Lost among the stars

After yesterday's post, about politics and hypocrisy, I'm inclined today to retreat to my happy place, which is: cool new scientific research.

The story this week that blew my mind comes from research by Gaia, an astronomical study agency based in the European Union.  They just released new and detailed information on a sampling of stars in the Milky Way, including the intrinsic brightness, distance from the Earth, color, and relative motion.

Astronomers were pretty enthused by all this.  "This is a very big deal," said David Hogg, astrophysicist at New York University.  "I've been working on trying to understand the Milky Way and the formation of the Milky Way for a large fraction of my scientific career, and the amount of information this is revealing in some sense is thousands or even hundreds of thousands of times larger than any amount of information we've had previously.  We're really talking about an immense change to our knowledge about the Milky Way."

It's the scale that's the impressive part, because Gaia's study provided detailed information...

... on 1.7 billion stars.

"This is the data we're going to be working on for the rest of my career.  Probably no data set will rival this," said Jackie Faherty, astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History.  "It's the excitement of the day that we see it.  It's why we were up at 5 a.m. to get here.  It's exciting to be around each other and trying to get the data all at once.  It's a day we're going to remember."

[image courtesy of NASA/JPL]

However, to put things in perspective, these 1.7 billion stars represent less than 2% of the stars in the Milky Way.  So if this is "hundreds of thousands of times larger" than what we had before, we were really working from skimpy information prior to this..  It's a little like trying to come up with a good idea of life on Earth by examining a platypus, a cactus, and a mosquito.  You could find out some cool stuff (aerobic respiration, photosynthesis, gas exchange, DNA & RNA, and so on) but you'd still be missing well over 99% of the details.

This is not intended as a criticism, of course.  It's an amazing leap over what we had prior to this, and is certain to give us information on the physics of stars we didn't have before.  Considering that we're stuck here on this spinning rock, 40,000,000,000,000 kilometers away from the nearest star (other than the Sun, obviously), that's pretty damn impressive.

Oh, and that's just looking at the Milky Way.  To put things even further in perspective, at current conservative estimates, there are 200 million galaxies in the universe, each of which contain on the order of 100 billion stars.  So the current amazingly exhaustive survey gives us information about 0.0000001% of the stars in the universe.

The mind boggles.  I mean, at some point, even the mathematically adept have to throw their hands into the air and say, "Okay, there are lots and lots of stars."

All of which brings me back to a question I've considered many times; wondering if there's intelligent life out there.  With all of those star systems, there has to be, right?  I remember as a kid, sitting out in my parents' front yard with my telescope, and wondering if some alien kid 500 light years away was sitting in his parent's front yard looking back at me.  I still think it's unlikely any of them have made it here -- not only is the Sun kind of a wimpy star, in a backwoods arm of the Milky Way, but the General Theory of Relativity is still strictly enforced in most jurisdictions.

Warp drive notwithstanding.

Anyhow, it's pretty cool.  But I need to wrap this up, and go back out into the... world.  Where things like politics are happening.  I'll try not to be too upset about it.  Who knows, maybe it'll be clear tonight, and I can go out and look up at the stars.

And maybe, many light years away, an alien science nerd will be escaping from the ridiculous political situation on his planet, and is looking back in my direction.

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This week's featured book on Skeptophilia should be in every good skeptic's library: Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things.  It's a no-holds-barred assault against goofy thinking, taking on such counterfactual beliefs as psychic phenomena, creationism, past-life regression, and Holocaust denial.  Shermer, the founder of Skeptic magazine, is a true crusader, and his book is a must-read.  You can buy it at the link below!

Cosmic spiritual quantum evolution, and the wisdom of staying silent if you're ignorant

I may have a good many faults, but one thing I try to avoid like the plague is spouting off about a topic of which I am ignorant.  In fact, I recall with the greatest humiliation the times that I've posted on Skeptophilia only to have someone who was more knowledgeable on the topic comment, "Um, no, you've got it completely wrong, and here's why."  Even in the classroom, I would rather admit to a student, "I don't know the answer to your question, but I'll see if I can find out" than to make something up and later be found to be in error.

There are, however, a good many people who don't share my reluctance to bloviate despite their own sad lack of knowledge, and I'm not just talking about our political figures, many of whom seem to feel the need to weigh in upon everything without any particular regard for the facts.  No, this tendency extends to many far outside the realm of politics.

Let's look at one particularly egregious example of this that I found just yesterday, entitled "What Events Occur When A Species Is On The Cusp Of Evolving?."

When I first opened this link, I was tentatively encouraged by the photograph of proto-hominid skulls, and there was no immediate howling about how evolution is false.  Then I looked at the name and photograph of the author (Diane Tessman), and I thought, "I recognize her.  In fact, I think I've written about her before."  And after a brief search, I found my post from last November in which I described her contention that clouds are not formed by water vapor condensing and so on -- they're actually camouflage for UFOs (read the post here).

But I thought: okay, maybe even if she is off the beam with regard to meteorology, she might still have something interesting to say about evolutionary biology.  So I started reading.  And right away, she leaps into the deep end of the pool with an anchor around her feet:

The process of evolution is not in conflict with religious teachings such as intelligent design, when you think about it. Evolution is at its heart, a mysterious process which insures that the life force will continue in one kind of life-form, and will be snuffed out in another species of life-form. If the life-form is chosen to continue, it is also “promised” that it will change (evolve), thus having a chance at future survival, too.

Actually, evolution and intelligent design are in complete opposition to each other -- beginning with the fact that intelligent design isn't science, because it makes no testable assertions.  And evolution doesn't promise anyone anything; current survival is no guarantee of future survival.

But she goes on to elaborate further, unfortunately:

The question: What events occur in the perception of a species which is about to evolve? I assume that hundreds of years before the evolutionary change became established, a few members of the species would perceive events and perhaps beings, which the old species in general could not perceive.

As the years moved along, thousands of the old species would begin perceiving in this new way. Finally, in, say, 1947, there would be a flying saucer flap. Yes, I am proposing that perhaps we perceive UFOs and their occupants because we are creating them, or at least beginning to perceive them, because we are evolving into a new hominid species. Again!

Frankly, I doubt that a population of plants sits there and thinks, "Wow!  I suddenly am perceiving events!  And beings!  Look at that stupid clump of crabgrass over there... it's not perceiving anything.  I bet I'm about to evolve!  Whooppeee!"

With regards to our perception of UFOs, it does demand the question of how perceiving something that isn't there could possibly be considered evolutionarily advantageous.  But she explains:

So, for thousands of years, a few of us have suddenly perceived more than the starry skies. By “us” I don’t mean that those who spot UFOs are superior to the rest of us, because human consciousness is probably a mass morphic EM field, so most times it is a random glitch in the EM field which allows a more complete (higher) perception of the skies than most humans see as they still march to the old human consciousness.

 Oh!  Okay!  Now I get it!  I mean, my only question would be, "What?"

But she goes on to state that evolution isn't, after all, about selective advantage and survival of the fittest and gene frequency shifts; no, it's about moving to a higher spiritual plane:

It seems all the natural world has this prime directive to Evolve or Die! However, humans are strange because of our advanced intellect and spiritual needs. The animal world has wonderful intelligence too and spirituality, but it is in balance, whereas humans are restless, aggressive beings who seem out of balance with their own planet.

I realize many hominid species disappeared and do not seem to be the actual fore-bearers of Homo sapiens, but others were our ancestors, and my point is, do we know what/who each hominid species began to perceive once the pressure of evolution set in?

Apparently, as each humanoid species evolves over millions of years, it begins to have “access” to a more complicated perception available within the EM morphic field. Thus Homo sapiens has the where-with-all to develop computers, and rockets to the moon, whereas earlier humanoid forms just couldn’t perceive these things. He/she could not dream of them, thus bring them into being.

Whether evolution allows a species to perceive more of the cosmos, or the species actually creates “more” within the cosmos, who knows?

Sorry, Ms. Tessman, actually evolution in the real world has nothing to do with species rising to a higher plane and acquiring advanced powers.  I believe you're thinking of Pokémon.

But what, you might ask, is making all of this happen?  I know I wondered, because she has long since stopped talking about anything remotely recognizable as science.  But she tells us that astonishingly, evolution is caused by the same thing that results in UFOs and ghosts:

I wrote an article http://www.ufodigest.com/article/does-earth-herself-create-ufos-ghosts-and-fairies asking if the planet Earth herself creates UFO occupants, fairies, and ghosts, perhaps in her subconscious or dream state. That theory can be blended in with this one: Gaia creates her various life forms. The dynamic, irresistible process of evolution begins to happen to them, because their creator is a living, breathing entity herself.

As millions of years roll on, these life forms come into new fields of perception which are actually the multiple layers of reality of the planet herself. Or, as a variation: These are the layers of the cosmic onion of quantum perception.

C'mon, admit it -- you knew she'd work the word "quantum" in there somehow.

At this point, you might be thinking, "Well, she is just talking about humans, right?  A lot of very advanced thinkers have had the opinion that there is something unique about humans, that sets us apart from the rest of nature -- a soul."  But no, she really is talking about everything, all nature, as evolving because the Earth somehow wants it to:

What makes a wolf – a wolf? What makes a blue jay – a blue jay? Yes, there are physical characteristics but each species has a different “hum” which cannot be completely defined or fully encapsulated by looking at the physical structure of the life-form.

Okay, if you want me to believe this, then build a hum-o-meter and show me how a wolf measures 6.8 on the hum-o-meter but a blue jay only measures 4.2.  (I would assume that a hummingbird would peg the needle.)

Right after this, she said, "This is only a theory, of course," and at that point I stopped reading, but not before screaming at my computer, "No!  This isn't a theory!  A theory is a testable framework based on evidence and data!  This is a random collection of brain spew and wishful thinking!"  But all I succeeded in doing is waking up my dog, who glared at me, sighed heavily, and then went back to sleep.  I doubt Ms. Tessman heard, frankly.

Anyhow.  I return to my initial statement; if you are ignorant on a topic, then you are well advised just to keep your mouth shut.  And Ms. Tessman, do go back to blathering on about UFOs and cosmic harmonic dimensional vibrational frequencies, because whenever you do venture into the ocean of scientific knowledge, you seem to sink so fast we can't even see any bubbles.