Good Reads

Alien Space Ship Saves Earth!

Okay, so I'm going to go 'all political on you' as my son would say....  He sometimes accuses me of going 'all logical' on him when I try to sit quietly and watch what the Discovery Channel tries to call science shows these days... like 'Ghost Hunters' that has folks run around haunted houses with a bunch of equipment trying to catch ghosts on tape - hoping, I suppose, that someday a specter will accommodate them and sit down for a full interview.  Anyway, they always come up with nothing (surprise) but end the show with all of them agreeing that they weren't sure but there just might have been something but they just didn't catch it.   Week after week the same.

They do the same thing with real science, like a recent Discover Documentary on the Tunguska event.  Tunguska was a massive explosion that occurred in Russia in 1908 flattening everything for miles, caused by a meteorite (big one).   Just the kind of cool exploding thing that my son loves - that and Myth Busters blowing up cement trucks.

This kind of thing is a perfect set up for the sort of pseudo science that the Discovery Channel likes to exploit.  It was long enough ago and remote enough that there wasn't anyone there, so no actual witnesses to muck things up with facts. And because it's a desolate area of mosquito-infested bogs and swamps in a hilly taiga, reachable only by being dropped in by helicopter or a long hike, not a whole lot of people went to go check it out for a long time.  It's perfect for 'you can't prove me wrong, so I'm right' science.  It's the kind of science that my teenager is currently very fond of... in fact it's the kind of argument that he and a whole of politicians love to make about nearly anything that will a: get them out of trouble, or b: prove their argument.

The Tunguska meteorite completely blew itself (and lots of other stuff) into a bazillion pieces, leaving, well, not much.  So, as a result, and despite a whole lot of subsequent science, numerous fringe theories have come up - and with the help of the Discovery Channel, continue.   These suggest that it was either: a black hole, b: the biggest lightning bolt you've ever seen, c: a piece of anti-matter, or d: and I love this one best - the exploding nuclear power plant of an errant space vehicle belonging to extraterrestrials (Kozo Kowai).

I mean I give Mr. Kowai huge credit for creativity.   And I forgot to tell you the bit about how 'independent thinkers' like Kowai, added that the reason the spaceship was there in the first place was that it was short of water for it's nuclear powered plant and was actually aiming for lake Baikal, the largest body of freshwater in the world.

There are a whole lot of questions that remain about Tunguska - how big was it, what was it made of, how exactly did it explode.... Lots of things.  And don't get me wrong science doesn't solve things right away, or always correctly at first.

Anyway, the point to all this is that science does its thing, no matter what nut jobs are out there, just give it time.  And I think that real science is way cooler than made up stuff.  Check this out.  Whatever hit the earth in 1908 was huge - I mean the biggest thing in a long time, kind of huge, 40 megatons of TNT huge.   It's the largest thing to hit the earth that anyone has ever found.  So big and so fast that part of it may have broken off in the explosion and bounced back to space, like a stone you've skipped across a flat lake.

But the 'independent' thinkers still don't like this, and you can always corner a good scientist if you ask 'are you 100% sure?'.  Any scientist worth his or her salt will always say, 'Well the theory is the best we have, but we can't ever be 100% sure'.  At which point the independents go all postal and say 'See! I knew it was spaceships!'  

Now I'm all for spaceships mind you.  My grandmother used to say that she always kept an open mind and would certainly offer her tea in her best tea service should they come by to visit.  But, it can be harmful in the wrong hands - and by 'wrong hands' I'm talking about politicians.

So, back to politics... politicians do the same thing as the Discovery Channel.  Take the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for example.  Everything points to defeat.  No matter how you look at it everything from the cost, the culture, past history, the impact on world terrorism, lives (ours and theirs), everything.   Every fact you look at, and there's plenty to look at.  Just one? - no one in recorded history has ever won in Afghanistan.

But the facts don't make it interesting, nor do they win elections.  Facts get in the way of possibly suggesting that the loss of lives was in vain.  Facts get in the way of making us out as any better than them, or our style of government, or religion, any better than theirs. Facts get in the way of patriotic fervor that lets our youth and their parents think it's okay to go off to kill and be killed.  

Just think what it would be like to have to look at the Iraqi mother who had lost her son, and without resorting to platitudes about peace or terrorism, explain to her what collateral damage was.   

So, now you know how to do this yourself.   Here's what you do.  You take the idea you want to get across (This time we can win in Afghanistan).  Attach it as an alternative conclusion for another event (The Russians didn't win their battle in Afghanistan because they were the bad guys) - don't worry about the facts.  Then simply add an emotional reason why people should believe in yours, (We need to spread Democracy around the world) and call all others short sighted.

On that downer, I'll leave you with the continuation of the alien spacecraft theory.  Turns out that it started in 1946 when a Soviet author named Alexander Kazantsev wrote a science fiction story about a nuclear powered spacecraft from Mars on a visit to collect fresh water from Lake Baikal, had exploded, showering the area in radioactivity.  Well, as I noted above, a well-known soviet scientist, took that and ran with it - fellow named - Alexei Zolotov.  His story, despite much enthusiasm on his part, died down after no one found any radioactivity that couldn't be counted for by nearby atomic bomb tests, until 2004.  In August of that year, another Russian expedition led by Yuri Labvin went to the site and has claimed to have recovered an "extraterrestrial device".   This story was carried around the world in Pravda, wire services and other press outlets as credible "Reported new claim that a UFO had been involved in Tunguska".  

Labvin, had elaborated a bit on the original story and now believes that it wasn't an alien ship that crashed, but rather, the aliens had in fact saved earth by blowing up a huge meteorite that was on a collision path with us.  They used a nuclear missile to do it.

British reporter said it best: It's a rather sad commentary on the current state of anything goes attitudes among some science correspondents that such blatant rubbish is being reported." 

Like I said, no one has ever won in Afghanistan.