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John Prytz (John Prytz)
Final Bits & Pieces That Are Out Of This World

Sometimes you have a new thought, an idea, or eureka moment, but it’s not gutsy enough to expand into a reasonable length article or essay. So, here’s a fourth potpourri of cosmic thoughts too good not to record, but with not enough meat available to flesh out.

1) This has just got to stop. One really needs to get away from the argument that “all technological alien civilisations will…” when it comes to explaining the Fermi Paradox which is the puzzlement that while we see no obviously apparent signs of their existence or local presence we damn well should. While there are many explanations offered to explain the Fermi Paradox, nearly all involve that “all will” phraseology, as in ‘all alien civilisations can’t be bothered boldly going and exploring the cosmos because interstellar space travel is in the too hard basket and therefore will not do so’ or ‘all alien civilisations are introverted and shy and will stay at home’ or ‘all alien civilisations have better things to do and thus will not be bothered’ or ‘all alien civilisations obey some sort of non-contact non-interference prime directive and will not interact with us primitive humans’ or ‘all alien civilisations respect that we are creatures in a cosmic zoo with a do not disturb and do not feed the animals restriction placed on us and thus will not disturb and feed us’ or ‘all alien civilisations blow themselves us or otherwise go extinct before developing interstellar capabilities and thus can not and obviously will not come a calling’.

The obvious flaw is the word all. If there is just one exception to that all will phrase then those all will arguments explaining the Fermi Paradox get flushed down the toilet bowl on the grounds that there are, based on everything holy in probability theory, be numerous alien civilisations. It’s like saying all humans will obey the Ten Commandments. Maybe most humans will, but not all humans will.

One other nonsense argument is the either/or scenario that extraterrestrial civilisations that boldly go will be either squishy biological intelligence or artificial intelligent nanotechnology. The former can’t get from there to here because it takes too much in the way of resources and energy (short lifespan relative to journey time, biological and thus resource requirements like food, air, gravity, etc. the eventual boredom that must ensue, 100% efficient recycling technology, and so on). Nanotechnologies avoid all those squishy complications, but nanotechnology is difficult to detect. Also, it’s difficult to envision how a machine can build a copy of itself using natural unprocessed resources it comes across on route. One assumes that a reproducing artificial intelligence nanotechnology probe is more preferable if you want to explore the cosmos relative to, sending out nanotechnology probe after nanotechnology probe after nanotechnology probe, millions of them, from home base. Since the essential feature in boldly going is that you boldly go and not some machine surrogate, the obvious solution is to combine the best of both worlds. Your squishy bits get left behind and only your mind, downloaded into a receptacle of silicone and steel, boldly goes. There’s an off or sleep switch so your mind doesn’t get bored throughout the long journey yet the overall size is such that you will be detectable as you spread throughout the cosmos

2) In almost every discussion about the Multiverse, be it caused by chaotic inflation, quantum fluctuations, Black Holes budding, even due to super advanced extraterrestrial technologies, or alternatively the string theorists with their ten to the five hundredth string landscapes, it is somehow assumed that the laws, principles and relationships of physics will be different in each universe that is within the Multiverse. That probably invoked to best explain the apparent fine-tuning of our Universe since the laws, principles and relationships of physics have to be Goldilocks and bio-friendly laws, principles and relationships and just why that should be is a mystery. But multi-laws in a Multiverse it is still just an assumption backed up by absolutely nothing. Why should it be so? We have one set of the laws, principles and relationships of physics we know exists and works so why not postulate uniformity of those laws, principles and relationships of physics throughout the Multiverse if one needs postulate a Multiverse at all. When you’re on a good thing, stick with it.

3) Let’s Make A Universe: Once upon a time that equates to our ‘in the beginning’ an extraterrestrial physicist in a white lab coat, or maybe a tweed jacket and bow tie, or maybe it was a young girl just doing her junior high school science homework , created our Universe from a tiny bit of quantum flux.

However, I tend to reject the idea that even the most brilliant of brilliant physicists could make a universe akin to our Universe via a quantum event. That’s a free lunch, making an awful lot of something from virtually nothing, a total violation of physical conservation principles. That leaves the idea that there are lots of technically advanced extraterrestrial civilisations whose evolution of computing prowess parallel ours in that their growth in computing crunch power is an exponential growth not a linear growth. Eventually one or more will make one or more simulations of a universe, one populated by virtual life forms.

In either case…

If a physicist makes a new really real universe that spawns life and intelligence life and thus a new crop of really real physicists that make more and more really real universes, which spawns even more intelligent physicists, etc. and/or (no reason it couldn’t be both) a computer programmer makes a Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe, then another and another, a fad thus spawning lots of other computer programmers to make even more simulated universes, well in easier case you have a Multiverse – one real Multiverse, and/or one simulated Multiverse.

4) If the Roswell UFO event (1947) happened as originally described (i.e. – a crashed flying saucer was retrieved by the US Army Air Force), at least one powers-that-be, in this case the United States defence, security, intelligence and political/governmental organisations, know the reality of extraterrestrial intelligence. That being the case, then eventually an awful lot of history will have to be amended at least, if not rewritten.

5) The important bits regarding the UFO events, Washington, D.C. July 1952.

* Violations of restricted airspace alone should raise eyebrows that something out of the ordinary is going on.

* There was visual contact with the objects, both by civilian airline pilots and military jet fighter pilots.

* There were several independent radar trackings of the objects.

* The radar returns were quoted as being solid returns.

* Intelligent behaviour was displayed by the unknowns when they left the area immediately when the interceptor military jets arrived. The unknowns returned when the jets left the area. Natural phenomena wouldn’t do that.

* The unknowns were capable of speeds greater than achievable by those military jets doing the chasing.

* There was a repeat performance within a week, yet nothing similar has happened since, again, leaving a natural phenomena suss.

6) Some more about alien psychology: Say you have this pet chimp, the closest human ancestor we can associate with in real time. In your normal day-to-day household routines, what actions of yours would be comprehensible to the chimp?

7) Some more about cover-ups: Some cover-ups do come unstuck via investigative journalism (Watergate) or whistle-blowers (NSA eavesdropping) or just plain oops (the U-2). The problem is, one has no way of knowing if it’s 1% or 10% or 90% of cover-ups that come unstuck (as opposed to being deliberately declassified at some time). It certainly isn’t going to be 100%.

8) Some more about crop circles 1: Sceptics rightly point out that it would be ludicrous in the extreme for ET to travel through the vast regions of interstellar space just to doodle agricultural graffiti in English farm fields. Their flaw is in the use of the word “just”. You don’t take a holiday halfway round the world just to sleep in a hotel room or to use the local toilet facilities. Your agenda is broader than that.

9) Some more about crop circles 2: Sceptics are well, sceptical about paranormal origins for those crop ‘circles’ since according to them they seem to form in place in England mainly during school holidays, on weekends, during the long summer vacation – in other words, anytime teenagers and young adults have some free time in which to make mischief. The flaw in that argument is that teens and young adults who like to get up to mischief during downtimes aren’t geographically restricted. You’ll find them in all countries that also have major agricultural industries like Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, parts of South America, etc. Yet, crop ‘circles’, while sometimes occurring in these other countries, are a far rarer phenomena than in England. What makes English teens and young adults so different from their counterparts in other parts of the world? Not a damn thing, thus eliminating them as a major player in the formation of crop ‘circles’.

10) Another possible example of cosmic fine-tuning is with respect to the physics of water and ice. Normally a solid for some particular substance will tend to sink in the liquid state of that same substance. In other words, the solid state is denser than the liquid state. However, there is one important exception to the rule, and I always tend to raise eyebrows when it comes to exceptions to the rule because that suggests to me that all is not quite as it seems or as it should be.

The exception here is with respect to water and ice. You would think that just based on your knowledge that solids sink in their liquid equivalents that ice cubes should sink in a glass of water. Of course you know, and I know, that when it comes to standard water and standard ice that ice floats on water (something the RMS Titanic found out about the hard way). Now the interesting upshot of that is that if that weren’t the case, we probably wouldn’t be here to talk about the relative merits of ice floating on water and those exceptions to the rule. Why?

If ice sank in water, all the bodies of water would freeze solid from the bottom up, maybe, just maybe leaving a thin film of liquid water on the surface. That scenario would play havoc with the origin and evolution of life as we know it. There would be a near permanent ‘Snowball Earth’. Considering the biological importance and relevance of ice floating on water relative to the other way around, we should thank this particular exception to the rule. The question is, should one consider this an anomaly; an example of cosmic fine-tuning, the sort of fine-tuning that allows life to survive, even thrive?