Exobiology: Life in the Outer Solar System: The Gas Giants and Pluto

Exobiology was the original term given to the sciences central to the question of life-in-the-Universe. It’s now been largely replaced by Astrobiology, but I’ll stick with the original. To investigate life-in-the-Universe perhaps we should start a bit closer to home and look to our own outer solar system, starting with the gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) and Pluto. Apart from Planet Earth, we have no absolute proof positive to date that any other life, albeit relatively simple forms compared to terrestrial life forms such as ourselves and associated companion animals and plants, exists within the confines of our solar system. However, the odds are fairly high, almost certain in fact; those other, extraterrestrial life forms do exist in our immediate cosmic neighbourhood. 

Taking each of the four gas giant abodes (the Jovian planets) in the outer solar system followed by Pluto in turn…

Jupiter (The Giant Planet): Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, but composed mainly of gas. In fact, Jupiter has been insulted by being compared to our Sun, but a failed Sun. If Jupiter had been a fair few masses larger, it would have ignited in a ball of thermonuclear fusion and become a second stellar object in our solar system, turning it into a binary star system. Jupiter however is still solar enough such that it emits more energy than it receives from the Sun. Jupiter, because of the intense gravity, compresses its own stuff, and compression produces heat. Important point number one: Jupiter has its own internal energy source.

Important points two, three and four: Secondly, Jupiter’s atmosphere is composed of the right sorts of chemicals that one identifies with origin of life events – hydrogen, methane, ammonia, water vapour, etc. Thirdly, Jupiter’s atmosphere is turbulent such that there is a lot of mixing of those elements and compounds. Fourthly, the atmospheric bands of Jupiter are highly coloured, an indication that there’s lots of complex chemistry including organic chemistry going on within.   

The upshot of all of this is that it is not implausible that within the upper reaches of Jupiter’s atmosphere, as per the case of Venus, simple life forms couldn’t exist, survive and thrive. You have the chemistry – you have the energy. And maybe Carl Sagan was right and that something more complex than just a unicellular ecosystem could exist in Jupiter’s atmosphere. But it would have to be an atmospheric ecology.

Saturn (The Ringed Planet): Saturn is a quasi twin of Jupiter. Although slightly smaller and farther away from the Sun than Jupiter, the same general arguments that apply to Jupiter apply to Saturn. That is to say, Saturn has the right sorts of chemistry – and an internal energy supply. It’s however slightly less dense than the other gas giants, such that if you could find an ocean big enough, Saturn would float! That however has no bearing on the issue of finding an atmosphere-based ecosystem there.

Uranus: Uranus is a poor cousin compared to the likes of Jupiter and Saturn. It’s mainly a gas planet, albeit way smaller, but so far out from where it’s all happening that it isn’t too likely that even simple life could flourish in the atmospheric depths, although the chemistry isn’t dissimilar to that of the closer-in Jovian planets of Jupiter and Saturn.

Neptune: The same sorts of arguments apply in general to Neptune as to Uranus, with one slight exception. Although farther out, Neptune, like Jupiter and Saturn, radiates out excess energy. It’s solar independent, at least as far as any life forms might describe their environment and energy supply.

Pluto: The planetoid Pluto was recently officially demoted from strict planetary status, and is no longer acceptable to refer to it as the ninth planet. However, when I was growing up, it was the ninth planet, and so I say buggers to astronomical officialdom. That rant aside, Pluto is hardly top rock for vacation seekers. It’s cold. I mean it’s really cold. It makes Antarctica seem absolutely tropical in comparison. I mean polar bears would freeze to death on Pluto, not that there’s anything reasonably resembling an atmosphere as we know it for them to breathe. Again, Pluto is too cold to allow for the high temperature chemistry we associate with life-as-we-know-it. If you’re looking for life in our solar system, Pluto wouldn’t be your first port of call. 

Exobiology: Life In The Inner Solar System: Mars

Exobiology was the original term given to the sciences central to the question of life-in-the-Universe. It’s now been largely replaced by Astrobiology, but I’ll stick with the original. To investigate life-in-the-Universe one also needs to look for life within our own solar system, apart from Earth of course. Take Mars, fourth rock from the Sun.  There is (microbial) life on Mars. Microbial life on the Red Planet Mars is just about a sure fire a thing as death and taxes, albeit it’s probably spread very thinly.

Firstly, the two Viking landers, equipped with three separate life detection experimental techniques, all scored positive hits. It was only because the detection of organic molecules proved negative that it was thought prudent to look at exotic inorganic soil chemistry as an alternative explanation for the positive life detection results. There are those scientists involved with those Viking experiments who still maintain that microbial life was detected on Mars in 1976. Certainly it’s not 100% proof, but it’s certainly a pro-life run on the scoreboard.

Secondly, there is the evidence from the Martian meteorite found in the Antarctic (ALH 84001). Recall there was four separate and independent reasons for coming to the conclusion that the meteorite contained fossil microbial life forms from Mars. While each apart could have a non-biological explanation, the four together were highly suggestive of microbial life on Mars. Make that two runs on the scoreboard.

Thirdly, spacecraft orbiting Mars have detected methane in the Martian atmosphere. Methane is chemically reactive, and would disappear in short time frames were it not replenished by some source. A major source of methane on Earth is from microorganisms. While there are non-living sources of methane (volcanic activity), lack of such activity on Mars suggests that one chalk up yet another run on the board for life.

Fourthly, there’s no longer any question about Mars once having had extensive water. Spirit and Opportunity have settled that chestnut, and that’s quite apart from the visual evidence of what look like water channels, etc. on the Martian surface. Where’s there water, there’s the probability of life.

Lastly, it’s obvious that Earth and Mars would have exchanged materials via rocks being impacted off one planet and arriving on the other (so called ‘ballistic panspermia’). Since microbial life exists on Earth, some of it would have been transported throughout geological history to Mars. It’s quite possible that Mars seeded Earth as well, maybe even initially. Perhaps we are the Martians!  And of course, it’s probable that both Mars and Earth were seeded from another outside source. That, IMHO, settles that.

Further readings:

DiGregorio, Barry E. & Levin, Gilbert V. & Straat, Patricia Ann; Mars: The Living Planet; Frog, Ltd., Berkeley, California; 1997: 

Goldsmith, Donald; The Hunt for Life on Mars; Dutton, New York; 1997:

Sawyer, Kathy; The Rock from Mars: A Detective Story on Two Planets; Random House, New York; 2006:

Exobiology: Life In The Inner Solar System

Exobiology was the original term given to the sciences central to the question of life-in-the-Universe. It’s now been largely replaced by Astrobiology, but I’ll stick with the original. To investigate life-in-the-Universe perhaps we should start a bit closer to home and our own inner solar system – Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon and Mars. Apart from Planet Earth, we have no absolute proof positive to date that any other life, albeit relatively simple forms compared to terrestrial life forms such as ourselves and associated companion animals and plants, exists within the confines of our solar system. However, the odds are fairly high, almost certain in fact; those other, extraterrestrial life forms do exist in our immediate cosmic neighbourhood. 

Humans and our associated kin on the third rock out from the Sun are lords of life forms in the solar system. But, we’re not unique lords, just lords. Other abodes in the inner solar system, most probably Mars, are possible even probable habitable abodes to simple microbial life forms; perhaps something slightly above and beyond that.

But first a pat on the back for those terrestrial microbes; all those germs, bacteria, unicellular critters and even viruses (though viruses, depending on your perception of their actually being alive as we normally define ‘alive’ might exclude them from this discussion). They are tough, I mean they boldly go, survive, and even thrive where even angels fear to tread, far less humans.

On Earth, microbes rule, OK? The biomass of all those bacteria, etc. put together easily equals the biomass of every other multicellular plant and animal added together. One could easily argue that microbes, not humans, are the jewels in God’s crown – He made so many of them, and talk about being fruitful and multiplying. The number and mass of micro-organisms are many orders of magnitude greater than the numbers and collective mass of humanity. If fact, there are millions of microbes living inside you – most beneficial. In fact, it could also be argued that you are nothing more than an elaborate colony of billions of unicellular organisms – your individual cells that make you, you..

Microbes have another decided advantage over more complex life forms, like plants. Solar energy (photosynthesis) isn’t the only kind of energy available to organisms. Even on Earth there are lots of organisms, mainly unicellular ones, that use chemosynthesis as the means by which they directly derive their energy needs, directly as in from the chemicals in their environment. Today we know a great deal about chemosynthesis and the organisms that can produce organics from inorganic substances and derive energy from the process.

When I was a high school biology student (1962-63), it was absolutely gospel (and no correspondence would be entered into contrary) that our Sun was the be all and end all of the existence of terrestrial life. No sun; no life. All life ultimately depended on photosynthetic plants which in turn couldn’t exist without sunlight. And while we don’t get our energy directly via photosynthesis, we’re still dependent on solar energy since we eat the plants or the animals that eat the plants.

A well known, if little understood example of chemosynthesis are the colonies of microbes (dubbed ‘rusticles’) that are eating the iron structure of the RMS Titanic, resting some four kilometres below the surface of the North Atlantic. Within another generation or two, the famous shipwreck will have been basically consumed by microbes, without any benefit bestowed by our sun. Also from the marine environment, the entire ecological communities’ part and parcel of hydrothermal vent systems is ultimately based on chemosynthesis.

From terrestrial environments to those of outer space and our solar system is but perhaps a small step for microbes. Even back in those high school days however I seem to recall speculation by no less a scientist than the late Carl Sagan about the possibility of a non-photosynthetic based ecology in the atmosphere of Jupiter which gladdened my heart no end - however, it wasn‘t Jupiter that broke the photosynthetic mould, but good old Mother Earth herself as it hydrothermal vent ecosystems among many others now known. So gospel ain’t gospel any longer!

Now taking each abode in turn…

Mercury: The planet Mercury, closest planet to our Sun, unfortunately lacks any atmosphere to speak of, and broils on the side facing the Sun and freezes on the side facing away – much like our Moon, and is in fact is similarly heavily cratered. There’s no liquid water on the surface, and overall, like our Moon, seems totally inhospitable. Bacteria might be able to exist in a dormant sort of way in 100% sheltered niches, but actively survive and thrive they do not.

Venus: The planet Venus had long been thought of as Earth’s twin sister. It’s the second planet out from the Sun, and has a size and density very close to terrestrial values. It also has an atmosphere. Being closer to the Sun than Earth, Venus was, pre-space age, thought to be warm and moist, a totally tropical environment of lush vegetation where maybe dinosaur-like creatures or dragons roamed and chased scantly clad maidens! Alas, once space probes crossed paths with, and landed on, Venus, such dreams of a tropical paradise was dashed. Well its tropical alright, if ‘tropical’ means a surface temperature of 900 degrees Fahrenheit.  But the atmosphere, mainly carbon dioxide – a greenhouse gas - is so thick and dense that the atmospheric pressure is way massive relative to Earth’s. So, Venus turned out to be more akin to Hell than a tropical Heaven. No life here!

But wait, perhaps such a judgment is premature. What happens here on Earth as you climb up a high mountain? Well, the temperature drops and the air gets more rarefied - and so too on Venus. In the upper atmosphere, the temperature and pressure of Venus drops to more terrestrial surface conditions. There can’t be surface life-as-we-know-it on that planet, but what about simple, say microbial life existing in the upper atmosphere?

The question therefore is, if life couldn’t have arose on the surface of Venus because it is just too damn hot (and no water), where hence did the atmospheric life (microbial most likely) come from? Well, the surface of Venus, way back when, may have been far more hospitable than it is now. However, there’s also Panspermia – life forms adrift in space that eventually impact other worlds. The upper atmosphere of Venus may have been seeded with microbial life forms at some time in the past via such a mechanism, the same mechanism that may have kick-started life on the early Earth, and perhaps seeded other planetary abodes in our solar system. 

Earth (Terra): Home! Nothing further need be said.

The Moon (Luna): Like Mercury, our Moon is airless and subject to extremes in temperature depending on whether the Moon is facing towards or away from the Sun. While the first couple of crews of Apollo Moon landing astronauts were quarantined after their missions, just in case, no extraterrestrial life forms of any kind were ever discovered. But that’s not quite the end of the story. The Apollo 12 astronauts brought back with them a few bits and pieces of the unmanned Lunar Surveyor that had landed about three years previously. Terrestrial bacteria within those bits and pieces were found to still be viable after exposure to the lunar vacuum, intense radiation exposure and temperature extremes. While hardly indigenous Lunar life forms, they give credibility (as if any were needed) that microbes are composed of the right stuff to survive the rigours of outer space. 

Exobiology: Microbial Extraterrestrial Life

Exobiology was the original term given to the sciences central to the question of life-in-the-Universe. It’s now been largely replaced by Astrobiology, but I’ll stick with the original. To investigate life-in-the-Universe one needs to look at what the most likely sort of extraterrestrial life will be. If Earth is any guide, the Universe will be full of LGM – not Little Green Men but Little Green Microbes. That’s because microbial life is probably very common throughout the cosmos, can adapt to a wide range of habitats, and is easily spread.

On Earth, microbes rule, OK? The biomass of all the bacteria, etc. put together easily equals the biomass of every other multicellular plant and animal put together. And microbes can live in environments where multicellular critters often can’t: from the coldest terrestrial environments, up to near boiling temperatures; from deep, deep underground to the heights of the atmosphere; from inside water-cooled nuclear reactors and the interior of rocks; to intensely saline, acidic and alkaline environments; to ecosystems where the Sun never shines. There are micro critters that can live off arsenic and thrive in toxic waste dumps! 

You, and especially your insides, like your highly acidic stomach, play host to millions of bacteria – fortunately, most are beneficial.

They can even survive outer space. Bacteria survived on the surface of the Moon – on Surveyor Three. This was possibly the most significant discovery of the entire Apollo Moon program and it hardly even rated a mention. Astronauts from the Apollo 12 mission brought back to Earth parts of the unmanned Surveyor Three Lunar Lander. Terrestrial bacteria on those parts survived the lunar vacuum, solar radiations (ultraviolet rays, etc.), the massive temperature extremes, and lack of water and nutrients. Experiments since then in low earth orbit have confirmed that given just minimal shielding, bacteria can boldly go!

You’d be aware of how difficult it is to totally sterilize something, be it hospital equipment or a spacecraft bound for a Martian landing. They’re tough – have you ever read about a mass extinction event where a bacterial species went poof? Microbes are easy to transport. They can be blasted off the surface of the Earth, shielded from radiation by the debris, and survive to land on another world and be fruitful and multiply. There’s little doubt that somewhere way out there, terrestrial bacteria have hitched a ride to the stars, bolding going where lots of microbes have gone before!

Whether transported from Earth or otherwise, the massive range of exotic and extreme terrestrial habitats inhabited by microbes uncovered in just the past several decades, have open up a whole new frontier of possible extraterrestrial environments that might now be bio-friendly, where previously they had been written off as theoretically lifeless.

For example, no biological scientist would have given any credence several generations ago to the likelihood that terrestrial life could exist without the Sun as the ultimate energy source. Then the remarkable discovery of hydrothermal vent communities existing at the bottom of the oceans in darkness where the ultimate energy source was volcanic heat and the organisms thrived off of chemicals spewed out by those undersea volcanos. If the Sun were to go kaput tomorrow, humans would shortly follow suit. But the hydrothermal vent communities would keep on ticking.

That discovery opened up the possibility that various icy satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, though frozen solid at the surface, actually had liquid oceans beneath that solid surface, the heat generated by tidal pushing and pulling forces between the satellite and the parent planet melting the subsurface ice. Where there’s liquid water, there’s always the potential for life.

Translated, I firmly expect that the Universe is teaming with life in all sorts of places. The less than glamorous catch is that LGM is not going to stand for Little Green Men, but Little Green Microbes.

Exobiology: The Origin(s) of Life on Earth

Exobiology was the original term given to the sciences central to the question of life-in-the-Universe. It’s now been largely replaced by Astrobiology, but I’ll stick with the original. To investigate life-in-the-Universe one needs to ponder the origin of life, and the only origin we’re certain of was the origin of terrestrial life. The origin of life happened naturally at least once and probably many times in diverse locations.

Life, even microbial life, is still very, very complex (try making a microbe from scratch if you doubt it). The fact that life arose from scratch on Earth within a very, very short span of geological time after the planet formed is a bit suspect IMHO.

The major reason for that is that in the early days of the formation of our solar system and of course Planet Earth, there was a lot of loose debris around flying around in all sorts of orbits. These bits and pieces would sooner or later impact one of the larger (planetary) bodies still forming and growing by the means of those very impacts. The orbiting large planetary objects would sweep up a lot of the rubble. Over time, the density of the rubble decreased, but to this very day there are still bits and pieces yet to make impact and call a planet home. We often see tiny bits of this left over rubble as ‘shooting stars’ in the night sky, but now and again a really large chunk can strike home, as the dinosaurs found out the hard way.

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Anyone who doubts that there was a massive bombardment of the planets by large chunks of rubble need only look at the saturation of craters on the Moon or the planet Mercury or even Mars and many of the larger moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Heavily cratered objects have one thing in common – little or no atmospheres and active geology to erode and erase the remains of these impacts from multi-billions of years ago. Earth has an active geology and an atmosphere and lots of erosion so we find relatively little trace of that early intense bombardment locally. But, were it not for those processes, Planet Earth would resemble the cratered Moon.

Now, what’s the fate of early life forms when large chunks of rubble after rubble after rubble slam into their environmental abode? Poof – that’s what. Given that the origin of life isn’t easy (otherwise our biologists and biochemists would have created life in a test tube from scratch by now), it’s unlikely that life arose locally on Earth – went poof because of impacting rubble – arose again locally and naturally – went poof again – arose – poof – arose – poof, etc. So, is there another possibility?

What if Earth were seeded by microbial life forms already in existence from space (or deliberately seeded by an advanced extraterrestrial civilization as the Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick has proposed)? Now I realize that just puts off the origin of life question to another time(s) and place(s). However, given the vastness of the cosmos is far greater than that of our finite globe (Planet Earth), and given that the cosmos existed for vastly longer periods of time before our sun, solar system and home planet came into existence, such additional time and space easily turns the improbable into a near certainty. And once established somewhere, then life could spread throughout that time and space, until it reached us.

Earth arose billions of years after the universe and our galaxy had evolved, ample time for life to have arisen elsewhere, and seed the early Earth. This is the concept of panspermia. We know that comets, meteors, and the cosmic dust of outer space are chock-o-block full of complex organic molecules. We know that simple terrestrial microbial life can survive the outer space environment if suitably shielded – and it doesn’t take much to do the shielding. We know that surface bits from planets/moons can be ejected into space, carry a cargo of microbes, and land on another planet, even eons later with the microbes still viable. Of course 99.999% of all such microbial life will be doomed to forever wander in space or crash onto a cold surface of a planet with no atmosphere or water, or plunge into a star, etc. But, sheer numbers will insure that now and again some microbes will land on a hospitable abode and be fruitful and multiple and evolve. The interesting bit is that if then, then now. And thus panspermia will be happening today. Certainly some meteorites which have impacted Earth have inside them ‘organized elements’ suggestive of microbial structures – the Murchison Meteorite from Australia is one such stone from space; another was the famous 'rock from Mars' [known as ALH84001]. On the sceptical side, the problem is that such ‘organised elements’ could be just terrestrial contamination as there are often lengthy time periods between fall, discovery and analysis. As an aside, if Fred Hoyle & Chandra Wickramasinghe are correct (and I believe they are), microbes (bacteria/viruses) impacting Earth today are largely responsible for some select/various disease epidemics/pandemics, past present, and no doubt future.

Exobiology: The Origin and Evolution of the Universe

Exobiology was the original term given to the sciences central to the question of life-in-the-Universe. It’s now been largely replaced by Astrobiology, but I’ll stick with the original. To investigate life-in-the-Universe one need start at the beginning – if there was one – which is the origin and evolution of our Universe. The universal laws and constants of physics are life-friendly (however you care to define life); the universe is however indifferent to whatever life-forms it produces and their ultimate fate.

‘In the beginning’ is a most unsatisfactory phrase as it explains nothing, and ultimately leads to the type of philosophical question ‘if God created the Universe, what being in turn, created God?’ You have to have the concept of infinity-in-time to get around that knotty problem. It’s far easier to come to terms with ‘it has always been and it always will be’ relative to ‘in the beginning’. There as no ‘in the beginning’.

How can you have a Universe (ours) that has always existed when clearly there is observational evidence what our Universe had a beginning – the Big Bang Event – some 13.7 billions years ago? Well, I believe that there are ultimately endless cycles of Big Bangs, expansions, contractions, hence Big Crunches (a contracting universe that comes together at a single point in space and time), before it starts all over again. In other words, I suggest a cyclic or oscillating, finite but unbounded, universe, existing again, and again, within infinite time. By the way, I can’t claim originality for that. And, the laws and constants and relationships of physics will be the same each time for each cycle (otherwise you might get a universe which never contracts again), or, in other words, each cycle will be life-friendly, because this Universe is bio-friendly (in that life can arise and exist in it).

Unfortunately, current observational evidence strongly suggests that our expanding Universe will not slow down, stop, and reverse direction. Even if that observational evidence isn’t contradicted by other more finely tuned observational evidence further on down the track, that doesn’t quite put the kibosh on the Big Crunch.

If the cosmos is infinite in time, it’s also probably infinite in volume. In other words, there’s ample room for more than one universe. If two (or more) expanding universes start to intersect, the stuff of any one universe, diluting with the expansion, now meets stuff from another universe(s) and the density of stuff starts to increase. Gravity does the rest and the intersecting parts of two or more expanding universes now clump together, start contracting, ultimately coming together at one point in time and space (a Big Crunch), the pure momentum resulting in, of course, a Big Bang and the ‘creation’ of a new universe. 

Even if my postulated cyclic/oscillating Universe isn’t to be, it doesn’t alter the fact that this Universe, our Universe, and the various physics that are part and parcel of it, permit life to exist in it. Why that should be so has been the subject of much speculation and debate. There probably was no particular reason (‘First Cause’) behind it all. It was just the way the Universe dealt the cards at the very beginning of the game. In any event, were that not the case, were some sort of non-life producing physics cards dealt instead, we wouldn’t be here to have to worry about such a heady question – why things are the way that they are.

However, the idea that there are many universes solves the improbability that our Universe just lucked out against all probability as being a bio-friendly one. If thousands of universes have and do exist, by chance some will be bio-friendly, even if most are not.

Since we can only exist in one of those few bio-friendly ones, well it’s now obvious why our Universe has life in it- terrestrial life at least. However, if our Universe can give rise to life without there being some sort of predetermined life-plan purpose to the Universe, then equally the Universe will go on its merry way without concern if we should all go down the gurgler.

Ancient UFOs: The Enigma That Is Tunguska (1908)

UFOs aren’t anything new. In fact, if my premise is correct, that the polytheistic gods (including the monotheistic God) were not deities but extraterrestrials (‘ancient astronauts’) then their aerial and sometimes fiery chariots so often referred to in mythology were nothing but shuttlecraft out of their mother-ships or star-ships – what we might now term UFOs. We’re all familiar with the ‘Wheels of Ezekiel’ story, but mythology coughs up several more possibilities, Biblical and otherwise. I’ll continue the story with an event certainly not mythical, one not even all that ancient, just puzzling, Tunguska, June 1908.

Assuming one or more extraterrestrial civilizations with advanced, interstellar spaceflight capability exists; then they know about Planet Earth. Say ‘hi’ to those pesky UFOs. If UFOs aren’t mystery enough, there’s that enigmatic 30 June 1908 explosion of ‘something’ over the Tunguska region of Siberia. Might the two anomalies be connected? Something that came from outer space crashed into, or exploded above, the Tunguska, Siberia forest in late June of 1908, of that there is no question. Whodunit or whatdunit is the $64,000 question.

Something that came from outer space crashed into, or exploded above, the Tunguska, Siberia forest in late June of 1908, of that there is no question. It was heard up to 1,200 kilometres away; witnessed up to 700 kilometres away. The after-effects, from air pressure waves, ground shockwaves to unusual bright skies at night (quasi-auroras in the sky) viewed throughout Europe in the days (or nights) that followed are well documented. From that, and the evidence as observed from on-site scientific expeditions at ground zero (the epicentre) and the 1908 eyewitness reports, strongly suggest that something several tens of meters across exploded, and totally vaporized some 8 to 8.5 kilometres above ground level with a minimum force of 5 megatons, an accepted average force of between 12.5 to 15 megatons, at the other extreme perhaps up to 30 megatons (1000 times the force unleashed on Hiroshima). 

Because of the political turmoil’s Russia and the world were experiencing (WW I; the Russian Revolution), but mainly because the affected region was just about inaccessible due to the harsh climate, distance from civilization and wilderness terrain, it was many years before an actual scientific investigation was launched and travelled into the region to investigate into what actually happened – what impacted this vast forested region of Siberia where (fortunately) there were few inhabitants and witnesses. The main and initial scientific investigator was a Russian scientist, Leonid Kulik. His first expedition in 1921 didn’t actually reach ground zero; but later expeditions of his in 1927 (the first to reach the epicentre), with follow-ups in 1928 and 1929 and finally in 1939 got the scientific ball rolling. Of course everyone expected that eye-witnesses would be irrelevant because the object was obviously a natural celestial object, a meteor or a small comet, and there would be a crater. Samples of the extraterrestrial object would be collected, analysed back in civilization, fragments put on display in museums – mystery solved. That’s what everyone expected, but at times Mother Nature can be a real bitch!

Well, to make a long story shorter, initial and subsequent on-site teams of researchers (there were further Russian expeditions in 1958 and 1961 with the first post Cold War international teams hitting the ground in 1989 and 1991) found no crater; no chunks of extraterrestrial debris. Whatever ‘hit’ the Tunguska region of Siberia in June 1908 didn’t really apparently impact, but exploded high up in the atmosphere, a resulting blast wave flattening the trees in a radial pattern out from ground zero, ultimately covering an area associated with a large city. Even that wouldn’t have been all that anomalous were it not for some witnesses who claimed that the object as it descended, changed direction. You wouldn’t have expected that from a natural object. And thus was born the idea that the object wasn’t natural, but artificial, probably, well certainly, since terrestrial technology had no equivalents, extraterrestrial – an alien spaceship.

Seeing as how there’s evidence that UFOs, or ‘flying discs’ as they were called in the late 1940’, could run into difficulty and crash, as in Roswell (July 1947) for example, well that lent additional credibility that in 1908, a ‘flying disc’ also ran into technical difficulty, but exploded, probably a nuclear-type explosion,  relative to actually crash-landing.

Well, whatever it was, it was vaporized to the extent that there wasn’t enough solid residue left behind to establish once and for all that the object actually was. And so other exotic, though natural, theories were spawned to account for the overall Tunguska event anomalies.

So, some scientists have suggested that what hit Tunguska was a mini Black Hole that just kept right on keeping on and passed through the entire Earth, exiting out the opposite side (commonly postulated to be the North Atlantic). There are good theoretical reasons to suspect that mini Black Holes exist in space – ‘theoretical’ needs to be stressed however.

Even more far out, it was a tiny piece of antimatter. Antimatter, when impacting Earth’s atmosphere composed of normal matter, well its ka-boom time as there will be an annihilation of equal parts of our atmospheric matter and whatever the amount of antimatter was – gram for gram; ounce for ounce. When matter meets antimatter, stuff is turned into pure energy, and thus no solid residue left behind at the ‘crime’ scene.  

Even more far out there’s been speculations that the Tunguska Event was caused by a concentration of methane (natural) gas released naturally into the atmosphere which exploded; an extraterrestrial laser beam attack or scientific test on a relatively uninhabited region; giant ball lightning; even a terrestrial death ray or early nuclear experiment that went very wrong. Those make the alien spaceship / UFO blowing up theories seem mundane and commonplace. 

The disturbing bit about the Tunguska Event was that if the explosion / impact had happened slightly earlier or later, it could just as easily have exploded / impacted over a far more densely inhabited region. Hitting the ocean might have generated a tsunami, and we know the sort of havoc they can cause. More frightening, if it had happened, right out of the proverbial blue, no warning at all, in say 1958 instead of 1908, what would Russia’s immediate reaction have been? Maybe an assumption that there had been a nuclear strike, the first of many pre-emptive or unprovoked nuclear strikes on Russian soil. Their reaction, and response, could easily have been, in that Cold War, high tension era, shoot back now and ask questions later – assuming a later after all out nuclear war.

Back to 1908, maybe the Tunguska Event was a comet, or meteor, or a mini black hole, or a bit of anti-matter. Experts remain uncertain and undecided to this very day. Or, maybe it was a spaceship – obviously not of terrestrial origin. Lots of authors have written tomes advocating that explanation (and others even more exotic as we’ve seen). And in fact, although scoffed at by the experts, I’m not quite ready to write off the spaceship theory quite yet. If Roswell, why not Tunguska? However, I’d be being unrealistic if I didn’t admit that theory is a long shot. At the least, it’s still a marvellous scientific mystery. 

So, here are your options: 1) Tunguska was a totally natural, albeit rare event; 2) Tunguska was not a totally natural, albeit rare event.

Further readings on the Tunguska Incident:

Atkins, Thomas & Baxter, John; The Fire Came By: The Riddle of the Great Siberian Explosion; Doubleday & Company, Inc., New York; 1976: 

Furneaux, Rupert; The Tungus Event: The Great Siberian Catastrophe of 1908; Panther Books, Frogmore, St Albans, Herts; 1977:

Rubtsov, Vladimir; The Tunguska Mystery; Springer, New York; 2009:

Stoneley, Jack; Tunguska: Cauldron of Hell; Star Book, London; 1977:

Verma, Surendra; The Tunguska Fireball: Solving One of the Great Mysteries of the 20^th Century; Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd., Crows Nest, NSW; 2005:

Ancient UFOs: The Miracle of the Sun at Fatima

UFOs aren’t anything new. In fact, if my premise is correct, that the polytheistic gods (including the monotheistic God) were not deities but extraterrestrials (‘ancient astronauts’) then their aerial and sometimes fiery chariots so often referred to in mythology were nothing but shuttlecraft out of their mother-ships or star-ships – what we might now term UFOs. We’re all familiar with the ‘Wheels of Ezekiel’ story, but mythology coughs up several more possibilities, Biblical and otherwise. I’ll continue the ball rolling with a tale from Portugal in 1917, a tale of the dancing Sun.

Mythologies are full of events that could be interpreted, if they happened instead within the last six plus decades, as a UFO event. The ‘Star of Bethlehem’ or ‘Wheel of Ezekiel” are both cases in point from our Biblical mythology. Many of the mythological ‘gods’ or characters rode around in aerial or fiery chariots, perhaps akin to those seen at Fatima in 1917. A UFO chariot by any other name is still a UFO chariot.

Chariots seem to be associated with the ‘gods’ because of the popularity of Erich von Daniken’s book title (when translated into English) “Chariots of the Gods”. But there’s no actual index entry for “chariots” in that book. So, did the ‘gods’ and maybe their passengers ride in aerial chariots or equivalent? A quick scan of the mythological literature says “yes”! A partial list of the Greek ‘gods’ or demigods (or demi goddesses) who rode in (UFO) chariots (or equivalent) include Zeus, Hercules, Helios, Apollo,  Hades, Triptolemus, and Medea. From Norse mythology, we have Thor and Freyja riding along in their chariots. Aerial chariots figure prominently in Indo-Iranian mythology, and they also play an important part in Hindu and Persian mythology as well, with most of the gods of their pantheon portrayed as riding in them. In ancient times what were aerial chariots pulled by various beasties with the ‘gods’ as pilots or passengers, are, in modern times, UFOs with their extraterrestrial pilots and crew.

Okay, so we have possible Biblical UFOs associated with Ezekiel, the Birth of Christ, Jonah, and Joshua. Another classic and more UFO event in a religious context was the so-called ‘miracle of the sun’ which occurred on 13 October 1917 near Fatima in Portugal. A miracle had been promised by the Virgin Mary as related by three young children to occur on that date. The gathered crowd, some 30,000 to 100,000 in number (the usual figure is given as roughly 70,000) saw some highly unusual luminous phenomena. According to Wikipedia, slightly paraphrased by me… “Witnesses spoke of the sun appearing to change colors and rotate like a wheel. Not everyone saw the same things, and witnesses gave widely varying descriptions of the ‘sun's dance’. The phenomenon is claimed to have been witnessed by most people in the crowd as well as people many miles away. However, no movement or other phenomenon of the sun was registered by scientists at the time. Not all witnesses reported seeing the sun ‘dance’. Some people only saw the radiant colors, and others, including some believers, saw nothing at all.”  Since scientists observed no actual movement of the sun; since it was an overcast day, it’s probable the witnesses to the sun dance and the changing in colors was a bona-fide UFO, making an appearance on schedule to bring credibility to the prophecy.

So, here are your options: 1) Supernatural God, on behalf of the Virgin Mary, works a miracle and allows a whole lot of people to watch the Sun do cartwheels in defiance of celestial physics; 2) There was no such event in reality and witnesses were smoking a bit too much of the good stuff - the option any sane betting person would take; 3) the story has some sort of foundation, in which case the violation of basic celestial physics – the Sun doesn’t dance in the sky - was only apparent and had to have been something else. Sceptics suggest it was anything from mass hallucinations/wishful thinking, to false images caused by staring at the real Sun to an optical phenomenon called a mock sun or sundog. But, perhaps that something else, had it been post June 1947, might have been termed a UFO.   

As an aside, the events were depicted in a 1952 feature film titled “The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima”. It was promoted as a fact-based treatment of the events surrounding the apparitions of Our Lady of Fatima to the three children which kick-started off the subsequent events in 1917. A more recent retelling was the 2009 film “The 13^th Day”.

Ancient UFOs: The Rock With Wings

UFOs aren’t anything new. In fact, if my premise is correct, that the polytheistic gods (including the monotheistic God) were not deities but extraterrestrials (‘ancient astronauts’) then their aerial and sometimes fiery chariots so often referred to in mythology were nothing but shuttlecraft out of their mother-ships or star-ships – what we might now term UFOs. We’re all familiar with the ‘Wheels of Ezekiel’ story, but mythology coughs up several more possibilities, Biblical and otherwise. I’ll continue the ball rolling with a tale from Native American mythology which might have something to do with UFOs.   

Mythologies are full of events that could be interpreted, if they happened instead within the last six plus decades, as a UFO event. The ‘Star of Bethlehem’ or ‘Wheel of Ezekiel” are cases in point from our Biblical mythology. Many of the mythological ‘gods’ or characters rode around in aerial or fiery chariots, but what about flying rocks or big birds transporting people around? A UFO chariot by any other name is still a UFO chariot.

Chariots seem to be associated with the ‘gods’ because of the popularity of Erich von Daniken’s book title (when translated into English) “Chariots of the Gods”. But there’s no actual index entry for “chariots” in that book. So, did the ‘gods’ and maybe their passengers ride in aerial chariots or equivalent? A quick scan of the mythological literature says “yes”! A partial list of the Greek ‘gods’ or demigods (or demi goddesses) who rode in (UFO) chariots (or equivalent) include Zeus, Hercules, Helios, Apollo,  Hades, Triptolemus, and Medea. From Norse mythology, we have Thor and Freyja riding along in their chariots. Aerial chariots figure prominently in Indo-Iranian mythology, and they also play an important part in Hindu and Persian mythology as well, with most of the gods of their pantheon portrayed as riding in them. In ancient times what were aerial chariots pulled by various beasties with the ‘gods’ as pilots or passengers, are, in modern times, UFOs with their extraterrestrial pilots and crew. The American Indian culture, the Navajos may not have a UFO chariot per say, but they do have a UFO “rock with wings”. 

Ship Rock (or Shiprock, also called in native Navajo ‘Tse Bit’a’i’ or the ‘Rock with Wings’ aka ‘winged rock’) is a 12 million year old standalone monolithic mountain, an eroded volcanic plume, situated in New Mexico close to the four corners area where NW New Mexico, NE Arizona, SE Utah, and SW Colorado touch. While it’s nearly 7,200 feet above sea level (peak elevation), from the ground up (standing on a high desert plain), it’s nearly 1,600 feet high. It’s situated on Native American Navajo land, situated in the bullseye of the ancient Pueblo peoples that prehistoric Native American culture are often referred to as the Anasazi. The Navajo’s have high historical and religious reverence for the mountain. It features prominently in their traditional religious and mythological culture, and as a sacred site, the natives have, since 1970, closed the mountain off to the public which used to be popular with rock climbers, etc.

The main belief of the Navajos centring around Ship Rock (and it looks a bit like an old Clipper sailing ship of yore but sailing in a sea of sand) is that it’s what’s left, the remains, of their ‘great bird of deliverance’.  According to their legends, once upon a time, a long time ago, their ancestors were facing a hostile tribe further north, and not wishing to go head-to-head with these warmongers, their high priest(s), or shaman(s), asked their Great Spirit in the sky for assistance. The Great Spirit sent down this great bird which took them southwards to what Americans today call Ship Rock. The Navajos were saved from their enemies, and they lived long and prospered – well prospered as well as any Native American tribe could be expected under the thumb of the European invaders.

Now if the Navajo were forced to flee and migrate southwards from hostile forces, you’d think their mythology would be something akin to the ancient Greek’s “Odyssey” or the quest for the Golden Fleece – a tale of a long journey, elusive goals, many dangers and hardships, and eventual success – not flying through the air without a care in the world. Or, if they didn’t have any migration south at all, then there’s no need for such a ‘winged rock’ tale, rather some other ‘how did we get to Ship Rock’ origin myth, like the Great Spirit breathing life into some of the rocks or moulding cacti or tumbleweeds into human beings – the Navajo. But if your Great Spirit is a ‘god’ that’s really an extraterrestrial; and your ‘rock with wings’ what we’d call today a UFO, or in ancient astronaut terminology a ‘flying chariot’, then the myth, as related, has some logical foundation in reality. And if you are a rather unsophisticated Native American when it comes to extraterrestrial technology, what else are you going to call a UFO but a ‘flying rock’ or a ‘rock with wings’ or a ‘winged rock’ or a ‘big bird’? The Navajos, in other legends, have associated Ship Rock with the presence of ‘Bird Monsters’ that feed on human flesh. I wonder if that could be a garbled tale of UFO abduction.

Now presumably this travelogue tale isn’t the fabrication of one person, shaman or otherwise, since there were many native Navajos who must have been alleged participants in the journey who could contradict the myth – if it was a myth of course. That fact that the Navajo consider Ship Rock a sacred site, off-limits to rock climbers and tourists, well they clearly consider this part of their mythology to be a Big Deal. In fact the mountain is a place of pilgrimage for their peoples, especially young men on quests for solitary ‘visions’ that’s part of their traditional culture.

So, here are your options: 1) Supernatural God (the Great Spirit) works a miracle and allows a whole lot of Navajos to fly south on a rock to escape their enemies; 2) There was no such event and Navajo shamans were smoking a bit too much of the good stuff - the option any sane betting person would take; 3) the story has some sort of foundation, in which case the violation of basic physics – rocks don’t fly - was only apparent and had to have been something else.  

Ancient UFOs: Methuselah Takes A Trip

UFOs aren’t anything new. In fact, if my premise is correct, that the polytheistic gods (including the monotheistic God) were not deities but extraterrestrials (‘ancient astronauts’) then their aerial and sometimes fiery chariots so often referred to in mythology were nothing but shuttlecraft out of their mother-ships or star-ships – what we might now term UFOs. We’re all familiar with the ‘Wheels of Ezekiel’ story, but mythology coughs up several more possibilities, Biblical and otherwise. I’ll continue the ball rolling with the Bible’s old aged pensioners, like Methuselah, all of whom might actually have something to do with UFOs.   

Ah, the Bible! The Bible is an endless source of inspiration. Inspiration that is for trying to figure out how to deal with the idiocies contained within. Some tales are plausible like David and Goliath; but some, like that of Methuselah’s old age run so against the grain as to be laughable. But perhaps, just perhaps, one can come up with a plausible scenario to account for these Biblical super pensioners. 

 

It never ceases to amaze me that an awful lot of people take every word in the Bible literally. I consider that a very poor reflection on the human intellect and the ability to think logically. To believe the Bible as literal truth today is now akin to believing that the Earth is flat and that the Sun goes around it. Once upon a time it might have been understandable, but those days are long gone. 

Despite a large percentage of people taking a literal interpretation of all things Biblical, including the tale of Methuselah (and others) living to a really, really ripe old age, modern day experiences strongly suggest the point, a point that you know and I know, that biology gives the thumbs down to any such longevity. So, what do we make of this tale?

I interrupt the story here to point out that 1) behind all mythology, including Biblical mythology lurks a tiny grain of historical truth and that 2) God isn’t a supernatural deity but just one of many extraterrestrials who have arrived on Earth eons before and have divided jurisdiction over various terrestrial geographical areas among themselves. God’s patch of turf to oversee and govern of course is what we now call the Middle East. The logic behind that is too long and complicated to go into again; I’ve done that previously. Let’s just say if you believe in God then you actually believe in extraterrestrial life, extraterrestrial intelligence and ‘ancient astronauts’. 

One of the many anomalies part and parcel of Biblical texts are those “Book of Genesis” genealogies that inform us that various characters in the Bible apparently spend way more time in retirement and collecting pensions and other old age social security benefits than they ever did gainfully employed. Methuselah is often the person cited as king of the pensioners. The question is, are those Biblical old ages fact or fiction? If factual, what are the possible explanations?

I’d normally sooner trust a card shark, used car salesman, even a politician before I’d trust any of those Biblical tall tales. However, there’s always the ‘what if’ game, as in ‘what if’ this particular Biblical tall tale is really true. ‘This’ in this case is the ripe old ages of a few of the Old Testament characters. Where does that lead us?

The following Biblical characters and their ages at death are listed on Wikipedia, but since there are several versions of the genealogies in the Old Testament (Genesis) the ages don’t always agree. Regardless, relative to you or me, these fine Biblical folk are up there getting their pensions and other senior citizen benefits and have been for quite some considerable time assuming they retired at 65. If you’re getting close to your ‘use by’ date, don’t you wish you had been born a Methuselah?

Methuselah = 969 (or 720) years.

Jared = 962 (or 847) years.

Noah = 950 years.

Adam = 930 years.

Seth = 912 years.

Cainan or Kenan (pre flood) = 910 years.

Enos or Enosh = 905 years.

Mahalaleel = 895 years.

Lamech = 777 (or 753 or 653) years.

Shem = 600 years.

Arphaxad = 535 (or 438) years.

Eber = 464 (or 404) years.

Cainan (post flood) = 460 years.

Salah = 460 (or 433) years.

Enoch = 365* years.

Peleg = 339 (or 239) years.

Reu = 339 (or 239) years.

Serug = 330 (or 230) years.

Nahor = 304 (or 148) years.

Terah = 275+ (or 205) years.

Abraham = 175 years.

Oldest human verified = 122 years.

Reasonable life expectancy = 80+ years.

While there’s no theoretical reason(s) for a human to die after X number of years, 969 is pushing that envelop a bit even if you did have all the right stuff, inherited good genes, didn’t smoke or drink, ate your vegetables (and an apple a day), got eight hours of sleep and some reasonable exercise every day, avoided stress and all those other sorts of things your quack general practitioner keeps on telling you to do.

One now needs to ask to what purpose were these select few individuals given, in most cases, 900+ years instead of three score and ten. I mean that’s just not a little bit of difference from the norm, it’s a massive difference. Further, these Biblical pensioners aren’t of the ‘over-the-hill-and-off-the-pill’ set. That is to say, if you want to live to a really ripe old Biblical age, it’s better to have been born a male (which somehow runs counter to expectations today where females tend to live to collect more pension checks than males).

The Bible itself apparently offers no explanation for these extraordinary life-spans. Therefore, we have open slather when it comes to speculations upon the explanations.

The most probable explanation is that it’s pure Biblical fiction, just more myths and fairy tales for grown-ups, but then if that’s true this essay terminates now. So, indulge my fantasy as I play the ‘what if’ game, as in ‘what if’ a lifespan of 969 was achieved. How and why and what sorts of implications are now gist for the fun-and-games mill that can be speculated on till the cows come home. 

One thing I rule out is more time to be fruitful and multiply. Any normal male over any normal lifespan could potentially father hundreds upon hundreds of offspring. You don’t need a 900+ year lifespan. Re-enforcing this are the observations by the Gershwin brothers in their “Porgy and Bess” song that no gal is going to give in and spread her legs for no man who’s 900 years old!

Now I have speculated elsewhere at long length that God isn’t really a deity, but an extraterrestrial, a Captain of the Starship Heaven. Further, God, and his extraterrestrial colleagues from other starships, the polytheistic ‘gods’, came to Earth with technological powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men (and women), and experimented with mammalian primate stock, ultimately producing, via artificial selection, the human being (which really was a very bad mistake, but that’s another topic).

Now perhaps these Biblical long-lifers were really aliens themselves, aliens with naturally long life-spans, part of Captain God’s Starship Heaven crew who did a lot of the be-fruitful-and-multiply begetting bit (some of those ‘sons of God’ chatting up some of those ‘daughters of men’ scenarios that the Bible relates) designed to improve the stock of the terrestrial species known as Homo sapiens..

Or perhaps this gift of extensive longevity is yet another case of God and/or the polytheistic gods doing a bit of bio-tampering via bioengineering, medical technology, and/or genetic engineering on actual humans – some of God’s chosen ones.  So perhaps if our old-timers were human through-and-through, then you have really got to conclude that clearly, some advanced bio or genetic or medical technology/engineering was employed, and by elimination, the only beings capable of employing such technologies would be aliens, aliens who to humans living way back around the time of the mythological flood were considered deities.

So assuming Methuselah and the rest of the super-pensioners listed above were genetically or medically augmented with all those additional years, what’s the point?

One reason for a long lifespan is if you need to take a long journey. Now that rules out Planet Earth since a normal human lifespan is long enough for you to get from Point A to Point B, even before the invention of the automobile and the airplane, especially given the rather limited geography that was known in Biblical times.

The only journeys that make sense in Methuselah terms would be a journey to the stars, where say Captain God (the E.T.) and crew of the Starship Heaven originally came from – call it a sightseeing tour for God’s chosen few. 

Today, modern humanity with its advanced high-tech civilization can’t manage to get to even the nearest of stellar neighbours. Our spacecraft are too slow; our life-spans too short. But how far could you get if you lived to be over 900 years and had an advanced extraterrestrial’s technology to transport you?

Now when it comes to interstellar distances, things are measured in light-years. One light year is the distance light travels in one year. The speed of light is roughly 186,000 miles per second; a light-year is some 6 trillion miles.

If you could travel at 1% light speed, you’d travel one light-year per every 100 years. So, if you lived somewhat beyond 900 years, you could make it out to roughly 9 light-years one-way, or 4.5 light-years roundtrip. That would bring you to our nearest stellar neighbour, the Alpha Centauri system, and back home again within your 900+ year allotment.

If you celebrated over 900 birthdays, and if you could travel at 10% light speed, you’d travel one light-year every 10 years. So, you could make it out to roughly 90 light-years one-way or 45 light-years if you wanted to touch ground on home turf again before you snuffed it. A radius of 45 light years brings you to distances that incorporate a fair few stars and star systems, some of which are quite Sun-like and prime candidates for hosting some form of alien life.

But if you could travel at close to light speed and taking into account special relativity, you’d boldly go outward bound at a little less than one light-year per year. The catch here is ‘special relativity’. It operates in your favour if you want to explore strange new worlds, etc. very far from home.

So, another possible explanation is that Methuselah (and the others) actually lived normal human life-spans but their interstellar journeys were at such velocities, close to light-speed, that Einstein’s special relativity came into play. The upshot is, the faster you travel, the slower you age. And thus, the case of the ‘twin paradox’ where the stay-at-home twin ages normally (one second per second; one year per orbit around the Sun) according to our norms, but the boldly going traveller, rocketing along near light speed twin, ages way more slowly. Thus, when the boldly going twin returns home and reunites with stay-at-home twin, there will now be vast differences in their ages. Stay-at-home twin has grown a lot older relative to boldly going twin. In fact, stay-at-home twin might have already snuffed it, dying of natural causes – old age – before a reunion happens.

So if Methuselah was boldly going, he might return home to a home now hundreds of years post his terrestrial date-of-birth, but to stay-at-home types, knowing nothing of special relativity, Methuselah would a super-pensioner, having obviously spanned those hundreds of years. Those stay-at-home bodies would record Methuselah lived to a super ultra ripe old age when in reality he aged normally and had a normal life span – no bio, genetic or medical technology/engineering, just special relativity physics.

 

And so in conclusion, Methuselah’s age and those of his super ultra pensioner kind, can be accounted for by 1) assuming the story is total rubbish (and if you were a betting person, that’s the way to bet); 2) they were aliens with naturally lengthy life-spans; 3) they were humans who were artificially augmented by various technological means to keep those grey hairs and wrinkles at bay for hundreds of years; or 4) they had normal terrestrial life-spans, the sort that you or I expect, but they were subjected to the weird physics associated with the Special Theory of Relativity.

So, here are your options: 1) Supernatural God works a miracle and allows a whole lot of men to live multi-hundreds of years; 2) There were no such persons and no such longevity, rather the author of Genesis was on some sort of Biblical-era LSD – the option any sane betting person would take; 3) the story has some sort of foundation, in which case the violation of basic biology was only apparent and had to have been something else.  

P.S. The moral to these stories is that once you reject the literal interpretation of any one of the Biblical tall tales (The Brothers Grimm should have written so many), like Methuselah, then you have to question the literal aspects of all the texts; every Biblical book, chapter and verse.

*Enoch didn’t come back from his interstellar sightseeing excursion to die a peaceful and natural death back on Terra Firma. Apparently was whisked away from his terrestrial abode by God for reason(s) unknown – raptured, abducted, died on the voyage, joined the crew, whatever – and so we don’t really know when Enoch snuffed it.

Ancient UFOs: Joshua and Celestial Physics

UFOs aren’t anything new. In fact, if my premise is correct, that the polytheistic gods (including the monotheistic God) were not deities but extraterrestrials (‘ancient astronauts’) then their aerial and sometimes fiery chariots so often referred to in mythology were nothing but shuttlecraft out of their mother-ships or star-ships – what we might now term UFOs. We’re all familiar with the ‘Wheels of Ezekiel’ story, but mythology coughs up several more possibilities, Biblical and otherwise. I’ll continue the ball rolling with the so-called story of ‘Joshua and Celestial Physics’ which might actually have something to do with UFOs.   

Ah, the Bible! The Bible is an endless source of inspiration. Inspiration that is for trying to figure out how to deal with the idiocies contained within. Some tales are plausible like David and Goliath; many aren’t, like Jonah and the whale or large fish, and some, like Joshua at Gibeon (Gideon) violate so many laws of physics that no sci-fi authors in their right minds would perpetrate such nonsense on their reading public. 

 

It never ceases to amaze me that an awful lot of people take every word in the Bible literally. I consider that a very poor reflection on the human intellect and the ability to think logically. To believe the Bible as literal truth today is now akin to believing that the Earth is flat and that the Sun goes around it. Once upon a time it might have been understandable, but those days are long gone. 

Despite a large percentage of people taking a literal interpretation of all things Biblical, including the tale of Joshua asking God to make the Sun and Moon brake suddenly, you know and I know that celestial physics gives the thumbs down to any such actions. So, what do we make of this tale?

I interrupt the story here to point out that 1) behind all mythology, including Biblical mythology lurks a tiny grain of historical truth and that 2) God isn’t a supernatural deity but just one of many extraterrestrials who have arrived on Earth eons before and have divided jurisdiction over various terrestrial geographical areas among themselves. God’s patch of turf to oversee and govern of course is what we now call the Middle East. The logic behind that is too long and complicated to go into again; I’ve done that previously. Let’s just say if you believe in God then you actually believe in extraterrestrial life, extraterrestrial intelligence and ‘ancient astronauts’. 

We have the tale of Joshua, a relatively minor figure in the Bible, a sort of sidekick apprentice to Moses during all those Exodus bits, at least until he gets his very own Biblical book, the “Book of Joshua” (how original). He was a sort of Biblical James Bond and military officer who commanded the Israelites in the destruction of many places, like Canaan and Jericho. But it was at Gibeon (Gideon) that everlasting historical fame, if not fortune, awaited Joshua, for at Gibeon he asked God to cause the Sun and the Moon to stand still, so that he could finish his battle, a battle on behalf of God, in daylight.

The exact quote from the King James Version is:

Joshua: 10: 12 – “Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon.”

Joshua: 10: 13 - “And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.”

Now the first and minor objection is that if the Moon and the Sun are in the sky at the same time, the additional lighting the Moon provides is so marginal that the average person wouldn’t even notice it. The Full Moon, when you get maximum illumination from the lunar orb, only rises at about the same time the Sun is setting; setting when the Sun is rising in the east. As long as the Sun was up and shining, Joshua had all the light he needed.

Now the second and major objection is that in order to get the Sun to stand still – hover in the sky – Planet Earth has got to stop rotating on its axis. God would have had to cause the Earth to brake very suddenly. Now, what happens if you’re driving along at a rapid rate of miles per hour and all of a sudden have to apply the brakes full force? Well anything not tied down inside the car is going to keep on travelling in a forward direction. Apply that principle to the Earth, which is rotating a hell of a lot faster than any family car, and anything not tied down, like you, will go shooting off into space! So, the Sun standing still in the sky would result in the Mother of all Disasters down here on not so terra-firma. Since that didn’t happen, the Joshua story is another example of Biblical bovine fertilizer.

Now the third and also a major objection is that since the Moon goes around the Earth, stopping just the Earth’s rotation wouldn’t stop the Moon from travelling across the sky. God would have had to stop the Moon dead still in its orbit. But that adds the complication that the gravitational attraction between Earth and Moon would then cause the Moon to start dropping like the proverbial stone – right towards target Earth (actually the Earth would also head towards the Moon as well; each celestial object gravitationally attracting the other). It’s only because the Earth orbits the Sun that prevents us from colliding with it; ditto the Moon orbiting the Earth in constant motion results in no lunar-terra collision. Of course God also needed to freeze the Earth’s rotation since that too would cause the Moon to move in the sky from east to west.

Now what sort of natural or even unnatural but closer-to-home terrestrial objects might substitute for a stationary Sun and Moon? Well, nothing really comes to mind. Since there were no helicopters, flares, blimps or balloons, or spotlights back then, and no other natural source of light, say ball lightning, stands still, then we’re left with either a total fabrication or something extraterrestrial. 

So the only escape clause as I see it, apart from the observation that the tale is pure fiction, is that the objects weren’t the Sun and the Moon at all, but UFOs under Captain God’s command. Brightly glowing UFOs could hover overhead, for as long as this was required, providing the illumination required for Joshua to complete his military rape and pillage, which of course God gave His stamp of approval to.

So, in conclusion, here are your options: 1) Supernatural God works a miracle and allows Joshua to strut his military stuff in everlasting daylight due to a stationary Sun and Moon; 2) There was no such person and no such military event and the Sun and Moon didn’t violate celestial physics, rather the author of the Book of Joshua was on some sort of Biblical-era LSD – the option any sane betting person would take; 3) the story has some sort of foundation, in which case the violation of celestial physics was only apparent and had to have been something else.  

P.S. The moral to these stories is that once you reject the literal interpretation of any one of the Biblical tall tales (The Brothers Grimm should have written so many), like Joshua, then you have to question the literal aspects of all the texts; every Biblical book, chapter and verse.

Ancient UFOs: Jonah and the UFO

UFOs aren’t anything new. In fact, if my premise is correct, that the polytheistic gods (including the monotheistic God) were not deities but extraterrestrials (‘ancient astronauts’) then their aerial and sometimes fiery chariots so often referred to in mythology were nothing but shuttlecraft out of their mother-ships or star-ships – what we might now term UFOs. We’re all familiar with the ‘wheels of Ezekiel’ story, but mythology coughs up several more possibilities, Biblical and otherwise. I’ll continue the ball rolling with the so-called story of ‘Jonah in the Whale’ (i.e. UFO). 

Ah, the Bible! The Bible is an endless source of inspiration. Inspiration that is for trying to figure out how to deal with the idiocies contained within. Some tales are plausible like David and Goliath; many aren’t, like Jonah and the whale or large fish. 

It never ceases to amaze me that an awful lot of people take every word in the Bible literally. I consider that a very poor reflection on the human intellect and the ability to think logically. To believe the Bible as literal truth today is now akin to believing that the Earth is flat and that the Sun goes around it. Once upon a time it might have been understandable, but those days are long gone. 

Despite a large percentage of people taking a literal interpretation of all things Biblical, including the ‘Jonah and the Whale’ of a tale, now you know, and I know since we can think for ourselves, that while it might be theoretically possible for a very large fish, or some whales (like the sperm whale) to swallow you alive and whole (thus avoid biting you in half in the process), it’s unlikely in the extreme because no marine creature currently known exhibits that sort of feeding behaviour. Large fish or toothed whales have teeth for a reason, and humans are fairly large prey – we’re not minnows. Other very large fish like the whale shark (an endangered species that needs your help) don’t have teeth the shark in “Jaws” would have been proud to display, rather they are filter feeders. Filter feeders include the very large baleen whale – but it couldn’t swallow you without choking to death. So, you’re gonna be bitten and chewed first before being swallowed. Further, you’re not going to survive in their stomach for very long – minutes at most in all likelihood. If you don’t drown first, the lack of oxygen will soon do you in or the digestive acids will soon turn you into digestible fish food. So the ‘Jonah and the Whale’ story is rubbish, unless the whale were really a submarine that was embellished and given flesh-and-blood in order to provide the narrator and reader with something in a more familiar context. But then there weren’t no subs back then were there?

So the story of ‘Jonah and the Whale’ (or large fish) is in all likelihood just another of the numerous Biblical tall tales. It can not be a literal event. However, let’s play that ‘what if’ game again.

I interrupt the story here to point out that 1) behind all mythology, including Biblical mythology lurks a tiny grain of historical truth and that 2) God isn’t a supernatural deity but just one of many extraterrestrials who have arrived on Earth eons before and have divided jurisdiction over various terrestrial geographical areas among themselves. God’s patch of turf to oversee and govern of course is what we now call the Middle East. The logic behind that is too long and complicated to go into again; I’ve done that previously. Let’s just say if you believe in God then you actually believe in extraterrestrial life, extraterrestrial intelligence and ‘ancient astronauts’. 

Now if I get the story right, God (the E.T.) sends Jonah on an errand. Jonah doesn’t want a bar of this and heads off in the opposite direction that involves a sea journey*. God ain’t amused at mutiny and so causes this storm at sea, which makes the sailors very unhappy indeed. The sailors, a superstitious lot, make Jonah walk-the-plank or otherwise heave Jonah overboard, actually at Jonah’s own suicidal suggestion. Now that throws a monkey wrench in God’s plans. God therefore had better save his errand boy from drowning and so Jonah is rescued by one of Captain God’s Starship Heaven’s shuttlecraft, or a UFO. But, Jonah gets punished with a three day and night solitary confinement prison sentence for his disobedience, locked away inside this so-called ‘fish’. But, Jonah, inside the belly of the ‘beast’ is eventually released (regurgitated) unharmed, repents and is able to complete his mission for Captain God. A happy ending!

Now Jonah, being a rather typical Biblical character, unsophisticated in the ways of high technology (and you can’t blame him for that – you couldn’t exactly enrol for a Ph.D. in engineering way back then) found himself floundering in the ocean one moment, then locked inside something strange for three days and nights before being deposited on dry land. The only logical explanation to such a Biblical lad lacking an engineering Ph.D. was the whale/large fish alternative. In fact to his mind, there was no alternative – that had to have been the only possible explanation.

Now Jonah wouldn’t of necessity have to have actually seen the aliens piloting the UFO shuttlecraft sent by God (the E.T.) that rescued him from certain death.

So, in conclusion, here are your options: 1) Supernatural God works a miracle and allows Jonah to get swallowed alive by a large marine creature and live to tell the tale after surviving a lack of oxygen and digestive acids for three days and nights; 2) There was no such person and no such marine creature, rather the author of the Jonah tale was on some sort of Biblical-era LSD – the option any sane betting person would take; 3) the story has some sort of foundation, in which case the ‘fish’ had to have been something technological complete with oxygen supply and no digestive juices.  

*Obviously Jonah didn’t perceive God as all-knowing and all-powerful, otherwise he would have known that ‘resistance is futile’!