Intelligence and Judgement

Intelligence is not information alone but also judgement

Please, be polite

You, people, live on a moving platform, the Earth, a lovely and more or less placid place. Most of you respect the Humans and treat them as your equals or almost.  But some of the immigrants on the Earth prefer insult every native-earth-born-creature hey meet and position themselves and superior beings.

But why do you disrespect the Earthlings? In fact, human beings are rather good in understanding the world. It may seem to you that their logic is deficient (and in part it may be true, I grant you this), but they were able to hunt game and build fires to survive. And they figured out how to build a wheel. And they always watched the stars and the flowers.

Remember that in the great Cosmic Ocean there are countless stars and planets, inhabited by millions of civilisations both younger and older than this one, the Human civilisation which has developed in this solar system. 

Yeas, there is a million worlds in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that at this same moment is inhabited by beings who are very different from each other (and many of them much more advanced than the Earth).

But all these worlds have one characteristic in common: they change. And almost all of them change for the better. If you lived on a planet where nothing ever changed, there would be little to do. So if you don’t like Humans because they are ignorant and they do not know a lot about the Universe, you are wrong!

Remember that knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart. Intelligence is not information alone but also judgement, so be polite and respect the Humans! Help them to overcome their difficulties so one day in a very distant future they might be able to help your home world…

Thank you and be polite!

You’ll find below some advice about how to explain to the Humans the external World. If you are a new resident on the Earth, you may find these advice useful.

Don’t forget to register as Newcomer at the Milky Way Galaxy Office for Aliens on the Earth (MWGOAE). Some fees apply.

Signed: Megan Jorgensen, expat on the Earth, born on the star R-1876642-12, Large Magellanic Cloud, representative of the MWGOAE in this Solar system).

Over the dying embers of the campfire, on a moonless night, Humans watched the stars and the flowers. Image : © Megan Jorgensen.

Astronomy for the Astrologer

Astronomy and Astrology

Astronomy for the Astrologer

Are the zodiacal signs real heavenly bodies? Are there other bodies in our solar system that we should know about?

One of the most common and constant complains from the astrological fraternity is that astronomers simply will not even try to understand them. The astrologers assert that the astronomers refuse to examine their evidence. For the most part, astronomers refuse to reply, though in the past some of them have shucked their cloak of dignified silence and made boobs of themselves by trying to disprove statistically “astrological tenets” that no reasonable astrologer ever held in the first place. Thus Dr. J. Allen Hynek, associated with UFO research in the press, upon hearing that astrologers linked Mercury with intellectual activity, set to work with scientific thoroughness and showed there was no significant correlation between a high I.Q. and a strong Mercury position in the horoscope. But then, on the other hand, what astrological theorist ever claimed that there was?

The contention by astrologers that astronomers refuse to review their claims is, to a great extent, true. But there is something to be said for the astronomers, too. To them, the universe contemplated by the astrologer is as much out of date as the physiology known to Hippocrates and Galen. There can be no real objection to looking at the Earth as the center of the solar system, considering the fact that Albert Einstein postulated that what is seen by an observer is, in a relative sense, true for him. But astrologers must ever remember that their view-point is no more than relative and that astronomers are quite justified in asserting that practically no astrologer knows even the rudiments of astronomy.

In these times, advanced astrologers and cosmobiologists are accumulating more and more evidence to support most of the claims made for their ancient science. One particularly important discovery is the one suggesting that forces originating outside of the solar system can have an effect upon chemical substances found in human cellular issue. Evidence such as this is lost upon the astrologer who has no understanding of the cosmos as viewed by an astronomer. This article intended for the astrologer who wants to get up-to-date of what science knows about the physical universe he uses as the basis for his interpretations.

Although the Earth creates an elliptical path around the Sun as far as our solar system is concerned, in relation to the galaxy its actual path is something like that of a corkscrew. This means that at certain seasons of the year, the Sun tends to be between the Earth and the sources of Energy which arise in the galaxy.  Since the blocking effect of the Sun is constant from one year to another, it means that the rate of chemical reactions of the type referred to will vary according to different seasons of the year. It is thought that this may be the fundamental basis for astrology.

If the Sun has such an effect, it is quite likely that the planets do also, perhaps by creating a turbulence in whatever field of energy is being emitted in the Milky Way. That such turbulence exists is evidenced by the fact that RCA Communications has for years been using planetary positions to compute the effect upon their international network.

Most serious astrologers long ago gave up the idea that the planets exert any direct influence on mundane events, but the exact rationale of astrology has remained somewhat of a mystery. For some time, consideration was given to Jung’s theory of synchronism, that is that two events may be related by time instead of causality. With the discoveries now being made, however, it seems that the nature of astrological forces resembles a field effect. By this is meant a situation where two bodies have an effect upon one another, not by virtue of their inherent qualities, but because of the nature of the field in which they exist. In the gravitational theory proposed by Einstein, for instance, two bodies are attracted to one another, not because of their own natures, but because their time-space field makes attraction the path of least resistance for them.

Astrologers used to play big role throughout the history of mankind. Photo by Elena.

To see how this works, take a sheet of cloth and suspend it by its four corners so it is approximately flat. Now put two steel marbles on it. No matter where you place them they will be attracted towards one another. This attraction is due to the depression which they make in the sheet, not because of any direct effect of the marbles upon one another.

Field effect astrology – if we may coin a term – would depend upon an analogous phenomenon. Assume a field of energy originating in our galaxy that has a profound effect upon certain chemicals in the human system. From time to time during the year, the Earth is exposed to varying strengths of that energy due to the shielding effect of the Sun. At the same time, the field is further modified by the presence of planetary bodies orbiting the Sun. In total, the astrological effect is caused not by the action of the planets upon the Earth but by field turbulences of which they serve as signals.

Aside from the astrological effect, there are also astronomical effects, and these can be attributed to the influence of other bodies in the solar system. A well-known instance of this is the sunspot cycle with its period of eleven years. Sunspots are fields of turbulence on the surface of the Sun. Their appearance is accompanied by the emission of large quantities of radiation. It has been shown time and time again the as the level of that energy increases, the Earth’s population as a whole begins to get more and more anxious.

During periods of radiation increase, there is a correlative increase in the number of riots, homicides, and wars. Communications are disturbed. The rate of plant and animal growth is altered. The sunspots increase to their maximum in 11 years. At the end of that time they suddenly subside and begin once more to increase again. There is some evidence that the sunspot cycle may be associated with Jupiter’s period of revolution around the Sun. If this is true, there is another direct effect to be considered.

There is a direct influence of the Moon upon the Earth. It is common knowledge that it causes tides in the oceans. What is not so well known is that it also causes tides on land surfaces as well. The point on Earth directly under the Moon is pulled upwards to a distance of two feet.

Though research at Northwestern University has shown that there is a correlation between the Moon’s phases and certain events in the life cycles of lower animals, there is still considerable debate about its direct effect upon humans. There is a body of empiric knowledge based upon reports of police and fire departments as well as mental hospitals and saloon managers that the Full Moon coincides with a period of aberrant sociological phenomena. So far there is disagreement among researchers who have conducted scientific inquiries into this. There has been at least one report that female admissions to mental hospitals reach their peak on the Full Moon; male admissions peak on the New Moon.

It would appear that phenomena correlating with human behaviour fall into two distinct groups. In the one, there is a direct astronomical influence as in the case of the Sun and Moon. In the other, there is the field effect in an energy stream which is occasioned by planetary positions and the position of the Earth with reference to the source of that energy in the galaxy.

The vernal equinox point, that is where the Sun crosses the equator on its way north is the point at which the zodiac begins. For this reason it is known as the first point of Aries. From this point the zodiac is divided into 12 signs of 30 degrees each.

As you probably know, the constellation that identified the original signs of the zodiac have shifted out of the positions that the held back during the days when astrology was becoming formalized, a period around the second century B.C. This is sometimes advanced as an argument against traditional astrology. Actually it is not. It is quite apparent that it is the division of the ecliptic into 12 equal signs that is important. The fact that certain constellations served to identify those signs a couple of thousand years ago was merely a matter of labelling. As a matter of fact, , we are not even certain at what time the constellation of Aries actually coincided with the segment  of ecliptic now known by that name. Estimates of the exact time made by both astronomers and astrologers range from 317 B.C to 321 A.D. Probably the figure determined by Cyril Fagan – 220 A.D. – is most nearly correct for the time at which the first point of the constellation coincided with the first point of Aries on the fixed or ecliptic zodiac. Since the first point moves backwards, this would mark the time that it was on the verge of moving into Pisces. It will, according to this calculation, move into Aquarius in about 300 years.

Can Astrologers predict the future? Illustration by Elena.

Measuring Positions in the Sky

The Earth turns on its axis at a regular rate, on revolution per day. For convenience geographers divided the Earth into 360 divisions along the equator. Those are called degrees of longitude pass by given point in 24 hours. This is at the rate of 15 degrees per hour or one degree every four minutes.

The particular degree on which you are situated is called your meridian. It is also the highest point that the Sun will reach any day. This is the location of the medium coeli (M.C) or Midheaven. The meridian passes through the zenith or the point in the sky directly over your head. The zenith is always the same number of degrees above the equator which gives them their ship’s latitude.

Sometimes astrologers become confused over the difference between celestial latitude – the distance the body is above or below the ecliptic – and declination. Declination is the number of degrees a body is above or below the celestial equator. The celestial equator is an imaginary line that runs across the heavens directly above the Earth’s equator. If you stand on the Earth’s equator, your zenith is located on the celestial equator.

Another method of measuring positions in the sky is by their hour angle. We saw that the Earth moved at the rate of one degree every four minutes. For us, that means that the heavenly bodies seem to move over our heads at the same rate. We can locate a body by saying how long it will take to reach our meridian or by how long it has been since it passed our meridian.

For instance, let us say that a body is located 15 degrees to the east of our meridian. We know that at the rate of four minutes for each degree, it will take 4 times 15 minutes or one hour to come to our meridian. Thus we say that the body has an hour angle of one hour east. If it had passed the meridian and was 15 degrees away, we would say it was one hour west.

Still one more way of locating celestial bodies is by their right ascension. This term, obscure to most astrologers, means no more than the number of degrees measured east from the first point of Aries to the meridian on which a body lies. This measurement is taken along the celestial equator, however, and not the zodiac or ecliptic. Thus is does not always agree with zodiacal measurement. For instance, a body at 15 degrees of Taurus would be 45 degrees away from the first point of Aries if measured on the ecliptic, but its right ascension, along the celestial equator, would vary with the time of year. Some astrologers use tables of the Sun’s apparent right ascension in progressing horoscopes; they feel that the Sun’s movement in right ascension for one day gives a better correlation with a year of life than does the standard “one-degree” method.

Has astrology anything to do with the real world? Illustration: Megan Jorgensen.

Credit Bureau Phone Numbers

Credit Bureau Phone Numbers and Aliens

If there are intelligent beings on the planets of fairly nearby stars, could they know about us?

On another planet, the chances of finding another form of intelligence is rather high. However , the chances of finding beings who are physically very similar to us is near zero, because a different sequence of random processes applies making hereditary diversity and a different environment to select particular combinations of genes, very different from ours’.

They may have switching elements analogous to our neurons. But the neurons which operate their process of thinking may be very different. There may be planets where the intelligent beings have about the same neural connections, as we do. Perhaps they act as superconductors that work at very low temperatures rather than organic devices that work at room temperature, in which case their speed of thought will be thousands of times faster than ours and they will develop therefore faster.

Or let’s imagine a situation that may seem incredible, but can be very real:  perhaps the equivalent of neurons in their brains would not be in direct physical contact but in radio communication so that a single intelligent being could be distributed among many different organisms, or even many different planets, each with a part of the intelligence of the whole, each contributing by radio to an intelligence much greater than itself.

In this case they will need neither phones, nor credit bureau phone numbers, as we need here on Earth.

In some sense such a radio integration of separate individuals is already beginning to happen on the planet Earth, with our system of communication

Places where the neural connections are immensely high… I wonder what they would know.

One conclusion is however evident: Because we inhabit the same universe, we and they must share some substantial information in common. If we could make contact, there is much in their brains that would be of great interest to ours. But the opposite is also true. Extraterrestrial intelligence – even beings substantially further evolved than we – will be interested in us, in what we know, how we think, what our brains are like, the course of our evolution, the prospects for our future.

Might they somehow have an inkling of the long evolutionary progression from genes to brains to libraries that has occurred on the obscure planet Earth?

They might not use our system of communications, their phones may be quite a mystery for us and their system of credit of phone numbers might seem bizarre, but if there are intelligent beings on the planets of fairly nearby stars, they are interested in us. But what they already know about the Earth?

Anyway, if the extraterrestrials stay at home, there are at least one way in which they might find out about us.

This way would be to listen with large radio telescopes. For billions of years they would have heard only weak and intermittent radio static caused by lighting and the trapped electrons and protons whistling within the Earth’s magnetic field. Then, less than a century ago, the radio waves leaving the Earth would become stronger, louder, less like noise and more like signals. The inhabitants of Earth had finally stumbled upon radio communication. Today there is a vast international telephone, radio, television, radar communications traffic. At some radio frequencies the Earth has become the brightest objet, the most powerful radio source, in the solar system – brighter than Jupiter, brighter than the Sun.

An extraterrestrial civilization monitoring the radio emission from Earth and receiving such signals could not fail to conclude that something interesting had been happening here lately.

Our inkling to acquire more and more phone numbers leads us to an eventually contact with alien civilisation! And we can’t change this psychology inherent to the human beings.

“The smartphone revolution is under-hyped, more people have access to phones than access to running water. We've never had anything like this before since the beginning of the planet.” (Marc Lowell Andreessen, an American entrepreneur, founder of Netscape). Illustration by Megan Jorgensen.

Telepathy

Telepathy

Tell me, guys, do you believe in telepathy? To tell the truth, I’ve never given it much thought, but the evidence seems rather convincing. But is someone else capable of reading our mind?

I don’t know if you’ve read any of the evidence suggesting that telepathy is somehow independent of time.

Can you imagine a room without walls, where there’s no entrance or exit?

Well, it’s not as simple as that, but it seems that we can really read other people’s mind while we are dreaming or even slightly drink. Yes, you may say that invalidates the evidence, but I don’t think so. It seems it’s the only way we could break through the barrier that separates us from the others minds.

Try and imagine the effect of that discovery: the effect of learning that every act, every thought or desire that flitted through your mind is being watched and shared by another being. It’ll mean, of course, the end of all normal life for everyone.

The real life would become a nightmare as every man and every woman would be a kind of telepathic Peeping Tom – no longer content with mere watching.

The will be a constant but sudden invasion of your mind. People will be always there, sharing your emotions, gloating over the passions they can’t experience in their bodies.

To make matters worse, some people will came chasing after me, and they wouldn’t leave you alone, and bombard you with e-mail letters and phone calls. It’ll be hell, you’ll be unable to fight them, so you’ll have to run away (and you’ll think on a small calm village in Costa Rica, of all places, where no one would bother you.

Have you ever wondered what the human race will do when science has discovered everything, when there are no more worlds to be explored, when all the stars have given up their secrets? Telepathy is one of the answers.

Indeed, I don’t know if you’ve read any of the evidence suggesting that telepathy is somehow independent of time. If it is people will send back their minds to an earlier, more virile age, and become parasites on the emotions of their predecessors.

Perhaps this explains all cases of what we call possession. How the future Telepath must have ransacked the past to assuage their hunger! Can’t you picture them, flocking like carrion crows around the decaying  Afro-Canadian  Empire, jostling one another for the minds of the Emperor Tremblay? (But perhaps they haven’t much choice and must take whatever mind they can contact in any age, transforming from that to the next whenever he has the chance).

However, perhaps telepathy is a symbol of conscience, a personification of guilt, remarkably detailed hallucination, that is yet another example of the tricks the human mind can play in its efforts to deceive itself. And when we realized this, we would cease to be haunted by our past in times of emotional crises. Just trying to fight an increasing sense of futility and uselessness during these moments might be enough.

Telepathy - a room without walls, where there is no exit. Illustration : Megan Jorgensen.

Space Tourism

A Reality of Space Tourism

Space is truly the final frontier for mankind. As future space tourists, we should keep our eyes on the fast-developing space industry, as it will shape our civilization for decades to come.

Imagine yourself heading out with your family on your annual vacation. Except, this time you aren’t going to a harbour for a Caribbean cruise or to an airport for a Chilean skiing tour. Instead you thrill to the idea that in a couple of hours you’ll be in a spaceport, waiting in line to take your places in a spaceship for this much-anticipated trip to the Moon. This scenario is a likely picture of what might be encountered in the next few decades.

This isn’t to say that space tourism isn’t available now; in fact, Russia has previously allowed some space tourists to travel alongside their cosmonauts to the International Space Station (ISS) for anywhere between 20 and 40 million US dollars (an insignificant sum for some of us, the Earthlings).

The goal, however, for the burgeoning space tourism sector is to make these trips more affordable for the average citizen and to provide infrastructure needed to make spaceflights possible. Today, most of the spacecraft can no longer be used after completing their mission and are discarded, which can prove to be extremely costly. Thus, companies wishing to invest in space tourism are currently researching methods of reusable space transportation.

SpaceX, for instance, has a prototype spaceship called Dragon that can transport up to 7 crew members. It is currently working with NASA to find a way to transport people headed to the orbit to work there, but it also hopes to provide commercial spaceflights to ordinary citizens.

Reaction Engines Ltd has proposed a “space-plane” named SKYLON that produces thrust by burning liquid hydrogen fuel with the oxygen from the air, significantly reducing the amount of liquid oxygen needed on board the ship to burn the fuel. Its SABRE engines will accelerate the ship to Mach 5 – that’s 6125 km/hour up until 25 kilometers above sea level, at which point the engines will switch to rocket mode and carry it the rest of the way to space.

The design received endorsement from the European Space Agency (ESA) in November 2012, and they were looking for funding to build there SABRE engines.

Another well-known company, Virgin Galactics, already had more than 500 ticket holders in 2014 waiting to catch a ride on board SpaceShipTwo, a spaceship that can hold two crew members and six passengers. The Virgin Galactics plans for this spacecraft to be the first ship that sends  tourists to space on a regular basis. The ticket price is currently reported to be $200,000 with a $20,000 down payment, a price much more lower that what the Russians charge. One of the first few planned trips are supposed to take passengers 110 kilometers above sea level marking the beginning of open space, for a total weightlessness duration of 6 minutes.

It is important to keep in mind that these ships will need dedicated ports to house them and to accommodate them for takeoff and landing. Several of these have already been open, like Spaceport America in New Mexico, open for business since 2011 and a few others are being built.

In addition to transportation, future space travelers will need tourist destinations to visit and accommodations to live in for the duration of their journey. A couple of companies are looking into providing housing for these individuals during their stay before the takeoff.

Bigelow Aerospace Company plans to send housing modules into space alongside spacecraft. These modules are compact rooms that can inflate upon command to form livable areas that are shielded from the radiation of the Sun. Theoretically Bigelow Aerospace could build an entire hotel room by room just by interconnecting these modules, effectively creating new destinations in space for tourists. One of these modules is destined to connect to the International Space Station in 2015 or later, providing Bigelow Aerospace with a chance to demonstrate their concept.

Space Island Group, another contender in the space tourism business, intends to build ring-like structures that can spin at variable speeds to create an artificial gravity that is equal to a third of the gravity of Earth. This could be highly beneficial, as it may potentially eliminate many of the negative effects that come from prolonged exposure to low-gravity environments, such as muscle atrophy or loss of bone density.

Naturally, all these accommodations will need to regularly stock oxygen, food, water and other supplies for the guests. While some of these necessities could be grown or recycled on the stations themselves, most supplies would still need to be sent directly from Earth. One candidate for these missions is SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which is capable of carrying a total of 10T of cargo, more than enough to resupply future space hotels. As a matter of fact, in 2008 already NASA employed Falcon 9 to send supplies to the International Space Station, thus illustrating its potential as a reliable cargo carrier.

Safety will be one of the main factors that will make or break the future of space tourism. Before governments can allow their citizens to leave the planet, companies must prove that their shuttles and living quarters will protect their customers throughout their journey.

The US government has already begun to draft some guidelines to ensure safety of their citizens who wish to travel to space. In 2004, the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act, H.R. 5382, was signed into law. It provides rules and regulations that space companies must follow to legally send people to space, such as getting a license from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (FAA/AST).

… After all, we might soon find ourselves staring at a tiny blue dot outside our windows and reminiscing of a time when this was all but an impossible dream…

Sources:

• Roupen Djinbachian, Space Tourism close to becoming a reality Technophilic, Winter 2013, page 22).
• Space Tourist Back From “Paradise”, Lands on Steppes”, by Patrick E. Tyler.
• Elysium, movie 2013.
• Clark, Stephen (September 2010), “Boeing allies with Space Adventures for tourist flights”.
• “Anywhere on Earth in four hours? Top-secret Skylon space plane could replace jets and rockets, company claims”. National Post, 29 November 2012.
• “Branson Dedicates Space Terminal”, Wall Street Journal, 18 October 2011.
• “International space station to receive inflatable module”, Washington Post, 16 January 2013.
• “Private-spaceflight bill signed into law”, NBC News, 23 December 2004.

What will we discover in Outer Space, is nothing compared with our beloved planet (Quotations from Megan Jorgensen). Image : © Megan Jorgensen.

Human History

Human History

Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. We have broadened the circle of those we love. We have now organized what are modestly described as superpowers, which include groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural background working in some sense together – surely a humanizing and character-building experience.

If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth. Many of those who run the nations will find this idea unpleasant. They will fear the loss of power. We will hear much about treason and disloyalty. Rich nations will have to share their wealth with poor ones. But the choice, as H. G. Wells once said in a different context, is clearly the universe or nothing.

A reasonable – even an ambitious – program of unmanned exploration of the planets is inexpensive. The budget for space sciences is not very expensive. Comparable expenditures in many countries are more or less the same. Together these sums represent the equivalent of two or three nuclear submarines per decade, or the cost overruns on one of the many weapon systems in a single year. In the last quarter of 1979, the program cost of the U.S. F/A-18 aircraft increased by $5,1 billion, and the F-16 by $3,4 billion. Since their inceptions, significantly less has been spent on the unmanned planetary programs of both the United States and the Soviet Union than has been wasted shamefully – for example, between 1970 and 1975, in the U.S. bombing of Cambodia, an application of national policy that cost $7 billion. The total cost of a mission such as Viking to Mars, or Voyager to the outer solar system, is less than that of the 1979-80 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Through technical employment and the stimulation of high technology, money spent on space exploration has an economic multiplier effect. One study suggests that for every dollar spent on the planets, seven dollars are returned to the national economy. And yet there are many important and entirely feasible missions that have not been attempted because of lack of funds – including roving vehicles to wander across the surface of Mars, a comet rendezvous, Titan entry probes and a full-scale research for radio signals from other civilizations in space.

Carl Sagan, Cosmos.

Even an ambitious program of unmanned space exploration in inexpensive. Image: Space Travel by © Megan Jorgensen.

X Ray Tech Salary

X Ray Tech Salary

Any society with a marked population explosion will be forced to devote all its energies and technological skills to feeding and caring for the population on its home planet. Technicians will be busy and tech salaries will go up. On any planet, no matter what its biology or social system, an exponential increase in population will swallow every resource.

We can predict thus that no civilization can possibly survive to an interstellar spacefaring phase unless it limits its numbers.

Of course, this is a very powerful conclusion and is in no way based on the idiosyncrasies of a particular civilization.

Conversely any civilization that engages in serious interstellar exploration and colonization must have exercised zero population growth or something very close to it for many generations.

The famous astronomer Carl Sagan and his colleague William Newman have calculated that if a million years ago a spacefaring civilization with a low population growth rate emerged two hundred light-years away and spread outward, colonizing suitable worlds along the way, their survey starships would be entering our solar system only about now.

But a million years is a very long period of time. If the nearest civilization is younger than this, they would not have reached us yet. A sphere two hundred light-years in radius contains 200,000 suns and perhaps a comparable number of worlds suitable for colonization. It is only after 200,000 other worlds have been colonized that, in the usual course of things, our solar system would be accidentally discovered to harbor indigenous civilization.

What does it mean for a civilization to be a million years old? We have had X rays, radio telescopes and spaceships for a few decades; our technical civilization is young, scientific ideas of a modern cast a few thousand, civilization in general a few tens of thousands of years; human beings evolved on this planet only a few million years ago. At anything like our present rate of technical progress, an advanced civilization millions of years old is as much beyond us as we are beyond a bush baby a macaque.

Will a civilization with a low population growth reach some lush Eden? Illustration by Elena.

Used Transmissions for Sale

Used Transmissions for Sale

The two Voyager spacecraft are bound for the Galaxy. Affixed to each is a gold-plated copper phonograph record with a cartridge and stylus and, on the aluminum record jacket, instructions for use. The humans sent data about their genes, something about their brains, and something about their libraries to other beings who might sail the sea of interstellar space. Although the recipients do not know any languages of the Earth, included are greetings in sixty human tongues, as well as the hellos of the humpback whales.

Photographs of humans from all over the world are attached, caring for one another, learning, fabricating tools and art and responding to challenges.

There is an hour and a half of exquisite music from many cultures, some of it expressing the sense of cosmic loneliness, the wish to end this isolation, the longing to make contact with other beings in the Cosmos. Recordings were sent of the sounds that would have been heard on this planet from the earliest days before the origin of life to the evolution of the human species and our most recent burgeoning technology. It is a love song cast upon the vastness of the deep.

But the Earth did not want to send primarily scientific information. Any civilization able to intercept Voyager in the depths of interstellar space, its transmitters long dead, would know far more science than the terrestrial science does.

Instead the Voyagers tell those other beings something about what seems unique about the Earthlings.

The interests of the cerebral cortex and limbic system are well represented; the R-complex less so.

In this spirit the people who launched the Voyagers included on the spacecraft the thoughts and feelings of one person, the electrical activity of the brain, heart, eyes and muscles, which were recorded for an hour, transcribed into sound, compressed in time and incorporated into the record.

In one sense the Humans have launched into the Cosmos a direct transcription of the thoughts and feelings of a single human being in the month of June in the year 1977 on the planet Earth.

Perhaps the recipients will make nothing of it, or think it is a recording of a pulsar, which in some superficial sense it resembles.

Many, perhaps most, of recorded messages will be indecipherable. But the Earth sent them because it is important to try.

Or perhaps a civilization unimaginably more advanced than the Humanity will be able to decipher such recorded thoughts and feelings and appreciate these efforts to share all these thought with them.

We have sent our messages because it is important to try, not because we’d like to sell used transmission. Image: © Megan Jorgensen.

Erosion on the Earth

Erosion on the Earth

Because of erosion on the Earth, our monuments and artifacts will not, in the natural course of things, survive to the distant future. But the spaceships Voyager launched in the XX Century carry human records on their way out of the Solar system.

Indeed, brains and genes and books encode information differently and persist through time at different rates. But the persistence of the memory of the human species will be far longer in the impressed metal grooves on the Voyager interstellar record. It happens because the erosion in interstellar space – chiefly impacting dust grains and cosmic rays – is so slow that the information on these recordings will last a billion years.

But the Voyager message is traveling with agonizing slowness. The fastest object ever launched by the human species, this probe will still take tens of thousands of years to go the distance to the nearest star.

Any television program will traverse in hours the distance that Voyager has covered in years. A television transmission that has just finished being aired will, in only a few hours, overtake the Voyager spacecraft in the region of Saturn and beyond and speed outward to the stars. If it is headed that way, the signal will reach Alpha Centauri in a little more than four years. If, some decades or centuries hence, anyone out there in space hears our television broadcasts, I hope they will think well of us, a product of fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution, the local transmogrification of matter into consciousness.

Our intelligence is providing us with awesome powers, but it is not yet clear yet if we have the wisdom to avoid our own self-destruction.

However, many of us are trying very hard. We hope that very soon in the perspective of our cosmic time we will have unified our planet peacefully into an organisation cherishing the life of every living creature on it and will be ready to take that next great step, to become part of a galactic society of communicating civilizations.

Will we ever become part of a galactic society? Image : © Megan Jorgensen.

Illegal Radio Transmissions

Illegal Radio Transmissions

or Million Years Old Society

A technical civilization one million years-old has descended on the planet Earth… Would we even recognize its presence?

More important question yet: Would a society a million years in advance of us be interested in colonization or interstellar spaceflight?

In fact, it may be people have a finite lifespan for a reason. Could it be that we are so interested in spaceflight because it is a way of perpetuating ourselves beyond our own lifetimes? Of course, progress in the biological and medical sciences might uncover that reason and lead to suitable remedies.

But might a civilization composed of essentially immortal beings consider interstellar exploration fundamentally childish? It may be that we have not been visited because the stars are strewn abundantly in the expanse of space, so that before a nearby civilization arrives, it has altered its exploratory motivations or evolved into forms indetectable to us.

It would be very easy for extraterrestrials to make and unambiguously artificial interstellar message (provided that they have the same logic we have and the same mathematics, which is reasonable enough if they try to make a contact with their neighbours). For example, they could first prime numbers – numbers divisible only by themselves and by one – are 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 19.

It is extremely unlikely that any natural physical process could transmit radio messages containing prime numbers only. If we received such a message we would deduce a civilization out there that was at least fond of prime numbers. But the most likely case is that interstellar communication will be a kind of palimpsest, like the palimpsests of ancient writers short of papyrus or stone who superimposed their messages on top of pre-existing messages.

Because we will share scientific and mathematical insights with any other civilization, understanding the interstellar message coming from a very advanced cosmic community will be the easiest part of the problem. Convincing the governments to fund a search for extraterrestrial intelligence is the hard part.

In fact, it may be that civilizations can be divided into two great categories: one in which the scientists are unable to convince non-scientists no authorize a search for extraplanetary intelligence, in which energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain unchallenged and society falters and retreats from the stars; and another category in which the grand vision of contact with other civilizations is shared widely, and a major search us undertaken.

This is one of the few human endeavors where even a failure is a success. If we were to carry out a rigorous search for extraterrestrial radio signals encompassing millions of stars and heard nothing, we would conclude that galactic civilizations were at best rare, a calibration of our place in the universe. It would speak eloquently of how rare are the living things of our planet, and would underscore, as nothing else in human history has, the individual worth of every human being.  If we were to succeed, the history of our species and our planet would be change forever.

Perhaps at an adjacent frequency or a faster timing, there would be another message, which would turn out to be a primer, an introduction to the language of interstellar discourse. The primer would be repeated again and again because the transmitting civilization would have no way to know when we tuned in on the message. And then, deeper in the palimpsest, underneath the announcement signal and the primer, would be the real message. Radio technology permits that message to be inconceivably rich. Perhaps when we tuned in, we would find ourselves in the midst of Volume 6,511 of the Encyclopaedia Galactica.

Any messages transmitted from outer space are the responsibility of the BBC and the Post office. It is their responsibility to track down illegal broadcasts (pronouncement from a British Defense Department, the London Observer, February 26, 1978). Image : Megan Jorgensen.

Why Do We Go to the Stars?

Why Do We Go to the Stars?

If our Sun or a nearby star were about to go supernova, a major program of interstellar spaceflight might suddenly become attractive, In fact, the discovery that the galactic core was imminently to explode might generate very serious interest in transgalactic or intergalactic spaceflight. Such cosmic violence occurs sufficiently often that nomadic spacefaring civilizations may not be uncommon.

However there may be many other motivations to go to the stars: an emerging technical civilization, after exploring its home planetary system and developing interstellar spaceflight, would tentatively begin exploring the nearby stars.

Some of these stars would have no suitable planets – perhaps they would all tiny asteroids or giant gas worlds. Others would carry an entourage of suitable planets, but some would be already inhabited, or the atmosphere would be poisonous or the climate uncomfortable.

In many cases the colonists might have to change –or as we would parochially say, terraform – a world to make it adequately clement.

The re-engineering of a planet will take time, but suitable world would be found and colonized. 

The utilization of planetary resources so that new interstellar spacecraft could be constructed locally would be a slow process. Eventually a second-generation mission of exploration and colonization would take off toward stars where no one had yet been. And in this way a civilization might slowly wend its way like a vine among the worlds.

It is possible that at some later time with third and higher orders of colonies developing new worlds, another independent expanding civilization would be discovered.

Very likely mutual contact would already have been made by radio or other remote means. The new arrivals might be a different sort of colonial society.

Conceivable two expanding civilizations with different planetary requirements would ignore each other, their filigree patterns of expansion intertwining, but not conflicting. They might cooperate in the exploration of a province of the Galaxy. Even nearby civilizations could spend millions of years in such separate or joint colonial ventures without ever stumbling upon our obscure solar system.

A million years is a very long period of time, but we could manage… (Cosmos by Carl Sagan). Image: © Megan Jorgensen.

Transmissions for Sale

Transmissions for Sale

To learn a little about what other kinds of civilizations are possible, we can study history and cultural anthropology. But we are all of us - us whales, us apes, us people – too closely related. As long as our inquiries are limited to one or two evolutionary lines on a single planet, we will remain ignorant of the possible range and brilliance of other intelligences and other civilizations.

Thus we are looking for other intelligences using different means and methods. For example, we suppose that most of other civilization will use powerful sources to transmit their notions and ideas. Some of our most powerful sources are radar transmitters; a few are used for radar astronomy, to probe with radio fingers the surfaces of the nearby planets.

As the Earth rotates, our more powerful radio transmitters slowly sweep the sky. A radio astronomer on a planet of another star would be able to calculate the length of the day on Earth from the times of appearance and disappearance of our signals. The size of the radar beam projected against the sky is much larger than the size of the planets, and much of the signal wafts on, out of the solar system into the depths of interstellar space to any sensitive receivers that may be listening.

On Earth, most radar transmissions are for military purposes as they scan the skies in constant fear of a massive launch of missiles with nuclear warheads, and augury fifteen minutes early of the end of human civilization. The information content of these pulses is negligible: a succession of simple numerical patterns coded into beeps.

Overall, the most pervasive and noticeable source of radio transmissions from the Earth is our television programming. Because the Earth is turning, some television stations will appear at on horizon of the Earth while others disappear over the other. There will be a jumble of programs. These might be sorted out and pieced together by an advanced civilization on a planet of a nearby star.

Large-scale television transmission on the planet Earth began only in the late 1940’s. There is no calling those television programs back. There is no way of sending a faster message to overtake them and revise the previous transmission. Nothing can travel faster than light.

Thus, there is a spherical wave front centered on the Earth expanding at the speed of light.

Because these transmissions were broadcast a few decades ago, they are only a few tens of light-years away from Earth. Hum… the most frequently repeated messages will be and appeals to purchase detergents, headache tablets, deodorants, automobile and petroleum products.

The most noticeable messages will be those broadcast simultaneously by many transmitters in many time zones – for example, speeches in times of international crisis.

If the nearest civilization is about 100 years away, then we can continue to breathe easy for a while. In any case, we can hope that they will find these programs incomprehensible.

The mindless contents of commercial television and the integuments of international crisis and warfare within the human family are the principal messages about life on Earth that we choose to broadcast to the Cosmos. What must they think of us? Image : © Megan Jorgensen.

Cosmology

Cosmology

Eventually we would discover the nature of other civilizations. There would be many of them, each composed of organisms astonishingly different from anything on the Earth.

Each one of these civilizations would view the surrounding universe somewhat differently. They would be interested in things we never thought of. They would have different social functions and culture.  By comparing our knowledge with theirs, we would grow immeasurably. And with our newly acquired information sorted into a computer memory, we would be able to see which sort of civilization lived where in the Galaxy.

Imagine a huge galactic computer, a repository, more or less up-to-date, of information on the nature and activities of all the civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy, a great library of life in the Cosmos. Perhaps among the contents of the Encyclopaedia Galactica will be a set of summaries of such civilizations, the information enigmatic, tantalizing, evocative – even after we succeed in translating it.

Taking as much time as we wished, we would decide to reply. We would transmit some information about ourselves – may be just the basic at first – as the start of a long interstellar dialogue which we would begin but which, because of the vast distances of interstellar space and the finite velocity of light, would be continued by our remote descendants. And someday, on a planet of some far distant star, a being very different from any of us would request a printout from the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica and acquire a little information about the newest society to join the community of galactic civilizations.

Any account of cosmic evolution makes it clear that all the creature of the galaxies, are beings to be cherished. Image © Megan Jorgensen.

Technical Civilizations

Technical Civilizations

We define an advanced technical civilization as one capable of radio astronomy. This is, of course, a parochial definition because there may be countless worlds on which the inhabitants are accomplished telepaths or superb botanists but indifferent radio astronomers. We will not hear from them.

But it is possible to explore the great issue and make a crude estimate of the number of advanced technical civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy. We should take many factors into consideration if we try to determine how many of them are there in deep space: the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy; the fraction of stars that have planetary systems; the number of planets in a given system that are ecologically suitable for life; the fraction of otherwise suitable planets on which life actually arises; the fraction of inhabited planets on which an intelligent form of life evolves; the fraction of planets inhabited by intelligent beings on which a communicative technical civilization develops; the fraction of a planetary lifetime graced by a technical civilization. We must not forget about evolutionary biology, organic chemistry, abnormal psychology, politics, history and many other factors.

Written out, an equation exists which defines a value and to derive it we must estimate each of these quantities. We know a fair amount about the early factors in the equation, the numbers of stars and planetary systems. We know very little about the later factors, concerning the evolution of intelligence or the lifetime of technical societies. In these cases our estimates will be little better than guesses.

Anyone can make his or her own choices and see what implications their alternative suggestions have for the number of advanced civilizations in our Galaxy (the very first equation is due to Frank Drake of Cornell).

By now, we know the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, fairly well, by careful counts of stars in small but representative regions of the sky. It is a few hundred billion. Very few of these stars are of the massive short-lived variety that squander their reserves of thermonuclear fuel.  The great majority have lifetimes of billions or more years in which they are shining stably, providing a suitable energy source for the origin and evolution of life on nearby planets.

There may be a billion planets on which technical civilizations now exist only in our Galaxy. Image © Megan Jorgensen.

Where Is Prague?

Cosmic Mystery or the Hand of God, Geometer

Johannes Kepler stood at a cusp in history; the last scientific astrologer was the first astrophysicist of the Earth.

In 1598, one of the many premonitory tremors of the coming Thirty Years’ War engulfed Kepler, a provincial schoolteacher of humble origins, absolutely unknown to all but a few scientists. He was living in Graz, a cozy German town, when the war began. Fortunately for Kepler, Tycho Brahe, a famous astronomer offered the mathematician to join him in Prague.

Leaving Graz, Kepler, his wife and stepdaughter set out on the difficult journey to Prague.

Chronically ill, having lost two young children, his wife was described as “ignorant”. She had no understanding of her husband’s work and, having been raised among the minor rural gentry, she despised his impecunious profession. She didn’t know where Prague was and what country was it the capital of.

Kepler for his part described his thoughts toward his wife as follows: "for my studies sometimes made me thoughtless; but I learned my lesson, I learned to have patience with her. When I saw that she took my words to heart, I would rather have bitten by own finger to give her further offense”.

But Kepler aspired to become a colleague of the great Tycho Brahe, who for thirty-five years had devoted himself to the measurement of a clockwork universe, ordered and precise.

Kepler’s expectations were to be unfulfilled. Tycho himself was a flamboyant figure, festooned with a golden nose, the original having been lost in a student duel.

“Hypocrisy I have never learned. I am in earnest about faith. I do not play with it”, Kepler said and he tried to work harder and harder in order to forget that his wife didn’t know where they lived.

Kepler’s fundamental innovation is nothing short of breathtaking: he proposed that quantitative physical laws that apply to the Earth are also the underpinnings of quantitative physical laws that govern the heavens. It was the first non-mystical explanation of motion in the heavens. This discovery made the Earth a province of the Cosmos.

“Astronomy”, Kepler said, “is part of physics”. He considered that his first aim was to show that “the celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to a clockwork…, insofar as nearly all the manifold movements are carried out by means of a single, quite simple magnetic force, as in the case of clockwork, where all motions are caused by a simple weight.”

There were only six planets known in Kepler’s time : Mercury, Venus, Earth,  Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Kepler wondered, why only six? Why not twenty or a hundred? Why did they have the spacing between their orbits that Copernicus had deduced? No one has ever asked such questions before. There were known five regular or “platonic” solids, whose sides where regular polygons, as known to the ancient Greek mathematicians after their time of Pythagoras.

Curiously enough, within the symphony of voices, Kepler believed that the speed of each planet correspond to certain notes in the Latinate musical scale popular in his day – do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. He claimed that in the harmony of the spheres, the tones of Earth are fa and mi, that the Earth is forever humming fa and mi, and that they stand in a straightforward way for the Latin word for famine.

Kepler believed he had recognised the invisible supporting structures for the spheres of the six planets. He called his revelation the Cosmic Mystery and thought that connection between the solids of Pythagoras and the disposition of the planets could admit but one explanation: The Hand of God, Geometer.

One week after Kepler’s discovery of his third law of nature, the incident that unleashed the Thirty Years’ War transpired in Prague. The war’s convulsions shattered the lives of millions, Kepler among them. He lost his wife and son to an epidemic carried by the soldiery, his royal patron was deposed, and he was excommunicated by the Lutheran Church for his uncompromising individualism on matters of doctrine. Johannes Kepler was a refugee once again. He had envisioned Tycho’s domain as a refuge from the evils of the time, as the place where his Cosmic Mystery would be confirmed, but he had to flee Prague, a town whose whereabouts his wife ignored.

The Hand of God, Geometer, revealed the Cosmic Mystery and created a Holy Geometry. Image by © Megan Jorgensen.

Embracing Our Cosmic Insignificance

Embracing Our Cosmic Insignificance 

Some find life too short because spanning an average of 67 years it seems too short to have any meaning. Other say it is too long and intentionally shorten their life story, but one thing is certain about living it eventually ends. The story of every fruit fly, king, janitor, beggar, computer guru, politician and so on doesn’t have a happy ending. We all perish and we perish only once.

This insignificance of life has bothered many of us, as our single and short life implies that it can be taken lightly. However, the fact that we are given just one life – no second chances, no secret shortcuts to endless options, no dress rehearsals – makes the lightness unbearable.

This lightness of being from the cosmic point of view proves to be liberating and a little less unbearable because it reminds us how fortunate we are for our existence. So let’s take several steps back and examine our current position. In doing so, we find what is perhaps best said by Daniel Dennett:

Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune.

You spring from an unbroken line of winners going back millions of generations, and those winners were, in every generation, the luckiest of the lucky, one out of a thousand or even a million. So however unlucky you may be on some occasion today, your presence on the planet testifies to the role luck has played in your past.

Carl Sagan also offers this cosmic perspective which helps us view our beloved Earth a “pale blue dot”. As soon as we adapt this vision, patriotism, nationalism and other dangerous words, which usually end in –ism or –ion, suddenly lose their importance. Instead, according to Carl Sagan, it highlights the importance of dealing more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we’ve ever known.

Nei Degrasse Tyson, the Carl Sagan of today shares the same opinion. He argues that visiting Sagan’s cosmic vantage points renders the constant conflicts in the name of boundaries or religion immature, silly and egoistic. This is similar to an adult (a word to which we generously associate the labels matured and grown-up) who treats a child’s complaints about broken toys and bruised knees as small problems (however these accidents are all traumatic experience to a kid).

Astronomy is unfairly and unfortunately considered “useless” compared to other sciences. However it has the power to reform our character and behaviour towards each other and the world we live in. It has the power to expand our view.

Astronomy lowers the omnipresent egoistic sentiments related to social status, culture, race, language. Lessons learnt through astronomy are capable of maturing up the mindset of any individual, family, institution, corporation and country.

Anyone who relishes the cosmic outlook will have qualities that will make him or her a better policy maker.

Thus, a crash course in astronomy is needed at every level. The situation should inspire us to spend less time on our cell phones and social media sites. It should broaden our minds, reduce unattractive competitiveness over journal names with the number of pages one has published in comparison with his or her neighbor. As researchers we should develop our attitudes towards learning.

As human beings, we should humble us down so that we can live up to our scientific name – homo sapiens (wise man).

We don’t suggest replacing the Bible in the motel rooms with a picture of the universe and an arrow showing where we are. We think this picture should complete the offer. Thus we could truly develop this fraction of an iota of a crumb of a grain of the universe which we call home.

Steve Jobs, an undeniable innovative man, said once (and we see here how our mortality influences our thoughts): “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way that I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose”. Yes, Steve Jobs used his cosmic lessons selectively, but these words illustrate the fact that our unbearably light life can be full of lights for everyone.

Cosmic Insignificance. “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.” (William Shakespeare, King Lear). Illustration by Elena.

Infinity

Infinity

When we talk about infinity, we are talking about a quantity greater than any number, no matter how large.

Just try to stand between two mirrors and you’ll see a large number of images of yourself, each the reflection of another. Well, you cannot see an infinity of images because the mirrors are not perfectly aligned and they are not perfectly flat. Besides light does not travel infinitely fast, and you are in the way. But if all the conditions are in place, your cat would be a perfect expression of Infinity.

If you consider your cat down beyond a single atom, you confront an infinity of the Very Very Large. And these infinities represent an unending regress that goes on not just Very Very Far, but Forever.

So what about the lives of the stars? The same is true for them, as hydrogen fusion cannot continue forever: in any given star, there is only so much hydrogen fuel in its hot interior. The fate of a star, the end of its life cycle, depends very much on its initial mass.

Billions of years from now, there will be a last perfect day in our Universe. This evolution is inexorable. Eventually the stars will vanish, the life will die and catastrophe of the most immense proportions imaginable will overtake the universe. And no God will be able to save it from its fate.

I have a terrible need… shall I say the word?… of religion. Then I go out at night and paint the stars (Vincent van Gogh). Image: © Megan Jorgensen.

Dating and Relationships

Dating & Relationships

Few people dream of being alone all their lives, although there are some exceptions. For the rest of humanity, most humans want some form of human interaction, in the form of socializing, friendships and deeper connection,s but mostly, the human race, unlike Zirconians, seek LOVE…

But what is Love? L'Amour avec un grand A? (French quote about romance) Well… the response to such a philosophical question is far beyond the scope of the present short entry, and what we like to discuss today is just how most people go about romantic pursuits in modern times, or in the information era, replete with social media platforms and other novel forms of socialization…

Interestingly enough, the idea of romantic love is debated by some scholars. For instance, social psychologists point to the existence of courtly love during the Middle Ages as the predecessor of today's pretty much accepted concept of a mutual, intense, attachment, acceptance and affection between two human beings. According to this particular viewpoint, romantic love has largely been invented by the postcards and greeting cards industry, as well as jewellery manufacturers…

Along these lines, in the academic realm, scientists have been looking at affectionate displays from different perspectives. From neuroscientific accounts focusing on neural substrates (such as the amygdala for emotional memories, or oxytocin and vasopressin playing a role in bonding), social psychology studies show that men and women seem to look for diverse characteristics when choosing a life partner, while even the understanding of the feeling praised in countless songs, legends, movies and poems worldwide actually appears to be thought of differently in some cultures…

On a more practical note, where and how does one find someone to date (or to share one's life with!) and, most importantly, what does one do when the elusive other, the dreamlike alter ego, finally shows up? Individual opinions vary greatly on this matter! To illustrate, a huge proportion of people, believe that playing hard-to-get is the way to go. In other words, to secure the other's attention, one should present themselves as unavailable, ignore phone calls, emails and texts, take a long time to see the person, look busy all the time (even if simply pretending!), you get the drill… Alternatively, others deplore such mind games, and stress that relationships are mostly based on trust, mutual interests and communication, so manipulation, however mysterious and well intentioned, may have no place in romantic unions… What do you think? We do not give advice, we simply lay out the facts…

Two different Zirconians (elf-like Aliens) who, unlike customary on Zircon, are in love… Copyright © Megan Jorgensen.

Luckily, in today's day and age, numerous options exist to find that special someone. From dating sites such as PoF, eHarmony or Match, to social networking platforms not specifically intended for such use (some people find their perfect match on Facebook, Twitter or MySpace), to the old fashion way: through mutual friends or acquaintances, at social gatherings such as parties and other celebratory events, and by other means. However, obviously whether you meet your potential companion at Sunday mass at the community Church, or at the local bar is likely to impact the future of your relationship, if any.

Naturally, not everyone wants a relationship. Unlike in the past, when people could pretty much be burned at the stake for committing adultery, in modern times many alternative to marriage exist.

While one psychological theory includes three aspects in the definition of love (passion, commitment and intimacy), all three elements need not be present to meet one of the proposed definitions. Thus, the Twilight saga aside, hook-ups or friends with benefits, seem to be popular arrangements among some older teenagers. Likewise, polyamory, or dating several partners at the same time appears an attractive possibility to some teens, and of course, adults. Notwithstanding, monogamous marital bliss remains the goal for the majority of couples in most societies across the world.

On the political side, the question of equal love is a dividing social issue for many countries in the West. For instance, in the United States of America, voters may choose their candidate based on where said candidate stands on gay marriage. Nowadays, gay marriage is legal in many countries and homosexual unions are much more accepted than they were in the past. Also, at time of writing, the current Pope Francis has expressed the acceptance of the Catholic Church of homosexual orientation.