Gaia: The Mother of All Aliens: Part Two

The asexual and sexual reproductive biology of the ancient Greek Mother Goddess Gaia is impossible as related. Her reproductive skills are akin to a human female giving birth not only to humans but to all sorts of other animals and even monstrosities. No writer of mythology (fiction) even back then would make such a fundamental error if he wanted his fiction to be credible. What’s the alternative? - Aliens.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

So how can there exist a whole multitude of species of deities, from those appearing human or humanoid, to the hideously monstrous, and yet are all genetically related to Mother Goddess Gaia?

Now I maintain that if you (or any other animal) produce offspring, while they would not of necessity all be identical, they will be fairly similar in appearance and conform to your own basic body plan. You’re not going to produce one kid that will grow up to be ten feet tall while another attains only four feet. One kid won’t have two eyes, the next three. The odds that your first born will have one head and two arms, but that your second born will have ten heads and twenty arms, is unlikely in the extreme. As this like-begets-like reproductive rule of thumb applies to you, I strongly suggest it should have applied to Mother Goddess Gaia. 

 IMHO, the ancient Greek Hesiod, who wrote up the origins of the Greek deities including Mother Goddess Gaia, and the world in his tome “Theogony” [“the birth of the gods”], should have and would have known better that to invent such outlandish sexual tales producing such an outlandish diversity of offspring. Presumably the people who read all of this also knew better – they knew that like-begets-like – just like the Norse hero Siegfried knew the dwarf Mime was lying to him about being his father because they didn’t look anything remotely alike. Siegfried knew from observations of animals and their babies in the forest that like-begets-like. Mime got his comeuppances! 

I conclude from all of this that Hesiod and whoever else came up with all this mythological reproductive nonsense was warped in the extreme; really puffing on the good stuff. Or perhaps, as in all mythology, there’s a true kernel of corn in the mythological haystack waiting to be uncovered. Perhaps both Hesiod and his readers couldn’t think of any other interpretation of reality but that Mother Goddess Gaia really did mate and produce offspring as wildly divergent as nymphs, 50 headed giants and the Cyclopes. Perhaps they had no concept of the extraterrestrial!

All of these collections of beings (Titans, Cyclopes, Meliae, etc.) are so different that each is unlikely in the extreme to be related to each other. Each is probably an alien race in its own right – alien as in various extraterrestrial intelligences.

So here’s my alternative scenario. Chaos (the void, the cosmos) ultimately formed our Sun and solar system including ‘Gaia’ as Terra/Tellus, the Planet Earth. Eons ago that other but biological flesh-and-blood Mother Goddess Gaia and her sons (Uranus and Pontus) along with a host of her species (probably the Titans) arrived on Planet Earth as part and parcel of their boldly going, exploring the Milky Way Galaxy exercise. Liking what they found, they settled down, perhaps thinking of Planet Earth as an R&R spot, perhaps as a colony planet. Things then proceed pretty much according to Hesiod’s mythology, except for one incorrect translation. There were no real acts of Mother Goddess Gaia reproducing which resulted in the creation of a high and unlikely diversity of other biological species. There were only those like-with-like sexual reproductions as in the original Titans creating the next generation of Titans (Atlas, Prometheus, etc.). Mother Goddess Gaia wasn’t so much a mother of extreme biological diversity as a hostess (with the mostest) to that rather wide diversity of extraterrestrial species.

Mother Goddess Gaia threw out the welcome mat for other alien species that came to visit, or were invited to visit, just like parents might play host to a much broader diversity of humans than their offspring would typify. Their dinner party might include guests short and tall, old and young, black and white, normal and handicapped, as well as other species – cats, dogs and aquarium fish – for the sake of wide-ranging diversity, etc. In the case of Mother Goddess Gaia however, things got a bit more serious as Mother Goddess Gaia and the various extraterrestrial races she’s associated with IMHO formed a block of allies against another block of allies – the Olympians (offspring of the original Titans and thus related to [Grand] Mother Goddess Gaia. The ‘War of the Titans’ was on the horizon and inevitable in a power struggle of epic proportions.

The extraterrestrial Cyclopes and that alien race, the Hecatonchires, which were once allied with Mother Goddess Gaia and the Titans, changed sides and supported the Olympians led by Zeus in their war against the Titans (the Titanomachy). Some Titans like Prometheus also switched sides and supported Zeus. In fact only about five of the original dozen Titans took up arms against Zeus and company. The Titans were actually led mainly by second generation Atlas (as first generation Cronus, Zeus’s daddy, proved not to be so invincible when Zeus freed his swallowed brothers and sisters, and therefore wasn’t really available for a leadership position). Zeus, as leader of the winners, however reserved a special punishment for Atlas as we all know. Atlas ended up with the weight of the world on his shoulders. As an aside, the ‘War of the Titans’ apparently happened in that region of Greece known as Thessaly.

It should be noted, in support of the extraterrestrial hypothesis, that the Titanomachy was a high-tech war, at least high-tech relative to what the ancient Greeks had. It was not a war fought with bows and arrows, slingshots, spears and swords, even though it did last an entire decade plus. Zeus had his thunderbolts – lightning, or perhaps in today’s terminology, lasers or particle-beam weaponry. Hades had a ‘magic’ helmet providing invisibility – the ultimate form of stealth technology and camouflage. Poseidon had his ‘magic’ trident which he could use to produce storms (weather modification), earthquakes, tidal waves/tsunamis, floods and all manner of ‘natural’ disasters – and he was noted for having a very bad temper with a very short fuse attached.

The Titanomachy was also noted for the hurling of massive boulders (missiles?); the rumbling earth which became scorched with flame and the vast forests that were levelled. The oceans and rivers, probably courtesy of Poseidon, swelled and steamed and boiled. And of course the heavens shook as well. If extraterrestrial, I’m sure the Titanomachy was as much a ‘star wars’ as a terrestrial one.

Now all of this probably happened in Planet Earth’s pre-human era. That’s because ‘humans’ back then probably weren’t the Homo sapiens we know today. Our modern species was created out of clay (as the ancient Greeks had no concept nor phrase for ‘genetically engineered’) by Prometheus (of gift of fire fame), a second generation Titan, and that ‘clay’ event probably happened way after the original extraterrestrial ‘gods’ (like Uranus) and ‘goddesses’ (like Gaia) arrived to set up shop. Thus, we probably have no actual eyewitnesses to what actually happened regarding the Titanomachy, as well as no real first hand accounts of Mother Goddess Gaia’s reproductive prowess, only what happened can not be taken literally as it violates fundamental principles of reproductive biology. The tales were probably all handed down way after-the-fact to the ancient Greeks by the Olympians – the winners – with a lot of understandable mistranslation and misunderstanding in the nitty-gritty details eventuating. 

But that’s not quite the end of the story. Mother Goddess Gaia had another go at dethroning Zeus and his Olympians, the location allegedly shifting to Italy and the Phlegraean Fields. This time she threw the Gigantes (Giants) against them (the Gigantomachy). So, round two - it was Mother Goddess Gaia and the Gigantes versus Zeus and the Olympians, but with a little help from the demigod Hercules, the Fates and even Helius (the sun-god), Selene (the moon-goddess) and Eos (the goddess of the dawn, known to the Romans as Aurora). Now since Hercules was the offspring of a deity (Zeus) and a mortal, humans had to have been around to witness round two. What was the upshot of Mother Goddess Gaia’s second attempt to grab power? All of the Gigantes became the late Gigantes, and nothing was ever heard from Mother Goddess Gaia ever again! In my version of the tale, Mother Goddess Gaia and those Gaia supporters who survived the Titanomachy and the Gigantomachy tucked tail (if they had one) and headed back to whatever planet(s) they originally came from. Eventually, for reasons unrecorded and unknown, Zeus and company ultimately did the same, or at least boldly went elsewhere.

One other observation is required. Normally, sexual relations between mother and son; mother and grandson; mother and just about anyone and anything else without benefit of a wedding ring, is considered taboo. That’s of course according to human morals and ethics. However, if my premise is correct, and all and sundry belonged to various species of extraterrestrials, then we can’t hold them to, or impose on them, our standards.  

Gaia: The Mother of All Aliens: Part One

The asexual and sexual reproductive biology of the ancient Greek Mother Goddess Gaia is impossible as related. Her reproductive skills are akin to a human female giving birth not only to humans but to all sorts of other animals and even monstrosities. No writer of mythology (fiction) even back then would make such a fundamental error if he wanted his fiction to be credible. What’s the alternative? - Aliens.

The asexual and sexual reproductive biological skills of the ancient Greek Mother Goddess Gaia is impossible as related. Her reproductive skills are akin to a human female giving birth not only to humans but to all sorts of other animals and even numerous monstrosities. No writer of mythology as fiction even back then would make such a fundamental error if he wanted his fiction to be credible. And that’s just the point – it wasn’t written to be read as fiction. The ancient Greeks didn’t interpret Mother Goddess Gaia and her offspring as make-believe. What did they know that we don’t today? What’s the alternative? Aliens - a misinterpretation of what was actually extraterrestrial activity. The ultimate stories behind Mother Goddess Gaia’s reproductive abilities centre around two rival alliances of various extraterrestrial races battling over Planet Earth, or at least their allocated part of it – Italy, Greece and the islands of the Aegean Sea.

In the beginning there was Chaos according to ancient Greek mythology. Chaos was neither a deity nor a personality, just an all encompassing dark void, lifeless matter with no distinguishing features which is as good a view of the cosmos as any by the ancients.  Chaos might just as well have been their shorthand for explaining life, the universe and everything; the creation of life, the universe and everything, and probably was.

Chaos gave rise to Planet Earth, among other cosmic attributes, like darkness and energy. Planet Earth was known as Gaia (or Gaea). Gaia as Planet Earth is obviously a physical product, a natural creation of the cosmos. However, Gaia (Terra in the Roman pantheon) was also considered to be the daughter of Chaos, a mother goddess. We need to separate the two concepts (Gaia as Earth (the planet) and Gaia the Mother Goddess). Chaos as a formless void would have to via natural physical processes form independently Planet Earth first before the arrival of the Mother Goddess that would represent Planet Earth, Tellus or Terra, alternative names by which Planet Earth is known. 

On the biological as opposed to the planetary side of things, Mother Goddess Gaia (representing the Earth, or of the Earth) had siblings called Nyx (which represented night), and Erebos (representing underground darkness). Later on down the track Chaos formed other siblings in the form of Eros (representing desire/energy) and Tartarus (the underworld).

Asexually, Mother Goddess Gaia gave rise to her two sons Uranus (Ouranos) and Pontus and the ten Ourea (Aitna, Athos, Helikon, Kithairon, Nysos, Olympus 1, Olympus 2, Oreios, Parnes, and Tmolus). Asexual reproduction is reproduction without benefit of a partner, usually termed parthenogenesis.

Mother Goddess Gaia does however ultimately take a husband and sexually mate - with her son Uranus (representing the sky or of the sky). From that union comes:

*The three elder and original Cyclopes: giants with one eye: Brontes, Steropes, and Arges.

 *The original first generation six male Titans (Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Cronus) and the original first generation six female Titanesses (Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys): all human looking. [Now the original Titans then did their ‘be fruitful and multiply thing’ and produce the second generation of Titans, making Mother Goddess Gaia a grandmother. These second generation Titans included Atlas and Prometheus – in case you were wondering if I had forgotten these important figures.]

*The three Hecatonchires: giants with 100 arms and hands and fifty heads apiece: Cottus,  Briareus and Gyges.  

Mother Goddess Gaia’s son and hubby, Uranus, then met an uncomfortable fate at the hands of his son Cronus when the latter castrated the former!

Mother Goddess Gaia then, via a not-so-immaculate conception, being splattered with blood from the severed genitales of her son/husband Uranus, conceived:

*The three Furies (Erinyes): Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone though their actual number maybe however indefinite. The Furies were winged hags with snakes intertwined in their hair.

*The Gigantes: a race of giants born in full armour with spears.

*The Meliae: the ash tree nymphs. Nymphs tend to be beautiful eternally youthful amorous maidens (sounds like my kind of aliens) who attend to the needs of more senior deities. Nymphs are a sort of yeoman figure.  

Mother Goddess Gaia mates sexually with her other son Pontus (representing the sea or of the sea). From that union came Nereus, Thaumas, Phorcys, Ceto and Eurybia, all relatively minor sea gods and goddesses. They appear pretty human looking.

However, later generation descendents of Mother Goddess Gaia’s and Pontus’s minor sea god and goddess were not quite so humanoid appearing. They include:

*The Harpies, predatory monsters; a woman’s head on top of a vulture’s body, wings and claws.

*The Graeae, a trio of swan-like women with grey hair who shared one eye and one tooth between them.

*The 50 Nereids who at least retain their maritime heritage being nymphs of the sea.

*The Gorgons, who on the other hand, were monstrous sisters with wings, claws and serpent hair, the most famous being the Medusa.

*The Muses, nine human-looking goddesses of the arts.

*Chiron – a centaur.

Mother Goddess Gaia also mates with Tartarus to produce the mother of all monsters, the Typhon (which Zeus later defeated in battle).

Mother Goddess Gaia mates with her first generation Titan offspring Oceanus. That union gave rise to Reousa/Creusa (a naiad or type of water nymph) and Triptolemus (a primordial man who flew across the land in a winged chariot and educated the whole of Greece in the agricultural sciences after being instructed himself by the goddess Demeter or Ceres if you’re Roman).  

Mother Goddess Gaia mates with Zeus (her grandson). Their offspring became Manes, the first king of Maeonia otherwise known as Lydia in western Asia Minor. The odd bit here is that two deities apparently have produced a mortal and not another deity!

Mother Goddess Gaia also mates with Poseidon (also her grandson). That produces offspring we know as Antaeus (a half-giant) and Charybdis (a sea monster).

The Python, that earth-dragon of Delphi is alleged to have a genetic type relationship with Mother Goddess Gaia – mother being the operative word. The daddy is unknown; perhaps this is another example of parthenogenesis in action. Python, as you’d guess from the name, is a serpent. The Greek Olympian deity Apollo did Python a mischief in mortal combat. Alas, Python is no longer among the living! Neither were the original Cyclopes as Apollo bumped them off which didn’t please Zeus one little bit as the Cyclopes assisted him and his fellow Olympians in their war against the Titans, providing the high-tech necessary for victory (see below).

While that’s not the absolute end of Mother Goddess Gaia’s bedroom romps (actual or suspected), the above covers the basics and shows that Heinz has no monopoly on varieties, 57 or otherwise. Now Mother Goddess Gaia is not the be-all-and-end-all of the varieties of presumably extraterrestrial species that are part and parcel of Greek mythology, but I think it’s safe to now at least conclude this segment on Mother Goddess Gaia remarkable reproductive prowess!

To be continued...

Aliens Did Not Build the Egyptian Pyramids

Though I find much admirable and compelling about the ‘ancient astronaut’ hypothesis of Erich von Daniken and a host of other converts, I just cannot accept the idea that ‘ancient astronauts’, that is aliens or extraterrestrials if you prefer built the Egyptian pyramids however difficult it may appear for ‘primitive’ humans without benefit of the wheel or the pulley to have constructed them.

Aliens, ‘ancient astronauts’ or perhaps the ancient Egyptian ‘gods’ (really extraterrestrials) may have helped inspire the building of the Egyptian pyramids (like God inspires the building of cathedrals), but it was your basic human blood, sweat and tears that did the actual construction despite all the hardships. Here are some thoughts on why we have to pat ourselves on the back and not the backs of aliens for these impressive structures, one of which is the last one standing of the seven original ancient wonders of the world.

*One common theme in creation mythology is that the ‘gods’ created humans to serve them and do the hard yards in terms of sweat and toil. That alone is suggestive that the so-called ‘gods’ (that is, the ‘ancient astronauts’) did not sweat and toil and build the pyramids using whatever high-tech at their command; rather humans erected these massive structures as tombs (and as a stairway to the heavens in the afterlife) to honour their ‘gods’, of which the pharaoh was considered to be as one after death. So a tomb for the departed king was also a monument erected to the ‘gods’.

*Archaeological digs within sight of the Great Pyramids at Giza have uncovered ‘towns’ and cemeteries where the human labour force that planned and built the pyramids, and provided the required infrastructure (like food) lived and died and were buried, including, of course, the skeletal remains of those workers.

*Detailed medical analysis of those skeletons reveals the sorts of anatomical conditions and accidental injuries that would be commonly associated with; that which would result from the backbreaking sort of work associated with stonework; moving and positioning massive stone blocks.  

*Images or reliefs in various temples, tombs and other structures depict scenes of large groups of men hauling massive stone blocks and/or doing the sorts of things that stonemasons do.

*Graffiti has been uncovered inside numerous ancient Egyptian pyramid sites left behind by the work gangs who did the hard yards. It’s a sort of ancient equivalent of the WWII “Kilroy Was Here” sort of thing.  

*The pyramids show a natural evolution in styling from the simple mastaba to the more complex as in mastabas piled one on top of the other (the Step Pyramid), then finally to the true pyramid shape now so familiar to us in their design and structure, starting with the Red Pyramid at Dahshur. Pyramids are not all near identical clones that those at the Giza necropolis might suggest.

*Associated with that evolution, we find pyramids that ended up in an ‘oops’ condition; pyramids that suffered construction mishaps like the Pyramid of Meidum where the outer bits just sort of collapsed in a heap revealing the inner core. The Bent Pyramid was “bent” because it was realised half-way through that the original angle was too steep and the top half was constructed at a lesser angle. The pharaoh concerned was an unhappy camper about that ‘oops’ and so the Bet Pyramid was then abandoned unused. Aliens wouldn’t have made such trail-and-error mistakes.

*The pyramid shape is hardly something out-of-this-world. It’s a fundamental geometrical shape well known to the ancients.

*Looking at images of the pyramids, both external and internal, you’d be pretty hard pressed to think of these as something high-tech. If ‘ancient astronauts’ can get from there to here in high-tech spaceships, and when they arrived they then built these pyramids, then you’d expect something a bit more futuristic ‘gosh-wow’, ‘golly-gee’, with flashing lights and lots of glass, chrome-and-steel, ceramics-and-plastics, all incorporated into that sort of architectural engineering that we employ today. Pure stone might be impressive, but high-tech it’s not.

*Modern scholars and Egyptologists have shown plausible ways ancient humans could have used ‘primitive’ techniques that oriented the pyramids and levelled them with respect to the ground and constructed them to high levels of precisions of length and slope. No high-tech was required.

*What possible motive could ‘ancient astronauts’ have had to construct such things in any event? They weren’t tombs for aliens; they certainly weren’t apartments or office blocks for extraterrestrials.

*No out-of-place artefacts have been discovered in or around the pyramids that can be associated with the time of the pyramids and the pyramid builders, the sort of tools and equipment you might find in any modern hardware store. And certainly nothing that looked like it should belong among the props on the “Star Trek” film or TV set has been documented.  

*The only real out-of-place artefact I’m aware of that’s suggestive of some odd goings on is that little wooden ‘bird’ found within an ancient Egyptian tomb at Saqqara in 1898, dated to several centuries BCE, now at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo [1]. Alas, it’s labelled a “bird” because it would be silly to label it an “airplane”, yet that’s exactly what it looks like, and scaled up models fly like a plane and are aerodynamically sound. That’s hardly evidence, far less proof, aliens were in ancient Egypt and therefore must have built the pyramids, but the game is afoot and explanations are required. 

*Ancient Egyptians left behind an awful lot of images on the walls of tombs, temples, obelisks, stele, etc. of their gods, pharaohs, their everyday life at work and play, their family activities, warfare scenes, etc. Nothing leaps out as anything obviously ‘out of this world’ as in depictions of ‘The Greys’ or of flying saucers or any sort of celestial scenes like say the planet Saturn complete with rings or an accurate pictorial depiction of say our solar system. Some of their ‘gods’ do look more than just a little bit strange with their animal heads, but at least they are the heads of terrestrial animals depicted. 

*However, an interesting image or relief at the Temple of [the goddess] Hathor at Dendera, Egypt shows two ancient Egyptians, apparently priests, each holding up what appears at first, second and even third glance to be an enormous light bulb complete with cable attachments at the rear end [2], though judging by other humans in the petroglyph nothing really is to scale. However, a light bulb by itself is useless. To be effective and do its light bulb thing, a massive infrastructure is required behind it. You’d need an electric power plant, or generator, or large batteries and electric wiring. There’s no power source shown and there’s no such electric generating infrastructure uncovered in the archaeological record. This image appears to be a one-off and the objects probably aren’t what they seem to be to our modern eyes. Only those depicted in the image, and perhaps the one who carved it and the intended audience would know what it really signifies. 

*However, that image does raise an interesting question, and, IMHO, a bona-fide mystery. How were passageways in tombs (like the pyramids) and temples, sometimes kilometres in length when taking into account all the twists and turns; often tunnels (with multi side chambers) descending down to depths equivalent to a 30-story building, lighted? Experiments with reflecting mirrors using outside natural light fail after several hundred feet. There are all sorts of highly detailed inscriptions/hieroglyphs chiselled on the walls and ceilings; ditto paintings. Yet, if all was lite by burning torches, where’s all the smoke soot? Can you construct such elaborate passageways/chambers from solid rock and highly detailed paintings and carvings and inscriptions in total darkness except for candles/torches without leaving soot behind and ruining your eyesight to boot? Could you? I couldn’t. Somewhat related is a viable oxygen supply in some of those really deep tombs. There just wouldn’t have been enough to support many workers. Even archaeologists descending down today can find themselves in difficulty.

*Finally, much of what applies here applies equally to the pyramids associated with the various cultures of Mesoamerica. I see no evidence at all that humans couldn’t of constructed these structures. 

Now don’t get me wrong, there are indeed many, many unsolved (but not unsolvable) anomalies or mysteries associated with the Egyptian pyramids (like lighting) that will keep Egyptologists and archaeologists and historians busy for generations yet, but invoking ‘ancient astronauts’ doesn’t seem to be very helpful in pushing forward such solutions that research will eventually solve and pin the handiwork where it belongs, on the human being. That said, I’m more than willing to concede that aliens might be associated with one or more reasons for humans building the pyramids, but that’s a far cry from saying aliens actually built the pyramids or gave humans our modern even futuristic (by our standards) technology to accomplish same.

P.S.: Contrary to typical and stereotyped Hollywood (and similar) depictions, slaves didn’t build the pyramids either. You had a voluntary labour force (in service to the pharaoh), a well fed, housed and looked after workforce.

[1] Corliss, William R. (Compiler); “The little wooden airplane” (in) Ancient Man: A Handbook of Puzzling Artifacts; The Sourcebook Project, Glen Arm, Maryland; 1978; pages 454-455:

[2] Sanderson, Ivan T.; “Frightfully ancient electrics” (in) Investigating the Unexplained: A Compendium of Disquieting Mysteries of the Natural World; Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey; 1972; pages 179-196:

Extraterrestrial Angels: Part Two

My philosophy tends to be that behind every mountain of mythology lies a molehill of reality. It’s just a matter of trying to figure out what that hidden needle-in-a-haystack reality might be without access to the actual needle. Take the case of angels. I think a better reality would have them as angelic extraterrestrials relative to the mythological ‘winged’ entities that really aren’t represented as such (winged, that is) in the Bible and similar texts.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

One of the numerous aspects dealing with angels is that they have a hierarchy – not all angels are equal in rank and status.

From the First Sphere come the Seraphim. You have apparently someone called the Metatron, an angel who acts as the ‘voice of God’, a scribe, and is the tallest and greatest of the lot. ‘He’s’ sort of the chief cook and bottle washer in Heaven’s highest level.

From the Second Sphere you have the governor or watcher angels who, well, as your typically obedient angels just sort of watch over humanity in general. However, disguised as men, they associated with humans in an all too human manner. According to Enoch, and Genesis 6,  those “sons of God” or “sons of Heaven”  (angels) got a tad horny and mated with human females (the “daughters of men”) producing the Nephilim, those giants back on the Earth in those ancient days! Perhaps the watcher angels watched a tad more closely than they should have! Could an angel really be a ‘peeping Tom’?

Lastly, from the Third Sphere, those messenger and battle ready angels. The best known of the lot are the archangels who are very high-ranking angels indeed, starting with Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, but followed by Uriel, Simiel, Orifiel and Zachariel.

Then there are the ‘fallen angels’ who were court-martialed and stripped of their status and rank. They play no real role in this discussion and thus are of no further concern to us.

Now not all monotheistic religious denominations embrace or adopt all of the above hierarchy. Maybe there should be a theological equivalent of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle well known in quantum physics. Let’s call it by a rather unimaginative phrase the ‘Religious Uncertainty Principle’. That’s a truism in that no two monotheistic religious denominations agree on everything which alone makes supernatural theology a bit suspect considering the alleged importance of a supernatural deity.  

In fact, you’d think the deity in question, and we all know who I’m referring to here (three letters starting with ‘G’), would take steps to clarify things. I mean if there are a dozen biographies written about you out there for sale on the market, and they all differ in key details about your life, wouldn’t you go ‘on the record’ and sort things out? 

Anyway, the upshot is that angels have a hierarchy and ranks and various jobs and responsibilities which are the sorts of things you’d expect if angels were really crew on an ET vessel that came to Earth a few thousand years ago. The parallel with crewing any navy ship or those spaceships depicted in “Star Trek” are clear-cut.    

Now what about the cherubim (mentioned above) that are depicted in the Bible; depicted with wings?

The cherubim (singular is cherub) are actually Assyrian in origin. They were depicted as enormous eagle-winged beings with the bodies of lions though usually with human heads (lammasu) or human heads and the bodies of bulls (shedu). Even though they were depicted as guardians, they don’t sound very Biblically angelic to me! However, it was these beasties, a composite of some things human and wings that morphed into the stereotyped image of an angel. However, cherubim are named as such in the Bible and the image is anything but traditionally angelic. 

They seemed however to have shape-shifted from their Assyrian image just a bit and taken on a different persona in the Bible, especially prominent in the Old Testament.

The definitive book in the Bible on cherubim is the Book of Ezekiel, mainly the first and tenth chapter. The prophet Ezekiel describes cherubim as a tetrad of living creatures, each having four faces: of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle. They are said to have the stature and hands of a man, feet of a calf, and four wings each. Two of the wings extended upward, while the other two stretched downward and covered the creatures themselves. In the Christian New Testament similar beings are mentioned in the fourth chapter of the Book of Revelation. Just to further distance cherubim from traditional angels, the cherubim’s wings are multi-eyed – no doubt that’s all the better to see you with I guess.

If you check out Chapter Six of 1 Kings (King James Version), you’ll find that cherubs have a wingspan of 10 cubits, and a height of 10 cubits, at least I gather that must be their real life size since Solomon manufactured two of them, I assume on a one-to-one scale. The whole story is repeated in the third chapter of 2 Chronicles by the way. Now a cubit is roughly 18 to 22 inches; say 20 inches on average. So our model cherub is 200 inches tall; ditto the wingspan. That’s a tad over 16 ½ feet! Well, the Assyrians did say their versions were enormous!

You’ll also find several references to someone hitching a ride on a flying cherub (2 Samuel 22:11 and Psalm 18:10). At over 16 feet, well that sounds plausible.

Somewhat related are the Seraphim, but instead of four wings they have six wings (Isaiah 6:2). That’s again rather un-angelic appearing. I’ve mentioned one already, Metatron; the other suspect is called Seraphiel, who apparently had the head of an eagle (akin perhaps to the Egyptian god Horus who had a falcon head placed on a human body or Seker with a hawk’s head or Thoth who had the head of an ibis). Apparently there are two more Seraphim as well, and all four keep God in good company 24/7. Nice work if you can get it!

I think we can agree that there is no similarity between your ingrained image of a Biblical angel (with or without wings) and the cherubim.

Relation between fairies and cherubim:  In modern English the word cherub is sometimes used for what are strictly putti, baby or toddler angels, or winged children in fact, mainly shown in works of art. Sort of like our current images of Eros or Cupid but without the bow and arrows! So we have another shape-shift and another quite different persona from that in the Bible or Assyria. In this case the cherubs appear to have some sort of kinship with the fairy-folk. Check out images of fairies and they are, though not childlike, tend to be small and winged.

Then there are ‘guardian angels’. However, IMHO, the concept of a ‘guardian angel’ is seriously flawed. First off, if we each have a ‘guarding angel’ looking over us, and as the human population keeps doing it’s “be fruitful and multiply” bit, where do all the ever required additional ‘guardian angels’ come from? Do they just materialise out of thin air? And secondly, if they exist, then they are doing a lousy piss-weak job of being a true guardian. I mean you still have bad luck, misfortunes, failures, accidents, illnesses and you still ultimately end up kicking-the-bucket. If a child of two say dies of cancer (or for any other reason), do the parents really believe there was a so-called ‘guardian angel’ looking after their kid? Do you believe it?  

Conclusions: The traditional images of your typical run-of-the-mill angel are as phoney as a three-dollar bill. That’s because despite the multi-thousands of depictions available on the market that you can consult, they do not agree with what should be the ultimate image source – the Bible. So, though the Bible is a mythological mountain, there’s still that damn really real molehill to be accounted for. So, we have wingless angels. If you don’t care for that molehill (and probably extraterrestrial) accounting, then be prepared to explain how angels can go up-the-down-staircase (and vice versa) without wings – well maybe they hitched rides on the cherubim! Then again, maybe not as that’s just too Monty Python for comfort. Aerial vehicles in a time when there aren’t (or shouldn’t be) aerial vehicles are a plausible (extraterrestrial) alternative.   

Anything humanoid with wings (cherubim or fairies or related) is clearly a mythological mountain with more likely as not an extraterrestrial molehill hiding behind that mythological mountain. Supernatural just doesn’t cut the mustard.

And so-called ‘guardian angels’ are just wishful thinking. There’s no reference to them at all in the King James Version of the Bible. In fact, the word “guardian” doesn’t rate a mention. While some angels as depicted in the Bible allegedly look after selected individuals at selected times at the behest of God, that’s a far cry from the belief that God sends an angelic spirit to watch over every individual 24/7. In fact the concept of guardian angels isn’t consistently believed or upheld in Christian thought as an article of any sort of faith.

Finally we see some commonalities between the polytheistic religions of ancient Egypt (bird-headed humanoids), ancient Greece and Rome (cherubs like Cupid/Eros), the ancient Assyrians (cherubim) and the wee-folk (fairies) of the pagan Celtic religions, all with the monotheistic Bible. People who put their religious money on monotheism, based on say the Bible, obviously also believe that polytheism is pure mythology. Monotheism is factual reality; polytheism is pure fiction. Yet, those who profess the reality of monotheism based on the Bible, had better think twice about polytheism, as that very book confirms the factual reality of polytheism as well. As demonstrated here, if you believe one you have to accept the other. Of course all this monotheistic versus polytheistic bullshit can be unified by resorting to a terrestrial presence of a multiracial or more likely as not multi-species of extraterrestrials.  

Extraterrestrial Angels: Part One

My philosophy tends to be that behind every mountain of mythology lies a molehill of reality. It’s just a matter of trying to figure out what that hidden needle-in-a-haystack reality might be without access to the actual needle. Take the case of angels. I think a better reality would have them as angelic extraterrestrials relative to the mythological ‘winged’ entities that really aren’t represented as such (winged, that is) in the Bible and similar texts.

It’s been recently reported in, the “Huffington Post” on the 23rd of December 2011, for example, that nearly eight out of ten Americans believe in the reality of, the actual physical 3-D existence of Biblical angels (no doubt winged and all – the traditional image). Presumably that polling result would also apply to similar monotheistic countries like those in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and much of Europe (as well as other locations).

To be perfectly honest, in the here and now, there’s equal rational, based on images, texts and traditions, to believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and even “The (Curse of the) Mummy”. But I digress, so anyway, back to belief in angels.

Now belief doesn’t of necessity make it so, but it does require some logical explanation(s).

Well, the obvious visibility of angelic beings isn’t one of those logical explanations. They might exist in the here and now, but reported sightings recorded in the press or in police records, photographs and films, interviews with them on chat shows, add up to one big bugger all zilch.

You’d think that maybe the religious higher ups, those with real influence with the Big Man upstairs, could arrange for an actual angel to give a sermon or a guest lecture at a theological course. Well, maybe angels are just really shy.

A more likely explanation is their presumed reality; images of what was but no longer is, has been passed down from generation to generation, orally and in texts, from parents to children, lecturers to students, religious officials to their sheep, oops, sorry, their flocks or congregations

After a hundred generations of this angel reality regurgitation, everything is in a right royal muddle, but you believe because you put your trust in high authority who believes, just as those higher authorities who you trust, in turn trusted in the beliefs of the generation of high authority figures before them.

Maybe the traditional image of angels is wrong. Maybe they are here but it’s the image that’s all wrong and so even if you do see and maybe film one you’re none the wiser; you haven’t a clue.

 If you see angels depicted by actors in the movies or on TV shows or in staged productions, in kiddie  plays, as little girls (especially) dressing up as make-believe angels, in manger scenes, on Xmas cards, in religious artworks, images in books or on angel-themed calendars, well what do you see?

Well, angels are white – Caucasians only need apply for the part, and even though that’s not really politically correct anymore, we’ll let that observation slide. Also angels are male, though I gather they are really asexual, androgynous or transgender beings. But the really big giveaway is of course they have WINGS!

Now if someone tells you about their guardian angel that flutters over them with their large wings, you know they have been smoking (or drinking) the good stuff or adding magic mushrooms to their Irish stew, chicken pot pie, or pizza. Why? Because traditional Biblical angels do not have wings! Oops! And another one bites the dust! 

On what authority you may ask do I rely on such that I can make such a blasphemous statement. Well, I cannot find any association between angels and wings in the Bible, at least the King James Version, presumably the authority on the matter of what traditional angels look like.

You have in the Bible flying (winged) serpents and flying eagles and flying creeping things and flying birds and flying fowl but no flying angels. That’s despite the thousands, indeed tens of thousands of images in Biblical illustrations, paintings, stained glass windows, Xmas cards, films – you name the visual; the angels will more than likely as not have wings. Wrong!

In the Bible we have angels ascending and descending; they come and they go; they carry things. But we do not have Biblical angels described with wings. My online search brought up 70 references to variations on the word “wing#” in the King James Version of the Bible. There were 283 hits on variations to “angel#”. There were zero, zip, zilch matches for angel# AND wing#. The holy angels in the Bible, where they appear, are always described as men (or transgender beings) without wings. Only cherubim have wings in the Bible, but cherubim are not called angels in the Bible. I’ll have more to say about cherubim later on.

So angels with wings are a human invention, which might have been a logical assumption 2000 years ago. Why? Because angels were messengers – postmen – between the Big Boss upstairs and the common folk downstairs – we humans that is. Angels are forever ascending and descending. How else do you go from upstairs to downstairs and upstairs again without a staircase or ladder? You have to fly of course and for that you must have wings, sort of like that father and son duo from Greek mythology, Daedalus and Icarus (the concept of Superman not being yet in vogue). It’s obvious since there is no ladder, no going up the down staircase or down the up staircase or even using that imaginary escalator to the sky (another concept unknown back then).

So how do angels get to and from Heaven, ascending, descending, through the atmosphere, often carrying things as well as messages, if not by flapping wings, an obvious logical assumption made by the ancients but totally unsupported or disproved by reading the texts of the Bible? 

Okay, how would angels without wings go from upstairs to downstairs and back again today. Well, there’s always the “Beam me down, Scotty” approach – then again, perhaps not. The physics required by the standard Star Trek shortcut of getting from Point A to Point B in quick-smart fashion are a bit on the highly improbable side for all sorts of technical reasons not required viewing in this context. What about a vehicle; say a hotrod custom-made no expense spared version of the Space Shuttle or Star Trek shuttlecraft? That would work!

And so what if angels are really real, reaffirming the nearly eight out of ten of the public’s belief in that regard, but extraterrestrial? That too would work and no need of wings. Of course that would mean the Big Boss upstairs is also an ET, but then a flesh-and-blood ET is far more plausible to the more rational of the faithful than a supernatural deity. There’s no first principle extrapolation or chain of logic that generates supernatural transcending-the-physical-law deities, but not so when it comes to ET, who can’t transcend the laws, principles and relationships of universal cosmic physics. And by the way, as far as ET is concerned, if you stop to think about it, we, the common folk, human beings, are an ET to them. If that possibility does or just doesn’t sit well, well any similarity between what you might want to believe and what actually is might all be purely a matter of coincidence.

So if angels are ET that explains why they don’t mirror our racial diversity and why they appear as transvestite weirdoes, because from our point of view they are androgynous or asexual. That might ring a responsive chord – the modern day UFO ‘Grays’ also appear to be asexual in appearance.

Now we have to admit that angels are ‘sky beings’. They are associated with ‘up there’ somewhere or ‘out there’ somewhere. That’s where they live, work and presumably play and relax and maybe watch some terrestrial television. They probably love the antics and plot developments in the TV show “Supernatural” starting with Season Four onwards featuring one of their own, the fictional character, Angel Castiel. 

To be continued…

Gods of the Chariots

One telltale sign that the ‘gods’ were really extraterrestrials would be if they displayed advanced high technology before humans could have come up with those same high-tech goodies. An obvious electronic circuit; a diagram of some sort of particle physics interaction; an aerodynamically sound aircraft, even a depiction of Saturn’s rings represented as a 50,000 year old  petroglyph or as cave art would just about be proof positive to convince the most strident of ancient astronaut sceptics. Alas, no such evidence – yet at least. But we do have those ‘chariots of the gods’, a topic worthy of further exploration.

When it comes to high-tech in our ancient history, few things impress me as representing extraterrestrial technology, such as the Baghdad (Parthian) battery or the Antikythera mechanical/astronomical ‘computer’. While impressive in their own terrestrial right, they are hardly the stuff of which extraterrestrial influences on our home planet are made. Ditto that for most of the megalithic structures like Stonehenge or massive building works like the Egyptian or Mesoamerican pyramids. Terrestrially impressive as representing massive undertakings involving lots of hard labour over long periods of time – yes. As extraterrestrial structures they leave a bit to be desired. You tend to think of alien stuff as a lot more futuristic looking – polished metals, weird designs, next generation computers, lots of flashing lights and unexplainable gizmos. If ET builds a building on Earth you’d hope for something more imaginative than a pyramid built with blocks of stone.

What else is there to consider? Well, machines that fly seem to be futuristic gizmos that were beyond the capabilities of the ancients to build and operate.

We have those vimanas (flying machines in Hindu mythology)  and the ‘Wheel of Ezekiel’ (in Biblical mythology) and those Pre-Columbian little gold model ‘aeroplanes’ from Central and South America, not to forget to mention those ancient Egyptian wooden ‘birds’, so-called, and pigeon-holed as such, yet ‘birds’ aerodynamically perfect as rigid fixed-wing  models that could really fly when scaled-up. While these and more have occupied much attention from ancient astronaut theorists, more traditional ‘chariots’ from much better known mythologies haven’t really captured their attention despite that title of Erich von Daniken’s best selling book. Alas, Erich didn’t provide an index entry for “chariots” in that tome of his, so maybe not even he was willing to put money where his mouth was when it came to just plain every old day aerial ‘chariots’.    

There’s nothing overly high-tech about a chariot, apart from those cultures like those of the Americas (North, Central and South) for example that never invented the wheel or cultures who hadn’t domesticated a horse to pull one. I guess to the Incas a horse-drawn land chariot of the ancient Egyptians might have seemed high-tech indeed.

But to the ancient Europeans, especially southern Europeans like the Greeks, Romans, and other cultures in the Mediterranean and nearby regions like Mesopotamia, and of course the Egyptians, even unto India and China, chariots were part and parcel of their transport and means of waging war.

But chariots that fly, aerial ‘chariots’, are a whole new ballgame, yet those ancient cultures and more had aerial ‘chariots’, often described as ‘fiery’, contained within their mythologies. Of course these winged ‘chariots’ weren’t meant as a public transport network for the great unwashed (like a subway or bus system), rather as limousines reserved for the gods, goddesses and just plain deities in general. Are they fact or fiction?

There’s no shortage of ‘gods’ who make use of aerial transport in the form of ‘chariots’. They tend to read like a who’s who of deities in mythology. They can be sky gods like Zeus; Thor (of the Norse) is obviously another; Apollo (Greece) ditto that; the Greek Moon goddess Selene (Luna if you’re Roman) is another as is the Greek goddess of the dawn Eos (the Roman’s Aurora). Most mythological Sun gods are associated with aerial chariots like the Nordic god Sol and the Hindu god Surya, or a solar barge (or boat) as in ancient Egypt.

Now you might think it obvious that chariots (or a boat) would be associated with a Sun god or a Moon goddess (or a sky deity in general).  Something has got to pull those celestial orbs along (recall this was way before Newton and that falling apple that came down with gravity). But, do you see a chariot (or a boat) associated or in proximity with the Sun and the Moon? You don’t? Well the ancients had eyesight equal to us moderns, so no doubt they didn’t see any chariots associated with the Moon or Sun, any more than you do. So there has to be another explanation for those ‘chariots’. Perhaps one needs to separate the god or goddess or deity from what they represent. Selene may be the goddess of the Moon, but she is not actually the Moon and it’s her ‘chariot’ not the Moon’s ‘chariot’ that is an issue here. Translated, the Moon doesn’t need transport; the goddess does.

Now following the Greek god’s War of the Titans, Zeus divided up the cosmos among his clan by their drawing of lots for the various portfolios and spoils of war that go to the victors. The Greek Sun god Helios, though well respected by Zeus, missed out on the spoils being fully occupied at the time with solar duties. However, Helios did take a ‘shine’ to a new piece of real estate that popped up in the Aegean Sea, so Zeus gave him title to that. It was called Rhodes and the locals later erected a statue of Helios in his honour – one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – the famed ‘Colossus of Rhodes’. Now mortals do not go to that sort of time and trouble, expend vast amounts of money and energy, on constructing gigantic statues of and to imaginary beings. There’s no benefit of doing so, either personally or for the community. Conclusion: Helios was real.

Now Helios, like nearly the entire ancient Greek pantheon of deities, had his share of offspring. Helios had various offspring-producing lovers like Rhode (the nymph of his island) and Clytie (another nymph) as well as his wife Perse (or Perseis), an Oceanid. [Talk about girls having a really hot time in bed – it doesn’t get any hotter than with the Sun god!] Among his kids were Circe (a sorceress) and Pasiphae, Queen of Crete, who had herself an affair with a bull (but that’s another story). Helios also had a fling with the Oceanid Clymene, resulting in a son Phaeton; setting the stage for the tragedy to follow.  

Now after that little interlude, let’s return back to those ‘chariots’. There’s one ‘chariots’ case history that really stands out and that’s the story of that Greek Sun god Helios, and especially the story of Helios and his son Phaeton. Now daddy very unwisely grants his son a wish. That wish is to drive the family car without benefit of a driver’s license or even any driving lessons. Now the family car is of course an aerial ‘chariot’. The end result was that the son suffered a bit of a prang – well that’s actually quite the understatement. Let’s just say modern Greeks even today could be finding pieces of the wreckage. Shades of Roswell! In fact, this might be the ancient Greek or Mediterranean version of Roswell!

Being a bit of a typical teenage hoon with a yen for fast ‘chariots’ (some things are probably universal even across extraterrestrial societies), Phaeton put the pedal to the metal, doing burnouts in the sky, and of course he lost control. Passing too close to ground level, the out of control ‘chariot’ scorched fertile plains, burned mountains and forests, turned lands into deserts, destroyed towns while burning the locals to a brownish crisp. No wonder Helios’s ‘chariot’ was thought to be the personification of the Sun!   

With the fate of the Earth at stake, a rather pissed-off Zeus brought this unhappy state of affairs to a quick conclusion by blasting the ‘chariot’, Phaeton and all, out of the sky via one of his famous thunderbolts. The ‘chariot’, trailing fire like a shooting star, fell from the heavens. The ‘chariot’ crashed and Phaeton’s dead body ended up in the River Eridanus. Good riddance to bad rubbish Zeus and no doubt the rest of ancient Greek society probably concluded. It doesn’t seem to be recorded what Helios thought – probably a silent “I told you so”. And that’s the story of the ancient Greek version of what I conclude as their Roswell.

In a further conclusion, the ancients could only label unknown exotic flying machines (UFOs) by what they were familiar with – like boats and chariots. In that sense I guess they, those aerial ‘chariots’ weren’t really UFOs since they had been identified, albeit incorrectly, in familiar terms.

Can Black Holes Evaporate? Part Two

While there is a constant transfer of matter and radiant electromagnetic energy (photons) between bodies throughout the cosmos, there are sinks, ultimate final resting places where matter/energy can retire to and be removed from the rest of the cosmos. These cosmic sinks are Black Holes. But is that retirement permanent, or can stuff re-enter the cosmic workforce? Can Black Holes evaporate? The theoretical short answer is “yes”; the long answer is “no”.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Now what about a Black Hole? Clearly a Black Hole isn’t isolated from the rest of the cosmos and objects therein. If you were just outside the event horizon you’d ‘see’ photons (of all wavelengths) because you’d see stars and galaxies, etc. just like you can locally. Neutrinos would still pass right through you on their way to their doom once passing through the event horizon. The Universe is full of interstellar and intergalactic atoms and molecules and dust and of course lots of larger stuff a Black Hole can snack on. Black Holes will sweep up stuff just like Earth does, only more so since it has more gravity with which to grab hold of stuff with, and also because once caught there’s no escape for the cosmic fish. Unlike Earth, everything that crosses that event horizon, that hits the Black Hole, won’t be reflected back (like photons). Neutrinos that can pass through light-years worth of solid lead without even ‘breathing hard’ will be imprisoned when they try that trick in a Black Hole’s inner sanctum. And of course atoms, molecules, interstellar dust, the big chunks will also get imprisoned. 

But we can imagine an idealized cosmos where all Black Holes have swallowed up all existing radiated particles (photons), all the atoms,  molecules, the dust and all the bigger stuff – all those stars and planets; asteroids and comets; even all that mysterious ‘dark matter’. So you have a cosmos of just Black Holes and the vacuum energy (well maybe a few bits and pieces escaped, but so few to be of no consequence).  Of course there is one further logical extension. Black Holes can swallow other Black Holes. Black Holes can merge to form bigger Black Holes. The final product is that the cosmos consists of one Black Hole – the Mother of all Black Holes – plus the vacuum energy!  So you end up with one Black Hole left standing with nothing left to eat.

Okay, so the only scenario now possible is that this Mother of all Black Holes evaporates via Hawking radiation. It might take trillions upon trillions upon trillions of years, but evaporate it does. Since matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, once the Mother of Black Holes has finally gone ‘poof’, the Universe is right back where it started from – full of stuff from photons to fundamental particles which them undergo chemistry to form atoms and molecules and stars and planets and perhaps life – and new Black Holes!

Perhaps this is a new and improved version of a cyclic/oscillating universe! - But then again, maybe not. There’s a fly in that ointment (but I had you going for a while back there!). That “idealized cosmos” was only a ‘what if’ thought experiment.

Firstly, it’s actually very, very unlikely all the Black Holes in the Universe will ever merge together as long as the Universe keeps expanding. Since the galaxies are getting farther and farther away from each other due to that expansion, the collection of Black Holes contained within each galaxy keep getting further and further apart from other clusters of Black Holes contained within other galaxies. It’s like the passengers in one car get more and more remote from the passengers in another car when each car is going at different velocities and heading in different directions.

Now the collection of all Black Holes in any one galaxy could well coalesce into one super Black Hole galaxy. You have a galaxy that instead of containing billions and billions of stars and debris and particles now consists of just one Black Hole – the car only has one occupant. You have a pure Black Hole galaxy, or a galactic sized Black Hole. 

One might end up with a Universe composed of just these pure Black Hole galaxies, all spreading farther and farther apart over time. 

But secondly, there’s another fly in the ointment. All the space that separates these pure Black Hole galaxies from each other isn’t a perfect vacuum, quite apart from the vacuum energy. All the radiating stars and stuff may have been gobbled up within each galaxy, but all of interplanetary space, all of interstellar space, and all of intergalactic space, isn’t pure vacuum. There’s still the ‘it’s everywhere, it’s everywhere’ Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR).

So what’s this CMBR?  If you have a massive hot explosion (like the Big Bang event is alleged to have been), and all that heat energy expands and expands, then you’d expect the temperature of the area occupied by that energy to drop, the temperature ever decreasing as the volume that finite amount of energy occupies increases. As the energy expands it gets diluted and thus cools, but can never reach an absolute zero temperature for reasons already noted. And that’s just what we find on a universal scale. There’s a fine microwave energy “hiss” representing a temperature a few degrees above absolute zero that’s absolutely everywhere in the cosmos. That’s the diluted heat energy of the very hot Big Bang – well it has been a long time since the Big Bang event (13.7 billion years worth of time) and that energy is now spread throughout a lot of cosmic volume. That microwave “hiss”, called the CMBR, was predicted way before it was discovered. There’s no doubt that it exists.

Since the CMBR is just photons with very long wavelengths, Black Holes could suck up the CMBR photons as easily as light photons. Removal of CMRB photons, already representing a temperature just slightly about the theoretical minimum – absolute zero – would mean the Universe gets even colder, which it would anyway since the Universe is ever expanding and thus available electromagnetic energy (photons) is ever diluting. Combining the two effects and the Universe is a chilly place indeed and will get even colder.

However, it’s probably not possible for Black Holes collectively to swallow up all of the CMBR since there will come a point of diminishing returns. What happens when the temperature of Black Holes equals the temperature of the Universe at large – the CMBR? The answer is thermal equilibrium like when your hot cup of coffee cools off to room temperature. Input into Black Holes from the CMBR will equal output via Hawking radiation. For every photon emitted via Hawking radiation, a CMBR photon gets sucked in. What does that mean? It means a Black Hole can not evaporate.

What about very tiny (micro) Black Holes that are relatively ‘hot’? Might they go ‘poof’ before thermal equilibrium is achieved? Will the contents of the Black Hole evaporate into the surrounding cosmos before they can equate to the surrounding temperature? The analogy might be like a hot drop of water could evaporate into the cold atmosphere before the liquid water drop can attain the temperature of its surrounding environment.

Even so, I still imagine that in the current matter and radiation dominated Universe, incoming would still exceed outgoing.

Of course if you could take a Black Hole, isolate and shield it from the rest of the cosmos and all that it contains, so all you have is the Black Hole and its internal energy (including the all pervading vacuum energy therein). An isolated Black Hole would be in a setting equivalent to putting it into an absolute zero temperature environment. If that’s the case then outgoing would exceed incoming since there could be no incoming, and therefore that Black Hole would then radiate and slowly evaporate and eventually go ‘poof’. BUT, and there’s always a BUT, I can not envision any scenario where a Black Hole can exist in such a theoretical isolation. So, Professor Hawking is quite correct – in theory. In practice, in the here and now, input exceeds Hawking radiation output, and even in the unimaginably far distant future equilibrium will be established where input equals output.