knows about UFOs, or to use modern parlance, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP).

The report was duly delivered to Congress on that day (I wrote about it here). Couched in cautious, bureaucratic language, avoiding sensation, the report said in essence that yes, there is a phenomenon; it is real; it cannot be explained. Quoting from the report: "Most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects given that a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation." Out of 144 cases investigated by the military, only one was dismissed as a deflating weather balloon. The rest - they don't know. [If you're a sceptical debunker, you might like to help the US Navy with their investigations. They couldn't explain away these 143 cases - maybe you could.]

Since the report was published, Congress has passed the National Defense Appropriation Act for Fiscal Year 2022. This now includes an amendment calling for a new body to be set up to investigate UAP sightings, determining their source and their health effects on humans, and whether or not (as some believe) the US government actually has any alien craft in its possession. The amendment also calls for reports about UAP to be presented to Congress annually. The first of these is due on 31 October 2022 - Halloween - eight days before the US holds its mid-term elections.

On 17 December 1969, the US government's Project Blue Book, the code name for the systematic study of UFOs by the United States Air Force was officially closed. The final summary stated:

• No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the USAF was ever an indication of threat to national security
• There was no evidence submitted to or discovered by the USAF that sightings categorized as 'unidentified' represented technological developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge; and
• There was no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as 'unidentified' were extraterrestrial vehicles

The UFO story has moved forward a long way since then. However, it's one thing to say: "There's a phenomenon - we don't know what it is; yes, there are physical craft - not ours, not our adversaries'." It's quite another to say: "We have possession of multiple craft and we've been trying for decades to reverse-engineer alien technology." And still another yet to say: "These aliens abduct human beings for their hybrid-race breeding programme", or that "we are being visited by numerous groups of aliens with their own diverse agendas, and this has been going on for thousands of years."

Each of the above statements is a red line; this year we - the human species - have crossed the first. I dare not speculate on whether there are more (I suspect the answer must be 'yes'), nor when we will cross them. The US government is now clearly saying, and for the first time, that these sightings by trained military personnel are something else other than misidentified flocks of geese, swamp gas or Venus low in the sky. 

Next year will also be the 75th anniversary of the Roswell Incident - the alleged crash of a flying saucer in New Mexico in late June/early July 1947. UFO lore suggests that a craft - and alien bodies - was recovered, and the US government, through its preferred aerospace contractors, has been attempting to figure out how the craft functions. A leap of faith too far? I'm sure that next summer there will be an outpouring of works of varying quality into what happened at Roswell.

How quickly this will all unravel is a puzzle. Personally, I don't believe mankind is ready yet to face a reality that we are not alone.

Religion - big business - science - all stakeholders in the comfortable status quo - will find it a hugely difficult to accept as a fact the physical presence of beings (or even just their craft!) on our planet.

Science - which still has so much to discover, from the nature of dark energy and dark matter, to what happened before the Big Bang (nothing? Endless cycles of expansion and contraction?), to the nature of consciousness - will get its knickers in a massive twist over final evidence of UFOs. From what we can gather to date, these are craft without visible means of lift or propulsion, capable of trans-medium travel, almost-instantaneous acceleration, ability to perform manoeuvres that would rip apart any man-made airframe, and to mask themselves from view at will. From what the US Navy is insinuating, the technologies used are far in advance of our knowledge of physics.

Some scientists are open to embrace the Possible. One of these is the head of Harvard's astronomy department, Avi Loeb. Sceptical at first (when asked about the US Navy's videos of UAP, he initially suggested it was a camera malfunction), Prof Loeb has since set up the Galileo Project, which "is dedicated to the proposition that humans can no longer ignore the possible existence of extraterrestrial technological civilizations, and that science should not dogmatically reject potential extraterrestrial explanations because of social stigma or cultural preferences, factors which are not conducive to the scientific method of unbiased, empirical inquiry."

Is a timetable for a staged disclosure being set out?

This morning, as I was about to do my daily blood-pressure reading, the word 'preternatural' just swam, unbidden, into my stream of consciousness. From Wiktionary:

Preternatural - beyond or not conforming to what is natural or according to the regular course of things;  having an existence outside of the natural world. Usage notes: in modern secular use, it refers to extraordinary but still natural phenomena. In religious and occult usage, used similarly to supernatural, meaning 'outside of nature', but usually to a lower level than supernatural. For example, in Catholic theology, 'preternatural' refers to properties of creatures like angels, while supernatural refers to properties of God alone.

Earlier in the week, I thought up the term 'superclassical' for physics that is above the classical Newtonian mechanics that everyone learned at school and can intuitively understand. This would start with quantum physics, and encompass everything that we might one day learn from other-world craft - wheresoever those other worlds actually are. (Imagine, if you will, three dimensions of time, paralleling the three dimensions of space. Not just time that runs from past to future (ie backward and forward) but also time that runs up-down, and time that runs left-right.)

And on my walk this afternoon to Dawidy, David Bowie intrudes:

Oh You Pretty Things,

Don't you know you're driving your

Mamas and Papas insane

Let me make it plain,

You gotta make way for the Homo Superior.

 

Look out at your children

See their faces in golden rays

Don't kid yourself they belong to you

They're the start of a coming race

The earth is a bitch

We've finished our news

Homo Sapiens have outgrown their use

All the strangers came today

And it looks as though they're here to stay

- Oh! You Pretty Things - released 17 December 1971. 

If there's one short video from this momentous year that you must watch before dismissing it all out of hand - it's this. Let US Navy pilots, former Pentagon and State Department officials and a US senator talk you through it all.



This time two years ago:
Sentimental stroll - streets of my childhood

This time three years agor
Streets of my childhood
[I did the same walk exactly a year earlier!]

This time four years ago:
Jeziorki - swans and bonus shots

This time six years ago:
A conspiracy to celebrate

This time seven years ago:
The Mythos and the Logos in Russia

This time eight years ago:
Going mobile - I get my first smartofon

This time nine years ago:
The world was meant to end today 
[It may not have ended, but this was a tipping point in history.]

This time ten years ago:
First snow - but proper snow?

The time 11 years ago: 
Dense, wet, rush hour snow

This time 12 years ago:
Evening photography, Powiśle

This time 11 years ago:
The shortest day of the year

This time 14 years ago:
Bye bye borders - Poland joins Schengen

JWST - the magic and the magick

[From a waking thought I had this morning at around 04:15]

If all goes well - if - Friday 24 December will see the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, something astronomer and cosmologists have been waiting for since 2007, its original launch date. The Hubble Space Telescope gave us incredible insights into the nature and history of our Universe - the images from the Hubble Deep Fields programme showed populations of galaxies up to 50 times fainter and further than any previously known. Click on the animated photograph below to see just how amazingly huge the Universe actually is. This is the magic. The aperture on the JWST is over two and half times bigger than Hubble's; great things are expected from the JWST. From Hubble, we learned that the Universe is 13.8 billion years old, narrowing it down from the 10 to 20 billion range estimated previously. 

Parked in a solar orbit 1.5m km from the Earth, with our planet positioned between it and the Sun, the JWST will deploy a massive sunshield to keep its sensitive instruments cold enough to function properly. Among the key tasks with which the JWST will help scientists is establishing Hubble's Constant - the speed with which the Universe is growing in volume. This is currently estimated at roughly 7% per billion years, based on a speed of somewhere between 65 and 77 kilometres per second per megaparsec. Science needs to narrow this range down somewhat! The speed at which the Universe is expanding will help solve the thorny issue of dark matter - the stuff that's keeps galaxies from flying apart - and dark energy - which keeps the Universe expanding at an ever-faster rate. Neither dark matter nor dark energy have ever been detected; they are still little more than mathematically calculated speculations. And yet they are believed to constitute 95% of everything in the Universe (27% dark matter, 68% dark energy, 5% everything that we can actually see). Will the JWST provide the answers?

And will the JWST reveal 'technosignatures' of advanced civilisations on other solar systems? Astro-engineering projects, such as Dyson spheres around stars, efficiently capturing their energy, for instance? Once the JWST is in orbit and functioning, teams of scientists will be able to bid competitively for telescope time to conduct experiments - the teams with the most compelling research projects will get priority.

What other wonders will JWST help science discover? New laws of physics even? 

It could do - but only on the premise that it works.

Much can go wrong with JWST, from the launch pad through to successful deployment. The '30 days of terror' from launch culminating in the unfurling of the six-layered sunscreen and activating the telescopes; the 344 known single points of failure along the road to successful deployment of the mirror; and all the unknown unknowns along the way. 

The Hubble space telescope's mirror turned out to have been incorrectly ground - it was out by 1/450th of a millimetre at the edge. This difference was catastrophic - light reflecting off the edge of the mirror focused on a different point from the light reflecting off its centre. This fault, discovered only once the telescope was up in orbit, necessitated a fix involving astronauts flying up to it in a space shuttle - a mission taking nine days. There are no space shuttles around today, and the JWST's distant orbit precludes such a repair mission should something go wrong.

Is there anything we can do to help with the success of the JWST?

Can we... pray for it? Science does not hold with the notion of magical thinking - effect without physical cause. If I apply a lateral force to the edge of my keyboard, pushing it with my fingertips, the force will cause the keyboard to slide across my desk. I cannot move the keyboard merely by thinking about it. 

Now consider the notion of intermittent faults - the ones that manifest themselves but cannot be diagnosed, be it in your car, central-heating system or laptop - these are the plague of all engineers. Suddenly, my computer's keyboard momentarily freezes. I shake the keyboard (electronics, huh?) and it unfreezes. Can I keep it from freezing just by thinking about it? To a certain degree, I feel I can...

Can we ensure the James Webb Space Telescope's successful launch, deployment and operation by sending a mass of positive thought, overruling out all possibilities of the chaotic, the chance of an unpredicted/unpredictable fault? This would be our magickal thinking, projecting good wishes towards the JWST! We shall soon find out...

[UPDATE: It worked. Perfectly. Science and spirituality, in harmony.]

This time two years ago:
Driving the Silk Road

This time four years ago:
Snapshots of Lublin dressed for Christmas

This time five years ago:
The best of Warsaw's Christmas illuminations

This time six years ago:
Changes on ul. Baletowa

This time seven years ago:
UK migration - don't blame the Poles

This time eight years ago:
Jacek Hugo Bader's White Fever: A Journey to the Frozen Heart of Siberia

This time ten years ago 
Thoughts upon the death of the Dear Leader

This time 11 years ago:
Global warming or climate change?

This time 12 years ago:
Progress along the S79

Getting our heads round UFOs

Friday 25 June came and went. The long-awaited report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to Congress about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) recorded by the US military made it to the front pages of the world's news websites - but usually way down the front page. Top news in America was the sentencing of policeman Derek Chauvin to 22 and half years for the murder of George Floyd. 

Here, for example, is how the BBC covered the story:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57619755

So no great shakes. The world's stock markets didn't show the slightest wobble, the Pope didn't feel the need to address urbi et orbi from a Vatican balcony the following Sunday. Social media (other than hard-core UFO accounts) didn't explode into a frenzy of speculation.

Mankind took the news in its stride. Most of us just skimmed over the headline with a 'meh.' "UFOs? Something for the weirdos, the conspiracy theorists, the fantasists." The subject is not one that affects people's day-to-day lives - but neither does the knowledge that the earth orbits the sun, (and not the other way around), nor that dinosaurs used to walk the earth, nor that protons are made of two up quarks and a down quark.

But what exactly was the news? 

The US military has now openly admitted that it has recordings of unidentified physical craft that are not of any known human-made origin. And that these recordings, in many cases supported by observations of trained military personnel, go back to at least 2004.

To quote from the report: "Most of the UAP reported probably do represent physical objects given that a majority of UAP were registered across multiple sensors, to include radar, infrared, electro-optical, weapon seekers, and visual observation." Out of 144 cases investigated, only one was dismissed as a deflating weather balloon. The rest - they don't know.

What the US establishment is saying is this: "It's not our technology. But we also know that it's not China or Russia. Therefore, whatever it is is not a national security threat." 

For most of us, the news came and went, we choose not to know; we choose to remain comfortable with the familiar nostrums of classical Newtonian physics. Which are now starting to resemble the familiar nostrums of organised religions. 

As my brother pointed out the other day, in the 17th and 18th centuries, there existed side by side science, religion - and the occult. The latter being a rag-bag of beliefs in supernatural phenomena not supported by the rationality of science nor by the scriptures and doctrine of religion. Whittled down by the 20th century to oddball groups of spiritualists, Rosicrucians, astrologers, Freemasons, palm-readers and pagans, the occult (from the Latin - 'that which is hidden') has become a catch-all phrase that would include belief in alien visitors from other planets.

And here we are today in a situation where it looks increasingly likely that alien visitors (or at least their craft - they may well be drones) are present on planet Earth. The news has been skilfully defused, packaged, presented in a way that would not induce alarm, anxiety or mass panic in the streets. Detailed disclosure of exactly how much is known about these visitors is still a long way away - maybe generations away. As a species, we are simply not ready to handle the truth. We need to grow up, evolve, rise to a higher plane. Lose the anger, the hate, the barbarism that's still in our species' DNA.

In the meantime, we have lost an authority- science. It cannot explain the technology behind the UAP that the US military have been recording; our comfortable, rational worldview - with us human beings at the centre of it all - has been disrupted. 

How do these craft enter earth's atmosphere, drop from space through the sky into the ocean, fly without means of lift or visible propulsion, perform manoeuvres that would pull human-built craft to pieces? Science can but guess. Electromagnetic drives? Nuclear fusion? Anti-gravity? Worm-holes in space-time? Travellers from other dimensions? Parallel universes? Time travellers? Something to do with applications of quantum physics that we've yet to grasp? 

Science is clueless. Science, familiar and comforting, has suddenly become like the 'woo' that the rational community has been calling studies of supernatural phenomena. The debunkers and sceptics are looking pretty foolish continuing to dismiss recent evidence captured by the US Navy as 'old cameras', 'faulty software' or 'human misidentification'. Science has failed to explain what's going on in scientific terms, and all bets are off. You might as well consult the tarot, channel the departed or have your palm read as listen to a physicist trying desperately to dismiss the phenomena as mental aberrations, flocks of geese or lights of fishing boats reflected off clouds. All bets are on. Again.

Occam's razor has failed us all.

Suddenly any number of theories can be pursued - the occult becomes as relevant as science when it comes to explaining the Universe (except occultists can't build computers or produce RNA-derived vaccines, as scientists do). But in terms of understanding where we are vis-a-vis aliens, a new philosophy is called for that encompasses UAPs into everything we think we know already. An entirely new worldview is called for. A massive shift in our mindset. 

Not only are we not alone in the Universe (this Universe?) but our visitors/neighbours are far more advanced technologically than we are. The science, for which we have depended upon for our progress over the past four centuries, cannot explain how it functions.

Where do we seek answers now? Astrology? Spiritualism? New Age religions? Everything has suddenly become just as valid.

In one sense, there's nothing new here. UFOs have been observed and researched by secret government programmes since the late 1940s; it's time to delve once more into those incidents we read about as youngsters with a fresh perspective - maybe they weren't merely entertainment and modern folk stories and fairy tales - but they were indeed based in a reality that we are only beginning to come to terms with.

Example: the 1952 Washington, D.C. UFO incident.

This time three years ago:
Bristol-fashioned

This time four years ago:
The imminent closure of Marks & Spencer in Warsaw

This time eight years ago:
Along mirror'd canyons

This time ten years ago:
Mad about Marmite 

This time 11 years ago:
Komorowski wins second round of Presidential elections?

This time 12 years ago:
A beautiful summer dusk in Jeziorki

This time 13 years ago:
Classic cars, London and Warsaw

Prepare to have your horizons broadened

Things will happen faster than I'd hoped; I don't know whether humanity is ready.

From Politico: "The Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Marco Rubio, ordered the director of national intelligence to work with the Pentagon on a public report on unidentified aerial phenomena by June 25, 2021."

From the numerous leaks that have already surfaced in the media, it is clear that the US Navy has a great many sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena on record, both credible eyewitness accounts and radar, infra-red and gun-camera footage showing contacts with craft that have capabilities far beyond what science and technology can currently explain. [For the best of these, the 60 Minutes interview with two former naval pilots about an encounter in 2004, video footage of which became public in 2019. Link at the bottom of this post.]

It has become evident that these are not weather balloons, nor swamp gas, Venus low on the horizon or flocks of geese. The US military establishment is embarrassed; these are either drones from enemy foreign powers - or what? It is not a subject that serious people seem want to discuss in public.

The Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which ran from 2007 to 2012 to analyse classified reports of UAPs from the US military, has categorised these crafts' so-called 'five observables' - characteristics that are inexplicable using our contemporary knowledge of physics:

1) Anti-gravity lift. All aircraft need flight surfaces (wings, rotors) and means of propulsion (propellers, jets, rockets). Yet objects have been sighted and recorded overcoming earth’s gravity with no visible means of propulsion and lack any flight surfaces. 

2) Sudden and instantaneous acceleration. The UAPs may accelerate or change direction so quickly that no human pilot or aircraft could survive the g-forces. A trained human pilot can withstand up about nine times the force of gravity (9G), an airframe about 18 or 19G before its structure becomes compromised. The UAPs have been recorded performing manoeuvres that would result in forces of over 400G.

3) Hypersonic velocities without signatures. UAPs leave no 'signatures', no vapour trails or sonic booms, while travelling at speeds many times faster than sound. 

4) Low observability, or cloaking. Even when objects are observed, getting a clear and detailed view of them - either through pilot sightings, radar or other means - remains difficult. Witnesses generally only see the glow or haze around them.

5) Trans-medium travel. Some UAP have been seen moving easily in and between different environments - space, earth’s atmosphere and water. Under water, navy sonars have tracked them moving at twice the speed of a nuclear submarine.

AATIP has been replaced by the UAP Task Force. Officially announced last August, its mission is stated as "detecting, analyzing and cataloguing UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to US national security." 

Assuming that a statement is made, it is likely to appear at a time that will least impact the global markets - 25 June is indeed a Friday, so expect it to come after Wall Street has closed for the weekend. The US military and political establishments will try to keep this low-key; the global media is likely to treat the public report in a light-hearted way. Whether this will be headline news depends very much on what else happens on Friday 25 June to shape the world news agenda.

Because the US establishment - and with it the establishments of all NATO governments and even China and Russia - have no clue as to the origin of these unidentified aerial phenomena, a tidal wave of speculation will be unleashed as old certainties crumble.

The aftershock will be profound. Establishments will be shaken to their core. Let's start with the scientific establishment.

The scientific establishment will be rocked to its foundations. We will be hearing about 'worm-holes', 'gravity waves', 'warp bubbles', 'parallel universes', 'string theory', 'fifth (indeed, umpteenth!) dimension', 'time travel', and we'll become familiar with the names of nearby stars orbited by exoplanets. These discussions will go on in the background, for those who are interested. Disclosure by the US government that its airspace is routinely being penetrated by craft of unknown origin displaying performance beyond current human scientific explanation will not chase the pandemic off the headlines, but it will be there.

Prof Avi Loeb, the head of Harvard University's astronomy department, put his reputation on the line in late 2017 by suggesting that the object 'Oumuamua - the first object ever detected entering the solar system from outside - was not a naturally occurring phenomenon, but something built by an advanced intelligence. For four years he has been fending off rebuttals from fellow astrophysicists claiming that it's just a lump of frozen nitrogen, frozen hydrogen, cloud of dust or simply a rock. Yet when asked about the US Navy sightings, Prof Loeb dismisses them as being the result of faulty cameras and old software failures; the same glib dismissal as that is given to his theory regarding 'Oumuamua.

Then there's the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) community. Again, a group of serious scientists using a network of radio telescopes around the world, crunching the big data in the hope of finding signs of alien life, risk being made to look foolish if the US government acknowledges that extra-terrestrial intelligence has been here, under our noses, for ages - and SETI didn't even notice.

I will feel sorry for astronomer Ian Ridpath and other professional UFO sceptics/debunkers, who have spent decades of their careers pouring scorn and disbelief on eyewitnesses of the strangest phenomena. Suddenly, the debunkers' logical, reductionist arguments based on the skilful application of Occam's razor will fall apart. They will still have the kooky end of the UFO community to mock, but once the US government has acknowledged that UAPs are real, that there are hundreds of recordings on radar, infra-red, gun-camera footage and observations from credible eye witnesses, their round rejection of UFOs/UAPs as being something that can be entirely explained away will evaporate.

The UFO industry built up since the late 1940s, stoked by Hollywood and pop culture, will also be seriously shaken. Fondly held theories (US military holds dead alien bodies and has been reverse engineering alien craft for decades) will re-emerge or will be dismissed. Roswell, Area 51, crop circles, alien abductions - these narratives will either become more real or be finally debunked.

Organised religions - in particular Christianity, founded on the notion that Christ sacrificed His life for Mankind - will have to learn how to spin this. Is Jesus also Lord to beings from advanced intelligence that come from - afar? the future? The Vatican has moved in the direction of acknowledging the presence of UFOs, and stands prepared.

Business - in particular that part of it founded on technology - will have to sit up and take notice. If our physics can make these craft do these things - shouldn't we be there, doing it too, exploiting these new capabilities to commercial ends? How will markets open on the morning of Monday 28 June?

Aliens - time-travellers - whatever - have, I as have written on this blog over the years, absolutely no interest in reaching out to us - we are simply not ready. We'd be like a two-year-old child confronted by a great scientist or philosopher - what is there to talk about? How can you conduct a meaningful dialogue? They are not here to sort out our problems.

All we can do is acknowledge, come to terms with a new, Universal reality, and begin to readjust our worldview.

The 60 Minute story.

This time ten years ago:
Szmulowizna

This time 11 years ago:
Jeziorki's Storm of Storms

This time 13 years ago:
How to tell you're flying over Poland

This time 14 years ago:
Poppy fields