The Mystery of Gobekli Tepe

At around 12,500 years ago, human beings started to domesticate plants and animals around the world. This was the start of the geological epoch known as the Holocene. During this time, human beings also started to transition from a hunter-gatherer species to an agricultural-farming one, and thereafter began the great creation of towns and cities and the basis of civilisation. Prior to this ‘Neolithic Revolution’, we were nomadic creatures, with no written language, and with tools and technologies driven largely by our need to hunt on the land and sea and survive the elements day to day.

We need to remember also that 12,500 years ago corresponded to the end of the last ice age, where vast ice sheets had covered much of North America, Northern Europe and Asia, with their maximum extent around 26,500 years ago. The glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere began to retreat around 19,000 years ago. After the end of the last ice age came the period known as the Younger Dryas, which was between 12,900 to 11,700 years ago, which saw a temporary reversal of the gradual climatic warming. This was clearly a dramatic time to be on planet Earth and in particular in the Northern Hemisphere, and it is interesting that the Neolithic Revolution really came at the end of this ice age, permitting the conditions for human beings to thrive, apparently for the first time. Or was it?

The archaeological site at Gobekli Tepe in Turkey

Between the years 1996 to 2014 a site in Turkey was excavated by a renowned German archeologists called Klaus Schmidt, from the University of Erlangen. The site was in the South Eastern Anatolia region of Turkey and it had the appearance of a hill, and so it was called ‘Potbelly Hill’ which in Turkish is written Gobekli Tepe. The site is around 1,000 ft in diameter and 50 ft high and is located 2,500 ft above sea level. Schmidt and his team were not the original discovers of the site, but it had originally be discovered in 1963 by the American archaeologist Peter Benedict from the University of Chicago in co-operation with Istanbul University.

After having spent several years excavating the site, Schmidt uncovered several layers which he had radiocarbon dated to 7,370 - 7,560 years ago (Enclosure C), 7,970 - 8,280 years ago (Enclosure B), 8,620 - 9,110 years ago (Layer III) and 8,800 - 9,2130 years ago (Layer III). The team found an astonishing set of T-shaped pillars forming what appeared to be a Temple or stone circle configuration. Many of the pillars contained pictograms and animal relief carvings, presumably to represent sacred symbols. The animal reliefs included lions, bulls, boars, foxes, gazelles, donkeys, snakes and other reptiles. They even included insects, arachnids and birds. Overall, the site displays the signature of a high culture and with a sophisticated knowledge of architecture and also possibly astronomy, and the use of stone tools - not expected of a hunter gatherer society.

Examples of some of the stone T-shaped pillars at Gobekli Tepe

The discovery of Gobekli Tepi is evidence suggestive of a non-linear history, which departs from so called gradualism. To construct a site like this, and noting that only around 5% of it has been excavated by archeologists to date, does not seem possible with a simple hunter gatherer society. This project would have required perhaps several hundred people working on it for years or decades, and they had to be fed with sufficient resources to not interrupt the construction. Just like the Clovis First model of the America’s, much of our understanding of history appears to be in need of revision. In fact, the site is suggestive that we are living in a post-apocalyptic era, and that there may be some truths to the mythologies of a great flood that swept across the Earth and also that prior to this existed advanced human societies.

The most incredible thing about this site in Turkey, is the view from Schmidt, that the site had been deliberately buried after its use. What could motivate a people to bury such a site? There would appear to be two possible reasons, which is to protect it (or preserve it) or to hide it from discovery by others. But protect it from what? And to hide it from whom? One thing is for sure, the only way we are going to unlock the answers to these questions is by fully committing to a major archaeological excavation program in Turkey. Let us hope that happens soon.

This article was originally posted on a previous web site for the asterism project on 15th Jul 2020 and it has been copied here since that site was closed down.

Worshipping the Sun

In ancient Egypt people worshipped the Sun God Ra, and he was believed to rule in all parts of the created world including the sky, Earth and the underworld. In ancient Greece people worshipped Helios as a god and personification of the Sun. The ancient Maya worshipped a Sun god called Kinich Ahau. The Inca people of the Andes region of South America worshipped the god Viracocha, who is said to have created the universe, sun, moon and stars. He was said to command the Sun to move over the sky and he was seen as the god of the Sun and storms. Continuing this through mythologies and traditions of ancient people around the world, we could keep listing gods related to the Sun and find a common adoration and gratitude for its presence.

Inca God Viracocha

Why were the ancients so fascinated with the Sun and its positioning in the heavens? They were also interested in other elements of the heavens including the Moon, planets and the stars themselves. In particular, tracking the path of the Earth and its true North axis through the phases of the zodiac seems to have been of great interest.

There are twelve original constellations of the zodiac, which were used by the Egyptians but probably originated in ancient Summeria and are known as the Astrological ages. These occupy 30 degrees of celestial longitude and approximately correspond to the constellations of Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. Currently we are in the age of Pisces and are transitioning to the age of Aquarius. Each of the age is characterised by a duration of around 2160 years, and 12 times this gives us a total of 25,920 years, which also is the total duration for the precession of the equinox. Together this celestial coordinate system takes the ecliptic as the origin of latitude and the Sun’s position at vernal equinox as the origin of longitude.

Equinox means equal night. The vernal equinox is the point on the horizon at which the Sun’s path crosses the celestial equator moving from South to North. There are two of these that occur each year and they are known as the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. The Autumn equinox is the date in the year when the Earth experiences a 12 hour day and a 12 hour night and occurs in late September. In addition to the equinox, there is also the solstices. The summer solstice is the date on which the Sun is the highest in the sky at noon in the Northern hemisphere and usually occurs in late June. Tracking these events is very useful for ancient agriculture so that one can plan for crops and is a necessary component of any society that has moved out of a hunter-gatherer status and is seeking to build a civilisation. They are also useful as calendar markers.

Many of the ancient megalithic structures exhibit cardinal alignments which are clearly linked to astronomical phenomena. But the Sun appears to get special interest. At the ancient Stonehenge site in England for example, the stones are carefully aligned so that if one sits at the centre, you have a clear view of the summer solstice sun rising over the heel stone. Similarly, you can see the Sun setting at the winter solstice.

Near the Great Pyramid in Cairo, Egypt, one can stand on the body of the Great Sphinx which has the body of a Lion and the statue lies exactly along the East-West axis of the Giza necropolis, with its gaze looking directly East, so that it stares at the rising Sun during the vernal equinox. At dawn on the vernal equinox one can also gaze directly at the rise of its own celestial counterpart in the constellation of Leo, to create a celestial rising, just as the Sun begins to rise. Although curiously, this only happens around 10,500 years ago, a date which is inconsistent with the claimed archaeological dating of the Sphinx from Egyptologists. Similarly, Serpent Mound in the state of Ohio in America, appears to also gaze directly at the summer solstice at Sunset. Indeed, if we travel around the world and examine many of the ancient megalithic structures, we find profound cardinal alignments which clearly demonstrate that people from all cultures sought out astronomical significance in the construction of their temples and religious sites of interest.

Perhaps its not a surprise, as mentioned there are practical reasons for tracking the movement of the Sun such as for agricultural planning and the correct measurement of the seasons. But also, in addition to air and water, the Sun appears to be the main energy giver for all life on Earth, and so it is not unreasonable for ancient people to associate this object with their divine worship.

Maybe, it was about creating a spiritual moment, where the Earth (the land of people) and the Stars (the land of the Gods) would become joined for just an instant, during one of these equinox or solstice events. That this is where you could experience the divine and actually feel the presence of a creator. Such observations were also usually accompanied by rituals, and it is possible that a society seeing that the elders were able to conjure the exact positioning of the Sun as a part of these rituals, also reinforced a religious belief and so a hierarchical system of control over a population.

Whatever is true, our link to our ancient ancestors is provided by our shared need for the Sun, since without it neither of us would have been here. That object connects us to our past but also our future, as it continues to rise and fall with the setting of the day. If any object ever deserved the honorary title of a God, the Sun is surely it.

This article was originally posted on a previous web site for the asterism project on 15th Jul 2020 and it has been copied here since that site was closed down.

Being Human & the Nature of Homo Sapiens

A homo sapien (‘thinking man’) is an extinct species of the genus Homo, which also includes Homo erectus. The genus is believed to have emerged out of Africa from a predecessor species approximately 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. The term Middle Palaeolithic defines the period when Homo sapiens first emerged and the emergence of the full behaviour modernity occurred around 40,000 to 50,000 years ago, in what is known as the Upper Paleolithic. During this period the modern human arose though cognitive and genetic changes.

The behaviour modernity, is a trait that distinguishes current Homo sapiens from other anatomically modern humans, hominins and primates. This is characterised by abstract thinking, planning, exploitation of games, music, dance, art and others. But what does it mean to be a human being?

Anatomically, we have two upper limbs (arms), two lower limbs (legs), hands and fingers, feet and toes, a head and neck, a chest, an intestine and stomach, a spinal cord, certain organs for physical function such as heart, lung, kidneys, liver and more. But clearly this does not define a human being, although it does appear to define our shared genus of hominins.

Our interaction with the physical world around us is provided by our senses. This includes our touch, taste, smell, hearing and vision. All of our connections to the physical world are enabled by these senses, transmitting information down specialised neurons in the skin. Any changes in pressure, temperature, vibration or pain and other sensations are all attributed to the different receptors in the skin, and ultimately this change is communicated to the brain which then measures that change against a model of the world that it has built based on experience.

But what if we were to remove the human body, and just place the human brain in a jar. If sensors were connected to the key parts of the brain so that you could still experience those key senses of touch, taste, sound, hearing and vision, but through computational input that is say on a random number generator to ensure variety of experience, would you know the difference? Would you still feel like you were a human being if those sensory inputs matched exactly your model of the real world? Would you know when you were not?

It would seem that your physical anatomy does not really define who you are. Then if we consider the future possibilities for the evolution of homo sapiens in different environments. Like if we adapt to living more permanently in water or as we explore space and settle other planets with different atmospheres, radiation levels, gravity. Indeed, in a micro-gravity environment where people just float around, what use is there for legs? Would it be more sensible if those legs evolved to become a second set of arms?

Then what defines being human? Is it our cognitive abilities? Is it our artistic and scientific output? Is it our ethics and morals about what is good and bad, right and wrong? Is it in how we treat others and other life-forms? With the advances in medical sciences, it seems that in the future our very anatomical definitions for what is a human being will be difficult to define. With the continued convergence of biology with technology (artificial intelligence) our cognitive and abstract abilities are surely to receive an exponential enhancement from the existing capacity.

As we continue to explore the new domains of exploration and discovery, it is important to move forward with an understanding for what is important to us. What is it that we would like to preserve, and what other things do we not mind if they undergo change? Are we okay if we continue to evolve (naturally or artificially) into something else that is definitely not what we would recognise as human today? Since we are still exploring our ancestral genus and those of other hominins, and we do not yet have a complete picture for how each is related, it is also important that we keep an eye on where we are going and what we will become. Preserving our human nature, may be the biggest challenge that still awaits us, in the climate of a dynamic and evolving universe.

This article was originally posted on a previous web site for the asterism project on 15th Jul 2020 and it has been copied here since that site was closed down.

Inventory Stele and the Sphinx in Egypt

The Great Sphinx of Giza in Cairo, Egypt, is one of the most remarkable sculptors ever devised by human hands. It is claimed by Egyptologists to be dated to the Old Kingdom during the reign of the pharaoh Khafre/Khufu in around 2558 - 2532 BC. But much controversy has arisen over the Sphinx in recent years, with claims that it may be much older than this. In particular, the erosion of the Sphinx enclosure shows evidence of precipitation induced weathering which is caused by significant and prolonged periods of rain fall or flooding. The Boston University geologist Robert Schoch claims that this suggests its age is more like around 10,500 BC, which pre-dates Dynastic Egypt by many thousands of years.

The Great Sphinx in Egypt

Its dating is further complicated by claims that the Sphinx faces exactly due east as a perfect equinoctial marker, where it looks upon the sunrise at dawn. At the same time, it also faces the rising constellation of Leo, but this also occurs around 10,500 BC. None of this is helped by the controversial ‘restoration work’ that is carried out by the local Egyptian authorities amid claims they are trying to cover up evidence that would allow accurate dating of the Sphinx.

However, there is a little bit of history that is not so widely known to the public, and it has been hidden from public display for some years, after initially being exhibited at the Cairo museum, but now appears to have been withdrawn from public display. That is the Inventory Stele. This is a commemorative tablet that apparently dates to the 26th Dynasty which is around 670 BC. It was found in in Giza in 1858 by the French archaeologist Auguste Mariette when he was excavating the Isis Temple which is located on the Giza complex. Although some Egyptologists view the Stele with great caution and is claimed by scholars to be a fake contemporary to its dated age, this is also convenient because the writing on the Stele appears to convey information which contradicts the historical view of Dynastic Egypt.

View fullsize

Inventory Stele of ancient Egypt, which was once displayed in the Cairo Museum.

In fact, although it has largely been dismissed as a fraud, Robert Schoch and its colleague Manu Seyfzadeh have published a paper titled “The Inventory Stele: More Fact than Fiction” (Archaeological Discovery, Vol.6, No.2. pp.103-161, April 2018), in which they conclude “From our analysis we conclude that while we cannot rule out a couple of minor modifications of names from the original written version we date to the 5th Dynasty, there is no plausible reason to dismiss the entire account recorded in this Late Period version on those ground alone and that the events it describes appear more factual than fictitious”. The authors attribute the current dating to misconceptions in part due to errors and oversights contained in two referenced translations. So what does the Inventory Stele actually say? He is a brief extract:

“Long live the King of Upper and Lower Egyupt, khufu, given life....He found the house of Isis, Mistress of the Pyramid, by the side of the hollow of Hwran {The Sphinx} and he built his pyramid beside the temple of this goddess and he built a pyramid for the King’s daughter Henutsen, beside this temple. The place of Hwran Hormakhet is on the South side of the House of Isis, Mistress of the pyramid....He restored the statue, all covered in painting, of the guardian of the atmosphere, who guides the winds with his gaze. He replaced the back part of the Nemes head-dress, which was missing with gilded stone. The figure of this god, cut in stone, is solid and will last to eternity, keeping its face looking always to the East.

These words, imply that the Great Pyramid and the Temple of Isis existed before the time of Khufu (c.2580 BC), and it describes how Khufu came upon the Sphinx, where it was already buried in the sand. Whether one believes this viewpoint or instead the view of main stream Egyptologists, is a matter of personal opinion, and to come to an informed opinion certainly requires substantial study of the artefact, its history and translations. But if the words are to be believed, then this would be proof that Khufu did not build the Great Pyramid or the Sphinx and that they were already on site long before his time. This would then bring the dates of 10,500 BC or 12,500 years ago, into the realm of plausibility. Although there is debate about the dating of the artefact, there is little disagreement about its content, which appears to be genuine. This debate is sure to run on and the accurate dating of the text on the Inventory Stele may be the key to unlocking the true history of what happened on the Giza plateau all those millennia ago.

This article was originally posted on a previous web site for the asterism project on 15th Jul 2020 and it has been copied here since that site was closed down.

Creation of the Universe in Mythology

The story of the origin of our planets, solar system, galaxy and indeed universe is one that science continues to ponder with its ever more precise measurements and long-range observations of the past. But philosophy, mythology and religion had an opinion on these going back to the dawn of civilisation. In the Judaic—Christian tradition we are left with the legacy of the Old Testament and its description of the creation of the world. In the Bible, it says:

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day and the darkness he called night.

Tahiti is one of the largest island in French Polynesia located in the central part of the Pacific Ocean. The native people of Tahiti have their own mythology about the creation of the world:

“Ta-aroa rested for a long time in his shell. It was shaped like a seed and spun around in the infinite emptiness in constant darkness. There was no sun, no moon, no earth, no mountains. there was just churning, unbound water. There were no people, no pigs, no birds, no dogs, no man-made objects, no sea and no freshwater. Ta-aroa flicked his fingers against the inside of the shell where he sat so cramped - and it cracked and opened. He squeezed out, stood up and shouted: “Is anyone there? Is anyone under there”? Not a voice answered his calls! Then he created the world of his own flesh - and the different parts of his body became the different parts of nature - except for his head, which he kept for himself.

The Sami people are native to large parts of northern Norway and Sweden and also parts of Finland and the Murmansk Oblast of Russia. This is the Sami tradition:

“Sami mythology contains several stories about the creation of the world and man. Here, the world was not created from nothing but was transformed by the gods. The Sun god was called Beaivi, which is also the Sami word for sun. According to the Sami mythology, the reindeer came to earth riding rays of the sun. On the Sami drum, several central gods were placed on the Sun’s rays. One story tells of the god Ipmill, who was tormented by the noise from the spirits of the underworld. So he decided to create a new world. Ipmill sacrificed a female reindeer from the sacred mountain passevare, and built a new world, of the body parts of the animal: the bone became the skeleton of the earth, the flesh became the land, the veins became rivers, and the hairs became forests. Ipmil made the reindeer’s head into the sky, and the eyes became the Sun and the Moon.

Japan is an island country in East Asia, located in the Pacific ocean off the eastern coast of the Asian continent. This is the Japanese tradition:

“Two gods were commanded: “Fix this floating country and put it in order”. To help them with their task, they were given the heavenly jewelled spear. The gods stood on the hovering bridge of the heavens and pointed the spear downwards. When they touched the sea, the salt water solidified, and the salt dripping off the spearhead and became an island. This is Onogorojima, “The island that solidified itself”. The gods descended from the heavens, erected a Column to the heavens and built a hall. Later, the gods gave birth to all the islands of Japanese. They then gave birth to the god of the wind, Shinatsuhiko, then the god of the trees, Kukunochi, the god of the mountains, Oyamatsumi, and the god of the fields, Kaya-no-hime...

The Maya people were an ethnolinguistic group of indigenous people of Mesoamerica. The group that inhabited the region of Guatemala had this tradition:

“Still it hovers. It is motionless, in peace and without a ripple. It is desolate, and the heavens are empty. These are the first words and the first story. There are no people there, no animals - no birds, fish, crabs, trees, cliffs, caves, ravines, grasslands, forests. Only the sky reposing in itself. The earth has not yet appeared. There is only the ocean, and the ocean is motionless beneath the sky - that is all there is. Nothing has been put together. Nothing moves, or vibrates or makes a sound in the sky. Then came the word. The first light and man appeared in their minds...

The Greenlandic Inuit are the indigenous peoples and the most populous ethnic group in Greenland. This is their tradition:

“Our ancestors talked a lot about how the earth and its people came into being. They did not understand how to hide words in lines like the white man, they just told stories, the people who lived before us. Long ago, when the earth was created, it came crashing out of the sky. Dirt, mountains and rocks - everything came from the heavens. After the earth had been created, came the people. The earth itself game them form. Small children grew right out of the ground, they sprouted in the underbrush covered in leaves, and they then lay there between the bushes, wiggling around with their eyes closed - they could not even crawl. They got their nourishment from the earth. But the people, who did not understand death, soon became too numerous and the earth became overcrowded. Then there was a mighty flood. Many drowned, and thus the population was reduced. We can still see traces of this floor high up in the mountains, where you can find mussels.

The peoples of the pacific Northwest had this tradition:

“Before there was anything - before the great flood, before the animals roamed the fields and the forest covered the land, before the birds flew among the trees and before fish, whales and seals swam in the sea - before all this was darkness - darker than thousand stormy winter nights. All the light in the universe was hidden in a tiny box. The Raven has always existed and always will. After turning into a fledgling, he finally caught hold of the light - a beautiful, radiant orb. Changed again into a huge, shiny black shadow the raven spread its wings snapped up the light and flew out into the vast darkness. The world was transformed: mountains and valleys appeared, the rivers glittered and life awakened everywhere. Far away another great winged creature rose into the air - that was when the light struck the eyes of the Great Eagle for the first time. The Eagle attacks the Raven, who lost half of the light. It fell onto the rocky ground and shattered into many tiny pieces that bounced back into the sky. They are still there - as the moon and the stars that light up the night. The Eagle followed the Raven to the end of the world. There the Raven set the last part of the light free. The light stained the clouds red, and then the sun climbed up over the mountains to the east.

Aboriginal Australians are the various indigenous people of the Australian mainland. Here is there tradition:

“The dream time tales of the Aboriginals have no beginning or end, but glide into and intertwine with each other. Told through 10,000 years. An eternal process of creation. A great darkness filled the heavens. This darkness was quiet and peaceful, and encased within it lay the earth, cold and lifeless. On the surface were mountains and tall peaks, hills, valleys and plains, and deep caves and grottos. In these caves, there were forms of life, but without awareness or their surroundings. There was no wind, not even a gentle breeze. One day, the Great Father Spirit whispered softly to Goddess of the Sun: “Now, you shall awaken and go out and give life to the world and all that it holds. First you shall wake the grass, the plants, and then the trees. After covering the earth’s surface, you shall create insects and fish, reptiles and lizards, snakes, birds and mammals. Nothing shall be created that does not benefit the other parts of creation”. All the mammals, birds and reptiles now used the opportunity to examine this strange new creature that had appeared with the rain, the thunder and the lightning. They gathered to talk about what they had seen, and all gave different accounts of this new being.

In ancient Egypt there were many creation myths. The texts describe a process without beginning and end, where the Universe is a dynamic living organism. This is their tradition:

“In the beginning, before there was any land of Egypt, all was darkness, and there was nothing but a great waste of water called Nun. The power of Nun was such that there arose out of the darkness a great shining egg, and this was Re. He was all-powerful, and he could take many forms. “I am Khepera at the dwan, and Re at noon, and Tem in the evening”, he said. and the Sun rose and passed across the sky and set for the first time. Then he named Shu, and the first winds blew; he named Tefnut the splitter, and the first rain fell. Next he named Geb, and the earth came into being; he named the goddess Nut, and she was the sky arched over the earth and with her feet on one horizon and her hands on the other; he named Hapl, and the great River Nile flowed through Egypt and made it fruitful.”

These bits of scripts were taken from an exhibit at the Archaeology museum in Stavanger, Norway. They illustrate the variety of ideas and the creativity of thinking, but also perhaps the commonality between some of them. Science has replaced these mythologies with the Big Bang model which is closely linked to observational evidence. Yet, there is still so much we do not understand about the nature of the Universe, such as what is dark matter and dark energy and are there other universes in a giant multiverse? In an infinite sea of possible universes, and if we take the meaning of infinity to its extreme interpretation, then by definition all of the above mythologies will occur at least once, no matter how crazy. Perhaps what matters is not how we got here, but that we are here, and what we will do with the limited time that we have been given.

This article was originally posted on a previous web site for the asterism project on 15th Jul 2020 and it has been copied here since that site was closed down.

Transcendental Numbers

The number pi, the ratio of circumference to diameter of a circle, is a rather special and unique number. Approximately, it is given as 3.1459265358….It is an irrational number, which means a real number that is not rational. Where a rational number is any number that can be expressed as the quotient or fraction (p/q) of two integers. That is pi cannot be expressed as a common fraction, (except as an approximation 22/7) and so its decimal identity is a continuing sequence. Another interesting thing about pi is that it is not the root (solution) of any non-zero polynomial equation having rational coefficients. This makes it a transcendental number, which is any real or complex number that is not algebraic.

An interesting observation is that all real transcendental numbers are irrational numbers, since all rational numbers are also algebraic. However, it is not the case that all irrational numbers are transcendental numbers. An example of this is the case of the square root of 2. This is an irrational number but it is also the root of the polynomial equation x^2 - 2 = 0. This means that the square root of 2 is not a transcendental number. Another example is the so called golden ratio, which is equal to 1.6180339887….and is also known as the golden mean. It is an irrational number and is the root of the polynomial equation x^2 - x - 1 = 0, but which also means it is not a transcendental number. Whilst a polynomial with rational coefficients is countable since each polynomial has a finite number of zeros, a set of transcendental numbers is uncountably infinite.

This article was originally posted on a previous web site for the Asterism project on 15th Jul 2020 and it has been copied here since that site was closed down.

Simulated Reality & the Cosmos

Many have speculated that we may be living in a simulated reality. That is to say, that we are manifested constructs in a numerical program, operated and designed by beings far smarter than us. This is an interesting idea and for anyone that is familiar with computer programming it is not so far-fetched.

In particular, for a physicist working on building a numerical model for a physical system, they will be faced with coding up equations that time march in discrete steps called cells that adequately model the system, and the physical properties in and out of each cell are calculated by say using finite difference numerical schemes or others. You can literally sit there and watch the calculation scroll down the screen, in a manner not too dissimilar to the terminal screens visualised in the Matrix films. Perhaps the calculation only takes a few minutes, or perhaps it takes hours or days. But in the end, once the computation is completed, something has been modelled and simulated and then as a scientist you will scrutinise the results.

An interesting development of our modern society is the community of gaming. These started at a very basic level with limited processing power and interaction potential, and then they have accelerated to the point where you can put on a visor and barely not know the distinction between that simulated gaming world and the actual world where you physically exist.

An incredible example of what is possible is the God of War produced by Santa Monica Studio for the PlayStation 4 series. Based loosely on Greek and Norse mythology, you become a God doing battle with other Gods. Along the journey, the player will encounter monsters of all sorts.

God of War

Another example is the game Galactic Civilizations produced by Stardock for Microsoft Windows. In this game the player gets to explore the planets and beyond using your own spacecraft, encountering other species. Another amazing example is Eve Online, produced by CCP Games. It has a scale and complexity that boggles the mind, as players compete and engage in large scale space warfare. The game takes the player right out into the Milky Way 21,000 years into the future. We have come a long way since board games like Monopoly and Dungeons and Dragons.

Eve Online

These sorts of games allow one to invent any species that we wish to, and then to enter those worlds and experience it like they really did exist. Only subtle errors in the simulation, a result of the currently limited technological capability of what we can program, visualise and trick our sensors over, give you a reminder that this really is just a game.

But what about the future? If the level of gaming is where it is today, where will it be in 10 years or 100 years or even 1,000 years from now. It seems quite possible that in the distant future, we will have the technological ability to create all of the fantasies of our best hopes and dreams but also of our worst nightmares. As we then continue to converge towards that technological-biological symbiosis it may even be possible that we could get hurt.

One of the things that is intriguing about our own mythologies is that although we tell our children certain things exist, we know as adults that we are really just telling stories. That is, about wizards, dwarfs, elves, giants, dragons, fairies or whatever it is our minds can conjure. Yet with this increasing convergence, and ultimately what will be an inability to tell the difference between the real world and the simulated world, everything that is in our children’s stories will come into existence. What are the implications of this? Are we heading ourselves towards a cliff-edge unable to stop the magnetic pull of technology upon us? And as we fully immerse ourselves in this world what does it imply for free will? Indeed, if our actual existing reality is just a simulation, are we really players in the game or constructs generated by a meta-mind for the benefit of players far in excess of our intelligence?

The science and science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke said that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Our universe and our very existence appear to be a miracle of nature. But is it really just the physical embodiment of someone else’s technology? And for the purposes of our existence, would it really matter?

This article was originally posted on a previous web site for the asterism project on 17th Sept 2019 and it has been copied here since that site was closed down.

Linquistics

One of the complex decisions to make about the Apkallu initiative artefact is what is the nature of the information that is to be displayed. It is useful to briefly explore different types of information.

The first written language was cuneiform and it was invented by the Sumerians in the late 4th millennium B.C. It is known as a language isolate since it does not have any genealogical relationship to other languages. The language began as a pictogram based system and then evolved to a logophonetic one. What is the difference?

A language based upon pictograms is one which conveys its meaning through an image to represent an physical object. Other than the original cuneiform the other good example of this is Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. Such things were also ideograms which represented symbols and ideas, and can often be independent of any particular language. Pictograms may often evolve into full logograms, which is a written character that represents a word of phrase.

The other type of writing is phonograms which do not have a word or phrase meaning in singular form until they are combined with other phonograms. This is the basis of phonetic writing and alphabets.

Fundamental to an alphabet is the concept of a syllable, which is a unit of organization for sounds of spoken word. A word that contains only one syllable is called monosyllable. For a word containing two, three or more syllables they are termed disyllable, trisyllable and polysyllable respectively. What makes up a syllable is a group of consonants and vowels. For the English language the vowels are a, e, I, o and u. All other letters are the consonants. 

A syllable is constructed around a central vowel which is called the nucleus. The consonant to the right of it is called the Coda, and with the nucleus this makes up what is called the Rime. If a consonant precedes the nucleus it is called the Onset. 

Here is an example to break this down. Let us take the word water. This contains two syllables, which are wa and ter. For the first syllable it contains only an onset and a nucleus. For the second syllable it contains an onset, a nucleus and a Coda and so also a Rime. 

What this all illustrates is that the structure of language is complex and this needs to be kept in mind in the design of the Apkallu initiative artefact. If logograms are used then careful thought must go into their choice. If phonograms are used then no matter what language they are written in, it has to be communicated to the future explorer who finds the artefact how a syllable and its constituents is the fundamental building blocks of language. 

 In 2016 a film came out called 'Arrival', directed by Dennis Villeneuve and based on the short story by Ted Chiang called 'Story of Your Life'. One of the central events of the film is in an attempt to translate an unknown alien language, the word 'tool' is misunderstood to be 'weapon', leading to the pending tension that follows in the plot and the risk of a first contact scenario going horribly wrong. 

In the design of the Apkallu initiative artefact, one must also think carefully as to how any information encoded onto it can be misinterpreted. Indeed, on the assumption that the artefact was studied and embraced for all of the knowledge it could teach, there is even a risk that the artefact would start to be treated as a spiritual / religious item and so its text could be embraced by some as a form of dogma. This may in fact act to regress sociological and technological progress down the line, which is the opposite of what the Apkallu initiative wants to achieve.

For the Apkallu initiative, a full understanding of linguistic information transfer, is critical to the successful achievement of its mission.

This article was originally posted on a previous web site for the Apkallu Initiative on 3rd July 2018 and it has been copied here since that site was closed down.

IMAGINING THE FUTURE

In the future, and in the event of some global cataclysm, we can imagine that some human would be wondering in the wilderness. They would be a survivor from a pocket community, exploring the landscape that remained and was in the process of renewing itself. Such a human, would be concerned with day to day survival, but also thinking about how they could rebuild the human future, so that we could once again move from a hunter-gatherer to an agricultural-farming community, where free time was available to study nature, science and the world at large and learn how to build a better civilized society. The painting below, imagines such a scene, where the Apkallu artefact is found on a remote beach, and its engraved knowledge looked upon with curiosity and awe.

Watercolour painting by K. F. Long

This article was originally posted on a previous web site for the Apkallu Initiative on 21st June 2018 and it has been copied here since that site was closed down.

INTERGLACIAL PERIODS IN HISTORY

During the history of Earth there have been five major ice ages, and we are currently in the Quaternary Ice Age at this time, which spans from 2.59 million years ago. Within the ice ages are sub-periods known as glacial and interglacial periods.

Recent measurements of the relative Oxygen isotope ratio in Antarctica and Greenland show the periods of glacial and interglacial periods throughout history over the last few hundred thousand years. This is a measurement of the ratio of the abundance of Oxygen with atomic mass 18 to the abundance of Oxygen with atomic mass 16 present in ice core samples, 18^O/16^O, where 16^O is the most abundant of the naturally occurring isotopes. Ocean water is mostly comprised of H^2-16^O, in addition to smaller amounts of HD-16^O and H^2-18^O. The Oxygen isotope ratio is a measure of the degree to which precipitation due to water vapour condensation during warm to cold air transition, removes H^2-18^O to leave more H^2-16^O rich water vapour. This distillation process leads to any precipitation to have a lower 18^O/16^O ratio during temperature drops. This therefore provides a reliable record of ancient water temperature changes in glacial ice cores, where temperatures much cooler than present corresponds to a period of glaciation and where temperatures much warmer than today represents an interglacial period. The Oxygen isotope ratios are therefore used as a proxy for temperature changes by climate scientists.

The Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water (SSMOW) has a ratio of 18^O/16^O = 2005.2×10-6, so any changes in ice core samples will be relative to this number. The quantity that is being measured, δ^18O, is a relative ratio and is calculated as follows in the units of % parts per thousand or per mil.

The change in the oxygen ratio is then attributed to changes in temperature alone, assuming that the effects of salinity and ice volume are negligible. An increase of around 0.22% is then defined to be equivalent to a cooing of 1˚C given by 

T = 16.5 - 4.3(delta) + 0.14(delta)^2

There are differences in the value of δ between the different ocean temperatures where any moisture had evaporated at the final place of precipitation. As a result the value has to be calibrated such that there are differences between say Greenland and Antarctica. This does result in some differences in the proxy temperature data based on ice core analysis, and Greenland seems to stand out, such as indicating a more dramatic Younger Dryas period (11,600 – 12,900) than other data.

An analysis of this data shows that the climate has varied cyclically throughout its history and is manifest of natural climate change. In particular what emerge out of the data are some interesting lessons about the recent history of planet Earth. Data shows the rapid oscillations of the climate temperature from the average temperature of today, indicative of glacial and interglacial periods. In particular, the data shows that during the Holocene period, beginning approximately 11,700 years before present, the temperature varied between 2-4 ˚C.

It is reasonable to assume that human civilisations under development will do better when the climate is kinder. This means that the warmer it is the better civilisations will do, and the colder it is, the harder the struggles. In particular we can expect that during the conditions of a colder climate that agricultural farming will suffer, and so there will be less food to go around, which will affect both life span and population expansion. To support this it is worth noting that the current epoch, the last 10,000 years has been the longest interglacial period for at least the last quarter of a million years and it is reasonable to therefore assume that this is one of the factors which has allowed human development from the emergence of the Neolithic period coming out of the last ice age.

View fullsize

Temperature proxy data from Greenland ice core samples of Oxygen isotope ratios.

The data also shows that there was a large global warming period known as the Eemian around 115,000 – 130,000 years ago. The average global temperatures were around 22 – 24 ˚C, compared to today where the average is around 14 ˚C. Forests grew as far north as the Arctic circle at 71˚ latitude and North Cape in Norway Oulu in Finland. For comparison North Cape today is now a tundra, where the physical growth of plants is limited to the low temperatures and small growing seasons. Given that Homo sapiens may have been here since around 300,000 years ago, this seems like a major opportunity for the development of human society from a people of hunter gatherers to one of agricultural developers and the development of a civil society.

There have been other interglacial periods that have resulted in global temperatures being either equivalent or above the average today, and the data shows temperature spikes of periods at around 200,000 years, 220,000 years, 240,000 years, 330,000 years and 410,000 years. Each of these interglacial periods will typically last at least 10,000 years.

Is it possible that these earlier periods in history allowed the opportunity for civilization to rise up and become sociologically and technologically advanced towards similar levels of today? The climate certainly seems to have allowed for it. The question is, did it happen?

This article was originally posted on a previous web site for the Apkallu Initiative on 2nd July 2018 and it has been copied here since that site was closed down.

The Apkallu Initiative: A Minilithic Artefact for Rebooting Human Civilization in the Event of Global Cataclysm

The year is 2050. Earth is a thriving metropolis with a population exceeding 9 billion. Progress has been made in harmonising social-cultural tensions around the world and nation state war is now an infrequent event. A young child of the future steps out into the bright sun shine of a gorgeous new morning. Her day is still ahead of her as she out stretches her arms and smiles at the mellifluous call of the singing birds. But then looking up, she notices something in the distance, a long streak across the sky that is moving rapidly, and seems to be descending towards the ground. It disappears behind the horizon, and shortly later a blinding flash engulfs the world. The girl looks on stunned, eyes struggling against the light, to see the gradual build-up of a mushroom cloud that starts to reach high into the atmosphere. The impact event was hundreds of miles away, yet soon it engulfs the world in a global climate change and sends Tsunami’s sweeping over coastal cities destroying all in the path. In response to oceanic earthquakes, the water becomes so big, that it pushes across the flat land masses; unrelenting mega white horses to a trampled poppy field below. One day, this will form into wedge shaped chevron deposits hundreds of feet high, composed of ocean floor micro-fossils. Within days of the event the girl will learn that billions of people are wiped out as the human civilization draws to a rapid stagnation. All infrastructure and governments are gone, and only small pockets of communities around the world survive, numbering thousands at best. She was one of the lucky ones, her small community of one hundred people survived just barely on their high mountain top position. This is fortunate for a girl named Hope.

= = =

Introduction

The future is uncertain. Whilst it is important to emphasise the positive reasons for the exploration of Earth and space, it is also important not to be in denial about the risks that really face us; for they are not insignificant. They are many and varied in type. From the potential for nation state warfare, to disease pandemics, to global climate change, to risks from above such as impact events by asteroids or comets or even the possibility alien invasion. The sure way to guarantee our survival is to follow the lead of Elon Musk and to make the human race an interplanetary species; and indeed to go further with an interstellar species. But until we have reached this point we are vulnerable. The proposal made in his article is not an alternative to the current plans for the colonization of space and the continued building up of infrastructure, but it is a complimentary pathway to increase the probability of human survival into the coming centuries. In particular, it should be taken on board that the assumptions of this project is that a possible future exists where rocket technology no longer even exists as a worst case survival scenario.

The Apkallu initiative is a proposed project to help re-boot human civilization, on the assumption that some small pockets of human communities survive around the world during a global cataclysm, but all the remnants of our industrialised and developed civilization are destroyed. This includes our cities, our farms, our libraries, our infrastructure, and our transport networks; in essence the human race is thrown back to being a hunter-gatherer species and must begin again. It is named after the Sumerian sages who are said to have helped human kind establish civilization and culture and giving us the gifts of a moral code, mathematics, architecture, agriculture and all ways necessary to teach us how to become civilized. The Sumerian civilization is one of the first to appear in recorded history, which included the invention of its own writing form called Cuneiform. Before we discuss what the Apkallu initiative actually is, it is worth reminding ourselves of some essential context.

Impact Threats and Other Risks to Human Survival

We know that objects have impacted the Earth throughout its history and continue to do so today. Approximately 66 million years ago, it is believed that an impact event resulted in the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction. This led to devastation in the global environment and a prolonged winter which affected the photosynthesis of plants and plankton life. It also resulted in the destruction of a plethora of terrestrial organisms, including mammals, birds, insects and most famously the dinosaurs. The object, an asteroid or comet, was 10-15 km in diameter with a likely impact velocity of around 20 km/s and an associated kinetic energy of impact of around 30,000 – 1000,000 Gtons TNT equivalent, depending on the assumptions. It left an impact crater in the Yucatain Peninsula in Mexico, and likely created 300 feet high Tsunami’s over an impact zone of around 3,000 miles.

Another example is the Arizona Meteor crater, which was the result of a Nickel-Iron object around 50 m in size impacting the Earth 50,000 years ago. With impact velocities ranging from 2.8 – 20 km/s this would have impacted with an associated kinetic energy of 10.7 – 26.2 Mtons TNT equivalent. Today, a crater remains of the impact event, 1.2 km in diameter and over 550 feet deep.

In 1908 a comet is believed to have impacted eastern Siberia, causing a flattening of a forest 2,000 square km in size. Since no impact crater was found, it is believed that the object disintegrated at an altitude of 5 – 10 km above the ground. The estimated energy of the air burst explosion was 10 – 15 Mtons TNT equivalent; depending on the assumptions one makes.

In July 1994 a comet split into 21 fragments ranging in size up to 2 km, and impacted the upper atmosphere of Jupiter with an impact velocity of around 60 km/s. The total energy of these impacts was around 6,000 Gtons TNT equivalent creating dark red spots with some being 12,000 km in size. Had this comet impacted the Earth, it would have posed a major threat to human existence.

During late 2017 we observed the close flyby pass of an asteroid of interstellar origins named ‘Oumuamua. Much of the nature of this objects remains uncharacterised, but some sensible estimates of the maximum potential impact energy suggest 4.2 – 46.9 Gtons TNT equivalent, had it impacted the Earth.

Then in April this year that an object named Asteroid 2018 GE3 passed closed to Earth and was spotted 119,500 miles away, which is closer than the Moon, which orbits at an average distance of 238,900 miles. The object was first observed by the NASA funded Catalina Sky Survey project based at the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. It was first observed a mere 21 hours before the closest approach to the Earth. The object was estimated to be at least 150 – 360 ft in diameter.

How many more are out there waiting for us? No doubt some will argue that the impact risks are statistically small and we should not be concerned about them. We know there are many asteroids in our own Solar System, varying in size from 1 m up to 1,000 km. Approximately 16,000 objects have been found near Earth, but this is a small fraction of the estimated total that is out there, which varies between 1 – 2 million. Statistically, this presents a threat to human existence and life as we know it. Indeed, it is the belief of this author that impact events which can lead to global devastation of the human population may be as frequent as 1/1,000 – 1/10,000 years.

In addition to impact risks there are many other threats to human existence. This may include the implications of magnetic field reversal. Such an event occurred 41,400 years ago during the last ice age, called the Laschamp event. It caused a magnetic field reversal leading to a drop in its strength. This resulted in more cosmic rays reaching the Earth and an increased production of the isotopes Beryllium 10 and Carbon 14.

There are also the risk of enhanced solar activity such as through large scale solar flares, or the possibility of the Sun entering unstable periods in its evolution for which are current models of stellar-structure are not aware. This could be due to the passage of our Sun through the spiral density arms of the galaxy. There are the risks of nation state war or even global thermonuclear war that could drive us towards extinction, either through direct destruction or through altering the climate. There are the risks of human disease pandemic, which surely must become more probable in an increasing global population. There are the risks of human destruction of elements of the biosphere, such as pollutions of the oceans, soils, deforestation or polluting of the atmosphere. There are the risks that microbes could be introduced into our biosphere from an alien planet that is infectious to our biodiversity.

Then there is the actual risk of alien invasion, from a species set on conquering other lower species or seeking resource acquisition no matter the costs. It may be assessed that some of these are low probability. However, the fact that there are so many risks to the future survival of human kind should be a concern, and it is vital that we take a proactive approach to adaptability and survival, instead of a reactive one when such events occur.

Assumptions of a hypothetical Near-Human Extinction

Imagine a situation where human kind is nearly wiped out by some global cataclysm. This could be an impact event or one of the other risks highlighted earlier. In a worst case scenario, but one where some humans survive, we might make the following assumptions:

1.       All infrastructure is destroyed, to include buildings, power utilities, city plumbing, damns, transport networks, agriculture and farming, huge portions of the plant and animal kingdom.

2.       All information sources are destroyed, to include all the world libraries, computers and electronic memory. It is possible that some books will be discovered over time as communities explore the rubble remaining from the metropolis. Books would become precious beyond their current value.

3.       The global climate is in turmoil and hostile, but with isolated regions of stability such that with determination survival is possible.

4.       The geological, climatic, oceanic activity and effects of the cataclysm event, within weeks, months or years will gradually return towards some level of stable Earth.

5.       Small pockets of humans survive around the Earth, perhaps 10s to 100s each but with the total not exceeding thousands.

Given this scenario, we can note that the surviving generation will remember the world as it was before. They will use this knowledge to teach their children. At this point knowledge is based upon direct memory. Those children will then grow up, with their parents dying off, and they will remember what their parents taught them and some of those children may even have some memories of the world before. But for the most part we are dealing here with recent history and part mythology. The grandchildren will also be born and grow up, but they will have no direct memory of the world the way it was before. At this point we are dealing with history and mythology. Within the third or fourth generation there is a risk that all knowledge will be lost, and especially if that knowledge is not captured and written down. All received knowledge then becomes both mythology and fantasy.

There are solutions to this practiced by the Native North Americans for example, which is to communicate stories verbally and also use this to impart wisdom, and those stories are accompanied by rituals. However, one cannot believe that such a method of communication does not contain significant information error propagation with each successive generation, compared to the original version.

The History of Humans on Planet Earth

In the event of a global cataclysm, assuming small pockets of human communities survive, but the majority of human civilization and associated technological infrastructure is destroyed, how can we ensure a chance at rebooting human knowledge? Indeed, is it possible that this has in fact occurred in the recent past and this is a part reason for the many Megalithic structures on Earth?

Until recently, Sumer was the earliest known civilization in the historical Mesopotamia, and is located in modern Iraq. It dates back to 3,000 B.C and was likely settled around 4,000-5,500 B.C by proto-Euphrateans or Ubaidians. The people from this era are credited for many great inventions and discoveries which led to the advance of their society. This includes in mathematics, geometry, agriculture, architecture, economics and law to name a few. One of the most famous objects discovered from this period is the Code of Hammurabi, a 2.25 m tall stone wall consisting of 282 laws, such as “an eye for an eye” and is the first legal system from the Old Babylonian period.

The Code of Hammurabi, created 1750 B.C, currently housed at the Louvre, Paris (image credit: K. F. Long)

It is important to note that in the Babylonian creation mythologies, which were written in Cuneiform, there are around a thousand lines of text on seven clay tables. The focus of this text is the creation of humankind for the service of the gods. These texts are called the Enûma Eliš, and arguably they have a clear lineage to the Judea-Christian Bible. The Cuneiform script was scribed, using a wedge-shaped marker onto a wet clay tablet and also cylinder seals. These are small round objects typically an inch in length engraved with information. Once dried the inscription was permanent. The information preserved on tablets and seals was Cuneiform text but also contained figurative scenes or descriptions of events or objects. Such objects are breath-taking in their clarity, gorgeous in their artistic nature, and contain a wealth of information about the society, its rituals, values, business, science and technology.

Photographs of Sumerian Cylinder Seals from the Private Collection of the Author (image credit: K. F. Long)

The Holy Bible records a flood story that engulfed all of planet Earth. This is recorded in Genesis chapters 6 – 9, and the flood seems to last for around one hundred and fifty days. Other cultures have recorded similar stories. For example the Sumerian tale of Ziusudra and the Atra-Hasis also describes a global flood story that is similar to that told in Genesis. In the Sumerian story the flood lasts for seven days. An account is also told in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is more similar to the Biblical story. Also, the Hindu mythology tells of a great flood in the Satapatha Brahmana. It is very easy to dismiss the possibility of a global flood as pure mythology, but the occurrence of a similar story in so many cultures around the world is at least suggestive that it may be a memory of an actual event which many today are regarding as mythology. Indeed, science may be catching up with the past.

Geologists and climatologists study a period in Earth’s history called the Younger Dryas, which occurred 12,900 to 11,700 years ago and saw a return to glacial conditions which temporarily reversed the gradual climatic warming after the last glacial maximum which began receding around 20,000 years ago. It led to many catastrophic effects including the decline of the Clovis culture in North America and the extinction of many megafauna which included the Mammoths; the last of which survived into the Holocene around 4,500 years ago in Africa, Europe, Asia and North America.

Illustration of the Younger Dryas period

In recent years, evidence is emerging that the Younger Dryas period may have been caused by a cometary impact event on the North American ice sheet, around 12,900 years ago. The evidence for his includes the discovery of a 10 million ton deposit of impact spherules across four continents, and the discovery of a Nano-diamond rich layer. In addition, analysis of underground soils indicates massive wildfire and abrupt ecosystem disruption on California’s Northern Channel Islands. Scientists have also discovered very high temperature impact melt products as evidence for an air burst explosion. All of this is dated to around 12,900 years ago, at the onset of the Younger Dryas. If this is proven to be correct, then a global cataclysm may indeed have occurred in our recent past. Speculating, if any advanced civilizations existed on Earth prior to this date, they may have been wiped out by this cataclysm forcing civilization to start from the beginning again.

At some point in our past we moved from a hunter-gatherer species to an agricultural-farming one, where we embraced the domestication of animals and crops. This is marked by a period called the Neolithic, and occurred around 10,200 years ago. It is considered to be the last period of the stone age and commenced the beginning of the Neolithic revolution. It ended with the emergence of the Copper and Bronze and Iron ages and our new abilities to use metals. It is remarkable that we have apparently exploded technologically and social-culturally over the last 10,000 years or so to the state where we have computers, cars, aeroplanes and communication satellites. What was it that propelled us forward over such a short space of time? Why had we not achieved this level of maturity previously? Was it the formation of a critical population density? Was it global climatic conditions? What is our tribal nature and inability to get organized? What it some other threats to our existence?

Homo sapiens in our modern form may be several hundred thousand years old. Paleolithic cave art certainly goes back to 40,000 years but may be 60,000 years if we include what is currently being claimed to be art from Neanderthal man. Evidence from the out of Africa hypothesis puts homo sapiens at around 130,000 - 180,000 years old. But there are alternative versions which claim populations emerging out of Africa as early as 350,000 years ago. Evidence for older findings includes discoveries of anatomically modern human skull fossils at Jebel Irhour in Morocco (315,000 years) and Middle Awash in Ethiopia (160,000 years). The history of human evolution is far from settled and ‘thinking man’ may be much older than we realised.

Ancient Megaliths

A story from ancient Sumeria is that of an amphibious being called Oannes (also known as Adapa) who apparently taught human kind wisdom. The story was told by Berossus in 290B.C, a Chaldean Priest in Babylon. Berossus described Oannes as having the body of a fish but underneath the figure of a man. He is said to dwell in the Persian Gulf, rising out of the waters in day time and furnishing human kind in the instruction of writing, arts and other subjects. Here are the words of Berossus:

"At first they led a somewhat wretched existence and lived without rule after the manner of beasts. But, in the first year appeared an animal endowed with human reason, named Oannes, who rose from out of the Erythian Sea, at the point where it borders Babylonia. He had the whole body of a fish, but above his fish's head he had another head which was that of a man, and human feet emerged from beneath his fish's tail. He had a human voice, and an image of him is preserved unto this day. He passed the day in the midst of men without taking food; he taught them the use of letters, sciences and arts of all kinds. He taught them to construct cities, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge. He made them distinguish the seeds of the earth, and showed them how to collect the fruits; in short he instructed them in everything which could tend to soften human manners and humanize their laws. From that time nothing material has been added by way of improvement to his instructions. And when the sun set, this being Oannes, retired again into the sea, for he was amphibious. After this there appeared other animals like Oannes.“

Whether this is pure fiction or has any resemblance to historical events does not matter, but it is this story that has given rise to the idea of building what this author is calling a ‘minilithic artefact’ under the Apkallu Initiative as will be discussed further below. As an aside it is worth noting that in his book ‘Intelligent Life in the Universe’, written with L. S. Shklovskii (Pan Books, 1977), the astronomer Carl Sagan opened a discussion on the Sumerian civilization with “I came upon a legend which more nearly fulfils some of our criteria for a genuine contact myth”.

On planet Earth we know that species rise up and fall and suffer extinction. The fossil record has shown this for many a species. There are also arguments that Homo Sapiens are not the only occurrence of intelligence on Planet Earth (see for example the recent book ‘Other Minds’ by Peter Godfrey-Smith’ on the Octopus, William Collins, 2016). Why then is it not possible, in the last million years, that an earlier species of man, or other life form on Earth, could have evolved to similar levels of intelligence to that which we possess today, to include a technological level similar in extent? Such a people would predate modern recorded history, and it is at least plausible that some memory of them could be preserved in the creation mythologies of our various ancient cultures.

Many ancient Megalithic structures have been found by archaeologists around the world. This includes for example the Great Pyramid and the Great Sphinx in Giza (4,500 years old), Tiwanaku and Pumapunku in West Bolivia (3,500 years old), Stone Henge in England (5,000 years old), Machu Picchu in Peru (550 years old) to name a few. However, recently our linear understanding of human evolution from a hunter-gatherer species to an agricultural-farming one has been placed under scrutiny, by the discovery in 1996 of Gӧbekli Tepe, a site in the South eastern Anatolia region of Turkey, which may date back to 12,000 years old. The site demonstrates a superior knowledge of construction techniques, geometry and other disciplines and to enable its construction would have required a food surplus to exist – before the arrival of the Neolithic revolution. In addition, it is arguable that to get to a point where you can construct something like Gӧbekli Tepe would take thousands of years of advancement of knowledge in itself. This might suggest that the builders were 15,000 - 20,000 years old.

A potentially even older site has also been found in West Java, called Gunung Padang, which was discovered in 1914.  It may be the largest megalithic site in South Eastern Asia. Radiocarbon dating puts the site at several different eras spanning 6,500 – 20,000 years ago, although the dating claims are controversial among archaeologist in Indonesia. A large structure has also been discovered beneath the surface some 15 m down and includes large chambers. This discovery, and that of Gӧbekli Tepe, is telling us that our linear understanding of history is in need of revision.

Interglacial Periods in Earth’s History

Given the existence of Gӧbekli Tepe and Gunung Padang, the idea that an earlier intelligent and advanced civilization existing on Earth is not so implausible. However, were there opportunities in Earth’s history for this to occur? An examination of climatic conditions would seem to suggest so.

During the history of Earth there have been five major ice ages, and we are currently in the Quaternary Ice Age at this time, which spans from 2.59 million years ago. Within the ice ages are sub-periods known as glacial and interglacial periods.

Recent measurements of the relative Oxygen isotope ratio in Antarctica and Greenland show the periods of glacial and interglacial periods throughout history over the last few hundred thousand years. This is a measurement of the ratio of the abundance of Oxygen with atomic mass 18 to the abundance of Oxygen with atomic mass 16 present in ice core samples, 18O/16O, where 16O is the most abundant of the naturally occurring isotopes. Ocean water is mostly comprised of H216O, in addition to smaller amounts of HD16O and H218O. The Oxygen isotope ratio is a measure of the degree to which precipitation due to water vapour condensation during warm to cold air transition, removes H218O to leave more H216O rich water vapour. This distillation process leads to any precipitation to have a lower 18O/16O ratio during temperature drops. This therefore provides a reliable record of ancient water temperature changes in glacial ice cores, where temperatures much cooler than present corresponds to a period of glaciation and where temperatures much warmer than today represents an interglacial period. The Oxygen isotope ratios are therefore used as a proxy for temperature changes by climate scientists.

The Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water (SSMOW) has a ratio of 18O/16O = 2005.2×10-6, so any changes in ice core samples will be relative to this number. The quantity that is being measured, δ18O, is a relative ratio calculated as in the units of % parts per thousand or per mil. The change in the oxygen ratio is then attributed to changes in temperature alone, assuming that the effects of salinity and ice volume are negligible. An increase of around 0.22% is then defined to be equivalent to a cooing of 1˚C.

There are differences in the value of δ between the different ocean temperatures where any moisture had evaporated at the final place of precipitation. As a result the value has to be calibrated such that there are differences between say Greenland and Antarctica. This does result in some differences in the proxy temperature data based on ice core analysis, and Greenland seems to stand out, such as indicating a more dramatic Younger Dryas period (11,600 – 12,900) than other data.

An analysis of this data shows that the climate has varied cyclically throughout its history and is manifest of natural climate change. In particular what emerges out of the data are some interesting lessons about the recent history of planet Earth. Data shows the rapid oscillations of the climate temperature from the average temperature of today, indicative of glacial and interglacial periods. In particular, the data shows that during the Holocene period, beginning approximately 11,700 years before present, the temperature varied between 2-4 ˚C.

It is reasonable to assume that human civilizations under development will do better when the climate is kinder. This means that the warmer it is the better civilisations will do, and the colder it is, the harder the struggles. In particular we can expect that during the conditions of a colder climate that agricultural farming will suffer, and so there will be less food to go around, which will affect both life span and population expansion. To support this it is worth noting that the current epoch, the last 10,000 years has been one of the longest interglacial period for at least the last quarter of a million years and it is reasonable to therefore assume that this is one of the factors which has allowed human development from the emergence of the Neolithic period coming out of the last ice age.

The data also shows that there was a large global warming period known as the Eemian around 115,000 – 130,000 years ago. The average global temperatures were around 22 – 24 ˚C, compared to today where the average is around 14 ˚C. Forests grew as far north as the Arctic circle at 71˚ latitude and North Cape in Norway Oulu in Finland. For comparison North Cape today is now a tundra, where the physical growth of plants is limited to the low temperatures and small growing seasons. Given that homo sapiens may have been here since around 300,000 years ago, this seems like a major opportunity for the development of human society from a people of hunter gatherers to one of agricultural developers and the development of a civil society.

There have been other interglacial periods that have resulted in global temperatures being either equivalent or above the average today, and the data shows temperature spikes of periods at around 200,000 years, 220,000 years, 240,000 years, 330,000 years and 410,000 years. Each of these interglacial periods will typically last at least 10,000 years.

Temperature Proxy Data Showing Opportunities for the Rise of Advanced Civilization in Recent Pre-History

The Apkallu Initiative

It is fully admitted that much of the above contains some speculation, but until we have a firmer grasp of history it would be unwise to rule such possibilities out. We turn our attention then to the future and solving the problem of how to preserve human knowledge in the event of a global cataclysm such that human kind can restart again so that within centuries we mature back to similar levels of today’s technological advancement. Ultimately this is a statistical problem, in that by reducing the time of each cycle for maturing to technological capability, one improves the probability of survival. It is sensible to think of this concept as a civilization accelerator.

The Apkallu Initiative is therefore a proposal to construct a minilithic artefact (analogous to Megalithic artefacts) that can survive for a time duration exceeding 100,000 years. This duration is chosen for three principal reasons:

1.       The recent ice core records suggest that within that time period there may be several opportunities (~4) where the climatic conditions are sufficiently supportive for human existence to facilitate growth beyond basic survival.

2.       It approximately corresponds to four processional cycles of the Earth around the equinoxes, which typically last 25,920 years. We note that many of the ancient Megaliths seem to have been pre-occupied with the measurement of the equinoxes; which may relate to lost memory of previous cataclysms.

3.       It is difficult to design for an artefact that can survive longer than this, although desirable.

The artefact would be a form of archaeological-architectural device from the stand point of future humans who uncover it. The device would be replicated perhaps 1,000 times and distributed around the seven continents of the Earth. Ideally, some could also be placed in space, on the Moon or Mars.  The idea is that any future human surviving a global cataclysm that finds this artefact and studies it sufficiently, it will give them the knowledge they need to rapidly advance human civilization at an accelerated rate.

Painting illustrating future man finding the archaeological artefact (credit: K. F. Long)

The artefact would be a form of long distance communication. We have of course attempted message plaques in the past such as the Voyager Golden Record and the Pioneer Plaque. Indeed, the Code of Hammurabi from the Sumerian civilization is a form of minilithic artefact, but just specific to moral and legal codes. Another example would have been the tablets for the Biblical Ten Commandments.

There is a question of what materials to construct the artefact from. Plastics and metals will likely degrade over thousands of years. Electronic memory is not use if it is subject to flip switching and also requires a computer interface to read it. It therefore seems sensible to construct the artefact out of stone; perhaps in a similar manner to the Sumerian Cuneiform on wet clay tablets. One of the options may be Diorite. It would perhaps be useful to depict both logograms, with syllabic and alphabetic elements, as well as phonetics and even determinatives to create appropriate semantic descriptions.

There is a question of what information should the artefact contain. It should contain the foundation knowledge of human civilization. This is a subjective decision. One example we might take lessons from for example was the classical Trivium (logic, grammar, rhetoric) and the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy). Both were considered preparation work before delving into the study of philosophy and theology. In addition to these, the artefact might contain many other disciplines of thought, such as human biology, medicine, architecture, chemistry, physics, law, history, music, language, agriculture, botany, ethics and other subjects. Experts in appropriate disciplines would need to be consulted to derive the say 12 base foundation knowledge or tenets that govern a field from which in principle all else can be derived given time.

The goal of the information content imprinted onto the artefact would be as follows:

·         Goal 1: The continued survival of the human species at peace.

·         Goal 2: The accelerated technological, social-cultural growth of human civilization from an assumed stagnated level.

·         Goal 3: The preservation of moral and ethical philosophy

There is also a question of what language. One approach would be to take lessons from historical artefacts which contained several languages to ensure future interpretation. This includes the Rossetta Stone (2,200 years old) which contains ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, demotic and ancient Greek. Another example is the Fuente Magna of the Americas (5,000 years old), found in Bolvia but contains both ancient Pukara and a proto-Sumerian alphabet. Another example is the Behistun inscription (2,500 years old) found in Iran, which contains three different cuneiform script languages, that of Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian.

There is also the question of the size and shape of the artefact, and although you want it big enough to find, you also want to manage the construction cost of the project. Something around 6 – 12 inches would seem a good optimum size. The exact shape would have multiple surface areas to facilitate different disciplines of knowledge. One idea is a Dodecahedron, which has 12 faces.

The proposal of the Apkallu Initiative is to form a team which then designs and leads the construction of such an artefact. This can then be reproduced and distributed to different locations around the world. Some would eventually be displayed in art galleries or museums and some will be lost to the land and sea, but the hope is that in the event of the cataclysmic scenario described above that future human will stumble across such an artefact, and after studying it, teach their community everything they need to become a civilized and socially-technologically advanced society. Currently no team has been formed, but this article is an initial invitation of interest and anyone interested can contact the web site: https://www.apkalluinitiative.com/

Our ability to become an interstellar capable species depends in the near term on our ability to survive here on Earth or in near-space. The preservation of the deep knowledge and learning of the human experience is critical to this future, if we are to continue to progress, avoid stagnation and decay or even complete extinction or avoid repeating mistakes of the past.

Finally, such a project has the potential to inspire long-term thinking among differing human societies, and so in itself may be a self-perpetuating mechanism toward social-cultural harmonization and increased global awareness of our fragility in the great Cosmos. In addition, because of its inter-disciplinary nature, it has the potential to involve all of humanity on its journey, as we jointly work toward a back-up plan to ensure that humanity can survive in the millennia ahead.

The author dedicates this article to the efforts of Graham Hancock and Randall Carlson, whose significant research inspired this initiative. It was written to garner scrutiny of the idea, before deciding whether to proceed or not. Feedback is invited.

Stellar Scale Engineering

The concept of stellar engineering refers to the deliberate orchestration of artificial changes to a star or other similar astronomical object for the purposes of engineering a useful construction, power source or some other function. Its minor cousin, planetary engineering (the engineering of planets) has been nicely discussed by others[1].

In 1964 the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev proposed[2] a scale for measuring the output of interstellar civilisations in the Cosmos that can be used for long distance communications. This has come to be known as the ‘Kardashev scale’, and three types of civilisation were defined.

A Type I civilisation has the capacity to store all of the energy which reaches a home place from its parent star. For the Earth this is of order ~10^17 Watts, when the reality is that today our power consumption for the present civilisation is around ~10^12 Watts or equivalent to an energy consumption of ~10^19 erg/second (where 1 erg is equal to 10^-7 J of energy).

A Type II civilisation has the capacity to harness the total energy of its parent star. The total power output of the Sun is around ~10^26 Watts or equivalent to ~10^33 erg/second. The proposed way by which this can be achieved is through a device known as a ‘Dyson-Stapledon sphere’, more on this below.

A Type III civilisation has the capacity to control energy on the scale of the entire galaxy. The total power output of the Milky Way, defined as its luminosity, is around ~10^37 Watts or equivalent to an energy consumption of around ~10^44 erg/second.

Further work by the American astronomer Carl Sagan in 1973 proposed[3] a method of extrapolating and interpolating intermediate values, on the assumption that there was a Type 0 civilisation that would control around 1 MW of power. Using this scale, it is possible to show that human civilisation on Earth has an average world power consumption of around ~10^12 W, which means we have a Kardashev value of around 0.7. Many other versions of the Kardashev scale have now been proposed, but they all largely agree we are far from the masters of our own local energy sources as a young species.

The ability to engineer astrophysical sources, such as stars, is an interesting idea which we could equally expect a more advanced civilisation to have attempted. It is useful to briefly discuss some of the structures that could be engineered in the universe by those other species or by a future human kind.

Dyson-Stapledon Spheres: These objects were first suggested by the British philosopher Olaf Stapledon in his 1937 novel Star Maker[4]. The idea was later picked up and refined as a thought experiment by the physicist Freeman Dyson in 1960[5] who reasoned that such a structure would be a result of the escalating energy needs of a technological civilisation. Such a sphere, or set of orbiting structures would completely encompass a star and capture all or the majority of its power output. It would be uniquely distinguished by an infra-red emission spectrum which would make such structures detectable to long distance observations.

One has to ask however, whether such an advanced civilisation with escalating energy needs would instead choose to occupy other star systems by interstellar diffusion, rather than huddling around the light of one lone object? More credible versions of this idea known as a Dyson Swarm consists of many large number of independent constructions orbiting in a dense formation around a star. Another variant is a Ring World, a hypothetical orbiting structure around a star, but rather than a complete sphere, it is instead a ring. The idea was popularised in a 1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven[6].

Matrioska Brains: This is another type of hypothetical that is really an extension of the Dyson-Stapledon sphere, but instead of power output purely for energy conversion the output is used to drive massive computational capacity. The idea was conceived by Robert Bradbury and the concept takes its name from Russian Matrioshka dolls, since the analogy is adopted so that there are the equivalent of nested spheres within each other, each built around a star, and drawing all of its power output. The inner shell would have the temperature of the outer stellar atmosphere and the outer shell would be so cool as to be equivalent to the temperature of space. In theory, such a large computing architecture could be full artificial intelligence, or create full artificially simulated universes for people to exist in. The Matrioshka brain concept looks even more complicated that the Dyson-Stapledon sphere.

Shkadov Thruster: This is the term used to describe a type of megastructure which is able to use a stars radiation output to create usable energy, such as for the purpose of producing thrust and therefore actually accelerating the star through interstellar space, and any object orbiting it, in any direction. Several variants or classes of stellar engines have been proposed. It involves the use of a large mirror or light sail to balance gravitational attraction and radiation pressure outwards from the star, such that the net pressure of the star would be asymmetrical and the excess radiation in one direction would act as net thrust to move the star from its original position. Any planetary system that is in orbit around the star, would also be dragged through space, and so the entire Stellar System could in principle be moved. This author used a similar idea to a Shkadov thruster in a short science fiction story titled ‘The World Movers’ published in 2015, although the thrust generation was also originated from negative energy density gravitational fields[7].

All of the above megastructures are different types of Stellar Engines that could in theory be constructed by advanced extraterrestrial civilisations or by future human kind. This presents interesting observational opportunities, in looking for either ‘live’ stellar engines or ‘dead’ stellar engines, the remnants of a once forgotten civilisation.

There has been several postulated sightings of potential stellar engines by the Kepler Space Telescope. This includes the objects KIC 8462852 and EPIC 204278916, but the analysis is so far inconclusive. The former, known as Tabby’s Star is an F-type main sequence star located in the Cygnus constellation at a distance of around 1,276 Light Years. Astronomical studies of changes in the stars brightness could not be attributed to intrinsic variability and one of the hypothesis being proposed to explain the unusual blocking of the light emission is a stellar engine.

We do not yet know whether advanced extraterrestrial civilisations exist, let alone have built large megastructures, but certainly observational programs that seek such structures out, or eliminate their possibility, will add to our knowledge of life in the universe. It would seem that in our pursuit of enquiry as to the various manifestations of existence, our most powerful tool is that of the imagination, which enables us to see alternate futures that may or may not exist, and therefore help to direct our research programs. Indeed, this may be the most important service that the literature of science fiction has given left us as its legacy.

[1] M. J. Fogg, Engineering Planetary Environments, Society of Automotive Engineers, 1995.

[2] N. Kardashev, Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations, Soviet Astronomy, 8, 217, 1964.

[3] C. Sagan, Cosmic Connection: An Extraterestrial Perspective, 1973.

[4] O. Stapledon, Star Maker, 1937

[5] F. Dyson, Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation, Science, 131, 3434, pp.1667-1668, 1960.

[6] L. Niven, RingWorld, Ballantine Books, 1970.

[7] K. F. Long, The World Movers, Published in Visionary, A Science Fiction Anthology in the Spirit of the British Interplanetary Society, BIS Publication, 2013.

Steadying the Ship of Hope

In recent months we have entered turbulent times on Planet Earth. Watching the television it all sounds very exciting and for sure it gives the media lots to talk about. The two key events which stands out for attention is the referendum vote in the United Kingdom to leave the European Union at some near-future date. The second is the election of a President in the United States of America, who arrives at that office with much controversy. Speaking to many, there is huge uncertainty about the future and the direction our civilisation will head next. In his 1942 publication 'Darkness and Light" the philosopher Olaf Stapledon described those two possible future as follows:

“Is it credible that our world should have two futures? I have seen them. Two entirely distinct futures lie before mankind, one dark, one bright; one the defeat of all man's hopes, the betrayal of all his ideals, the other their hard-won triumph.”

One year from now, the Earth would have gone around its orbit again, for the approximately 4.5 billionth time. The Sun will still rise and set. The ocean tides will continue to ebb and flow. The birds will migrate with the seasons. The universe will continue to grow in its extent. Your cup of coffee will still be ready for you in the morning. Gaining some perspective, is an act of humility before the storm.

How we handle these apparently turbulent times is up to us. How the European countries handle the negotiations on 'Brexit' and how the United States handles the election of its new President, is up to all those people involved. Just because the circumstances are controversial, this does not require that we respond in similar kind, or that we used heated words designed to hurt the character of another person or nation. For when we attack each other, we are also hurting ourselves. And although the majority of us may not be involved in the day to day decision making that surrounds such events, this does not allow ourselves to lower the standard of our conduct. Instead, we have a duty towards our fellow human kind to ameliorate our shared circumstances and be emollient. We are all protagonists in this great play, and we all have a role to perform as citizens of Planet Earth. You will never get another person to listen to your point of view by attempting to drag them kicking and screaming....or threatening them with actions. This doesn't mean we must acquiesce to the untoward which offends us. Instead, leadership by example, is what creates that hopeful space. All nations of the world, its governments and its people, East and West, North and South, should adopt such behaviour.

We can stir up the fires of discontent, division, and despair, or we can create the conditions of encouragement, unity, and hope. Whenever we write words in articles, blogs, facebook, twitter, or speak words in person, in speech or on television and radio, they have the power to belittle or influence other people for right or wrong, and thereby collectively contribute to one or another of those two futures that Stapledon spoke about. Which future do you want to live in? What role will you play during these turbulent times?

Turbulence is typically characterised by unsteady or even stormy conditions, a state of conflict and confusion. If you were on a ship, bound on a journey, and your ship entered very stormy conditions, what would you do? If a person takes action to try and improve the situation, the best way that 'they' know how to, yet makes mistakes, would you chastise them or encourage them to try a different approach, with education, inspiration and good intention in your heart?

Planet Earth is a ship, it is a living starship, at sea in the ocean of space, and we are its crew, all of us. It seems to me that to keep this ship steady in turbulent waters, our best hope is to adopt a state of calmness and serenity, as we seek to find wisdom and humility in ourselves, and to encourage it within those of our fellow species. And yes, it takes courage and patience not to give in to the taunting of the masses, but ultimately this is where true integrity is to be found as we seek to determine verisimilitude in a labyrinth of mass information, global events and political, economic, social-cultural and technological change.

The Starship Travellers

A star is a stellar object in deep space, burning with the embers of a nuclear core, providing fundamental elements for the universe to nourish and create objects, places and people. It starts its existence as a molecular gas cloud collapsing, condensing into a huge gravitational mass, eventually igniting in a giant cauldron of fusion energy, luminescent across the Cosmos.  A star is the creator and destroyer of all things. There are billions of these stars, hundreds of billions in our galaxy alone. Some small, some large, some bright, some dim, some with planets abound, with the star warming the shores of surrounding world’s, others floating in the void of the vacuum destined to serve little purpose than the generation of light for the wonderers of the deep.

A ship is a vessel, which transports people from one location to another. It has some form of device which propels it along the journey, moving along a carefully planned navigational course, avoiding risks and pitfalls along the way. It is merely a device to enable the journey, from here to there. It allows the occupants, people, to extend their biologically evolved senses of sight, hearing, smell and touch, to go beyond the banks of their origin, to experience different places, to measure the heights and the depths of space, to better understand and comprehend the reality upon which we inhabit.

If you bring these two words together, you have a Starship. This allows people from one place in the Cosmos to connect with people from another place. It allows those people to share their common or not so common experience of the world. To share knowledge, stories, science, technology, culture and philosophies. The starship enables a coupling between species that have been separated by space and time for the age of the Universe, and now they are bought together to discover for the first time, the journey of another. This form of ‘mental conception’ or ‘fusion of intelligence’ will most likely lead to something wonderful including to a greater understanding of ourselves.

We have many ideas for what a Starship may look like, but it is too early to really say. Our minds require more time to comprehend the abstract challenges of sending vessels across light years of space, at speeds approaching that of light, for durations that last for years, decades or centuries. Will it be driven by microwave beams or catalysed by antimatter? Will it have giant fusion reactors or mine interstellar hydrogen as a form of interstellar ramjet? Will it cross that sea of Suns using exotic space drives and warp drives, technology and indeed science, yet to be invented? Will it be a huge cylinder or shaped like a large doughnut with engine nacelles coming off the sides? Will it carry people from one nation on Earth, or representatives from all nations, with a mix of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, culture and philosophical outlook? Does any of this matter?

When that Starship finally arrives at its destination will it build artificial colonies or terraform the nearby world’s? Will the inhabitants of that Starship, perhaps several generations ahead of those that set out, wonder about the Earth and want to return to it? Will they even care about Earth? It may be that some will colonise the system, their civilisations will rise and fall as we have done before, but always with the shadow of their origin looming over them – the distant pale blue dot called Earth. Perhaps, a new species will evolve, that seeks to go on a journey of their own, to simply return to the home world from which they originated and to see the deserts of the Sahara, the jungles of the Amazon, the icy mountain of Everest, for themselves.

In some ways, it is not the origin or the destination that matters, it is the journey. It is the act of setting out on a bold new adventure that allows human kind to grow and evolve into whatever it shapes itself to become. This is what results in a change to the human being and all that he believes in and stands for. It is rapid rate of change on an otherwise predictable trajectory. It is a kind of mathematical and physical inflexion point, upon which the future of human civilisation thereafter takes a different course. Change, even when disruptive, especially when disruptive, results in a movement to a different paradigm of though. This is what the Starship represents. Just like the ‘Pale Blue dot’ photo of Earth gave us a different perspective on our world, the Starship journey and the act of trying, will give us a different perspective on ourselves.

Just like in the television series ‘Star Trek’ the Starship is merely a vehicle for the plot line, similarly, in the future the Starship is a vehicle to enable continued human growth and for progress to be made – to discover new things about the Universe and what it means to be human – or even to separate from our biological evolutionary tract by a form of technological divergence. And what sort of people will go on this magnificent journey? Will they have the weaknesses that so betray our species today? Will they inherit our selfish ways, our jealousy, our greed and our war like mentality? Will they exhibit our bitterness and our nature to push one philosophical view point on to the mind of a weaker human being? No, I think those Starship travellers will be a bold, daring, confident and capable people. They would have shed many of our weaknesses and adopted many of our strengths. Starship Human, will be a more evolved entity, physically, mentally and culturally.

We came out of the pools of Africa, from a few cells we evolved into the mammals and then the Homo Sapiens that we are today. Now, we are preparing for our greatest period of personal growth yet, to build a Starship and travel to those distant points of light that have so haunted human kind for many thousands of years. We will be a changed people for the attempt and for the experience, definitely if we succeed, almost certainly so still if we fail. Let’s hope that change contributes to the Universe and its intelligence in a positive way. Let’s hope it helps us to reach our full potential, deserving of the title – We the human race, are the Starship Travellers.

The Infinite Horizon of Discovery

In the ages of old, people thought that if you kept going out into the Atlantic Ocean, you would eventually fall off the edge of the Earth. Indeed, there were also tales of monsters that lurked there, waiting to snatch the sailor and his ship and drag them down into the abyss below. Well, there were monsters and the waters were dangerous, but they were surmountable once the sufficient technology came to fruition.

In 1492 Christopher Columbus set sail on the first of several trips in search for the West passage to India and in his journeys he discovered the “New World”. But before this attempt was made, many had first embarked on exploration of the islands which meander the West coast of Africa and in particular the Canary Islands. These “precursor missions” allowed the gradual development of core capabilities, technologies, experience and most important, confidence. So that the Atlantic could be tackled and the new horizon breached.

When I consider the history of human kind, a species which grew by a process of gradual migration out of Africa, it is awe inspiring to think how far we have come. Think of the countless toils and struggles of those that would walk for miles across vast lands, searching for water, food and places to shelter or settle. Think of the risks they took as they entered territories with dangerous never before seen animals and even hostile humans who would rob them of all they own and cherish, including their lives. Think of the hard labours fault in the battle to master agricultural techniques, to grow crops so that we might weather the harsh seasons and feed the growing population. Think of how we survived as we crossed deserts, jungles, ice sheets, and barren landscapes, freezing in the cold night of the Moon, and baking in the hot rays of the Sun. Yet, we endured.

We are an explorer species. We search for the next mountain to climb, the next ocean to dive. This exploration extends not just to the physical world but also to the world of our minds as we intellectualise our reality and with curiosity seek answers to explain all that we observe. This constant questioning, this endless frontier is fundamental to who we are. The exploration of space is a natural extension of these propensities and it is in our deepest desires to go out there; this driving force cannot be stopped, because the exploration of space is the purest expression of our personal and joint liberty.

So we breached the Karman line of space, circled the equatorial and polar orbits, hopped from the world of our origin to our closest neighbour, the Moon. The planet Mars calls us loudly and beckons us to come and explore it too. Look at it through a telescope, its rustic coloured appearance with polar ice caps of its own. Those mountains and valleys yet to be explored; Olympus Mons three times the height of Everest. How can we not try?

The other worlds call us too. The Jovian worlds and its possible swimming life, bathing in the ash ridden atmospheres of volcanic and ice covered worlds. Saturn and its ring of icy jewels. Titan with its ocean of liquid Methane. They call us, like the metaphorical Gjallarhorn across the solar system – come explore us and see what nature left here. Pluto is next, then the Oort cloud and beyond. Our precursor missions will extend to the furthest frontiers to prepare the way for our eventual arrival. Then it’s the stars and the entire cycle of planetary exploration begins all over again, until the next system and then the next, billions of them until the galaxy is fully explored by some future descendants of human kind. But our galaxy is but one within a large supercluster, and there are millions of these. Where does it end? Even when we have explored the entire Universe, will we discover the Universe too is but one of billions created by the architect of nature? Perhaps, it is as the philosopher Olaf Stapledon depicted in his 1937 book “Star Maker”, and our Universe is but one in the great laboratory of Multiverses, as the Star Maker perfects his or her art.

How marvellous that we can see so far and so much? How splendid that nature has arranged it so that when we look at the sky we see back in time, back to the beginning of the Cosmos itself? Perhaps the purpose of the Universe is as the science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke said, “For the perpetual astonishment of mankind”? It is exhilarating a thing to be on the path of discovery, but it is also joyous to think that we are always at the beginning with the ocean of knowledge all before us. Our limited life span is so short in the age of the Cosmos. If we are lucky we will live for eighty or even one hundred years. Use that time wisely, make time for moments of discovery and contemplation, learn what you can whilst you are here, because what is your horizon of discovery today, will be someone else’s history in the future. The light cone goes on, the entropy grows, the clock ticks in synchronicity to the arrow of time. Be a part of the contribution to knowledge whilst you can - for we will not be here forever, but the infinite horizon of discovery will be. Eyes, ears and mind open.

“How many more years I shall be able to work on the problem I do not know; I hope, as long as I live. There can be no thought of finishing, for 'aiming at the stars' both literally and figuratively, is a problem to occupy generations, so that no matter how much progress one makes, there is always the thrill of just beginning.” Robert H. Goddard, in a 1932 letter to H. G. Wells.

The Starship: Bringer of Harmony

Williams K Hartmann is an American space artist. In 1984 he wrote a book titled “Out of the Cradle, Exploring the Frontiers Beyond Earth”. In this book he proposed something which is quite profound and which had become known as the Golden Rule. It states that “Space exploration must be carried out in a way so as to reduce, not aggravate, tensions in human society”. The Starship has the potential to do just that.

Firstly, the manufacture, construction and assembly of a Starship is an enormous undertaking which is likely to require the capabilities of people and organizations from across the globe. Any sensible cost estimates for a Starship program will usually be in the trillions of dollars, so with the 2012 Gross World Product of the entire planet being in the region of $80 trillion, the Starship economics begin to become tractable if done on an international basis. The implication here is that the construction of a Starship will likely require human co-operation on a global scale not seen before. The nearest we have to this model is the International Space Station (ISS), a structure that is 450 tonnes in mass and has cost approximately $150 billion. But it has involved not just the United States, but also the United Kingdom, Europe, Japan, Russia and many other countries. The ISS stands out as a superb achievement in human co-operation as a large scale construction project and it is on the critical path to Starship construction. And by the way, I prefer the original name, “Space Station Freedom”.

Second, as we move away from the planet Earth and visit other worlds, we will look back upon that pale blue dot and learn to treasure it more. Over the 3.5 billion years of history of life on Earth, humans have risen to the top of the food chain, due to our apparent intelligence (although frequently one wonders). But there is a down side to our ascension, which is that all of the other animals on the planet are forced to compete with us for resources and land, as we embark on the conquest of the natural world without due consideration for the consequence of our actions. The Amazon rainforest for example is disappearing at a rate of something like 600 square km per month, mainly due to deforestation by human settlement and land development. Yet, we continue to consume, we continue to not strive to live within our means. We always want more. As the dominant species on the planet Earth we have a duty to be the moral caretakers of Gaia – the only world we have ever known. That is the responsibility of those who would choose to rule. If we do not learn to take our responsibilities seriously, what hope then is there for the new worlds we aspire to colonise? As we learn to design and build Starships, we must also learn to change our ways because the Starship and current man are not compatible; we must adapt our nature, to nature.

A third element that the Starship brings is universal freedom to expand. With our population on Earth growing at an average rate of something like 2% per annum, we will be at 10 billion people by around the year 2050. Clearly, humans have a need to explore and expand but with the limited resources of the Earth this is not sustainable. The Starship brings with it the opportunity to expand at will in all directions to anywhere, utilizing the abundance resources of space appropriately as we move from one world to the next. The Starship is our vehicle of universal liberty.

Forth, we still have many problems on the planet Earth. I have already mentioned over population, but what of starvation, disease, conflicts, poor resource distribution, and energy sources? Science and technology has the potential to solve all of these problems given sufficient time and support. As we strive to invent new propulsion systems, power systems and other technologies, this brings with it as yet not-conceived technological spin-offs which will have the capacity to change and improve the human condition.

Sixth, let us understand the implications to human culture as we pursue the mission of the Starship. This brings with it an informed and educated population as we need more engineers, scientists, biologists and other specialists. Many will be inspired by what is achieved by the Starships and will seek similar careers producing a scientifically informed population which has to filter back up to the political system. This will naturally lead to improvements in how decisions are made, based upon data, rather than emotional trends in popular society.

Finally, and relating to culture, is learning to live with each other’s differences, no matter what the colour of our skin, our sexual orientation, gender or philosophical outlook. The 1960s saw the peak of the civil rights movement in America, a period where people simply desired to be seen as equals and rightly so. We have made great progress since those dark days, but there is clearly much more work to be done. As we embark on the voyage of the Starship we are surely to meet Alien beings which are stranger than we could ever imagine in both appearance and in cultural values. The science fiction novel “The Mote in God’s Eye” by Larry Niven, contains a description of the Mote, which is one of the best representations of realistic aliens I have yet come across. How would we really react when we meet these beings from distant stars? Will we find their ways distasteful, unethical, and immoral? What makes our ways right?

It is clear that as we pursue the dream of the Starship, we must also learn to live with each other, because any differences we have down here on Earth, will be nothing in comparison to what awaits us in the darkest depths of the Galaxy. It is entirely possible that out there lays the best of our hopes and dreams and the worst of our nightmares. We should prepare for all eventualities, and the best way to do that is to learn to practice tolerance and compassion for each other first.

The Starship: What is it for Anyway?

A Star is a distant stellar objective, burning nuclear reactions at its core, releasing fusion energy and radiating outwards across all matter and fields in its path. A ship is a vessel that will take passengers or cargo from A to B, from here to there or from there to here. So, you want to travel on a Starship, but why? In ages past people have travelled from one continent to another on ships. This could have been to do trade or to settle a new land or simply to visit friends. Today, we can also take a world cruise and visit many continents across the globe in a matter of weeks. We also live in the age of passenger jets where you can get up for breakfast in London and be in New York just after lunch. These seem like long journeys to us during the trip but they are the blink of an eye in the grand context of interstellar travel.

The nearest star is Proxima Centauri at 4.3 light years distance. A light year is the distance that light travels in one year at its speed of around 300,000 km/s, which is equal to 9,460 billion km away. So the nearest star is 40,678 billion km distance. If you could travel at only 1% of the speed of light, it would still take 430 years to get there. Going back in history that is the year 1583 and in that year the Italian scientist and philosopher Galileo Galilei would only have been 19 years old. By the time the Starship reached its destination after centuries of travel time, what history would have passed by back on Earth? Indeed, how would the culture on board the Starship have evolved? They would have their very own rich and interesting history, although hopefully no conflicts. What if we could travel at 10% of the speed of light? Then it would take us a mere 43 years trip time, half a century. In Earth’s history that would be the year 1970 which is one year after mankind first walked on the surface of its small gravitational companion – The Moon. That certainly sounds more reasonable.

And when that crew gets to their destination what will they find? Will it be pastures green, new life, new civilizations? Or will they have to work hard for many decades in order to establish a viable colony? Of course, those who arrive at the destination from the slow century’s long mission would never have known the planet Earth and it would only be a memory in the banks of their computers and stories told by their great grandparents of old. For the quicker decades long mission, some who set out on the journey may still be alive when they arrive but how would they react? Would they be disappointed by what they find and look back with their deep space telescopes at the distant Sun, wishing they were home and had never made the attempt? The colonists would be resigned to their situation and would have to make the best of whatever they have. Hopefully, with hard work and optimism, they can make a liveable home for themselves and learn to mine the resources of their new stellar system. In time, towns will spring up, followed by cities as an entire civilization emerges in this new place suspended by the light of a different sun beam.

As the new generation grows up they will hear tales of the green and blue planet Earth, the home of their genetic origin and the will wonder looking up at the stars at night, what that planet must be like. They will hear about its deep and vast watery oceans, its cold polar ice caps, its hot dry deserts, and wet and wondrous jungles adorned with so many species of life you cannot count them all. To them, Earth will appear as a place of myth and fantasy, a place of magic and splendour. Their urge to learn more about it will grow. Their yearning to see it for themselves and to feel the touch of a rain drop on a cold windy day, will become strong.

Today there are some of us who look at the stars with a dream to travel there, to wonder among those glistening gems that shine in the deep, and to satisfy our tenacious curiosity for what may be there. Some of these future interstellar colonists will have a will of adventure just like their ancestral explorers and eventually they will be determined to make the crossing back, to the place from where they had come. What a moment that would be, a human being from the distant stars many centuries later returning to the planet Earth. As a species we can be proud of all that we accomplished and welcome our Star Child as one of our own. They may appear different, perhaps of altered complexion – although there would not have been time enough for evolution to do its work. But their character and personality would certainly be different. They would have less of our weaknesses and more of our strengths. These humans from the stars would be made from the hardships they had endured making their distant space colony a success. They would have things to teach us, and the children that were sent away had come home to tell us their stories. Yet, this would still be only two star systems occupied by our kind, and the entire Cosmos would still await us to be explored.

Eventually, some of those distant colonies will be so far away, that they may forget Earth altogether. As natural catastrophes’ happen on their adopted planets perhaps their entire history will be wiped out over eons of time. The name Earth may have no meaning for some of these future colonies. But does this matter, because our seed would be out there and life, the most precious thing in the Universe, would be flourishing. How wonderful is nature to give us this great tapestry of space and time, matter and energy that we see before us scattered across the dome of our sky? So that one day we may go out to it, and finally learn the meaning of what it means to be a Starship human. So what role does the Starship play in all this? It is our vessel; that takes us from star A to star B. All animals on Earth undergo some form of migration, including birds, mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians, insects and crustaceans. Even tree populations may migrate over the landscape through generations, typically due to environmental suppression or dispersal capacity of the population by seed. Perhaps humans too have it within our biological drivers to migrate to new places, so that we may survive, learn, adapt and grow. In the timescales of the Cosmos, humans going to the stars and returning may be like a form of migration. How awe inspiring is nature to lay out all of these opportunities for us? The question is; are we intelligent enough to yield the technology we develop for this purpose or will we destroy ourselves in the attempt? In some ways, the development of the Starship is a test of our nature and fitness for survival out there, due to the duality of the advanced technology which can be used for good, or bad. I’m personally optimistic that we can mature from our childhood slumber and embrace the promising future that is before us.

God Speed! Second star to the left – eyes forward.

Leonardo and the Starship

An invention is a unique device, method or process. It could be something completely new and never seen before or an improvement on an existing product. Often these technologies can be disruptive innovations which completely change the market place, taking the performance of a product onto a new paradigm of thought. The automobile or motor car for example, was an incremental technology changer, because it did not result in a major disruption to the market place which was dominated by the horse-drawn carriage. But once mass production of cars took off in the early 1900s and their performance involved significant reductions in journey times, the technology transitioned to a game-chaning innovation. This is an example of a technology that was not immediately disruptive, but with its introduction and further investment, it soon became one. It is what you might call, revolutionary. Those products which do not dramatically affect the market place are known as evolutionary, and they merely add incremental improvements to a technology over time.

One of the greatest inventors in history was the Italian Renaissance man Leonardo da Vinci who lived between 1452 and 1519. Among his many accomplishments were his many engineering innovations. This included designs for a bridge, diving suit, cannon, large cross bows tanks, submarine, and designs for various flying machines including a hang glider, parachute and something that resembles a helicopter. Leonardo clearly had some understanding for the basic laws of momentum, centripetal force, friction and the aerodynamics of aerofoils. He used an extensive knowledge of engineering, including pertaining to gears, pulleys, cantilevers and hydraulics. Despite all Leonardo’s genius, it would not have been possible to successfully construct some of the machines of his imagination, simply because the technology and physics knowledge did not yet exist. From the perspective of many people in his time, Leonardo’s inventions would have seemed fanciful and not something that would ever be a part of any plausible future. To the minds of us today, his inventions were prophetic, future looking, realistic and credible in principle. Opinions are relative when viewed through the lens of history.

Today, many people spend their time designing vessels what could someday travel to other stars. How will history view these attempts? We know that space travel is possible, and indeed we have sent spacecraft to the furthest reaches of our solar system. Many of the technological advances made today take us that little bit further, faster and sooner. They are evolutionary technologies (e.g. chemical propulsion) although some can now been seen as revolutionary (e.g. electric propulsion).

Today, eager minds, young and old, imagine what the future spacecraft will be like, the ones that we can definitely call revolutionary, and the ones we can especially call disruptive. Is it possible that we can conceive of “da Vinci machines” that will take us to the Stars in decades, years, months, weeks or even days? From all we have learned about the laws of physics and its application to technology, we can at least answer this question with a positive: Yes, it does appear possible at some point in the future.

The British Interplanetary Society Project Daedalus study of the 1970s was essentially a proof of existence theorem, to show that interstellar travel was feasible in theory. In general, many agree that the team succeeded in this aim. One of the key elements of the design was the need to carry Deuterium and Helium-3 fuel, and due to the scarcity of Helium-3 this necessitated mining the material from the gas giants. This was suggestive of the need for a solar system wide economy and so the first launch date was pushed out quite extensively. In order to build large Starships (Daedalus was approximately 53,000 tonnes) you need large space infrastructure in place and in particular cheap and reliable access to Earth Orbit. The Project Daedalus Study Group expected that this would plausibly come about between the years 2200-2250. Given that the Daedalus probe was to take around half a century to get to its stellar target of Barnard’s star, the first Starship would not be arriving at a distance star system until around the year 2300.  Can we do better?

When I initiated the Project Icarus study I placed a design constraint on the mission of mainly fusion based propulsion. Internal to the team this was interpreted to mean that approximately 80-90 percent of the thrust generation of the mission should come from fusion reactions, although the remainder could be augmented from alternative propulsion systems. This was done not because it was the view of the team that fusion was the best way, but mainly to facilitate a design constraint so that the problem would be tractable within a finite duration of the project. In addition, it was thought important to maintain continuity with the original Daedalus project, which was also fusion driven. Given the advances in science and technology over the last few decades what would we do differently?

One of the obvious goals for the design team is to shrink the mass. This includes the enormous 50,000 tonnes of fuel, 450 tonnes of payload, and 2220 tonnes structure mass. The team are looking at typical payload masses of around 150 tonnes and typical propellant masses of around 20,000-25,000 tonnes. Because Helium-3 raises obvious acquisition issues, the team are also looking at alternative reaction combinations such as Deuterium-Tritium, Deuterium-Deuterium, and even options like Proton-Boron. However the design turns out, it is likely that the Project Icarus design will have some resemblance to the original Project Daedalus Study but also have some marked differences. No need for that old vacuum tube electronic technology for example, although the need for an Artificial Intelligence based system is still thought to be high.

One of the clear distinguishing characteristics between the two projects (Daedalus and Icarus) is the need for deceleration. At the outset of Project Icarus the team had a discussion about projections for future deep space astronomical platforms. It was soon realised that by the time we actually launch a Starship, we will likely know where we are going and what is there, before we ignite the engine. The resolution of telescopes will be so good that we will be able to resolve atmospheric compositions and perhaps even detect orbiting Moons around the planets in the target system. There is unlikely to be any surprises, at least on a planetary scale. For this reason, in order to justify the cost and effort of the Starship endeavour, flying through the stellar system in a matter of days was seen to be inadequate and it was determined that atmospheric penetrators and the boots of atmospheric landers needed to be placed directly onto these most interesting of worlds. Hence for Project Icarus deceleration is the name of the game. To achieve this the team are looking at the use of Magnetic sail systems (MagSails), rearward deployed sail systems (Medusa Sails) and of course reverse engine thrust.

Nuclear fusion propulsion is just one of the methods for getting to the stars. The many others include antimatter or exotic solutions like space drives and warp drives. Some propose to go the way of propellantless solutions and to fly by the “wind” of the Sun using solar sails or converging the solar energy into laser powered systems using large Fresnel lenses. Who is to say which one of these concepts that we dream up will be the actual blue print for how the first interstellar missions are conducted? On the other hand, it may be the case that they are all form a part of our future, each performing their own role, optimised for their specific purpose, payload and destination. None of our efforts would have been wasted, it would have been time well spent preparing the way of the Starship for our future interstellar generations.

When Leonardo da Vinci considered flight, he didn’t just think of one machine, but he considered many methods, be it parachute, glider or helicopter. He observed that there were forces of nature, and although he did not understand by what rules they were governed, he set out to find ways to tame them and mimic nature for good use. One wonders how he would have approached the problem of designing a Starship if he existed in our times? Would he have focussed on only one method? No, the evidence is that he sought multiple solutions for a problem and it is likely that he would have been looking hard at ways to master the solar wind, tame the atom, or collide the anti-protons, to produce energy for the Starship. Although the Starships we design today may not appear ready for the existing markets and the technology they require not sufficiently mature, it is possible that we are in the position of Leonardo all those centuries ago, who conceived of machines that were centuries ahead of his time. In this respect, we are all then students of the Renaissance.

“When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will always long to return”.

Leonardo da Vinci

Time for the Stars?

In the year 1956 the science fiction writer Robert Heinlein published his memorable novel “Time for the Stars”. This was a tale of two twin brothers, one who stayed at home and the other who went off on a fantastic journey to the stars in a so called ‘Torchship’. They stayed in constant communication through the power of telepathy; the ultimate long distance communications device. The mission was put together by the Long Range Foundation, a non-profit organization that funds expensive, long term projects for the benefit of human kind. Moving at sub-light speeds the vessel takes many years to get to its destination. When we read science fiction, it all makes star travel seem so near and within our grasp. Our minds conceive of countless technologies, devices, and machines by which the journey can be launched. But when is it really “Time for the Stars”? By this question, we mean of course when will we will be in a position to actually launch the first Starships towards those distant lights of Suns that shine like candles in the dark of our Cosmos? Well, several authors have actually looked at the problem, and it’s interesting to see what they have got to say about it.

The American born Robert Enzmann derived his ‘Ezmann Starship’ concept sometime in the 1960s. This would be a fusion powered vehicle carrying a colony of humans on a 60 year trip to the stars. It would travel at around 9 percent of the speed of light using its nuclear pulse based engines. Although Enzmann never wrote up his ideas, a recent 2012 Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS) study reviewed the Starship in it’s entirely in a paper titled “The Enzmann Starship: History and Engineering Appraisal” by Adam Crowl, Kelvin F.Long and Richard Obousy. The American author (and pioneer of model rockets) G.Harry Stine later look these ideas as a basis for his 1973 article in Analog magazine titled “A Program for Star Flight” in which he described an enormous ten-ship colony mission launched to the stars beginning in the year 1990. The entire program would involve ten vessels and cost something like $100 billion spread out over a couple of decades.

One of the first people to try and estimate when star flight would be possible using credible scientific methods was the British born physicist Freeman Dyson. In his 1968 paper titled “Interstellar Transport” published in Physics Today, he looked at 4 percent economic growth rate scaling and concluded that this implied a Gross National Product for the United States of around one thousand times larger within 200 years. This meant that the first mission would be feasible from around the year 2168.

The American Brice Cassenti examined the problem in a 1982 JBIS in his paper “A Comparison of Interstellar Propulsion Methods”. He looked at velocity trends throughout history from the 1800s including sailing ships, early race cars, Earth escape velocity and solar escape velocity.  He concluded that the first missions on the order of 10 light years distance would be feasible around the year 2182.

During the British Interplanetary Society Project Daedalus Study of the 1970s Alan Bond and Anthony Martin considered the clear need for large space based infrastructure in order to facilitate the design, construction and assembly of a large multiple Mega-tons Starship. The (unmanned) fusion powered Daedalus would travel at 12 percent of the speed of light reaching its target stars in around half a century. They predicted it would not be feasible until around the year 2100 at the earliest although most likely much later.

Bond and Martin also lead the follow up 1984 World Ship studies published in “World Ships – An Assessment of the Engineering Feasibility” and “World Ships – Concept, Cause, Cost, Construction and Colonisation”. These were enormous vessels tens of kilometres in length, capable of carrying thousands of people and included an ocean. They would travel at a slow few percent of the speed of light towards the distance stars in journey times measuring centuries. They concluded, optimistically, that such vessels might be feasible around the year 2200.

The American physicist Robert Forward was renowned for his efforts to develop propellantless propulsion systems. He pioneered studies in solar sails, laser sails and even antimatter powered engines. In his 1976 JBIS publication titled “A Programme for Interstellar Exploration”, Forward constructed a plan for going to the stars as part of a strategic roadmap which saw the first light-sail based missions being launched around the year 2000.

A more recent examination of the problem was performed by the American physicist Marc Millis in his JBIS publication titled “First Interstellar Missions, Considering Energy and Incessant Obsolescence”. He looked at energy scaling trends in history from the year 1980 to 2007 using an assumed average growth rate in world energy production of less than 2 percent. He then compared that to the energy you need to push either a robotic probe or a small colony ship towards the stars. His analyses lead to the predicted dates of 2200 (for the colony ship) and 2500 (for the probe). The reason the colony ship was deemed to be launched sooner was due to the much smaller energy requirement.

The British science fiction author Stephen Baxter also discussed the problem in his 2010 JBIS paper titled “Project Icarus: Three Roads to the Stars”. Baxter examined three scenarios for the next few centuries including an energy constrained Earth, and energy rich Earth and an interplanetary Mankind. Although he did not make a prediction on a specific date, Baxter’s research leads him to conclude that a Starship could be launched by a society closer to ours in nature, and closer in time, than is often imagined.

As reported in my own JBIS paper published in 2011 titled “Project Icarus: The First Unmanned Interstellar Mission, Robotic Expansion and Technological Growth”, many of these (excellent) projections miss out the important role of “disruptive technologies” which will alter the assessment on when the first missions are possible. In particular, it was shown how for a 100 year flyby space probe mission to Alpha Centauri 4.3 Light years away, and assuming an ideal cruise velocity of 2,700 AU/year (1Astronomical Unit = mean distance between the Earth and the Sun), that if we started from an assumed mission capacity of 5 AU/year in the year 2020 then assuming a greater than 8% technology grown annually in mission capacity (as measured by the attainment of cruise speeds) it may be possible to launch an interstellar probe by around the year 2100.

All of these efforts are worthwhile attempts to essentially predict the future, although note the large range in projected first launch dates and thereby uncertainties in the prediction of interest; ergo – we do not know. But many of them rely on linear extrapolation techniques. If history has taught us anything, it is that technology does not usually follow linear trends in this way. The science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke made a similar point in his 1975 Analog essay published in “Man, Space and Destiny” which was also presented to the US House of Representatives. He said:

 “It is a cliché that we often tend to overestimate what we can do in the near future and grossly underestimate what can be done in the more distant future. The reason for this is obvious, though it can only be explained with a certain amount of hand-waiving. The human imagination extrapolates in a straight line; but in the real world, as the Club de Rome and similar organizations are always telling us, events follow a compound interest of exponential law. At the beginning, therefore, the straight line of the human imagination surpasses the exponential curve; but sooner or later the steeply rising curve will cross the straight line, and thereafter reality outstrips imagination. How far ahead that point is depends not only on the difficulty of the achievement but also upon the social factors involved”.

When thinking about the future there is a constant tension between our imagination and our reality. Our imagination believes in the infinite extent of possibilities that lay before us. Our reality grounds us to what nature really allows, to the well understood laws and constraints of physics. As we strive to predict the future, we would be sensible to keep a good balance between our speculative musings, and our rigorous derivations, between our subjective desires and our objective analyses. Going to the extreme of one way or the other will result in wildly under predicting or over predicting what is possible. It is the rare person indeed, who can follow in the footsteps of people like Arthur C.Clarke and get the balance right.

As the current starship design endeavours (e.g. Project Icarus, Project Dragonfly) head towards their final quarter in deriving our Starship design, we too will be asked to make projections on when we think such a probe could be built and indeed, how much it would cost. In some ways, these questions are more difficult to answer than addressing the nuts and bolts engineering of the probe itself, because the uncertainties on our assessments are so large. All we can do is extrapolate using worst case and best case techniques and hope that the real answer lies somewhere in between. But ultimately, does it matter if our projections are wrong or right? For it is the pursuit of the game itself that will get us there and as long as we continue to look forward and out to those distant worlds of light, the time of the stars will someday surely come. Meanwhile, here’s hoping for 2063 and Zefram Cochrane’s warp drive. Anyone want to take some bets on that prediction?

The Emergence of the Starship

In the year 1865 and 1901 Jules Verne and H.G.Wells published their now famous novels “From the Earth to the Moon” and “The First Men in the Moon” respectively. Their ideas were not completely crazy, although the physics needed some work. In Verne’s novel the crew would be propelled to the Moon using a projectile mechanism, the same way a bullet is fired from a gun. That the acceleration would have killed the crew is a minor detail. In Well’s novel, he decided to embark on what today we call a breakthrough propulsion physics device, painting the vehicle with a special kind of paint called Cavorite, which had the unusual property of effecting anti-gravitational lift.

We got to the Moon eventually, but the Saturn V was not quite the way these authors imagined it. At some point the ideas went from imagination to reality, as the examination of the physics and engineering technical issues became more credible. A technological transition occurred when the real lunar ship emerged into our world, and crystallised from a thing of thought, to a thing of matter and energy. Today, we imagine what a future starship may look like. And we are fortunate to live in an age where the idea is crystallising out of the imagination as many credible methods for how we accomplish this seemingly impossible mission begin to materialise.

Essentially, we are constrained by the ideal rocket equation, which expresses the additive velocity increments from successive engine stages, as a function of the vehicle exhaust velocity and mass ratio – the mass ratio being the ratio of initial wet mass (fuel + structure) divided by final mass (payload + structure) which arrives at the target. The objective is to get a high mass ratio, which means that the amount of mass remaining at the end of the mission should be a low percentage of the total start mass, although there is a trade-off because you want your payload fraction to be a minimum size. Alternatively, one can have a high exhaust velocity, but this means choosing fuels which are energetic and release large amounts of energy/gram of substance. Typically, these go alone the lines of chemical, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, antimatter. All Starship designs which carry propellant rely on the ideal rocket equation in this way.

Some people like to search for “loop-holes” to this equation however, in the form of propellantless solutions. This includes using solar energy or stay at home laser propulsion, so that only the payload itself is accelerated. These are known as solar sail and laser sail type systems. You can combine rocket and non-rocket solutions in the form of the Bussard interstellar ramjet which utilizes the interstellar hydrogen of space, funnelled in through a large magnetic scoop, as it accelerates up to the speed of light. Another hybrid is the Medusa sail, which combines elements of Orion nuclear pulse propulsion with solar sail technology.

When you look at Starship design this way, through the lens of the ideal rocket equation, it’s almost as if nature has given us a toy to play with: “here! Take this rocket equation, study it, bend it, exploit, it, perturb it, break it…find a way”. The stars call us ever closer by their glistening shines of light across the Cosmos, beckoning us ever closer to discover the riches that orbit them on their myriad of worlds. But meanwhile, the ideal rocket equation acts as our constraint. The stars make us want to go, and the rocket equation tethers us to a limitation on our desires.

There is a way around this problem of course, which is to go around the ideal rocket equation altogether and even the need for stay at home propulsion drivers. Welcome to the exotic science of breakthrough propulsion physics where anything appears possible if you can throw enough variables together. This is in the form of space drives, warp drives and exotic constructions like worm holes. But we must be careful as we play with these toys that nature has given us; these “gedanken experiments”. Because, as we move away from understood physics (which is validated by experiment) there is always the danger that our speculations will become wide of the mark. But without any constraint to pin us to reality, there is no way to tell for sure. So whilst we marvel at these new creations from our minds of intellectual thought, we should also be aware that this does not guarantee that it is represented by reality.

One of the tools of theoretical thought is so called “back of the envelope” calculations. This helps us to develop an instinct for the ball-parkness of an estimate to satisfy ourselves that the full calculations (e.g. computer codes) are giving us the right answers. But sometimes, these estimates can become so vague that physicists (and astronomers) often refer to it as “hand waiving”. I am okay with hand waiving, within reason, but I do worry that when our physics speculations become so vague that this is equivalent to disco dancing in the dark. The public do not always know the difference between what is known science and what scientific speculation is. I feel that is our duty as scientists to communicate to them the distinction clearly. We do so by carefully caveating our statements and declaring our assumptions with honesty and transparency and avoiding unnecessary hype. But sometimes, our caveats, assumptions and uncertainties can be so large, that our speculations diverge wildly from how we know nature really works.  

In science what grounds us is experiment and observations. That is how we test our ideas and refine our theories. When we move into territory where we cannot test those ideas, we move away from the scientific method and you are in danger of no longer practising science but something else; a form of pseudo-science. This is a cautionary note, a heads up to all those would be Starship designers – to be aware of losing your way.

"In physical science the first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be." [PLA, vol. 1, "Electrical Units of Measurement", 1883-05-03, Lord Kelvin]