“On Comet, on Cupid, on Donner and Blitzen…” It’s not just a Christmas song anymore. A Song of Ice and Fire is no longer just a famous fantasy book series by George R. R. Martin. This week, humankind landed vicariously on a comet, via a space probe, launched 10 years ago. I heart science.
Nothing to this extent, in my opinion, has happened since man landed on the moon. It seems like NASA and the space program have been reprioritized behind everything since the 60’s. At least in the US. The ESA (European Space Agency) is responsible for Rosetta, the operation to get this probe on the comet. Go Europe. NASA’s all but died to me… why is that?
Comets themselves are really interesting. One theory holds that comets were responsible for delivering water to Earth, helping to kick-start biology – they “seeded” the Earth with the H2O chemistry – needed to add that “elixir of life”. Maybe comets played a part in what ultimately led to the creation of humans.
There is this whole concept of the Oort cloud that has tons of dust and rock and stuff in it, sitting just outside of our solar system, about ¼ of the way to the nearest star to the sun. The gravity between a binary star system creates a gravitational force that stabilizes somewhere between the two masses, keeping the Oort cloud intact in this location. Comets shoot off into our solar system, ice and frozen rock moving so fast, it creates fire. Forces occasionally dislodge some of this planetary material and set the comets to shooting off in orbit. Other comets are more well-known and maintain their orbits – you may know one of them by name.
Halley’s Comet last came around in 1986 – it’s a shame I was only 5 and I couldn’t fully appreciate it so early in life. I didn’t get to see it even. So if I really want to see that comet and appreciate it for what I know of it, I will have to live to be at least 81 years old. No pressure. By then I may be senile, in the grips of dementia, or even deep in the throes of Alzheimer’s.
We can get a space probe to land on a comet. But we can’t cure world hunger? We can find the one mad cow in Canada that sparked an epidemic, we can find Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden, but we can’t make significant strides in climate change to save our planet? Sometimes I wonder about our priorities, as a human race. Take for example this tidbit of knowledge I’m about to drop.
I’m a big fan of conspiracy theories. I was watching a TV show recently, Unsealed: Conspiracy Files. No government will go on record to admit aliens exist, but we don’t know if they are trying to avoid mass panic. The episode focused on the global threat of an alien attack. In 2012, US and Chinese naval forces launched a counterattack under code name Valiant Shield, to a deemed hostile threat off the California coast, and spanning up to the Alaska coast. What would unite both countries to defend themselves? The US navy denies the battle and called it a “training exercise”. A leaked memorandum said opposition was “extraterrestrial” and it posed a “clear and present danger”.
Further, in the 1980’s, President Reagan was briefed by the CIA about the Roswell incident, presenting a case that the UFO’s were very real and we are not alone. Corpses of 9 dead aliens and 1 lone survivor in the 40’s were found as a result of that crash, and Area 51 is still off limits and guarded very heavily to this day. Supposedly, the 1 sole survivor worked with the CIA and military for 5 years. Holy crap.
Could it be coincidence that every time there is a major leap in technology, there are sightings of UFO’s? I spoke about game changers and advances in technology in this post. It really gets me going, how these could not just be coincidence.
Is the CIA covering its interactions with aliens? In 1954, something called the Greada Treaty was signed. A summit was called under President Eisenhower to form a UFO investigation committee in February of that year. A message in binary code was launched into space and received by a race of aliens known as the Greys in the Zeta Reticuli star system, 39 light years from earth. Evidence has been obtained which is kept in the Library of Congress proving the meeting with aliens happened – physically, in person – but documentation of the treaty signed by Eisenhower is still “many levels above top secret”. According to the testimonies examined so far, the first 1954 meeting was not successful, and the extraterrestrials were rejected due to their refusal to enter into technology exchanges with humans. They insisted on nuclear disarmament by the US, and presumably other major world powers. But in a second meeting, some agreement was formed and signed. Humans could be taken for experimentation, and the Greys would provide technology.
As a result of the Greada Treaty, the US would have gained technology – smart bombs, stealth technology, bioweapons, and so on. Coincidentally, there were 2 immediate jumps in technology after Roswell – the patent of the transistor (i.e. transistor radio) and development of metal called titanium (virtually indestructible…) Defense spending tripled in the time since Roswell, and allocation of defense spending budgets is highly classified information. We went from horses and muskets to fighter jets in a relatively short amount of time. And now we’re landing on comets… Crazy.
It’s also no coincidence that the rise of Hollywood and films, and especially horror films depicting aliens in the way the Greys may have looked, started making this idea of extraterrestrial life forms more conceivable. It may have been the intent to use TV and movies to market and publicize the idea of alien life forms while all this was happening.
This is the stuff of science fiction. Armageddon, the Ben Affleck movie of the 90’s with the great Aerosmith soundtrack song, “I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing”. Steven Tyler’s big lips and the tear shed for Bruce Willis when he does what he must do on the surface of the asteroid with Earth’s name on it. That Jodie Foster film, Contact, and her character being the one to work with another scientist to interpret the blue prints from the coded message, the blue prints being a piece of technology that would allow humans to travel through space and time into the space between. Her character interacts with the alien life forms, and she sees her dad again. It’s not so farfetched and fictional anymore all of a sudden, when you piece together the bits of information available out there. There are more films – Gravity, Signs, ET, and so on. There’s even a theory the surviving alien life form and 9 dead aliens found in Roswell were the basis for the depiction of the aliens the way they look in movies.
A comet is just the start of the space age revival, so I hope. The news this week has inspired my imagination and refreshed my belief in the amazing and wonderful, and made me question our government and its space agency strategy going forward.
idigres 