Off center

The Copernican principle is an idea from cosmology that can be summed up as "we're nothing special."

I'm sure you all know that there was a widespread belief prior to Nicolaus Copernicus's proposal of the heliocentric model that the Earth was at the center of the universe, with everything up to and including the stars traveling in perfect circles around us.  Part of this came from observation, given that the Sun and stars and all appear to be circling us; but a large part of this misapprehension was motivated by religion.  Not only was there at least some passing mentions in the Bible that suggested geocentrism was correct (such as "Sun, stand thou still over Gibeon" from Joshua chapter 10), it seemed that as the site of the Garden of Eden and the Incarnation and Crucifixion, of course God would put us at the center of the universe.

Then, along came Copernicus, followed by Galileo (who, upon discovering four of the moons of Jupiter, demonstrated that at least some celestial bodies didn't revolve around us), Kepler, and Tycho Brahe, the latter two of whom showed that astronomical objects don't even demonstrate heavenly perfection by traveling in circles, but move in "imperfect" ellipses.

Since then, we've been pushed farther and farther from the center of things.  In 1924 astronomer Edwin Hubble proved that not only was the Milky Way not the only galaxy, but many of the "nebulae" (the Latin word for "cloud," since prior to that there were no telescopes powerful enough to resolve individual stars in them) were "island universes" themselves, with the nearest -- Andromeda -- at an astonishing 2.5 million light years away.

Hubble also used the strange red shift of light from these distant objects to conjecture that the universe was expanding, the first step toward establishing the Big Bang model of the origin of the universe.  Oddly, though, almost everything Hubble looked at was red-shifted; it appeared that the whole universe was rushing away from us, as if we -- once again -- were at the center of things.  But a bit of three-dimensional geometry showed that this is exactly what we'd expect if space itself were expanding, carrying objects along with it.  No matter where you are, whether here on Earth or on a planet in the Whirlpool Galaxy over thirty million light years away, it looks like everything is moving away from you.

The Whirlpool Galaxy (Messier 51) [Image is in the Public Domain courtesy of NASA and the ESA]

Most of the data we have suggests that the universe is largely homogeneous (any given volume of space is likely to have on average the same amount of matter in it) and isotropic (every direction you aim your telescope looks approximately the same).  Not even the region of space we sit in is remarkable in any way.

The Copernican principle is sometimes called the principle of mediocrity; we don't occupy a privileged place in the cosmos.  And this same principle has cropped up elsewhere.  Genetics and evolution have shown us humans to be part of the Great Continuum of Life, just one branch of the extensive tree that includes all living things.  (And our nearest relatives, the great apes, share something like 98-99% of our genetic makeup.)  We may be the smartest animals -- although events of the last year have made me question that -- but animals we most certainly are.

And a lot of people really don't like this.  I'm not just talking about the creationists, who have a doctrine-based reason for disbelieving all of the above; but there's a certain brand of woo-woo that rebels against the Copernican principle just as hard, only in a different way.  And even if they come to different conclusions than the biblical literalists, I find myself wondering if they're not, at their cores, motivated by the same drive.

"We are too special, really we are!"

This attitude is best exemplified by one Alex Collier, who "claims to have worked in military service as a helicopter pilot in the United States" (the equivocal language was the article writer's, not mine).  I first ran into Collier fifteen years ago, when he said the Earth was being "bombarded by demonic hyperdimensional entities who have engineered our current space-time continuum," that an "extraterrestrial war" in the 1930s propelled us into the wrong timeline, and that NASA is covering up evidence that we're about to be attacked by the Borg Cube.  So Collier wasn't exactly a reliable witness even back then, but if anything, his grasp on reality has gone downhill in the intervening fifteen years.

Because he's back at it, even bigger and better.  Now, he's telling us that the human species was created in a lab by superpowerful aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy, who pulled together and melded the DNA from twenty-two diverse alien species to produce us.  (I guess the fact of our having a near-perfect genetic overlap with other primates here on Earth is just a strange coincidence.)  He also has some insights about what to expect now that this astonishing information has been revealed:

[A] “dimensional collapse” [has] already begun, marked by changes in sound and color.  [Collier] mentioned that people would soon start hearing about “rods” — streaks of light captured on video.  According to him, these were etheric, fourth- and fifth-dimensional craft moving through space, unaware that they were passing right through our dimension.  He explained this as a sign of an ongoing implosion between dimensions...

[M]ore ghosts and apparitions would become visible because souls trapped between the third and fourth densities would appear more frequently as Earth’s frequency rose.  Many of these souls, unless healed, would eventually transition out of this plane.

He also apparently said that we should "be cautious about anyone claiming to be an angel," which is good advice, but not for the reason he thinks.

What struck me about all this is not that some wingnut has a crazy idea -- after all, that's what wingnuts do -- but that this is really nothing more than a modern iteration of the "We are too special!" mental set that has been plaguing us pretty much forever.  A lot of pseudoscience works this way, doesn't it?  Astrology posits that the (apparent) arrangements and movements of astronomical bodies somehow shapes the courses of human lives.  Numerology suggests that the chance occurrence of patterns of numbers is because the universe is set up to send us information.  Even practices like Tarot divination presuppose that your own life's path is important enough to influence magically what comes up from shuffling and dealing a deck of cards.

I mean, I get that life (way) off-center is a little scary and disorienting sometimes.  Bill Watterson's brilliant Calvin & Hobbes captured it perfectly:

But I think it's better to relax into the awe of living in a vast, grand, only-partly-comprehensible cosmos than either succumbing to fear of our own insignificance or else resorting to making shit up to try, futilely, to shove us back toward the center of things.

It's enough that we have, against all odds, begun to take our first tentative steps into understanding how everything works.  That's all the self-aggrandizement I need as a human.  I'll end with the short but mind-blowing quote from Carl Sagan: "The cosmos is within us.  We are made of star-stuff.  We are a way for the universe to know itself."

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Space cubes

I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that we survived (1) the Rapture, (2) the Mayan apocalypse, and (3) the 2012 Christmas shopping season.  The bad news is that the Borg are on their way.  [Source]

At least, that is the claim of such pinnacles of rationality as David Icke and Alex Collier, both of whose names you may have seen once or twice in Skeptophilia before.  Icke, you may recall, is the one who believes that American public schools are being run by aliens; Collier, on the other hand, claims that there was a giant alien/human war back in the 1930s, which none of us have heard about because the war propelled us through a rip in the space-time continuum into an alternate timeline, and now we have to try to get back into our correct timeline, without even being able to consult Geordi LaForge for advice.

Now, because two minds of this caliber are clearly better than one, Icke and Collier have teamed up to analyze the data coming in from NASA's SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory), and have come to the terrifying conclusion that the Borg cube has arrived, and is hovering menacingly just inside the corona of the sun.

So, let's just take a look at some of the photographs in question, whatchasay?

Spokespeople for NASA say that these images aren't of a giant cubical spacecraft; they're basically just blank spots where there's missing data.  Icke and Collier aren't convinced, however.  They take the evidence from the photograph, which consists solely of a couple of blank squares, and come to the only conclusion you could draw from this:

The cube is a "GOD" (Galactic Obliteration Device) launched by an evil alien race, which is coming to Earth to destroy it as per the Book of Revelation Chapter 21, wherein we find out that the "City of God" that is supposed to descend during the End Times is square in shape, and since squares are kind of like cubes, this thing is going to come to Earth and the Borg are then going to annihilate the human race in the Battle of Armageddon, which fulfills the scriptural prophecy even though I've read the Book of Revelation and I don't remember any mention of the Second Coming of Locutus.

Apparently, this idea didn't originate with Icke and Collier, but was the brainchild of the LLF (Luciferian Liberation Front).  Which gives it ever so much more credibility, given that this is the same group of wingnuts who believe that the biblical story is literally true, except that Jesus was actually a superpowerful cyborg from another planet.

Of course, Icke, Collier, and the LLF aren't the only ones who have weighed in on the anomalous squares in the SOHO photographs.  Scott Waring, of UFO Sightings Daily, thinks that the cube is a giant spacecraft, but that it doesn't have anything to do with either the Borg or the Book of Revelation.  No, Waring said, don't be a loon.  There are two other, much more likely, possibilities: "Such huge objects are present either because the sun is hollow or because energy is being harvested from the sun."

Oh.  Okay.  That makes all kinds of sense.

My own personal opinion is that NASA should hire someone whose sole job is to scan their photographs, looking for ones with glitches, dead pixels, missing data, and so on, and make sure that those flawed photographs never make it online.  We rationalist skeptics have enough trouble keeping everyone's eye on the ball without goofed-up pics from NASA making it worse.

Of course, if NASA did hire someone to do this, Icke, Collier et al. would eventually find out about it, and then there's be allegations of a conspiracy and coverup designed to keep all of us from finding out about the impending alien invasion.  Accusations would be leveled.  The word "sheeple" would be used.

You can't win.

Repeat offenders

If there's anyone I owe a debt of gratitude to, here at Skeptophilia headquarters, it's the woo-woo frequent flyers.  Where would I be without Dirk Vander Ploeg's pronouncements about psychic telepathic alien Bigfoots, and how Lord of the Rings was actually a historical document?  Or Alfred Lambremont Webre's claims that President Obama has visited Mars, and that the US government has already developed long-distance space and time travel?  Or Diane Tessman's missives to the world about the Celestial Convergence, which she claims are the musings of a super-intelligent alien named Tibus?

None of the repeat offenders, however, has provided me with quite so much wonderful material as Alex Collier, the Canadian woo-woo extraordinaire who claimed last year that the Earth was about to be attacked by the Borg (apparently they changed their Collective Mind), and also that there was a huge alien/human war in the 1930s, which none of us know about because during the war we were summarily catapulted through a rip in the space/time continuum into another timeline, and now we have to get back, which will be difficult without the assistance of Geordi LaForge.

Well, once again we have evidence that Collier has been using his Netflix membership to watch old episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, because now he's claiming that we're being bombarded by "alien orbs" whose pilots are "demonic hyperdimensional entities" who have "artificially engineered... our current space-time continuum." (Source)

As evidence, Collier produces a scrolling set of images, the majority of which are photographs of the sky with fuzzy spots of light.  One, however, is just baffling, and shows Adam and Eve (or possibly another naked couple, it's hard to be certain) being sternly lectured by something that looks like a figure from a painting by Picasso.  I suppose this represents something profound, but I'm damned if I can figure out what.

In any case, Collier says that there have been large numbers of sightings lately of UFOs in groups of three, and this is highly significant, because three is such a special number, having a great deal of emphasis in the woo-woo world because of its inherent magic, and also because it's the most convenient way to get from two to four.  The "Pagan Gnostics," Collier said, believed in the Archons, who were "demonic interdimensional and artificial life forms who appeared in threes," and after all, we know what authoritative sources on science the Pagan Gnostics are.  "To hell with Einstein," you frequently hear physicists say.  "Let's find out what the Pagan Gnostics have to say about the General Theory of Relativity."

Of course, Collier doesn't just use "Pagan Gnostics" as sources; he also calls upon that trifecta of credibility, Alex Jones, David Icke, and Jesse Ventura.  Yup, I'm convinced.

The best part of the whole article, however, and in my mind the kind of thing that places Collier in a higher tier of woo-woo than the other recidivists mentioned above, is when he starts going into why the number three is so significant:

(N)umerous researchers have presented that “3” has been a recurring theme in a path of apocalyptical destruction.  A distinctive pattern of disasters, has occurred on days, months or years which are either perfectly dividable by “3” or when divided by three produce a perfectly recurring decimal of “3”, ie 646.333333.

Fukushima occurred on 3/11; hence ‘3’.

The War on Terrorism was launched on 9/11, henceforth 9 divided by three equals ‘3’.

“Battle Los Angeles” was a movie on an alien invasion which also precisely coincided by the very day that Fukushima occurred -- 3/11.

World War I began in 1914, which is perfectly dividable by “3”.

World War II began in 1939, which results in a repeated decimal of “3”, I.e. 646.33333

If we conclude that “3” is a significant number in apocalyptical events including World War, we therefore need to look at dates in which “3” become a prominent theme.

As a result, 15 June 2012, or “6/15” becomes at least a candidate for an apocalyptical event, and would represent a “Day of Symmetry” for the archon mind; and 2012 also produces a recurring decimal of “.666” which is the “Number of the Beast”.

When I read all of this, I was torn between laughing and crying -- and of course, you've already seen what the problem is.  If you take any number and divide it by 3, a third of them will divide evenly, and a third of them will leave a repeating decimal .333....  And the remaining third will leave a repeating decimal of .666...., the "Number of the Beast."  So any date that Collier picks will work!

That, of course, is the difficulty with woo-woos in general, isn't it?  They have a totally different definition of the word "evidence" than the rest of us do.  Couple that with a general disdain for the kind of rigorous self-questioning that is the hallmark of good science -- are the correlations we see relevant?  Do they indicate a causation?  If so, what is the correct model to explain that causation? -- and you have a recipe for egregious bullshit.  And, now that the "Information Age" has arrived, they have a more effective venue for disseminating their views to the world than ever before.

Of course, one has to hope that the same mechanisms that allow quick transfer of idiotic nonsense like Collier's aforementioned numerological musings can also act to spread reliable information.  The key is to train people to recognize the difference, so they don't get suckered by wingnuts, hoaxers, liars, and charlatans... which is about as powerful an argument for teaching critical thinking in public schools as any I can come up with.