Author: photog
Europan Trilobites
I was watching a YouTube video about the material that a NASA probe brought back from an asteroid. This asteroid apparently is in a near Earth orbit and so this mission was able to reach and return from this tiny world in just a few years with its cargo of sand and gravel. By the look of the asteroid, it’s not even a solid piece of rock but a bunch of space junk that gravitated together out in the lonely stretches of interplanetary space.
But as unpromising as this locale seems to me, apparently, it was a bonanza for science. This one kilometer flying gravel pit somehow contains an astonishing collection of organic molecules that hint shockingly about being the precursors or even the aftermath of life. A slew of amino acids and even some precursors of the RNA molecule showed up in this sampler that NASA recovered.
Now, reading this I immediately began to question in my own mind whether these organic molecules started out on Earth and were ejected into space during one of the asteroid collisions that befall this planet every once in a great while. After all, if rocks from Mars have ended up on Earth (as has been claimed by geologists) then surely debris from Earth could have contaminated nearby space and ended up on this neighboring rock. But the writers of this report have information that dates this asteroid to very ancient times. In fact, they claim it’s older than the planets and could possibly contain material from completely outside the solar system. Well, who knows? Despite assurances I think it’s fifty/fifty whether it’s originally terrestrial organic material they’re looking at.
But suppose it really is extraterrestrial in origin. In that case, I think that eventually we will find that life existed on Mars in the past when it possessed abundant water. In fact, it’s entirely possible that life exists cryptically below the surface of Mars at a depth where temperature is higher and reservoirs of water exist. And if organic molecules are floating around the solar system, it seems likely that some of the larger Jovian and Saturnian moons with their liquid water oceans will also turn out to contain life.
Now here’s the thing. I would make a small wager that when these life forms are found, they will be shown to have a relationship to terrestrial organisms. I say this because I think they will be descendants of microorganisms that have managed to be ejected from Earth and drifted through the solar system until they reached environments that they could adapt to.
Of course, it’s possible that life on Earth also came from space. Experimentation with hardy terrestrial lifeforms has shown that they can exist in the vacuum of interplanetary space for surprisingly long periods as spores. I guess the interesting question is just how advanced is the life that we will find in the rest of the solar system. There is a big difference between finding bacteria, algae, lichen or moss on Mars or a jellyfish swimming in the oceans of Titan as opposed to finding the xenomorph. Well, I won’t be greedy. I’ll split the difference. I’ll settle for a Europan trilobite.
05DEC2025 – Photo of the Day
05DEC2025 – Quote of the Day
By robbing Peter he paid Paul, … and hoped to catch larks if ever the heavens should fall.
François Rabelais
Tom’s World – 04DEC2025 – The End of “Our Democracy”
Here’s a column by Christopher Chantrill, whom I’ve been following religiously for several years. He has several uncommon, shall we say, takes on the political landscape.
“Our situation is not whether to have a republic or democracy. Our situation is what to do after the failure of the educated-class project of the last 150-200 years. Obviously, the educated class wants to hang on.”
…
“Problem for any ruling class is that, at the end of the dynasty, the rulers are not sending their best: Biden, Harris, Walz: see what I mean? And so, even though they have sat majestically on the throne for decades and won world wars and saved workers and blacks and women and gays from a fate worse than death, when it comes to the crunch, they don’t have the ability and the skills and the cojones to realize that they have screwed up, that their regime is incompetent and corrupt, and that dynasties don’t last forever.”
Hailing Frequencies Open!
Back in the 1960s we had a tv show called “Star Trek.” It starred William Shatner as James Tiberius Kirk, the captain of the starship Enterprise. And for one hour every week Kirk and his crew of four hundred able-bodied men (and women) warped their way through the galaxy seeking out new life and new civilizations and boldly went where no men had gone before.
And wherever they went Lieutenant Uhura kept them (mostly) in contact with the Federation using a form instantaneous contact called sub-space communication. I say mostly because something called sub-space interference would be invoked whenever it would be useful to the plot for the Enterprise to be incommunicado. This would allow Kirk to show initiative and break with inconvenient policy like the Federation’s Prime Directive against interfering in the technological development of more primitive civilizations. Of course, Kirk broke this rule about a million times in the course of the show. But you know, there was dramatic tension while they sorted out their feelings about this rule.
But getting back to sub-space communication, it was instantaneous. Which was needed to make the stories work. After all, radio waves are electromagnetic waves and propagate at the speed of light. The Enterprise travels many times the speed of light (maximum about 1000 times the speed of light). So normal radio communication is essentially useless for them. They could beat their radio message back to Earth by a factor of as much as a thousand-fold.
But here’s the thing. Suppose you want to write a story where faster than light space travel is impossible but instantaneous communication with other stellar systems is possible? What would be the dramatic possibilities of such an arrangement. Well, basically, it allows the writer to imagine radically different cultures and organisms sharing ideas and information across the entirety of the cosmos.
You could have a supremely old race teaching a young one how to avoid all of the dangers that it experienced. And they could teach them about their future. Suppose a race on a planet is circling a star that is about to explode. What would they want to pass on to the universe? Maybe some religious insight or a supremely beautiful musical composition or maybe just their name; so, they would not be forgotten after they die.
Now of course instantaneous communication is as completely untethered to scientific reality as warp drive is. But I can still see how using it in a story without FTL space flight would present story lines that aren’t as well-explored as ones where FTL space flight exists but “sub-space” communication does not.
Now all this being said, I will say that Lieutenant Tawny Madison, played by Sigourney Weaver in the movie Galaxy Quest really improved on Lieutenant Uhura’s performance as communications officer. Her costume was significantly skimpier and showed much more cleavage than Lieutenant Uhura ever did. And Madison didn’t need to wear an ear piece to hear the computer tell her what the ship was doing. All she had to do was repeat what everyone else could hear over the ship’s speaker system. Now that was progress.
04DEC2025 – Quote of the Day
We have here other fish to fry.
François Rabelais
04DEC2025 Photo of the Day
03DEC2025 – This ’N’ That
Finally, a breathing space! I don’t have to do anything for almost a week. I spend my time working on getting my book ready for publishing and watching Christmas movies. I confess that I overindulged on turkey and the fixin’s around Thanksgiving and am still recovering from caloric excess. But after some vigorous exercise today I’m back in shape for what lies ahead. And that looks like snow and ice removal! Dunwich is up to its old tricks. Instead of three inches of snow we’ve gotten a day of rain which probably will turn into a half inch of ice tonight. Oh, the pain, the pain. Luckily neither Camera Girl nor I are compelled to leave the Compound tomorrow so I can slowly work on the driveways. I wish I had more tube sand but even a hundred pounds or so of it should be enough to prevent the whole thing from resembling an ice-skating rink.
I noticed that the latest fake crisis is horror over cigarette boats filled with fentanyl being blasted out of the water. I can conceive of no better targets for the US military than narcotraficantes heading for US coastal waters. What clearer priority do we have than preventing these people from selling poison to our people? Don’t they realize that Saint George of Floyd was killed by a fentanyl overdose? Surely that must give them pause. But Democrats are always looking to side with evil against us. They can’t help it.
Well, enough about that. Now, how about those kooky Somalis in Minnesota? Good old Tim Walz was handing over hundreds of millions of dollars in fake aid to the Somalis and they were sending it to terrorists in Somalia. Even his own state employees blew the whistle on him and even the New York Times is exposing the sordid details of his cover-up. Trump said that Walz is severely retarded and I think it’s hard to deny it. Of course, this doesn’t add to the reputation of Minnesotans for keeping this bozo in office. Now, of course it isn’t everyone in the state but it’s a clear majority that seems okay with government fraud as long as it goes to a constituency that will vote reliably Democrat. We’ll have to wait and see if Trump’s Justice Department can find a judge willing to honestly hold Democrat crooks accountable. Lately it doesn’t seem to be the case.
And finally, early indications are that Hollywood is throwing in the towel on woke entertainment for children. Disney and its peers have lost so much money on woke movies for children and young adults that they’ve sworn off woke lecturing for the foreseeable future. For at least the next year or two they’re going to try and remember what “wholesome” means. No more trans kids, girl bosses or obligatory race-swapping of traditional characters.
Well, anyway, that’s the plan. But can they do it? I tend to doubt it. I’m not even sure they would know an exciting adventure story if it reached out and bit them on the butt. But it’s hopeful that they’re even trying. At the very least it means that a whole bunch of woke writers, directors and actors will be out of work for the next year or two. And that’s a beautiful thing.
03DEC2025 Photo of the Day
