SETI Strategy

The traditional, even the untraditional Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has been going on now for over five decades; six decades if you include UFOs, and a century’s worth if you include listening for Martian radio signals. Of course, as we are all well aware, nothing has, to date, come from these extensive searches. Either there’s nothing out there worth searching for, or perhaps one is shooting at a moving target. A better search strategy might be to shoot at a stationary target(s). My suggestion is for an optimal static SETI target – the Moon.    

Traditional SETI, the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence, uses a search strategy of looking for extraterrestrial radio signals broadcast by technologically advanced, well, extraterrestrials.  Alas, you don’t know in advance where in space the alien radio station is; what strength it’s broadcasting at; what radio frequency it’s using; how often it’s broadcasting or for what duration per broadcast. Further, the station is probably on a rotating planet, and we on the receiving end are rotating too and so the meshing of the two such that we face each other is dicey at best. It’s a search with all the odds stacked against it. That’s what I call SETI in motion. Static SETI has better odds in its favour, IMHO. What SETI needs is to eliminate the motion associated with possible ETI from the search. In other words, search for ETI via those artefacts of ETI that 1) pretty much stand still and 2) remain standing still for very lengthy time frames.  

TRADITIONAL SETI IN MOTION: The Electromagnetic Spectrum

Optical and radio wave SETI relies on some alien technological civilization pointing a radio or optical transmitter in the outward bound direction and letting briefly fly the photons in just the absolute right direction such that a terrestrial radio or optical receiver just happens to be pointed in that exact same direction at the exact relevant time frame later on down the track. The odds are not good that all these variables of motion will mesh together. I mean, what if you had one spinning terrestrial globe (globe A) with some random rate of spin and orientation (axis tilt), and another spinning globe (globe B) with another random rate of spin and orientation, both positioned at some random distance apart, what odds that say, one specific latitude and longitude on globe A would exactly match up in a straight line, allowing for the speed of light representing that straight line, with the exact same latitude and longitude on globe B?

UNTRADITIONAL SETI IN MOTION: Space Probes

We have sent out messages to ET in the form of plaques (Pioneer 10 and 11) and audio-visual recordings (Voyager 1 and 2), which have odds of success that even the most optimistic of optimists wouldn’t bet a nickel, far less the family farm, on achieving reality. That’s because space probes are very, very small and space is really, Really, REALLY, very, Very, VERY, big, as “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” as so adequately pointed out and made that concept clear to us. Finding alien space probes: it’s the needle-in-a-haystack or perhaps the message-in-the-bottle carried to extremes.

UNTRADITIONAL QUASI-SETI IN MOTION: UFO SETI

The problem with trying to search for and pin down UFOs as an example of ETI is that UFOs will not stand still. They come and they go like short-duration will-of-the-wisps in a totally random way that cannot be forecast in advance. But the skies can be monitored 24/7, and they are monitored 24/7, and guess what, UFOs are spotted 24/7. Of course a UFO doesn’t automatically translate into an alien spaceship, and in any event, while the skies stand still in a manner of speaking, those pesky UFOs don’t.

TRADITIONAL STATIC SETI: Galactic Searches

External galaxies, like stars in our galaxy, sit still in the night sky. Unlike targeting individual stars in our galaxy, or rather the inhabited planets whizzing around them (orbiting and rotating) which is traditional SETI in motion, targeting entire galaxies at one go, assuming a reasonable number of ET civilizations are in that galaxy, suggests that something that’s of an EM nature (on a myriad of frequencies) emitted at random time intervals by someone(s) or something(s) is intersecting our local geography upon which sits our radio telescope 24/7. The fly in that ointment is that, as the introduction to “Star Wars” pointed out, external galaxies are far, far away. That means that while we’re getting some signal(s) from an external galaxy 24/7 just on sheer probability, it’s like trying to hear someone, say your ex, shouting at you from L.A. when you’re, alas, in N.Y.C.

STATIC SETI: Omnidirectional Signals

Omnidirectional electromagnetic signals would appear as a ‘light bulb’ that was always on, but the drawback is that it is a very energy intensive way of advertising yourself and saying “hi there” to the cosmos.

STATIC SETI: Dyson Spheres

We’re all for solar energy, and a really advanced extraterrestrial civilization could take the concept to an extreme. Only a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the Sun’s output hits Earth, so even if all of that were captured and put to good use, it would still be just a tiny fraction of what’s theoretically available. But, if one could build a quasi-flexible sphere (of say colony space stations) around a parent star, then a large fraction of the star’s solar energy could be intercepted and put to a useful purpose. The light energy would ultimately be converted to heat energy, or infrared (IR) wavelengths. So, if we SETI by looking for anomalous infrared stellar sources, we just might detect or capture evidence of a vast extraterrestrial astro-engineering projects, known in the trade as Dyson Spheres. The trick will be to distinguish a natural IR source from an artificial one. Further complicating matters is that the search pretty much has to be conducted from above Earth’s atmosphere which is pretty opaque to IR wavelengths.

STATIC SETI: Pulsars

When pulsars were first discovered, they were immediately thought to be the SETI smoking gun, and were named LGM 1, LGM 2, etc. where LGM stood for “Little Green Man”. Alas, it quickly became apparent that in terms of SETI, pulsars were too much of a good thing, now numbering in the thousands, and a natural alternative explanation quickly came to the fore – rapidly rotating neutron stars. However, if author Paul LaViolette* is to be believed, pulsars are not naturally rapid rotating neutron stars but artificially constructed interstellar navigation and communication beacons – the product or creation of ETI. Fortunately pulsars stay put and thus LaViolette’s ideas can be tested.

STATIC SETI: Planetary Disequilibrium

Another possible example of static SETI is the search for planetary atmospheres in chemical disequilibrium – the search in all probability for bio-signatures. Earth’s atmosphere is in a state of disequilibrium; so apparently is Titan’s atmosphere. The ‘intelligence’ part comes in regarding the detection of unnatural pollutants, again in disequilibrium. A variation on that theme is to look for anomalies in a star’s spectrum, say for uranium, plutonium, radium, thorium, or technetium. Finding such would be suspicious – hey, what’s going on here? The answer being that a technological civilization used their parent star as a nuclear waste dump (quite a sensible idea); or to advertise their existence.

STATIC SETI: The Sun

As per above, there are some who have suggested that extraterrestrial intelligences with advanced technologies might deliberately ‘pollute’ their parent star with unnatural or anomalous elements, perhaps an exercise in radioactive waste disposal. The upshot being that the stellar spectra of such ‘polluted’ stars would give the game away that there was intelligence afoot since no natural process could account for such anomalous spectra. Now if such a strategy were used as a calling card by said extraterrestrials, perhaps they have artificially altered the natural solar spectra of our Sun. Alas, I assume by now our Sun’s spectra has been analysed and re-analysed and re-re-analysed with nothing anomalous discovered.

STATIC SETI: The Moon

If you want to leave a message or a calling card akin to “Kilroy was here” for someone unknown or unknowable in the future (whether near future or distant future is also unknown) what would you do, especially if you had some space-faring capability? Translate that scenario now and assume that there must have been some sort of visit to Planet Earth by ET(s) over the past several billion years (and Earth was inhabited even if only by microbes at that time) and maybe they left behind their equivalent of “Kilroy was here”. Well you wouldn’t leave your calling card on Planet Earth since Planet Earth is both geologically and meteorologically active and the ocean bottom isn’t much better. You wouldn’t leave it in high Earth orbit or at the Langranian Points since that makes your message a moving target and/or subject to dislodgment from gravitational forces say from a passing near Earth asteroid or a close encounter with a passing comet. Solar flares, etc. over the long haul could also disrupt any stable orbit. Positioning the message elsewhere in the Solar System is probably placing it too distantly away requiring too much power to sustain itself over the long haul – assuming ET supplied it with batteries – or placement would result in just too much real estate to have to cover for future recipients. What about the Moon as a repository for an alien artefact or two? Did Arthur C. Clarke get it right in “2001: A Space Odyssey”?

The Moon has and hasn’t for all practical purposes any dynamic geology or meteorology and certainly no ocean bottoms. The Moon is not, for all practical purposes a moving target as we tend to think of moving targets. Has the Moon ever been targeted by SETI? Not formally to the best of my knowledge.

If there was an EM beacon on the Moon broadcasting on our radio/TV frequencies we’d know about it. I imagine there must have been times when the Moon was in view or in the line of sight with radio telescopes doing traditional interstellar electromagnetic (radio) SETI analysis. If so, no dice resulted. I imagine the Moon (from space) has been looked at in the ultraviolet, infrared, and other parts of the EM spectrum not readily accessible from ground level. Still, I think a formal SETI attack on the Moon might not be a bad thing – if only to dot I’s and cross all the T’s.

QUASI-STATIC SETI: Transient Lunar Phenomena

For more years than you can shake a stick at - and that’s a lot of years - anomalous lights, glows, or luminescences have been seen and recorded on the Moon by astronomers, both amateur and professional. These enigmatic lights have been tagged with the general phrase Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP). They come and go with total unpredictability. The usual theory is some sort of volcanic activity, maybe a meteor impact, but to date they remain just one of those mysteries Mother Nature chucks our way. TLP’s require far more investigation, just in case they have a ‘Kilroy’ aspect to them.

STATIC SETI: Alien Artefacts

The ‘Face on Mars’ is probably the best known example of an ‘alien artefact’, and when first photographed by a Viking orbiting space probe it indeed looked like a human ‘face’. However, later photographs under differing lighting conditions just revealed a big rock that had to be lit just so in order to show a pseudo-‘face’. Though the ‘Face on Mars’ proved not to be a real ‘face’, the key point with respect to SETI is that the ‘face’ stood still to be photographed and studied another day under differing conditions. It stood still!

STATIC SETI: Ancient Astronauts

Many myths and legends, from ancient cultures around the world, especially surrounding religious figures of all-powerful deities, can often be reinterpreted in terms of flesh-and-blood aliens as opposed to supernatural gods and goddesses. Alas, while provocative, its marginal evidence at best for ancient astronauts. Engineering feats seemingly impossible for ancient societies are equally provocative, are bona-fide archaeological mysteries, but are again just marginal evidence for high-tech aliens, not smoking guns. However, if there were artefacts, images or equivalent, indisputably produced by ancient man yet which clearly exhibited a degree of knowledge they could not have possessed, that’s a different horse of quite another colour. As a hypothetical example, if there was an image or carving clearly showing the planet Saturn and satellites, all in correct proportionality, in say an ancient Egyptian tomb that would be more than just something provocative. Ditto the image of a kangaroo or a map showing Tasmania or Long Island (N.Y.). Even better would be a really real alien artefact with a “made in Krypton” stamped on it somewhere! Regardless, I suggest a detailed examination of ancient artefacts/images as viewed from the eyes and perspective of a physical, even biological scientist or geographer as opposed to a traditional archaeologist might be in order. Even    

STATIC SETI: Crop Circles

Crop circles stand-sit-lie still (as it were until farmers mow them down) but I’m not convinced they have anything to do with ETI, even if they are high strangeness. But if they do, have anything to do with ETI that is, they would a tempting SETI target.

STATIC SETI: Junk DNA

Some out-of-the-box thinkers have suggested that aliens might have left an internal message within us (as in terrestrial life) that ‘Kilroy was here’ the message being in the form of a coding within those parts of an organism’s DNA that isn’t particularly used for anything – junk DNA. The only problem I see with that is that even junk DNA can and will mutate and thus change the message, just like changing one letter in a word can render that word meaningless. 

CONCLUSION

Our Moon offers the best bet for uncovering evidence that aliens have been (and maybe still are) in our neck of the stellar woods. Since the Moon is close by, and can be observed 24/7 (we know where it is at all times) and is a logical place for aliens to have left evidence of any visitation, it should be the focus of SETI. Such evidence, by implication, would prove that ET exists, or at least one ET existed once upon a time.

*LaViolette, Paul; The Talk of the Galaxy: An ET Message for Us?; Starlane Publications, Alexandria, VA; 2000.



Impossible, Improbable & Imaginary Extraterrestrial Geographies

Far away places with strange sounding names. Sometimes they exist; sometimes they exist but not quite in the way at times suspected or expected; sometimes they don’t exist at all. It’s the latter two categories I examine here.

Impossible, improbable or imaginary geographies are often located, as things turned out, off planet. Here are a few examples of those impossible, improbable & imaginary extraterrestrial geographies.

Vulcan: We all know that Mercury is the closest planetary object to the Sun. But that’s not celestial physics set in stone. There could be objects even closer in, though difficult to see in the intense glare of our parent star, just as many of us haven’t ever seen Mercury being too close to the Sun to be seen with the unaided eye unless conditions are absolutely spot-on. So, way back when, when astronomical instrumentation and technology wasn’t as good as today, coupled with expectations and the thrill of the chase, well it’s not too surprising that astronomers ‘found’ that there was a planet even closer to the Sun than Mercury. Such a planet would be hot property indeed, and so when looking for mythological names that were ‘hot’ with which to christen it, well Vulcan fit the bill. And so it came to pass that Vulcan was the planet closest to the Sun; Mercury relegated to next in line. Unfortunately, they were wrong. Wishful thinking trumped less than ideal observations and so Vulcan was created in the mind as opposed to being actually verifiable. Mercury was restored to first rock from the Sun status – Vulcan became imaginary real estate. But, as Star Trek fans all know, the name lives on as the (non-solar) home of Mr. Spock and kin. 

Neith: Venus, the Goddess of Love, should have a lover – a companion. Venus, the planet, should too have a companion. After all, Venus is the near twin of Earth in terms of size and proximity to the Sun (Venus is second rock out), and Earth has a natural satellite so it stood to reason that Venus should have one too. Alas, it was not to be, but not for lack of trying. Take Neith – companion (but in mythology not lover) to Venus the planet. As with the case of Vulcan, wishful thinking, plus perhaps less than ideal telescopes (relative to modern scopes) led to a flurry of sightings of that expected satellite of Venus, named Neith, so confident were the discoverers that this was no illusion but a physical object. Now there’s a slight problem here. Venus isn’t that close in proximity to the Sun that solar glare should have caused problems. It wasn’t just one professional astronomer who sighted Neith, but many. And while the optical equipment of the day wasn’t 2012 state-of-the-art, it was more than adequate, or should have been more than adequate, to see a reasonable sized satellite in orbit around Venus. So, one could argue that Neith was indeed an actual bit of celestial real estate that went walkabout. Natural satellites don’t have a habit of going walkabout and disappearing. Unnatural satellites on the other hand… Now, might our own Moon be such an unnatural satellite?

Spaceship Moon: Once upon a time there was no real scientifically satisfactorily explanation for the Moon, or rather how the Moon came to be our Moon. One idea that the Moon was an independent body in an irregular and rogue orbit that somehow in a just-so kind of way happen to get gravitationally captured by the Earth was really too implausible. The Moon could have formed jointly with the Earth out of the same cosmic interstellar dust cloud that gave rise to the rest of the solar system. Some bits of that cosmic dust clumped together to form the planets around the parent star, the Sun, and in like fashion other bits of that dust came together around the planets to form natural satellites. Alas, post Apollo, chemical analysis of Moon bits compared to Earth bits ruled that out. For a similar reason, as well as problems in celestial physics, the Moon wasn’t born of a rapidly spinning proto-Earth leaving behind the Pacific basin as its scar, in the same way water droplets would be flung off a globe that was rapidly spinning.

Enter stage left the far-out-star-scout alternative idea that the Moon had nothing to do with the proto-Sun and proto-solar system and proto-Earth. The Moon wasn’t a rogue object captured by the Earth’s gravity, but it was a rouge object that was deliberately steered into an Earth orbit. The Moon was actually a hollow artificially constructed spaceship, covered with lots of dust and rock debris as a natural shield against cosmic radiation and other cosmic bits that would now and again slam into this spaceship – hazards of an interstellar voyage. Anomalies like Transient Lunar Phenomena (strange glowing lights seen on an irregular basis on the lunar surface) are explained as artificial. The Moon’s aliens are the source of the UFO phenomenon. The reason for the aliens steering the artificial Moon into Earth orbit in the first place is that Earth provided all the close at hand next door resources the aliens could ever want.

Of course to spoil that good artificial hollow Moon theory, some bright scientist comes up with yet another natural lunar origin explanation that now fitted all of the facts – a rogue near Mars-sized planet slammed, albeit just a glancing blow, into the proto-Earth, and the resulting mixture of thrown off debris from the proto-Earth and the near totally destroyed smaller rouge planet came together under gravity in near Earth proximity to become, the Moon. So, alas, the artificial hollow Moon proved to be another bit of implausible geography.

Face on Mars: The ‘is there or isn’t there life on Mars’ game was set afoot when the American Viking space probes arrived in the Martian arena in 1976. On the scale of micro-organisms, that question still hasn’t been resolved. There are those who are convinced the Viking craft that landed on the Martian surface hit biological pay dirt. Most others say it was only chemical, not biochemical pay dirt. The fence is being sat on by others to this day. However, the other Viking craft that orbited Mars boldly detected not microbial life, but intelligent life on Mars. One photographed the ‘face on Mars’, and by Jove, that’s exactly what it looked like – one huge monolithic massive stone structure on the Martian surface that resembled down to exacting details, a human face. Well, appearances can be, and often are, deceiving. All of us, at one time or another has seen geometry and recognizable shapes, including faces, in the clouds or in rock formations or on toasted cheese sandwiches. Images of ‘Jesus’ appearing on all manner of things are regular fodder for the tabloids.  Anyway, the whole ‘face on Mars’ issue spawned an entire mini publishing boom, though sceptics were 99 & 44/100’s % convinced that it was all just an illusion. And so it came to pass that NASA went back to Mars post-Viking, and, under pressure, had a new orbiting probe take another look under differing lighting conditions. The score – sceptics one; ‘face on Mars’ advocates zero. It really was all just an illusion, a trick of those lighting conditions that when coupled with some wishful thinking produced another example of imaginary geography.     

Hollow Moons of Mars: But wait, we’re not quite through with Mars yet. Mars has two relatively tiny satellites discovered in 1877 and both named after offspring of Ares/Mars – the god of war - that orbit around it. The one farther out and smaller of the two is called Deimos (about 4 miles radius and over 12,400 miles altitude) and the other larger and closer moon is Phobos (about 7 miles radius; altitude 3700 miles from the Martian surface). Actually it would be more accurate to say that neither is a perfect sphere; potato-shaped is a more spot-on description.

Now it came to pass that some scientists monitoring the relative orbits of Deimos and Phobos noticed that they were shrinking much, much, faster that they should have been. The moons were spiralling in towards the planet, eventually destined to have a close encounter of the Ka-Boom impact kind. The very tenuous Martian atmosphere isn’t much of a drag to what must be solid rock moons. The only alterative explanation is that these satellites were hollow; much less dense than solid rock, and therefore, wait for it, artificial, probably relics of a long extinct Martian civilization. Well actually, there was another alternative explanation – the observations of the shrinking orbits were at the limits of resolution technology and were erroneous. Space probes that have since passed up-close-and-personal to and photographed these satellites, and show exactly what you’d expect – not gleaming metallic hollow space stations or the image of a Star Wars type of Death Star configuration, but irregular, potato-shaped, cratered hunks of rock.

Heaven: If you accept the literal truth of Biblical passages, you can draw no other conclusion other than that Heaven is a physical place not of this Earth since there are lots of passages relating beings ascending and descending twixt the two. Therefore Heaven must be located somewhere up there or out there and as the Bible points out, home to an assorted range of supernatural deities (Father, Son and Holy Ghost) and staff, presumably angels (or extraterrestrial officers and crew depending on point of view). Unfortunately, despite Heaven being physical geography, it ain’t been seen by man, telescope or space probe. Heaven would have to be fairly conspicuous – deities and staff don’t reside on a quarter acre block. Try something more like the Taj Mahal or Buckingham Palace or Angkor Wat all cubed.

Of course perhaps Heaven is located light-years away among the stars, but that would hinder rapid interventions by the Heavenly residents here on Terra Firma. Prayers can’t travel faster than the speed of light, and like radio broadcasts, rapidly fade according to the inverse-square law – twice the distance, one-quarter the strength; thrice the distance, one-ninth the strength, etc. So, Heaven, if it makes any sense at all, should be nearby, in cosmic terms. Maybe Heaven resides and is hidden within the cloud bands of Jupiter, though that’s hardly a tranquil or ideal location as is in fact most of the solar system’s real estate. Of course if Heaven were a spaceship, a large spaceship – think Buckingham Palace cubed again – well perhaps that explains Neith. It just moved from the Venus environs to a less conspicuous location like in the asteroid belt or within the rings of Saturn - hidden in plain sight as it were. The upshot is, until proven otherwise, Heaven must be considered a mythical place.

Perhaps we all should be satisfied with the geography we got for real, keeping in mind that the geography we know is but a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny (repeat several hundred more times) of the geography yet to be discovered and explored – the vast cosmos beckons.

ET’s Home Sweet Home Away From Home

If aliens are present in our neck of the woods as many believe, then they originated from somewhere way out there (an interstellar home sweet home). They are unlikely to commute daily between home sweet home and here, just like scientists don’t commute daily between New York City and the South Pole. Therefore, these extraterrestrials have set up a base of operations – a home away from home. Where might that be, and has the location(s) changed over recorded history?

Let’s start off with a commonly held, but unproven assumption or belief that extraterrestrials have in the past, and are currently, interacting with Planet Earth and humanity – ancient astronauts and UFOs respectively. Now since these aliens have neither invaded, nor sought diplomatic contact, they have been somewhat less than right royally in your face when it comes to making an absolute spectacle of themselves. Translated, they are here, but are somewhat shy, at least in the sense of staying out of harms way. Now where they would seclude themselves depends on a number of factors.

Firstly, if the aliens have indeed mounted a long-term expedition to our terrestrial neck of the cosmic woods, they will need access to resources. You can only bring so much with you and no recycling scheme is ever 100% efficient. Entropy rules: order to disorder; useful to useless. So, aliens will need to top up their energy tanks, their required minerals, water, fertilizers for their hydroponic tanks, etc. Fortunately for them, resources are abundant just about anywhere in our solar system – water (as ices), minerals, solar energy, hydrocarbons, etc. So, aliens don’t need to factor resources in their home away from home staying out of harms way equation.

Having satisfied their long-term resource needs, they need a place(s) to live – a home sweet home away from home – that’s out of harms way. Aliens are well aware that humans shoot first and ask questions later. Keeping out of harms way however is relative to the state of humans’ abilities to in fact harm them. In the days BCE; in the days of ‘ancient astronauts’, places like Mount Olympus and the high Andes would adequately serve. Ancient alien buffs have speculated that aliens had bases under the sea and/or underground, and these would have also served the alien’s security purposes. The same applies to regions generally inhospitable to humans – arid areas and the Polar Regions. Such terrestrial abodes would be a welcome relief from the confinement of their starship or ‘mother ship’ which obviously must exist in order to serve as their transport between there and here.

Fast forward to today, and Mount Olympus, the South Pole, underwater and caves/caverns would no longer adequately serve their security needs. It would be time to sell up and move to a new home sweet home away from home. It’s either back to the ‘mother ship’ or the next nearest but still remote and isolated from human activity piece of real estate. Well, the ‘mother ship’ is okay for getting from Point A to Point B, but aliens, like humans, need to stretch their legs. That leaves the nearby but out of this world abode – the Moon.

Now there’s nothing new about speculation that the Moon could be a ‘home away from home’ for E.T. In fact it was once topical for those whose grounding in basic science was a bit suss to speculate that our Moon was in fact the alien’s ‘mother ship’. The Moon was an artificially hollowed out spaceship. You don’t hear too much about that brand of pseudoscience anymore, but that doesn’t mean E.T. can’t phone home from the Moon.

What can’t be so easily dismissed are reports from bona-fide astronomers (both professional and amateur) about mysterious lights seen on and sometimes moving about on the Moon. They are collective termed Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP). There have been thousands of TLP events reported, recorded and catalogued in the technical scientific literature. Explanations abound, like volcanic activity (which is highly unlikely), but nothing has come to the fore yet which has satisfied all of the people all of the time. It’s also not too difficult to find astronomical reports of anomalous structures on the Moon. I can recall reports of unusual lunar spires photographed from the series of Lunar Orbiter unmanned space probes used for detailed lunar mapping prior to selecting touchdown sites for the then upcoming Apollo Moon landings. 

Now quite off the record, it’s not hard to find information that links the American manned lunar program and American lunar flights with reports of UFOs both on and near the Moon. Cover-up and conspiracy theorists have had a field day with NASA and the powers-that-be censoring and covering up proof that aliens are on the Moon. There’s no doubt you’ll find dozens of Internet sites that cover that subject. But, there is one fact that translates into an oddity if you think about it. 

Now the absolutely oddest thoughts can strike you at the oddest times for no apparent reason. For some weird reason, the quotation on the Apollo 11 lunar plaque came to the fore, and why I thought of it at all I know not, but it all of a sudden struck me as being odd. This is the quote: “HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969, A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND”.

Now the first sentence is perfectly understandable: But what of the second? Why go to an apparently lifeless hunk of rock (the Moon) and state that you come in peace? Are you going to declare war on lunar rocks? Do people, in their explorations, say bushwalks, go up to a rock and say they come in peace; I will not harm you Mr. Rock? And that bit about “for all mankind’ is also odd. How come an American expedition has the right and authority to speak “for all mankind”? Do you have the right to speak on behalf of your spouse; on behalf of your street; or suburb; or city; or state; your country; the hemisphere you inhabit; the entire Earth? - Of course not - Something’s screwy somewhere!

The only thing that makes any sense is that there are living things on the Moon and that mankind (those American powers-that-be at the very least) is collectively aware of that fact! Apollo 11’s plaque just reassured that alien life using our Moon as a base of operations that they (the astronauts) weren’t harmful; humans were peaceful and that they had the authority to speak for everyone back on Earth. Our security minded aliens were still out of harms way despite our trespassing on what’s become their home away from home! And we humans had to make certain the reverse was true – recall those first few lunar expeditions got quarantined when they returned – just in case they got exposed to extraterrestrial germs!

Now one has to ask why we (Americans or any other nationality) haven’t gone back to the Moon in over four decades. Why aren’t there any official plans set in hard concrete (money committed), or at least soft concrete (blueprints on the drawing board), to return? Is it just lack of political will; the lack of current superpower political rivalry; the economics of it all, or something else?  There is no real precedent in the Age of Exploration for abandoning a new landfall discovery. Where would the Americas be today if nobody had bothered to follow up Columbus? The same applies to Australia and other newly discovered lands (even if they did contain indigenous peoples). Even Antarctica, which is a pretty forbidding place, saw explorers returning in droves and today Antarctica is manned year round.   

Have we conceded the Moon to the aliens? In exchange for leaving them well enough alone, they (apart from an alien abduction or two or twenty) petty much mind their own business too, and are no longer quite as in our face as they were in ancient times when they ruled as ancient astronauts - the polytheistic ‘gods’. 

Biblical Tall Tales: Jonah and Joshua: Part Two

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. 

However, scholars who don’t accept Biblical truth as the undisputed literal word of God, when stumped for an actual alternative physical explanation, retreat to nebulous and wishy-washy concepts and start throwing buzz words like parable, metaphor, archetype, symbolism, ancestral memory and other psychological mumbo-jumbo around – anything that’s an alternative to 1) pure make-believe or 2) a real and unexplainable event. But those are my alternatives: the tales of Jonah and Joshua are either just make-believe or reality. Make-believe is more way more plausible, but it’s boring. So, let’s try for reality, but not supernatural reality – that’s a contradiction in terms.  

Continued now from yesterday's blog... 

Joshua Second:

Then 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.

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 Jonah and Joshua, then you have to question the literal aspects of all the texts; every Biblical book, chapter and verse.

Exobiology: Bibliography: Part Two

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 a solid grounding in the relevant literature. A comprehensive relevant bibliography would run to many thousands of pages and be rather off-putting. So, perhaps something on a slightly smaller scale might be more in order to help the novice get started. 

For something that doesn’t yet exist, extraterrestrial life, intelligent or otherwise, has hatched a massive amount of literature, both technical and popular, in English and otherwise. There are speculative books, articles, documentaries, etc. that number in the tens of thousands. Add the sci-fi contributions into the mix, and you have tens of thousands more entries. Here are just a few more samplings of some of the non-fictional monographs that have touched on some of the topics raised so far.

Further Readings: Intelligent Life on the Moon

Leonard, George H.; Somebody Else Is On the Moon; David McKay Company, Inc., New York; 1976: 

Wilson, Don; Our Mysterious Spaceship Moon; Dell, Publishing Co., Inc., New York; 1975: 

Wilson, Don; Secrets of Our Spaceship Moon; Sphere Books Limited, London; 1980:

Further Readings: Our Solar System

Brack, Andre & Clancy, Paul & Horneck, Gerda; Looking for Life, Searching the Solar System; Cambridge University Press, New York; 2005: 

Carle, Glenn C. & Huntington, Judith L. & Schwartz, Deborah E. (Editors); Exobiology in Solar System Exploration; NASA SP 512; U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.; 1992:

Horowitz, Norman H.; To Utopia and Back: The Search for Life in the Solar System; W.H. Freeman and Company, New York; 1986: 

Ponnamperuma, Cyril (Editor); Chemical Evolution of the Giant Planets; Academic Press, Inc., New York; 1976:

Further Readings: Mars

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:

Further Readings: Intelligent Life on Mars

Carlotto, Mark J.; The Martian Enigmas: A Closer Look; North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California; 1991: 

Hoagland, Richard C.; The Monuments of Mars: A City On the Edge of Forever; North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, California; 1987:

Further Readings: Europa & Titan

Greenberg, Richard; Europa, the Ocean Moon: Search for an Alien Biosphere for Life on Jupiter’s Ocean Moon; Springer- Praxis Books, New York; 2005:

Greenberg, Richard; Unmasking Europa: The Search for Life on Jupiter’s Ocean Moon; Copernicus Books/Praxis Publishing Ltd, New York; 2008:

Lorenz, Ralph & Mitton, Jacqueline; Titan Unveiled: Saturn’s Mysterious Moon Explored; Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey; 2008:

Further Readings: The Rare Earth Hypothesis

Brownlee, Donald & Ward, Peter D.; Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe; Copernicus Books, New York; 2000:

Further Readings: Extraterrestrial Intelligence

Gould, Stephen Jay; Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History; Vintage, London: 2000: 

Morris, Simon Conway; The Crucible of Creation; Oxford University Press, New York; 1998:

Morris, Simon Conway; Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans In A Lonely Universe; Cambridge University Press, New York; 2003:

Seielstad, George A.; At the Heart of the Web: The Inevitable Genesis of Intelligent Life; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, Boston; 1989:

Further Readings: SETI

Davies, Paul; The Eerie Silence: Are We Alone in the Universe?;

Allen Lane, London

; 2010:

Drake, Frank & Sobel, Dava; Is Anyone Out There? The Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence; Delacorte Press; New York; 1992: 

McConnell, Brian; Beyond Contact: A Guide to SETI and Communicating with Alien Civilizations; O’Reilly & Associates, Sebastopol, California; 2001:

McDonough, Thomas R.; The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence: Listening for Life in the Cosmos; John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York; 1987:

SETI Institute Science & Technology Working Group; SETI 2020: A Roadmap for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence; SETI Press, Mountain View, California; 2002:

Shostak, Seth; Confessions of An Alien Hunter: A Scientist’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence; National Geographic, Washington, D.C.; 2009:

Further Readings: Exploration and Colonization of Interstellar Space

Gilster, Paul; Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration; Copernicus Books, New York; 2004:

Macvey, John W.; Interstellar Travel: Past, Present, and Future; Stein and Day, New York; 1977:

Further Readings:  The Fermi Paradox

Hart, Michael H. & Zuckerman, Ben (Editors); Extraterrestrials: Where Are They?; Pergamon Press, N.Y.; 1982:

Hart, Michael H. & Zuckerman, Ben (Editors); Extraterrestrials: Where Are They? [2^nd edition]; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 1995:

Verma, Surendra; Why Aren’t They Here? The Question of Life on Other Worlds; Icon Books, Cambridge; 2007:

Webb, Stephen; Where Is Everybody? Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life; Copernicus Books, N.Y.; 2002:

Further Readings: Ancient Astronauts

Blumrich, Josef F.; The Spaceships of Ezekiel; Bantam Books, New York; 1974: 

Castle, Edgar W. & Thiering, Barry B. (Joint Editors); Some Trust in Chariots!!; Westbooks, Perth, W.A.; 1972:

Daniken, Erich von; Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York; 1969:

Daniken, Erich von; Gods from Outer Space: Return to the Stars or Evidence for the Impossible; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York; 1971:

Daniken, Erich von; In Search of Ancient Gods: My Pictorial Evidence for the Impossible; Souvenir Press, London; 1974:

Downing, Barry H.; The Bible & Flying Saucers; Avon Books, New York; 1968:

Drake, W. Raymond; Gods and Spacemen in the Ancient East; Sphere Books, London; 1974:

Drake, W. Raymond; Gods and Spacemen in the Ancient West; Sphere Books, London; 1974:

Norman, Eric; Gods Demons and UFOs; Lancer Books, New York; 1970:

Story, Ronald; Guardians of the Universe?; New English Library, London; 1980: 

Story, Ronald; The Space-Gods Revealed: A Close Look at the Theories of Erich von Daniken; Harper & Row, New York; 1976: 

Temple, Robert K.G.; The Sirius Mystery; Sidgwick & Jackson, London; 1976:

Wilson, Clifford; Crash Go the Chariots; Lancer Books, New York; 1972:

Wilson, Clifford; The Chariots Still Crash; Signet, New York; 1975:

Wilson, Clifford; The War of the Chariots; S. John Bacon, Melbourne, Victoria; 1978:

Exobiology: Intelligent Life in the 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 look to our own solar system. Apart from Planet Earth, we have no absolute proof positive to date that any simple life (i.e. – microbes), exists within the confines of our solar system. But what of intelligent life?

Over the years, there have been some speculations that our solar system plays host to advanced intelligent extraterrestrial beings.

The Moon (Luna): The Hollow and Inhabited Moon Theory: Once upon a time, not all that long ago in fact, there really wasn’t a satisfactory scientific explanation for the natural origin of our satellite, Luna. All the three major theories had fatal flaws. And thus, the possibility that the Moon wasn’t natural at all, but some sort of hollow world, perhaps a UFO base and colony ship, wasn’t all that implausible to some. However, some scientific genius came up with a fourth natural explanation that satisfied all the previous scientific stumbling blocks. Thus, using Ockham’s (or Occam’s) Razor as a guide, me-thinks the hollow Moon theory has proved to be a bit, well, hollow. Pity! However, if UFOs should prove to be space vehicles, the products of alien intelligence, then it logically follows that E.T. will have explored our Moon, maybe even have a base of operations there. That might account for part of the various Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP) witnessed over many centuries.

The Moons of Mars: For a brief while there was some serious scientific speculation that the tiny twin Martian satellites, Deimos and Phobos, were, based on their orbital characteristics, hollow, and thus artificial. Well, close-up photography has put that to rest. It was the observations that were out of kilter, not the actual orbits of the Martian moons. 

The Face on Mars: An apparently gigantic ‘human’ face was photographed by the Viking Orbiting spacecraft. Alas, however wonderful this would have proved to have been, an obvious alien artefact, it really was just a mirage – a trick of light and shadow as shown by later photographs from other orbiting Mars spacecraft. It proved to be a case of wishful thinking, like the canals of Mars were, and a case of a mountain made unnecessarily out of a molehill.

The Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) hasn’t just focused on trying to detect artificial radio transmissions from E.T. There have been searches of the asteroid belt for obvious signs of astro-engineering (like aliens mining the asteroids for the resources they contain). No luck. There’s also been searches made of the Earth-Moon Lagrangian points – those areas of space where an object can ‘hover’ indefinitely in a fixed position relative to both the Earth and the Moon – sort of like being in geostationary orbit. Anyway, searches have been done at those locations for obvious alien relics or ships, but again, no dice.

I can’t quite leave this area without making reference to that way far out sub-genre of UFO buffs from the 1950s (their heyday) – the contactees. The contactees claimed to have had personal contact with and messages from angelic-like extraterrestrial beings, often called by the contactees our ‘space brothers’ who have come to Earth in their ‘flying saucers’. 

The contactees were often bucketed as total loonies back then (in the 50’s) by the mainstream, even mainstream people interested in extraterrestrial life and UFOs. That’s no less so today if someone is still foolish enough to mention them. But a question remains on the grounds of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ - and none of the contactees were ever convicted and imprisoned for outright fraud. But did the contactees (collectively) invent these angelic-like extraterrestrial beings with the intent of fraud; or to have some fun and hoax the public and pull the wool over their unsuspecting eyes; or perhaps they just, collectively, had some serious mental issues, say delusions of sorts. Or, perhaps the contactees were relating the truth as they thought they had experienced it, when perhaps the angelic-like extraterrestrial beings were being less than 100% honest with them.

In any event, the contactees spun the tale that these angelic-like ‘space brothers’ came from the other planets and bodies in our solar system (some we haven’t even discovered yet). Our Moon, Venus, Saturn, etc. were all home to these advanced extraterrestrials. The contactees rode in the ‘space brothers’ ‘flying saucers’ and visited their planetary homes, however preposterous that seemed back even then. Although then again, you have that angelic-like ancient Near Eastern goddess Inanna or Inana (Ishtar) identified with the celestial planet Venus, so who knows where the ‘gods’ have actually set up camp! Venus might be pure fire-and-brimstone hell to us, but then too we, using our technology, can survive in environments previously lethal to us – say under the sea or on the Antarctic icecap.

Just because there’s no obvious evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence in our solar system now doesn’t mean there wasn’t in the past, or of course they could be here now, hiding in plain sight – those pesky UFO events!

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. 

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.