John Titor: The Final Word

My impulse when I first learned about John Titor was to lump him into the same intellectual bucket I put all the other things of that nature in; pure bunk. Just another kook claiming to be a time traveler, soon to be put to rest permanently when he started selling plans for a time travel machine via the internet for the low, low price of $99.99.

There was just one problem; no one could de-bunk Titor’s claims definitively, and he made some very remarkable and plausible claims. Also, Titor stayed true to what he said he would do and asked nothing from anyone…in fact, he never even asked to be believed. He said several times he didn’t expect to be believed. He was engaging in conversation with people of our time for his own personal curiosity. He expressed the unfortunate but also plausible ‘fact’ that people of our time weren’t very well thought of by people of his time. People in his time thought of us as spoiled ungrateful wretches who had it all and squandered it, not only for ourselves but for future generations as well. Truth hurts, and in this case, perception is truth; all you have to do is look around at the disgusting and wasteful way in which we live our lives these days. So essentially Titor was saying he wanted to put a human face on people he despised, trying to understand the reasons behind their foolish and improvident lifestyles.

Regardless of what or why Titor did what he did, the fact remains he made some incredible and far out claims, some of which have merit. Most of his “future events” haven’t really happened, at least not the way he claimed they would. There have been some eerie parallels with events that we’ve undergone in our times, but only one thing has pretty much happened exactly as he said it would, and that’s the invasion of Iraq and failure to find any WMD’s. However, you mustn’t think that his recall of future events were in any way predictions; they weren’t.  To understand exactly why that is, you have to understand the nature of current theory in quantum physic, something I’m not going to recount here. If you’re really interested in it, there are plenty of resources out there for you to learn about this particular aspect of physics. What I will do is give a brief rundown, enough to understand by.

Theory has it, every single event that occurs in our universe that could have multiple outcomes results in every single one of those events outcomes happening. Now we think of things happening one way or another. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

Let’s say you’re having breakfast and you butter a piece of toast. You’re holding that toast in your hand and suddenly you drop it and it lands butter side down. Ugh! Typical outcome, right? Only according to this current theory, it also drops butter side up. Furthermore, it gets even more confusing, for every single outcome that could have happened, does happen, each separate event spawning an ‘alternative’ universe, where events continue to unfold as events continue to happen. Are you confused yet? I don’t blame you if you are.

Putting it another way, in one universe your toast lands butter side down, in another butter side up, in another, you  didn’t butter it, in another you didn’t drop it, in another you didn’t eat breakfast, in another, you don’t even exist…and so on and so on.

So what if Titor’s events didn’t happen the way he said they would? This can be explained by his very presence in our time. By stepping into our time, he immediately spawned an alternative universe in which events started to unfold in a different way. Therefore the events that happened in his universe don’t necessarily unfold that way in ours. I’d like to point out this neither proves, nor disproves his being a real time traveler; merely points out a possible explanation for why some of what he said seems to be real and some does not or only shadows events in our own time.

Ok, so let’s go over what we know in real, proven science about Time Travel. Time travel is accomplished by altering gravity. This concept is already proven by atomic clock experiments that demonstrated that clocks at different altitudes on the earth (therefore a different gravitational potential) would eventually show differing times. NASA did this experiment by putting an atomic clock on board an orbiting space craft and comparing it to a clock on earth after the astronauts landed. It did indeed show that the clock on earth had run slower than the clock in orbit. So, the simple explanation is that the closer an observer is to a gravity source, the slower time passes for them. Tipler, oft mentioned by Titor, was the original author of a theory on massive rotating spheres that ‘proves’ a time machine could be a real possibility, and much work has been done along the lines of proving that if time travel is possible, then the theory of multiple universes must be true as well.

Also, rotating black holes or singularities are thought to have the potential to offer time travel. Kerr, also mentioned by Titor in the design of his time travel machine, described in his work a phenomenon known as the “dual event horizon” that is present within rotating singularities. Just as Tipler describes time travel through his rotating sphere, or cylinder theory, it may be possible to time travel through a rotating black hole, skating between the dual event horizons as Kerr describes. Just don’t dip too far in any direction other than forward or you run the risk of being crushed into an infinitesimal point within the black hole itself.

So, put into as simple of terms as possible, a micro-singularity can, according to Titor, be manipulated by injecting electrons on the surface thereby manipulating the mass and gravity of the micro-singularity and time travel may be achieved. It basically mimics the time travel available through a rotating black hole by creating a Tipler Cylinder under controlled conditions.

Whoever, or whatever this Titor guy was, you have to give him credit. If he wasn’t the real deal, then he put an enormous amount of effort into his science and other things (most of which doesn’t enter into this discussion) in order to perpetrate a hoax. More importantly, he does point the way in which singularities could indeed be used to travel through time and probabilities.

Bottom line is, I don’t know whether or not Titor was the real thing or not. I’m not sure we’ll ever know for sure, unless we’re able to prove without a shadow of a doubt that time travel into the past is not possible. Regardless of any of that, there are some important things we can take away from the story of John Titor, not the least of which is our wasteful lifestyles are horrid and could be changed for the betterment of all mankind.

John Titor: American Time Traveler or American Fraud? Part 3

In previous articles I explore a little bit about how time travel might be possible according to our modern understanding of physics. Now I want to explore a few facts about Titor himself, including his predictions of the future, though to him they weren’t predictions, they were his history.

Titor's time machine installed in the
first vehicle he used to to travel time

Sometime late in 2000 someone using the internet handle of Timetravel_0 started posting on several BBS websites (BBS stands for Bulletin Board System – an old and outdated concept that eventually evolved into modern social media websites like Facebook). Others responded and what resulted was an eventual conversation with someone who was claiming to be a time traveler from the future, John Titor by name, though this is a pseudonym and not his real name.

Titor claimed to have traveled time from the year 2036 back to 1975 in order to procure an obscure computer from that time that would help his time overcome some programming issues that were going to have devastating effects in his time. During the course of that, he interacted with his grandfather, who was one of the original programmers of this 1975 computer. His grandfather, obviously convinced somehow that Titor was the real deal, cooperated with the condition that Titor then travel to the near future, somewhere between 1998 and 2001 presumably, to accomplish something. What that is, we don’t know. Titor alluded to it, but never gave any details. What we do know is, he claimed to have finished doing the task his grandfather asked of him in 2001 and said he would be returning to his own time. Due to the mechanics of the multiverse as he explains it, he can never go back to his exact version of space-time, but he could go back to a version of it that resembled it, probably with only a 2% divergence from his own original time line.

Before we get much further, I want to make it clear that I am not trying to either prove, or disprove the existence of John Titor. Titor was an interesting subject, was very convincing, and yet still might have been a hoax. I do not know whether or not he was for real, or if it was just an elaborate joke played upon the public. I don’t pretend to have any answers. With that said, let’s delve a little into what he said was true of his own time line.

Remember, the following is a condensation of a lot of different posts, for brevity’s sake. If anyone wants to read all of this first hand there are many websites devoted to the subject of John Titor that have much more thorough explanations of exactly what Titor said and the implications of what he was saying.

• A period of civil war/conflict starts around 2004/2005 surrounding the US Presidential elections. This begins a series of events that has people in large cities coming into conflict with people that are living rurally. (Governmental forces being concentrated in the bigger cities. His statement is that the conflict rises slowly, without anyone really knowing what is going on until 2008, when it is widely recognized that conditions have deteriorated.

• By 2008 the conflict in the USA has escalated to the point that there is a Waco type event happening every week. By this time urban and rural areas are in what amounts to pitched battle. Titor claims at the age of 13 he was inducted into the rural army. City forces are dubbed the American Federal Empire. Titor joins a shotgun militia to combat the Federal forces.

• In 2015 the civil war is abruptly ended when Russia makes a preemptive nuclear strike upon almost all US major cities, effectively ending what is called the AFE, or American Federal Empire. Russia also hits a number of other nations, including the European Union and China, ending them as world powers. A general world war is begun that eventually ends in the death of almost 3 billion human beings, and the poisoning of much of the earth.

• Titor claimed that the United States would wage war in Iraq, using claims that Iraq would have weapons of mass destruction as an excuse. He also stated that no WMD’s would be found. This is remarkable seeing as it was years before war was once again waged on Iraq, using that exact same reason. It is also remarkable in its accuracy that no WMD’s would be found.

• By the early 2000’s Titor claimed that the large particle accelerator at CERN (an acronym that translates to English as European Organization for Nuclear Research) would make discoveries about creation of miniature singularities that would lead to the ability to make time travel possible. Remarkably, later in the 2001, after Titor had disappeared, CERN announced publicly that they believed that the creation of micro singularities was indeed possible.

Some of Titor’s more frightening predictions have thankfully, as yet, not come true, including the before mentioned losses of civil liberties and subsequent civil war in the United States. However, let me point out that some would say we have lost quite a few of our civil liberties since that time due to the events surrounding 9/11/2001 and the laws passed since then.

Continuing on with Titor’s claims of future history;

• Titor predicted that war would be waged between Israel and the neighboring Arab states. During the course of this conflict both sides would use weapons of mass destruction.

• As the United States and the west in general became destabilized, China would begin to show its strength by forcibly annexing all of Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

• Mad cow disease would run rampant and become a major health concern, but the danger of it would not be generally known for some time to come. People would be affected by it for decades to come.

• In a similar vein, foods grown from seeds that have been genetically modified would become an issue in the future and affect the general health and welfare of the public in a detrimental way before the practice of genetically modifying food would be stopped.

The second vehicle Titor installed his time travel
machine into in order to travel back to his future

All of these recollections of future history by John Titor paint a very grim picture of the future. Essentially, the year 2036 is a completely different world than we know today. Titor describes the United States as being split into 5 regions of geo-political power. The capital has been moved from Washington D.C. (presumably it was taken out by the barrage of Russian ICBM’s that targeted American cities) to Nebraska. Much of the political power in the United States is held by region, not by the federal government. Five separate Presidents are elected, by region, and they share power on a time-sharing basis. The old political parties have disappeared and been replaced by ten new parties. Much of America is rural in nature, with communities that are bound by tightly knit family ties and mutual dependence. Each community supplies its own power, food and water, for the most part. The main struggle day to day is mostly to survive, as radiation and environmental contamination make much of the land toxic and most water undrinkable.

Though Titor’s statements paint a grim picture, things in Titor’s world are not entirely horrible. The Internet still survives, albeit in a greatly changed form than the Internet we know today. The family is more important than ever, as are bonds with the community. A turn to more environmentally friendly technologies seems to be underway. There is a system of rapid transit trains that service travel between what cities are left. They are working hard on space travel, genetic engineering and other remarkable innovations, proving they are a vibrant and alive culture, not content to live upon the past but forge their own way into the future.

More on this in my final article on John Titor…

John Titor: American Time Traveler or American Fraud? Part 2

John Titor's Time Machine installed in the
vehicle he used to travel through time

In my last article, I discussed John Titor, alleged American time traveler, and touched lightly on the subject of Einstein-Rosen Bridges and how they might be able to form at the event horizons of black holes and theoretically allow travel through space and time. Now that we’ve discussed black holes and time travel theory, let’s get back to the alleged time traveler who went by the pseudonym, John Titor. Mr. Titor, or Titor as I will refer to him from now on, claimed to be from the year 2036 where he was a member of the military in what was left of the United States. His claims were outrageous and wild, but strangely believable. Many people have tried to poke holes in his statements and claims, but none have been able to do so indisputably, though there have been some very sound arguments made against his having actually been from the future. Point being, a lot of people have tried to debunk him, but to my knowledge no one has done so definitively.

The strange thing about Titor was that he was very believable. The way he spoke about the future and his role in it were very convincing. He spoke as if he had actually lived the events he described, as though he had definitely been there. He also spoke of some future developments, some of which have happened and some of which have not. This could possibly be explained because he claimed he was also not exactly from our future; he was from an alternative future world line, which is right in keeping with the current theories on quantum theory and universe development, in which every possible outcome to a situation has a 100% chance of happening in some world line. However, I don’t want to get into a long description of time travel theory; what I want to discuss is how Titor claimed to have traveled through time, because it is actually very possible according to our current knowledge about singularity theory.

The following passages are quoted from posts made by John Titor on internet bulletin boards during the end of the year 2000 and the early months of 2001:

“By using two microsingularites in close proximity to each other, it is possible to create, manipulate and alter the Kerr fields to create a Tipler gravity sinusoid. This field can be adjusted, rotated and moved in order to simulate the movement of mass through a donut-shaped singularity and into an alternate world line. Thus, safe time travel.”

For the record, Titor never discussed who Kerr and Tipler were, but after researching time travel and black hole theory I am assuming that the Kerr and Tipler that Titor refers to are, respectively, Frank John Kerr (8 January 1918 – 15 September 2000) and Frank Jennings Tipler III (born February 1, 1947). Kerr was an astronomer and physicist who accomplished many things in his career. Amongst them would be his work defining the affect of the Magellanic Clouds on our own galaxy and also his pioneering of the use of the magnetron. I believe in Titor’s reference it probably is for the latter that he is being credited, though it could also very probably be for his work on singularities as well, perhaps it is both. Frank Jennings Tipler III is still alive and is well known for several extremely controversial theories about the nature of the universe that do not enter into this discussion. I believe what he is being credited for in reference to Titor’s posts is his doctoral thesis in the field of general relativity that suggests that if a time machine could indeed be created its use would result in the formation of singularities. So Titor’s time travel claims are very much based on real world people and science.

Titor goes on after this post to publish several pictures of his time travel device, several of which can be seen here (and the machine was allegedly built by GE no less. Who knew when GE sponsored the Carousel of Progress in Disneyland that the theme song, “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” would become so literally true for them) that appear to be genuine. The device certainly looks like a polished and professional device in the pictures and he also published specs for the device itself. Certainly if this was a hoax, it was one of the most well thought out hoaxes in the history of mankind. Whoever, or whatever this Titor guy was, you have to give him credit. If he wasn’t the real deal, then he put an enormous amount of effort into his science and other things (most of which doesn’t enter into this discussion) in order to perpetrate a hoax. More importantly, he does point the way in which singularities could indeed be used to travel through time.

More on Titor in Part 3.

John Titor: American Time Traveler or American Fraud?

Late in the year 2000 and in early 2001, a unique American phenomenon took place which the majority of American’s were most likely unaware of and probably for the most part are still unaware of. It was the appearance of a man on internet bulletin boards claiming he was an American time traveler calling himself John Titor who had traveled to our present, his past, from the year 2036. What was remarkable about this man was not that he claimed to be a time traveler; many people, sane or not, have claimed that over the years. What was remarkable was that the man put forth evidence for the truth in his statements that still have to be successfully refuted to this day. Though many have tried and claimed success, no refutation to this date holds so much weight that we can definitively say the man was a fraud, at least not without some smidgen of doubt.

What made his assertions noteworthy and so hard to refute was that he used real world science in the explanation of his claims, as well as detailing some very intriguing and compelling future history. One of the things that remains unique about his extraordinary claims of being a time traveler is the method he allegedly used for time travel; miniature black holes. To understand this, let’s go into some of the science behind black holes and how they relate to time travel and John Titor’s amazing and hard to believe claim.

Let’s start with a (relatively) short explanation of the present thoughts on physics and black hole theory. We can thank Einstein for completely flipping our universe upside down and making Newtonian physics a relic of the past. I believe that today very few people outside the realm of physics actually understand the current theories involved in quantum physics; frankly, I believe I’m one of those people. The vast majority of the science involved seems like science fiction to most folks and is entirely misunderstood.  Black holes are one of those completely misunderstood items.

Most people get the basics of what a black hole is. It does indeed swallow all matter and even light completely. It is a massive gravity well and bends space-time into itself. I think what people get confused on is a black holes “size”. Black holes, or singularities as they are known in physics, do not have a size. They are merely points in space, and in fact, they have no size of any kind. It is merely a point in space where gravity is so strong it bends space-time in on itself; imagine sticking your head into your navel and then being sucked completely into yourself continually until there was literally nothing left except a point in space where your navel used to be. That is a descriptive if not entirely accurate analogy.

It may be that gravity isn’t what causes a black hole, but gravity is merely a by-product of the existence of the black hole itself. In a way they are like pin holes in the universe. So when you hear someone talking about a massive black hole, what they are really talking about is how strong the gravity is, or really, how powerfully the black hole can bend space time into itself.

There is a theory about black holes that they could be a conduit for a tunnel like formation called a wormhole (named because of the visual reference of a worm burrowing its way through the ground) and that these wormholes could be used to travel time and/or space. These theoretical wormholes, also called Einstein-Rosen Bridges, are the best possibility known to man at this time to offer us an opportunity to travel time, if they actually exist. According to modern theory, they also offer the opportunity to travel space, and in theory could allow someone to travel vast distances, even light years, in the blink of an eye. These wormholes are allowable according to physics, as we know them today; given the understanding we have of Einstein’s theory of relativity, which tells us that any mass curves space-time. The larger the mass, the more space-time is curved.

To help you understand the nature of wormholes, imagine you draw a line on a piece of paper. Now, to get from one end of the line to the other, you must follow the line. Now fold the paper, matching one end of the line with the other. Now travel between one end of the line and the other is possible in an instant. This is what theoretical wormhole travel allows. Black holes may be conduits for these wormholes because of their enormous gravitational fields. Their affect on space-time may be so great that Einstein-Rosen Bridges are formed at the event horizon. If this is so, the old belief that a black hole is a conduit to another universe isn’t far off from the truth; instead of another universe, you might travel through space and possibly time in our own universe, perhaps to another black hole in your own galaxy, perhaps to another galaxy all together, or, even... through time.

More in Part two.

Lost Civilizations: The Fremont Tribes

I have enjoyed traveling throughout the United States, and frankly I’ve enjoyed traveling in the Western part of the United States more than anywhere else. Part of this is because I’m from this area, but frankly I find the open spaces and wonders there to be the most attractive of any I’ve had the pleasure of seeing. Traveling throughout all the western states, the one’s I have traveled most widely through are the Great Basin states. Something I have found and very much enjoyed in my travels has been the extensive Native American ruins and petroglyphs throughout the Great Basin area, which are the only existent signs of several long vanished Native American Civilizations. One of those, largely known by the petroglyphs they left behind, is the Fremont Culture.

 One place I found with many Fremont era petroglyphs is near Price, Utah in a place known as Nine Mile Canyon. After a quick drive from Price you arrive at a relatively lush canyon that contains many different petroglyphs throughout the canyon on rock faces in what seems like random places. The majority of these are not marked with any kind of notice or sign, but a vigilant eye can spot them if you drive slowly and look carefully. As I drove up and down the canyon looking for petroglyphs, I imagined in my mind the native Fremont Indians climbing the cliff walls to put their mark upon them, in no way knowing that many years later, their culture would have vanished and ours would exist on top of the locations they enjoyed living in. It was fascinating looking around at the environs and envisioning in my mind how they lived, what things they experienced and saw, what kind of lives they led.

 But who were the Fremont Indians? What kind of people were they? Truthfully, we don’t really know a lot about them. What we do know is that up until 750 years ago there was an obscure band of Native American’s we know as the Fremont Indians living in small settlements, in remote canyons, all over the area known as the Great Basin an area roughly between the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California and Nevada and the Rocky Mountains. Unfortunately for the Fremont Tribe’s, they were either displaced or emigrated, never to be heard from again, most likely being eliminated and absorbed by the tribes that came and replaced them. Again, all we know for sure is around 1250 AD the Fremont culture virtually disappeared without a trace. Within the space of about 100 years, their culture had all but vanished from the Intermountain West, leaving behind arrows scattered on the ground, traces of pottery, a few implements and items such as footwear as well as the remnants of corn and other perishable food items.

 The Fremont culture farmed the land, mostly in the relatively lush river bottoms, though there did seem to be wandering bands of hunter/gatherer’s as well. It seems where there were resources to exploit the Fremont Indians would establish communities that would last as long as there was water and arable land. Other than this, their petroglyphs are almost all that we know of them; less than a handful of perishable items have survived and a more sizable amount of unique types of pottery. Fremont’s used rock shelters to live in as well as building what are called “pit” houses, which were partially underground. They farmed crops of beans, corn and squash using rudimentary farming techniques, though not all farmed. They used hunting and foraging to supplement their farming, and in some cases certain tribes did nothing but hunting and gathering to find food, with no farming of any kind, though likely they traded with other Fremont’s for produce. These wandering bands of Fremont culture Native American’s were probably responsible for the spread of the common types of perishable items we see across the area, such as basket making and footwear. They were also probably responsible for the spread of knowledge about such things as the pottery found commonly throughout the Great Basin area. The Fremont tribes were flexible, adapted easily to changing circumstances and resources and were surprisingly diverse in their living styles.

 The disappearance of the Fremont Indians has been attributed to many things, but my theory is that they were gradually, probably violently, pushed out of the area and exterminated and/or absorbed by what are known as the Numic speaking Native American’s who later became the Ute, Paiute and Shoshone people’s. This was a natural migration on the part of the Numic speaking tribes, brought on by a combination of factors including population pressures and water availability. Not much more is known about them. We do know they vanished, and that it was probably only partly due to being pushed out by other tribes. Part of the reason they vanished is probably because of a multitude of factors, which could include drought, crop failures and disease. Bottom line is, they vanished, and new cultures came to replace them, and a new culture came to replace that.

Is it so hard to take that one step further and imagine new cultures coming in the future to replace ours?

Uturuncu: An Old Super Volcano Gets New Attention

There has been a lot of American as well as world wide media coverage in the past few years about super volcanoes and specifically the Yellowstone Super Volcano.  However, as the year 2012 approaches, more and more people have studied phenomenon of this nature and interest has peaked, mostly due to the doomsday scenarios thrown about by “End of the World” pundits within popular culture who love to crow about such things. Recently the thunder from the iconic American super volcano, Yellowstone, has been stolen by media coverage given over to speculations about a so called “new” super volcano, Uturuncu, which is actually a very old, dormant stratovolcano in southwest Bolivia, where signs of unrest have been identified by the geologically recent extent of uplift deformation and seismic measurements.

According to geologist and expert volcanologist Dr. Shan de Silva from Oregon State University, the ground below the volcano is inflating and the magma chamber may be filling. Uplift of this kind often signals a building eruption. Combined with the thousands of micro quakes measured in the area, this could indeed signal a new era of activity for the volcano, which could include future eruptions. A study published in 2008 (a more recent paper on the subject can be read here) revealed that between 1992 and 2006, geodetic satellite measurements documented  an ongoing 70 km wide deformation field with a central uplift rate of 1 to 2 cm/yr. This uplift indicates that it is most likely caused by a magma influx of 1 cubic meter per second from a source at 17-30 km depth into a shallow reservoir. Sediment and stratigraphic studies suggest that the uplift started around the time the satellite began to record the uplift, which suggests the volcano is just beginning a period of unrest. Constant seismic activity implicates a possible future awakening of the volcano, which last erupted 270,000 years ago. The study also revealed that there are on average 2.6 earthquakes per hour, with a maximum of 14 per hour, recorded at about 4 km depth below the center of the uplift, 4 kilometers southwest of the volcano's summit.

One of the things indicated in the 2008 paper was the following: "The current unrest, together with geophysical anomalies and 270 ka of dormancy indicate that the magmatic system is in a prolonged period of intrusion. Such circumstances might eventually lead to eruption of large volumes of intruded magma with potential for caldera formation."

Taken out of context, this seems alarming. In fairness to the data gathered however, there are some other calderas near Uturuncu showing that their magmatic systems have been able to produce large explosive eruptions in the past, which confirm such potential for future eruptions. Facts point to the ability, however not the certainty, of an eruption coming from Uturuncu that would fit into what is presently defined as a super volcanic eruption, meaning a catastrophic eruption that would have unprecedented global effects.
However, such hypothetical scenarios need to be taken in the context of the data. To the average lay person the facts as they have been laid out seem alarming. But if you actually read the data in the published papers and interpret it correctly, the prospects of an actual supervolcano eruption from Uturuncu in our lifetimes are very remote.

The reality of super volcanoes is; we don’t know a whole lot about them. We have very little knowledge one way or another about their behavior because no one in living memory has ever seen one in eruption nor has any data been gathered for the same reason. So we don’t really know for a certainty that the volcano will erupt within the next several thousand years or if it will erupt next year. There is just no way of knowing. The fact is the earth is dynamic, a living, breathing organism that works in ways we don’t fully understand. So is it possible we could have a super volcano eruption from Uturuncu within our lifetimes? Yes. Is it likely? That would be an emphatic no.

As time goes on the possibility of an eruption coming from Uturuncu approaches a near certainty. However it seems unlikely it is going to be in a near future. To put this in perspective; after 270,000 years, anything is possible, including it taking another 10,000 years to erupt.

How Americans: Space Exploration Part Five

Clearly the previous four parts of this article have described something that hasn't happened...yet. But it could happen, easily. The Earth has been bombarded frequently from space by asteroids and comets. Many people focus on the possibilities of asteroids hitting the Earth but the reality is that most of the big asteroids that had a possibility of hitting the planet have already done so, long past. Asteroids are relatively steady in their orbits and in the intervening billions of years since the solar system was created most of the ones on trajectories that could impact planets have already done so. Comets however are a different situation altogether.

The fact is, comets most likely come from the Oort cloud; a hypothesized spherical cloud of comets which may lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from our sun. Objects within the Oort cloud are thought to be mostly made of methane, ammonia and water ices. This makes them highly dynamic in composition when considering how close to the sun they get in their trajectories through our planetary system.

What is thought to affect them and bring them out of the Oort cloud and into the inner solar system is gravity. Either an unknown planet of some kind out beyond the orbit of Pluto, or the machinations of our own large gas giants like Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus might perturb the balance of the cloud and occasionally cause a new comet to slowly drift towards our sun, in an inevitable slide into the inner solar system.

Essentially what this means is that comets are unpredictable and random. This makes them dangerous to the planets. It is a well known fact that comets and can and do hit planets, as we learned from Shoemaker-Levy 9, a comet which broke up and impacted Jupiter in July of 1994. This gave us ironclad evidence that extra-terrestrial objects do hit our planets from time to time, leaving us with this question to ask ourselves; do we want to leave a comet hitting us to chance? Or do we want to take control over our destinies and provide ourselves with a measure of safety and security by committing the dollars needed to space exploration and technology creation?

Regardless of how you look at space exploration itself, it's pretty hard to argue against exercising caution and protecting ourselves against a possible comet or asteroid impact, which as my hypothetical scenario shows would be incredibly devastating to mankind. In all honesty, my assessment of a comet impact was rather kind and conservative. If, for instance, Shoemaker-Levy 9 had hit Earth instead of Jupiter, the consequences would have been much worse than anything I detailed in my earlier entries. The surface of our planet would have looked a lot like if you took all the contents in your fridge and stuffed them in a giant blender with a couple of gallons of water, then turned it on at full blast. Pasteurized planet.

Not only are we gambling with our future by not funding space exploration, we're also affecting our economy in a very big way. I'll have more on this in the next article.