Science Questions
The ‘Wow” signal has been trending. I don’t know how to think about this. Part of me struggles with the science part. More precisely, I tend to elevate science to an unreasonable degree, forgetting there are humans involved, which means mistakes, and equipment failures and artifacts. I am more curious why it seems to be trending. Even the oil on mars, or truffles, is trending? It’s old news, but in telescope range. Are there algorithms bringing these things back around? Can orbital mechanics explain how things keep coming around?
There are a scattering of articles, a sample of which is available below. The one attached to the thumbnail above, that was 2016. The 2022 article says a study has narrowed the source to two stars… Do they mean the 2016 article that has three stars circled? Are they discussing something new, something old. Hypothetically, was the math in 1977, the year they discovered the WOW signal while browsing data, good enough that they could have traced a line back to a region and said “oh, look, there is a star there.”
And see, this is where I can’t do math well. Can you point your telescope to any region and not eventually find a star, or a galaxy, or an artifact? Yes, things move. So, 40 years after the Wow, something is there now but it wasn’t there then? No, 40 years isn’t enough time for the stars to realign, right? And science would accounted for drift?
All the articles point to the possibility of this being a genuine artifact of intelligence, and then they say, but it could also be someone warming up their sandwich in a Microwave. Still evidence of intelligence? So, nothings changed? Oh, it could be either of these stars, or a sandwich. Do you smell popcorn? Ah! Forget looking through the telescope, let’s eat!
SPACE TELESCOPES
The James Webb Telescope is pretty cool. There is speculative discussion we might actually see an exoplanet well enough to do spectronomy on the atmosphere and tell you if there is life, as we know it. Does it bother anyone we will not see images until after they’re reviewed by a committee?
Can you imagine had Galileo kept mum about his observations?
Church- What’s you looking at?
Galileo- Oh, nothing.
Church- you sure been staring a long time for nothing. You’re looking at your neighbor’s wife, aren’t you? Come on, we’ve all been looking over there…
Galileo- You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth.
And so here we are, full circle. The state’s church of science owns the telescopes we paid for, but they’re going to hold back information. This leads to speculative discourse, rumors, conspiracies, and a host of articles discussing something like the WOW signal, which is still being bantered around.
Same with organic chemicals on Mars. Could that be evidence of past life? Could it have happened naturally? OMG! Do you suppose when they realize there is petroleum reserves on Mars we’ll finally go to Mars? Greenhouse gasses released on Mars with 1980s tech changes Mars into an habitable planet. OMG is better then WOW. Who would have saw that coming.
The Future Unknown
We can’t predict the future, right? We can make some good guesses. It seems like the future could be good. If we don’t blow ourselves up, and sink into a totalitarian one world government, and people maintain a modicum of self-autonomy, the future will be alright. If you like metaphors, Mad Max is an unsustainable, extinction level crisis. It’s brutally bleak. Star Trek, as originally envisioned, was the most optimistic future available. The way it’s been degraded, you would almost imagine it was done deliberately to crush any hope of society evolving into a more loving, educated world.
We, humans, have the potential of turning this planet around. My math sucks, but I have heard from pretty good math people- most people in the world are great, loving, genuine people with healthy boundaries. Statistically speaking, if we were all dicks all the time, the world would be a lot different. Statistically, all bell curves have outliers. There is good evidence, the world is being run by outliers. Out right liars.
And for what? Money. Would knowing aliens exist really topple economic structures? Covid hurt many, but it really didn’t stop consumerism. Technically, and this again is me asking questions because I don’t know enough, wouldn’t a sudden decline in people consuming result in prices coming down? If people stayed home, didn’t buy gas, fuel prices would come down per the laws of supply and demand.
WOW, you mean you don’t have to adjust the economy by changing interests rates or raising prices? Just say, ‘it’s aliens.’ People will stay home?
Pff. Not likely. I suspect if Congress came out today and said it’s aliens, people would go right along doing what they do today, with very few going outside to look up. The few that did go out and look up, they would see the same sky they always did, go back inside and say, “I don’t see nothing.”
How will the world know it’s aliens? It will be on television. How crazy is that? Do we have any nonpartisan news sources? Maybe there shouldn’t be. I mean, after all, humans are emotional and we should be happy when we discover things, right. It’s that eureka moment that has a person leaping out of the bathtub and running down the street naked shouting “By George, I think I’ve got it!”
Wait. That didn’t happen. The By George part. Oh! how nice of scientist to be so reserved. They simply wrote WOW in the margins.
Meanwhile, an alien scientist catching reruns of I Love Lucy writes LOL in his margin, then goes down to get some popcorn.
