Face It - We Are Alone

We are stuck with our universe, and powerless to alter its fundamental constants. So long as this is the case, the anthropic principal will be immune to experimental falsification  - a sure sign that it is not a scientific principle. 
Heinz R. Pagels, A Cozy Cosmology, The Sciences, Vol. 25 No. 2 March/April 1985 p. 35-38

As one gets a certain age, one must take stock. One must admit that some long held beliefs were a bust. As a youngster growing up in the 1960's I was all but convinced in my heart and soul that by the year 2015, we would have made contact with certain higher life forms that surely populated the universe.

Pioneer Plaque - Relax, no one will ever see it...

And in hand with that there would most certainly be proof that could be visited in a museum. The Lunar Rosetta stone for instance. After all there was Carl Sagan and the Drake Equation, how could one go wrong with authority such as that? Here we are in the early 21st century and not one artifact, not one message, and not even anymore sightings of possible alien spacecraft.

Relax! The aliens threw their record players parsecs ago...

For many years the Oracle of Ottawa was convinced of the mainstream urban myth that our governments had secretly cut a deal with the aliens and all findings were forever stored and suppressed. But the only people that could believe that are the ones that have never worked for government! Governments can't keep secrets. And the only thing that a government can cover up, given enough time and money, is it's self! And as time goes on it is getting harder and harder for them to even attempt to do so.

My favorite counter argument today for the space cadets is this; if the worlds largest governments really had the ear of a Type III civilization, do you think that they would have allowed 9/11 to happen? That argument just kills, feel free to use it. The smarter ones then start on about all the exo-planets discovered by the Kepler Observatory of late. How there are thousands of possible earth like planets in the sweet spot around a star with water. The reply here is, how many of those sweet spot planets have a counter rotating molten core like Earth that will generate the defenses from the full electromagnetic interstellar space spectrum like the Earth does? The answer is about zero.

Then there is the question is why did the Americans stop going to the Moon? Answer: the TV ratings went to hell and there was way more money and profit margin per item, for the defense contractors to make Agent Orange and Napalm then heavy detail cost plus contracts for small amounts of very closely supervised space vehicles! Yes Sir! The Humans of Earth are one serious bottom line life form...

Lunar Mission Proposal - The Flypaper Observer

Today we have with us, a group of students, among America's best. To you we say we have only completed a beginning. We leave you much that is undone. There are great ideas undiscovered. Breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of truths protective layers.
Neil Armstrong, Speech, at The White House, 1994, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.



One can only find it wondrous weird, that at the time of this writing, early in the 21st century, that armed only with a lease back laptop, and a half decent internet connection, one can readily stir up Google Earth and check out any place upon the planet Earth, in rather breath taking resolution in the great majority of cases.  But if you want to do the same thing as regards to any place on the Earth's moon, good luck with that!
 

The Moon - Earth's Cosmological Flypaper...

 All the Oracle of Ottawa can get is those medium resolution (at best) mosiacs by the Lunar Society! You would think that all those greatly talked about high resolution Lunar Orbiter images would have been declassified decades ago, and in turn available to every one with access to the internet, in their entirety.  But that might be true, just that the Oracle of Ottawa can't seem to find them. Why do you think that is Dear Reader?

It has become clear to me recently that all higher life forms through out the Universe will have several things in common, no matter their differences in biological origin and/ or appearance. Let us go over a few of them. First is that all higher life forms fabricate stuff. The higher the life form, the bigger and more voluminous the stuff fabricated. Secondly all higher life forms litter! This may ironically be the one thing that all life forms of the Universe have in common.  Thirdly higher life forms love to build tributes to their awesomeness! And again the higher the life form the more grand the artifacts.  

The Moon is 4.5 billion years old, slightly younger than the planet Earth. We the people of the planet Earth were gifted by the Force with something very valuable. A piece of cosmological flypaper. In 4.5 billion years what do you think the chances are that something and or someone crashed, built, fought over, destroyed, rebuilt, harvested and left the wreckage behind? In 4.5 billion years what are the chances that some higher life form claimed the moon with the construction of a very grand monument to their awesomeness? The Oracle of Ottawa would have to say, greater than 50 -50 easy.  
(Google - Moon Shard)
 

 What the Oracle is saying is that if I can see the painted parking lines that are a mere 4 inches wide (really, I measured!) on Google Earth for my hood in Ottawa Ontario, why is it that we can't arrange the same coverage of the Moon? Can't something be arranged that will map the shit out of the Moon and put all the images out to crowd sourcing Earth wide? Wouldn't it be great to show your grand children where Apollo 11 landed? (It did really land on the Moon didn't it?) And I figure that there are a ton of fascinating artifacts to be found. What the hell are we afraid of ? Think of the paradigm technological leaps we could make in one fell swoop! Just by cataloging these artifacts and sending up a rover with a hand held X-ray spectrometer?

Of course the whole thing could be a bust, in that we discover some of the most interesting naturally occurring  geologic anomalies known in the Universe so far. In that case the Oracle of Ottawa will revert back to his existentialist kick, and read that first edition copy of Being and Nothingness by Sarte. (With the original dust jacket of course!) With the greatest comfort in that at least, even as an old man, I stepped into the arena...

Homage To The Heretics

Science does not build its theories by a single line attack.
Sir Fred Hoyle, The Frontiers of Astronomy, p. 126

This blog was kicked off by watching videos late into the night at the University of You Tube. And one night I happened to come across one entitled Universe - The Cosmology Quest. Not only did it have rare and unknown footage of my childhood hero Sir Fred Hoyle, but it included all the heretics of that wild and wonderful time of my well misspent youth. And many that I have never heard of before and some more that I had no idea that they were involved with the cosmology quest.

Sir Fred Hoyle

I will never forget that part where Halton Arp was describing his theory of how a galaxy gives birth, and there was that animation of it as he talked of it. Well Dear Reader, it took the top of my head right off so to speak. Something just clicked deep inside. It one of the most important hallmarks of a valid theory in that it was self similar. Halton Arps theory of a galaxy giving birth looks exactly like a corral spitting forth a seed. There was no mention of these things in my high school  physics texts.

Halton C. Arp and Jayant Narlikar

 All the heretics were present, too many to name in this short writing. But I was amazed that they somehow got Jayant Narlikar to appear. And he was most interesting and I am sure someday soon to be proven right for all eternity. The Oracle of Ottawa was so set on fire that he dug up all his Fred Hoyle books from the stacks finally realizing that the time has come to get the reading in and done. And as providence does provide I found a mint new copy of A Different Approach To Cosmology in mint condition in hardcover, with the dust jacket, unread. It is not unread now. It was by Hoyle, Burbidge, and Narlikar, hail the gang was all together one last time.

Now the Oracle of Ottawa has been to college and why he even graduated! So A Different Approach was not that hard to get through. The end result of that was to read Ernst Mach's most famous book  'The Science of Mechanics', and would you believe that I had a fresh facsimile copy that I bought years ago and kept for that time when I had time. The time came and the book was wacked in no time, and I can understand why it is so often mentioned even today. I will riff on it in this blog in the near and probably into the distant future...

Of course the contemporary 'Big Bangers' say that all these heretics are ancient history. Sir Fred Hoyle has been gone from us since 2001. But somehow much to the chagrin of the bangers the Universe keeps getting older and bigger around. Objects that are of several million solar masses are being found where it is impossible for the Big Bang to have placed them. The Very Large Telescopes of the European Space Agency are detecting objects being ejected from galaxies near and far, like God was pitching batting practice.. And you often are starting to hear that nightmare quip that puts the fear of God, that can't possibly exist, into every bangers heart: The text books are going to have be re written...