Exploded Planet Hypothesis - 2

Let's animate The Tenets of Ecocosmology to show that individualism seems to be a casualty of the current hypothesis as it applies generally to the physical cosmos.

By that I mean that the tenets generally apply to the survival of groups, species, civilizations, and/or inhabitants of planets near central stars rather than specifically applying to individuals.

Using the Exploded Planet Hypothesis (EPH) as a background, let's walk through a scenario where living entities must abandon a planet in order to survive.

To focus the inquiry even more, let's also hypothesize that governments on that planet don't believe that the approaching catastrophe is a reality, however, many individuals sprinkled throughout the civilization do know it is coming.

This concept is not far from the current reality on the planet Earth, at least in the near term, and is a certainty in the long term.

Especially when we consider the true nature of the Sun, the solar system, and the currently accepted "knowledge" of civilization at this time.

We know that society in general is not capable of taking the Tenets of Ecocosmology seriously enough to change its fundamental behaviors (cf. "When": The Most Unstable Adverb?).

But, there are individuals within various meme complexes or groups who do sense, by their analysis of reality, the approaching dangers touched upon by the Tenets of Ecocosmology:

A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.

Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."

The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharri of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.

It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:

"The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent."

By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely, Population, Climate, Water, Agriculture, and Energy.

(NASA Supported Study, emphasis added). What can individuals do once they investigate, read, observe, and come to that conclusion --when the culture around them is fundamentally animated by the bias or societal belief that "warnings of 'collapse' are ... fringe or controversial"?

Many of us implode when we realize that the cultural Amygdala (Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala) of most of our cultures has paralyzed most of the types of cognition in our society that comprehend our direction, at least at this time, and at least in terms of a unified effort such as a "let's go to the moon in ten years mega-effort" reminiscent of the JFK years.

Let's consider a few self-destructive responses of groups who did nothing more than commit group suicide (Heaven's Gate, The People's Temple - Jonestown) when they deduced that their cultures were committing mass suicide or ecocide (MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact - 5).

And, let's also consider the "preppers" and "survivalists":

"Survivalism is a movement of individuals or groups (called survivalists or preppers) who are actively preparing for emergencies, including possible disruptions in social or political order, on scales from local to international. Survivalists often acquire emergency medical and self-defense training, stockpile food and water, prepare to become self-sufficient, and build structures (e.g., a survival retreat or an underground shelter) that may help them survive a catastrophe."

(Survivalism, Wikipedia). Basically these two reactions (suicide, preparing for small-group survival) seem like both overreactions and under-reactions.

Which shows that these reactions are induced or substantially influenced by cultural Amygdala impulses, rather than resulting from being informed by a comprehensive solution (but I have to say that those who see the survival of the most informed, who would upon their own survival begin a new, more informed civilization, are enlightened --at least in their initial approach).

Even the governments have institutionalized under-reactions (New Climate Catastrophe Policy: Triage) and over-reactions, such as arresting those who are not only aware, but who are also properly demonstrating it (Barack Hansen Replaces Barack Bush?).

"So what about the exploded planet thingy Dredd?", you may be wondering.

Ok, now let's get into that (first post in this series: Exploded Planet Hypothesis).

Where did the fears, denials, and paralysis, which form the structure of our civilization's cognitive dissonance, come from?

The EPH raises the specter and/or hypothesis that some of the life forms of the planet that exploded survived (by leaving, or in the case of microbes, by being transferred to Earth by meteors or comets) to now influence our planet after migrating "here" (e.g. Maybe Human Civilization Is From Mars & Venus?).

Yes, "here," where we have had five abiotic mass-extinction events (currently in the biotic sixth) that have destroyed most life then existing on Earth time and again [abiotically; but see (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch, 2, 3, 4) for the ongoing anthropogenic, biotic extinction dynamics].

All of which influence the evolution on this planet.

Both our enlightenment and our darkness surely may have epigenetic, genetic, and/or other residue from the experience of catastrophes as has been suggested (e.g. The Evolution of Anthropogenic Extinction by Catastrophe, Are Microbes The Origin of PTSD?, On The Origin of Propaganda).

The cosmic argument ("its not just an Earthly dynamic") from astronomer types, such as a review of the evidence of an exploded planet in our solar system, is documented with specificity:...

Meteors and comets cannot date back to the origins of the solar system because they consist of evolved matter. There are three kinds of meteors just like asteroids. Comets consist of water ice and often they come with rocks in their core. - Water cannot form in the void of space. Water can only form on the surface of a planet with an atmosphere. Therefore, comets provide the most convincing argument in favor of a planet, which exploded within the solar system.
...
When keeping the aforesaid in mind the various moons of the Solar System are no more an enigma; neither from their origin nor from their composition. The moons were parts of the former planet, differing among themselves according to which parts of the former planet constitute their matter. As for the moons of the planet Jupiter:

Ganymede is a former ocean, which took its islands and part of a continent along into space. Through the forces of gravity this moon has formed as a gigantic ball of water ice and rocks, which on account of their higher density and weight have settled predominately near the center of gravity. But there is enough solid matter present to partly reach this moons surface. Therefore, Ganymede looks like a child's marble with surface features in different colors of water ice and rock.

Similar to Ganymede Callisto is a former ocean but it contains only a small amount of rocks or no rocks at all and much sand. The masses of sand of the former ocean were thoroughly mixed with its waters by the force of the explosion blowing them out into space. Before all the sand could be pulled to the center of the newly formed moon by gravity its outer layers consisting still of a mixture of sand and water were frozen solid in the absolute zero temperature of space. Consequently, Callisto's surface consists of a mixture of sand and water ice.

If there were rocks they were pulled to the center of this moon by gravity. In between surface and the center there is probably a layer of almost pure water ice, which did not freeze fast enough to keep the sand or the rocks it was mixed with from being attracted by the center of gravity. Because of the peculiar composition of its matter this moon lacks the typical characteristics of the Earth moon. At the time of the formation of the outer crust meteors simply went through the thin crust and disappeared in the watery interior. Later meteors, which where already scarce, produced craters but these craters were filled in by the water ice plus sand mixture, which produced the wave like structures on Callisto's surface typical for sand dunes or waves. - Sand cannot form in space because it takes water action and an atmosphere to produce sand.

In contrast to the before mentioned moons Io consists of matter from deep inside the former planet. Accordingly, Io's matter shows the characteristics of matter as existing in planet's cores. This and the influences of gravity and radiation from Jupiter and the moon Europa are responsible for the extensive volcanic activity on the moon Io. While volcanoes on the Earth can produce huge amounts of water vapor clouds this is not the case on the moon Io, since its matter came from a planet's core and does not contain water vapor. Therefore, Io's volcanic system is kept going mainly by sulfurous gases and molten igneous rock. These are responsible for Io's typical colors whereas the volcanic activity accounts for the characteristic surface structures whose craters did not originate from meteor impacts but from volcanic activity.

The moon Europa originated from magma masses of the former planet. Under the influence of gravity these liquid magna masses contracted to a sphere and then formed a solid crust. This process set free huge amount of water vapor, which precipitated in frozen form on Europa's surface once it was formed producing its typical smooth appearance. The long cracks appeared in Europa's surface when its crust had already solidified while magma in its interior was still contracting as it was cooling down. This contraction caused the irregular long cracks and faults in Europa's otherwise smooth surface. Contrary to some other moons of Jupiter's planetary system Europa does not show craters. - When most of the meteors struck Europa's surface still was liquid and the traces of meteoric impacts simply disappeared. Meteor craters left from later hits are covered by precipitation of water vapor crystals.

(World Mysteries 8, scroll down to the third article "Exploded Planet", by Rich Anders; NOTE: that author's religious notions are his own).

I focus only on the author's plausible description of the results of a planetary explosion (compare The Exploded Planet Hypothesis 2000).

Remember that there can be many reasons for a planetary explosion, so in the first post of this series I arbitrarily selected the reason for the explosion to have been a defective Dyson Grid installation.

In closing this post, for now I will add two things for your perusal:

1) Ecocosmology only presents the road map ("I Am The Highway"), not the vehicle with which to "travel that highway" using that map (The Tenets of Ecocosmology --- see especially the comments);

2) here are some other articles concerning various aspects of this issue: Asteroids like comets discovered (ice on/in them), Asteroid Ceres Has Water, Ceres More Non-Salty Water Than Earth?, Martian Atmosphere Lost, New Star, How long do stars Exist?, Lee Smolin - Current Scientific Theory Problems, Weekend Science Excursion, Exploded Planet Hypothesis, Mars Colony, Weekend Rebel Science - 5, Weekend Rebel Science -7, Quantum Vacuum Engine, Chaco Canyon, Galileo Mission - Moons of Jupiter (saltwater ocean), Moons of Jupiter - Parts of Exploded Planet?.

Future posts in this series will look at various ideologies and dogmas that focus on the issue of individual survival, by asserting that individuals are not axiomatically forsaken when their groups are consumed by unawareness of impending doom.

The previous post in this series is here.

Now, some videos:

Are We Really Sure How Stars Decline? - 2

In the first post of this series this blog asked Are We Really Sure How Stars Decline?

In that post it was pointed out how important it is, in terms of The Tenets of Ecocosmology, to know solar science, and know it well.

The obvious reason for that is because our future as a planetary society in the long run is utterly dependent on the way the Sun behaves.

The dogma of science is quite assertive and impatience with questions about its authority, even though scientists are constantly being surprised by new discoveries, such as huge waves on the Sun.

The recent decade saw scientific expressions of certainty as to how the Sun would enter an active period soon, after having been relatively quite for a period of time.

Now, all of a sudden, a flip flop is taking place and scientists are now saying it looks like the Sun will be going quiet for a prolonged period instead.

The question that arises, in the context of the climate of this planet, is how will that impact global warming:

How much light the sun emits affects the Earth's weather and climate. And sunspots — dark dots on the face of the great fusion reactor in the sky — do alter the orb's output. So when solar scientists said last week that sunspot cycles might be going into hibernation, the impact on our planet's climate became a hot topic.

Previous prolonged weakenings in the solar cycle may have launched mini-Ice Ages. An example is the so-called Maunder Minimum in the 1600s and 1700s when the Thames River routinely froze, something that never happens today.

So if we're to face a temporarily cooler sun, maybe all those greenhouse gases we've been putting into the atmosphere will keep us toasty?

A cooler sun might mean a drop in global average temperatures of at most 0.3 degrees Celsius. But the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere today will add 0.6 degrees Celsius to global average temperatures by the end of the century. And more, since greenhouse gas emissions show no signs of diminishing. So the slightly cooler sun won't counteract a much hotter earth.

(Scientific American, David Biello). The political animals who also espouse dogma, and who have in general been in denial about global climate change, are likely to seize upon this new scientific "position" to defend the status quo.

As time goes on, this blog will research the issue and present the results to Ecocosmology Blog readers for their perusal.

But one thing is for sure concerning the Earth environment being impacted by the Sun in this decade, it is absolutely minuscule compared to the damage that human civilization is doing.

Are We Really Sure How Stars Decline?

The tenets of ecocosmology are based on the scientific understanding concerning how stars decline then die out.

In recent years there have been discoveries which challenge the existing models of stellar decline, also challenging the tenets of ecocosmology to some degree because the science and the tenets are inextricably linked together.

It behooves us, then, to revisit the tenets periodically as we revisit the current stellar models, hypotheses, and theories.

Two quick examples will illustrate the point, the first concerns red dwarf stars:

One mystery which has not been solved as of 2007 is the absence of red dwarf stars with no metals. (In astronomy, a metal is any element heavier than hydrogen or helium). The Big Bang model predicts the first generation of stars should have only hydrogen, helium, and trace amounts of lithium. If such stars included red dwarfs, they should still be observable today, but none have yet been identified. The preferred explanation is that without heavy elements only large and not yet observed population III stars can form, and these rapidly burn out leaving heavy elements which then allow for the formation of red dwarfs. Alternative explanations, such as that zero-metal red dwarfs are dim and could be few in number, are considered much less likely as they seem to conflict with stellar evolution models.

(Red Dwarf Stars, emphasis added). Another issue challenges our understanding as well:

"A massive star a million times brighter than our sun exploded way too early in its life, suggesting scientists don't understand stellar evolution as well as they thought."

(Star Explodes, So Might Theory, emphasis added). There is some mystery about the red giant Betelgeuse also.

The First Tenet of Ecocosmology states:

1) The stars like our Sun, at the center of all solar systems, will support life forms for an amount of time, but will then destroy life on the planets near them at an unknown time during each solar system's developmental life cycle.

a) For stars that are late K thru M, such as red dwarfs, this applies to the deadly outbursts, that come short of physical destruction, of the planets orbiting close to that type star.

(Revised 2/12/12, See Tenet One Basics). That is true for all planets orbiting stars which fit that mold, but what about a red dwarf?

The current teaching is that they do not destroy the planets near them, they die out orders of magnitude more slowly than our Sun will, and they just fizzle out so to speak.

So, in one sense the tenet holds true for all star types, it is just that some stars require a relatively quicker response from any species on the inhabited planets around them.

That response is the same for all species on all planets, which is finding another habitable planet to live on when the star which the planet orbits expands to destroy them, or fizzles out to leave the planet no longer habitable.

The difference among those like us who inhabit planets orbiting destructive-decline stars, and those who might inhabit planets orbiting red dwarfs, is that they have a much, much, much longer time frame within which to find another home world than we do.

The silver lining in this cloud is that red dwarfs would be very, very long lasting locations for "bases" from which to search for new home worlds, perhaps taking the pressure off planets like Earth whose inhabitants have a million times less time to find a new home world.

Sun Spots Reappear

After an unusual hiatus sun spots are back.

There are some posts on Dredd Blog that explain why sun spot activity is a national security issue.

Also discussed is why it is an issue in the greening of the power grid which will be done by upgrading it to accept wind and solar generated electricity.

During the upgrade the power grid needs to be made more safe from other events associated with Sun Spots, or catastrophic results may develop.

The good news is that the Sun has not gone strange on us into some mode we do not understand with our current scientific model of the Sun.

The Solar Wave Of The Future Now

Scientists have now confirmed that waves much higher than the size of the earth form on the surface of the Sun.

The wave in the photo shows a surfer at "Ghost Tree", a northern California surf spot.

The entire earth would be about the size of the surfer on one of these solar waves:

Years ago, when solar physicists first witnessed a towering wave of hot plasma racing along the sun's surface, they doubted their senses. The scale of the thing was staggering. It rose up higher than Earth itself and rippled out from a central point in a circular pattern millions of kilometers in circumference. Skeptical observers suggested it might be a shadow of some kind — a trick of the eye — but surely not a real wave.

"Now we know," says Joe Gurman of the Solar Physics Lab at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Solar tsunamis are real."

(NASA). Surfs up on the Sun. Only the fittest surfers will survive when the Sun eventually "does the Sun thing", like all stars do, and destroys all the planets near it.

The reality that humanity is very tiny in the cosmos should inspire us to become fit to survive, to pass The Test.

Ecocosmolgy tells us that we are a tiny species surrounded by enormous giants that are certain to destroy us utterly, so we should band together as a sane group working to help each other.

The Fittest Stars, Planets, & Species

As it turns out the survival of the fittest does not apply exclusively to biological organisms or to species.

It applies also to non-biological stars and planets in the sense of the evolution of sentient beings who want to become fit to survive in this cosmos.

The tenets of Ecocosmology map out the route or path which the fittest must take in order to master survival instead of becoming extinct.

Those tenets point out that biological evolution only goes a tiny part of the full distance of that route. That aspect of looking forward is focused by a study conducted by some scientists who have done a survey of stars in the milky way galaxy.

They have found that our Sun is of a type of star that only makes up roughly about 10% of the stellar population in our own Milky Way galaxy.

That discovery ends up being very significant in several ways:

The distinction between habitable planets and planets harboring intelligent life is based on the fact that intelligent life requires stars with lifetimes greater than the time required for intelligence to evolve. For example, in the case of this solar system, we could not find ourselves around a star with a lifetime less than 4.5 billion years.

Indeed, sun-like stars seem to have the right balance: They are of high enough mass that they are more likely to host habitable planets, but they are of low enough mass that they live long enough for intelligent life to develop, and are not extremely scarce. Whitmire estimates that 10 percent of the Milky Way's stars might fall into the category they've outlined. This would still leave over 10 billion candidate stars in the Milky Way alone.

(Space). The factor that leaves biological evolution behind on this route toward fitness to survive is the factor that these Suns eventually destroy all the planets in the habitable zone, together with all biological life on them.

Survival of the fittest, which Ecocosmology calls "The Test", requires that intelligent life which develops on any habitable planet must develop competent space travel, must develop the ability to locate other younger stars with habitable planets, then must colonize those planets.

As if that were not enough, the tenets of Ecocosmology point out that those intelligent planetary species must then continue that behavior ad infinitum because all stars die out or otherwise destroy life on their planetary neighbors.

Thus, the greater part of survival of the fittest is in developing competent astronomy followed by the development of competent space travel so as to successfully locate then colonize new home worlds.

The bottom line of this area of science is that we are cosmic nomads until, as tenet 3(f) says, we "morph into a species free from that type of solar/planetary cosmic dependence".

Ecocosmology & Cosmic Surprises

SuperNova-1987-A

The universe is not so stable that it is free of surprises.

So when we consider the ramifications of the tenets of the science of Ecocosmology, in the sense of vast amounts of time, we should remember that the uncertainty principle instructs us not to become complacent just because there is a seemingly vast amount of time within which we may pass "The Test".

The planet Jupiter took a surprise hit on 7/20/09, and thanks to an amateur astronomer who discovered the impact, professionals monitored it closely.

It was a bit odd that it was exactly 15 years from the last observed impact by a comet, and a bit odd that only an amateur first noticed it.

The earth has also taken hits over the eons like Jupiter did that have wiped out much of the life then in existence on earth.

Today official government programs watch for near earth objects which could cause catastrophe on the earth, and have some rudimentary theoretical proposals to try to stop an asteroid or comet impact on the earth should the need arise.

Tenet 3(e) of Ecocosmology says that the universe requires life forms to develop space travel in order to find new home worlds as their sun or star dies out, and that they must keep doing so until their "final morph" takes place.

Thus, even if The SETI Institute was successful and found a species of intelligent life that wanted to communicate with us, that would not do away with our requirement of passing "The Test" ourselves, nor would it remove their requirement of passing "The Test" themselves.

The movie "Knowing" depicted in a science fiction manner, what one species who had evolved to the point of developing sophisticated space travel would think about some of our human endeavours and behaviours, and what they might do if they knew our sun was going to surprise us soon with our utter destruction.

The lesson of that movie was that they only saved the innocent who would not be a danger to them some day.

Then they continued on with their own evolution because even they had not yet passed "The Test" by evolving into a species that no longer relied on stars that would eventually die out.

Wanted: Technology To Save Our Species

When "you" discover that the Sun will destroy you at an unknown time in the future unless you move somewhere else, some people will say "lets talk about that somewhere else and how to get there fast", and some people will say "why worry about that now".

This says a lot:

... the Voyager 2 spacecraft, which has been traveling outward from the Sun for 31 years ... launched in 1977, is moving at a speed of 38,000 miles an hour. Even at this considerable speed, the spacecraft will still take 30,000 years to reach a distance equal to that of the nearest star.

(Science Daily). The nearest star is only 4.2 light years away, has no habitable planets around it, and it would take "30,000 years" [74,000 years by other calculations] to travel there. We have trouble travelling a few days to the moon and setting up a colony (it hasn't been done BTW).

Thus, our current technology does not allow us to find another habitable planet and colonize it, which we must do in order to avoid extinction as a species (because our star is going to disintegrate us along with all the inner planets out to Mars).

The NASA Kepler mission is looking for habitable planets or habitable moons of planets in the 50-500 light year range. You know, up to a million years of travel for Voyager 1 & 2 type space vehicles (see Tenet 3(b) basics).

Anyone ready to drop the silly fossil fuel technology and the song "Fly Me To The Moon", and get serious about developing the new physics?

Did Anyone Survive The Catastrophe?

The photo shows the residue of a star that exploded 190,000 years ago.

The light traveled for 190,000 years to reach us.

The Sun will do the same thing to us one day, after first expanding out past Mars to destroy Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.

In a catastrophe like this we usually quickly ask "did anyone survive the catastrophe"?

That is, did any life on habitable planets in that solar system make it out before the explosion and destruction, and will we be able to do so before the time comes?

Tenet One Basics

The Sun ("our star") will eventually expand out to about the orbit of Mars, and later "burn out".

All planets within that orbit level, including the Earth, are doomed, and therefore have a time limit upon them.

All life on those doomed planets is in jeopardy in the very long run:

Earth's fate is precarious. As a red giant, the Sun will have a maximum radius beyond the Earth's current orbit, 1 AU (1.5×1011 m), 250 times the present radius of the Sun. However, by the time it is an asymptotic giant branch star, the Sun will have lost roughly 30% of its present mass due to a stellar wind, so the orbits of the planets will move outward. If it were only for this, Earth would probably be spared, but new research suggests that Earth will be swallowed by the Sun owing to tidal interactions. Even if Earth would escape incineration in the Sun, still all its water will be boiled away and most of its atmosphere would escape into space.

(Wikipedia, Astronomy Today, PBS, and Space Dot Com). Exactly when this will happen, or could happen has become more foggy as we observe some stars going through that phase much earlier than the current stellar models allow for that to happen.

The logical behavior and path for the human species, since we are faced with this reality, is to preserve the life sustaining essence of this planet earth while we find another habitable planet within our reach. We have no reach yet (see Tenet 3(b) Basics).

Meanwhile, we must develop a way to travel to that habitable planet so we can colonize it so as to perpetuate the human species.

Tenet One is part of The Tenets of Ecocosmology which this blog focuses exclusively on.

A recent study of the Sun, which raised eyebrows, underscores our need for more study and research so as to build a more solid foundation for solar science.