User:Paine Ellsworth/Mystery

This "think" page is devoted to great mysteries I have encountered in this world. Feel free to think along with me!

These are in no particular order; except for the final two sections, which will always come at the end, these mysteries are written as they recur to me.

Homestead, Florida's Coral Castle

Check out this quite probably related YouTube video. And here's a YouTube search. Seems that lots of people think they've solved this mystery. But there are still anomalies that stand out.

I remember reading about Ed's legendary move from Florida City ten miles north to Homestead. He hired a flatbed truck and driver, and he made the driver go around the corner while he himself loaded the heavy blocks onto the flatbed. When the driver returned a few minutes later, the blocks were loaded and ready to go. How did ol' Ed do all this? This is another great mystery wrapped in an enigma!

Churches of Lalibela

In Ethiopia, where I spent time with the U.S. Peace Corps, there are ~~twelve~~ (oops) eleven huge churches, Christian churches, that were carved out of solid rock. Instead of the story told in the WP article, I heard a somewhat different legend about these awesome churches. King Lalibela had his men begin work on these churches and asked the angels to work on them, also. His men worked in the daytime, and the angels worked during the night. The men would wake up each day and be astounded by the amount of work done overnight by the angels. The legend is that it took only one week, seven days, to construct all of the churches! Well, at least that is what you hear while you're actually there in Ethiopia.

Why were these churches built this way? and why eleven? I have suspected for some time now that there were actually twelve of these churches constructed all at about the same time. One church that houses the Ark of the Covenant, which was taken there by members of the Knights Templar, has been filled in to protect the Ark and other religious relics. The 12th church and the Ark will be found soon, rediscovered for all to ponder. So the churches were built this way in order to very effectively hide the Ark of the Covenant and other precious relics from the unworthy eyes of those who would not appreciate their true worth.

These churches are an example of many great and mysterious ancient constructions throughout the world. The Great pyramids of Egypt and elsewhere and other similar wonders give many of us pause when we ponder them.

Destiny

Why are we here? Is our presence here governed by determinism or by free will? Why can't we rid ourselves of stuff like murder, thievery, human trafficking and the like (evil stuff)? Evil is with us because it is a necessity. People measure good by its contrast to evil. It's ironic to think that without evil, there would be no good, either. So why can't we get rid of the both of them, good and evil? Is there more to it than just yin and yang?

For more than fifty years I have believed and accepted the following instruction... "There's no such thing as black or white; gray is truth and the truth is gray." That's okay, because for almost as long and to give you a bit of context, I have also accepted that, "When a person learns to read with understanding, they automatically become a Republican," and I am a registered Democrat from a long, long line of Democrats. So I'm liberal at heart, but conservative at mind. Again with the "polar opposites"? The important thing to always keep in mind (and in your heart) is that there is no such thing as black or white; gray is truth and the truth is gray.

So, is our fate made for us? or do we make our own way. That "truth is gray" thing is not something I came up with on my own. It was taught to me by my hypnosis/meditation instructor while I was in Viet Nam in 1971. Mike had several students, and he laid that little gem on us one evening while we were in group. I was pretty much a redneck when I started Mike's training, and that slowly changed as I worked to remake myself. The answer to the question of fate, then, is somewhere in the middle of the two extremes of our lives being made for us and making our own destinies. Where in that middle depends upon each of us, upon each of our inner beings based upon nature and nurture.

I Ching

In this book of ancient Chinese philosophy, the reader is led to throw three coins. Because a coin has two sides, heads and tails, it represents the dual, bipolar nature, the black and white, the yin and the yang. Three coins are used to derive a hexagram, sometimes two hexagrams, figures each composed of six horizontal lines. The written explanations for these hexagrams can then help the reader find an answer to a question they asked, to find the likliest future if the described steps are taken. By throwing the coins, the illusion of the dual nature is transformed into what I see as the gray, the truth, as determined through careful study by the ancients who wrote the I Ching. The book can be surprisingly adept at helping readers, and lends credibility to what I've learned as, "no such thing as black or white – gray is truth and the truth is gray".

I don't expect anyone who reads this to blindly accept it as all true, because it may well be way off the mark, but frankly, I think it's right on the mark. And I'm never wrong! Remember... there's no such thing as black or white; gray is truth and the truth is gray. Mystery, mystery, shrouded in history – have a cup of coffee or something and let's wait on the next big adventure!

Man: It won't be long now. Woman: It never was.

Quantum outtakes

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then we've saved 3,000 words with these three images. With this physics mystery comes many interesting questions. Let's keep it simple and begin with how at first they used photons even though the first image to the right shows electrons being shot toward the screen through the double slits. Whatever the particles that are "shot" into the slits, from photons to buckyballs, they produce the image on the screen as shown in the second one on the right. That's called an "interference pattern", and it means that the so-called particle is behaving just like a wave instead of like a particle. No big mystery here – the electron or photon is actually a wave rather than a particle.

What's puzzling is when a sensing device is placed near one of the slits to see if a certain individual particle goes through one slit or the other, then the particles produce the pattern on the screen as shown in the third image on the right. The particles begin to act like particles instead of like waves. And ever since this was discovered in the last century, scientists have been asking "Why?" That's the big mystery. Why do particles behave like waves until they are closely observed, at which time they act like particles? Take the sensing device away, and they act like waves again (that is, they produce the interference pattern seen in the second image on the right).

We need some quantum outtakes here.

The simplest conclusion is that we can change waves into particles just by observing them. The seemingly mere act of observing a subject can radically change the subject's behavior!

This conclusion becomes obvious when we think of how the great scientist, Jane Goodall, began her study of chimpanzees by observing them from afar and ended up becoming so close to her subjects and changing their behavior. It's one of several reasons why animals in zoos act differently than animals in their natural habitats. Just the mere act of observing a subject can radically change the subject's behavior. Someone once said about the difference between "reputation" and "character", "How we behave around others is our reputation; how we behave when we're alone is our character."

Isn't it interesting that this mysterious discovery is the only thing we've found so far that is common between our larger world of classical physics and the tiny world of quantum physics? Observation changes the behavior of the subject that is being observed. Behaving like a particle is a particle's reputation; behaving like a wave is a particle's character!

An interesting tiny-world read is quantum gravity. How odd the tiny world is as compared to our regular-size world! We humans are made of mostly water, but molecules of water are mostly made of space. In fact everything is made mostly of space – it's all protons, neutrons, electrons and... mostly just space. While it seems unbelievable, we are compelled to accept it since our very laptops, cell phones, and a ton of other high technology all depend upon the theories of the tiny world of quantum mechanics.

I find it fascinating that we can use it without being certain as to how it works. It's like using electricity. Most of us turn the switches on and off without having any clue as to what is actually going on inside that light bulb or toaster or coffee maker. And so it is with scientists and quantum mechanics. Just fascinating! (and perhaps even a bit humorous)

Paradoxum

This sentence is false.: So if that sentence is true, then it must be false; however, if it is false, then it must be true. This is a form of the "liar paradox".

Of all the weird stuff in this Universe, I think contradictions – paradoxes – are great mysteries. I first came across this particular paradox in a less streamlined form:

The sentence below is true.
The sentence above is false.

As good as the first sentence of this section is, I think the double sentence better illustrates the profound mystery of this paradox. A real head-scratcher! Can't stay long, jus' gotta move on.

Asimov's paradox

I've searched for this one, a paradox of entropy similar to Zeno's paradoxes, and since I haven't been able to find it, I'll call this Asimov's paradox. Isaac Asimov wrote a story, "The Last Question", in which the question of entropy, defined as the gradual dissipation of energy in the Universe, arose and was explained, well, sort of. As well, this one came to mind from remembering Russell's teapot and its impact on theism vs. atheism.

If the energy of the Universe dissipates halfway to zero, then it will have to dissipate halfway to zero again... and again and again in a series of infinitesimals, and it will never, ever reach zero.

Since the actual realities of Zeno's paradoxes paradoxically show that infinity paradoxes are simply mental math tricks, it doesn't leave us much hope for the Universe, now does it. I need more coffee.

Watermelon paradox

Here's an interesting puzzle on YouTube, and yes, I did get it wrong. In general this is classified as a veridical paradox. It is also interesting to note that, near the end of the video, the narrator explains what to say if anyone challenges whether or not this is a true paradox: "and if you have any objection to that, just take it up with Wikipedia‍". This leads to the following:

Wikipedia paradox

The situation in which someone uses Wikipedia as a reliable source, even though they or their media might not be used as a reliable source on Wikipedia (e.g. You Tube), and even though Wikipedia does not even see itself as a reliable source. Please let me know what class of paradox you think this is.

Changes

When you think that anything has remained the same, look more closely, and think again.

It seems to be one of the greatest mysteries that there is actually an order to chaos. Chaos theory has unveiled just such an order to every chaotic, changing system that has been studied. It's a mystery that a butterfly can flap its wings in Peking and in Central Park you get rain instead of sunshine.^[1]

I am truly mystified by the order that has been discovered in apparently chaotic systems. The only thing in this entire universe that does not change is the fact that everything changes, and there seems to be an organization to those changes no matter how unruly they appear to be. This is more awesome than most people are prepared to accept. It is the basis of the I Ching, the Chinese Book of Changes. It's strange how well that book works to predict the future. Peruse it in good health!

Changes are so difficult to understand and spark the many arguments of fools. People argued over the beginning of the new century and even the new millennium. Some said they began on 1 January 2000, while others argued that they didn't really begin until 1 January 2001. The latter is correct for the new century and for the third millennium. This century, what we call the 21st century, which began on 1 January 2001, is the first century of the 3rd millennium. To really understand all this, you must start from the year 0001 CE – that was the first year of the first decade, first century, and the first millennium. It wasn't "year 0000" because there was no year zero. Zero was just the transition point in time between year 0001 BCE and year 0001 CE. That instant in time came on the night of 31 December 0001 BCE, and the very next day was 1 January 0001 CE. No year zero. Everything starts with a one. The tenth year was the last and final year of the first decade, and the eleventh year, year 0011, was the first year of the second decade. So the 100th year was the last and final year of the first century, the 1,000th year, year 1000, was the last and final year of the first millennium, and year 1001 marked the first year of the second millennium. Year 2000 was the last and final year of the second millennium, and year 2001 marked the first year of the third millennium. Easy peasy.

It can be very confusing, I know, but that's how it works. It's even more complicated a little by the transition from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. That's why some birth dates, for example Ben Franklin's and Thomas Paine's, have both "Old Style" and "New Style" birth dates. This change brought the global calendars that accepted it back into line with the movement of the Earth around the Sun, so it was a necessary, if confusing, alteration. Time and the inventions of the measurement of time are as mysterious as is the idea of change, my friend, and I've covered time in a later section of this page. Thank you so much for reading this far!

References

^ In the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, Dr. Ian Malcolm (played by Jeff Goldblum) attempts to explain chaos theory to Dr. Ellie Sattler (played by Laura Dern), specifically referencing the butterfly effect, by stating "It simply deals with unpredictability in complex systems", and "The shorthand is 'the butterfly effect'." [link]

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Don't-knowist

With this I reveal something I've never told anyone. I'm not an atheist nor a theist, nor even agnostic; I am a don't-knowist, I am truly very much don't-knowic. I simply do not know anything at all about whether or not a higher being of any kind exists. I believe in higher beings, but there is no proof, no hard evidence. I believe in them because, as I've said before, I refuse to accept that human beings as a whole are the highest forms of life in the Universe. So in truth, I'm just a little ol' don't-knowist, just an ignorant sumbitch. What comes next after my body dies is one great and profound mystery to me.

“

I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. I think it is much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers that might be wrong. If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain ... In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar.

”

— Richard Feynman, 3 Paradoxes... on YouTube 9:10

As Wm. Shakespeare would say, "...there's the rub!‍" (At least, for me) it seems to be the hardest, most difficult thing to "leave the door to the unknown ajar", and yet I have to admit that I am constantly uncertain. I don't want to peek through that door to the unknown, that's how much I (and most people) fear, even dread, the unknown, but I can't help myself. What the hell, let's keep peeking.

If you, like me, are a don't-knowist, or perhaps the things you've read and studied have made you a budding don't-knowist, then this particular mystery of living has a certain amount of attraction and interest for you. I've been looking most of my life for evidence that higher beings exist, and I think I've found some. If you have found some objective evidence, then do please bring it up on this unarticle's talk page to discuss it. Keep in mind my thoughts on the nature of a deity or deities, which might make proving their existence a little easier. What we're looking for are things similar to the free oxygen level in the atmosphere of Earth that is regulated to about 21%. What other things are also being controlled/regulated that could be evidence of higher beings? I honestly would love to hear from you!

The Taboo Four

Back in '71 when I was a US Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia, East Africa, we were instructed to never, ever, become involved in any discussion with Ethiopians about any of the four "Taboo" subjects: race, religion, politics, sex. And even now, discussions on these topics can be highly contentious and even volatile. While I've seen this many times and know all this to be true, I've never been able to understand why people cannot discuss these subjects without getting all bent out of shape. This is yet another mystery I may never solve.

Dark E & M

It seems so obvious to me that what science calls "dark energy" is the energy of spacetime itself. And dark matter? Well, general relativity states that gravitational fields have energy, and special relativity concludes that energy is equivalent to mass. So a gravitational field induces a further gravitational field. And dark matter is just dark energy that has been detected very far away and, from that long distance, appears as a mysterious substance that exerts gravitational force. The mystery for me is... why hasn't science caught up with these facts?

Gravity

And now it comes down to this. (pun intended)

We should feign no hypotheses for the cause of gravity (Isaac Newton in public) – I'm told that in a private letter to a friend, Newton wrote that gravity is caused by divine interaction (God). – no, wait – gravity is caused by the influence of matter upon spacetime, matter curves space and that results in the "effect" (not the "force") of gravity. So matter tells spacetime how to bend, and spacetime tells matter how to move. (Albert Einstein). "Prof. Einstein, what did you say, precisely, that bends and curves? the 'nothing' of spacetime?" – no, wait a tiny wee bit more – gravity's cause is rooted somewhere deeply inside of the enigmatic, perplexing theory of quantum mechanics (quantum gravity).

The actual cause of gravity is the energy of spacetime (dark energy), which continuously flows toward and into the much more condensed forms of energy known as matter. The greater the mass, the more spacetime flows into it and the stronger the apparent gravitational field of the mass. That is what keeps our feet on the ground and our behinds in our seats.

The challenge is that there is no "proof", no evidence that spacetime itself is energy, what I've been calling "spatial energy", which is the same as "dark energy". All energy has wavelengths and frequencies. Light energy has wavelengths and frequencies, infrared energy has both, ultraviolet energy, x-ray energy, sound energy, and so on, all have wavelengths and frequencies. What then is the wavelength(s) and frequency(ies) of spatial energy? The longer the wavelength, the weaker the energy, so I suspect that since gravity is the weakest of the fundamental forces, then its energies are at the weak end of the spectrum with very long wavelengths and very low frequencies. And since these have not yet been detected, measured and attributed to gravity, then there is nothing yet that we can say with certainty about spatial energy comprising spacetime and causing gravity.

I'm not even sure that we are as yet looking for spatial energy, let alone looking for it in the likely places. I'm not even sure we as yet have the technology to find and measure the long wavelengths of spacetime. The study of gravitational waves will hopefully take us forward. I find that doubtful, though, because studies of gravitational waves and of gravity waves go off in different, unrelated directions. If Newton and Einstein weren't onto something, then nobody was.

Solar sails

Here's a thought... light, the energy of light, according to scientists can exert pressure on spacecraft equipped with solar sails. Since light photons are massless, I think that the pressure is actually exerted by non-massless particles that accompany solar light photons. Anyways, light energy is composed of fairly short wavelengths, and are fairly high energy waves. Perhaps the longer the wavelength and the lower the relative energy, the more pressure an energy can exert on matter. When the wavelengths are very long and the energy is very low, as I suspect it is for spatial energy of the type that exerts pressure on us and keeps our toothbrushes from rising into heaven, the strength of that pressure is large and powerful enough to keep us from floating away? To be clear, the wavelengths of spatial energy can be expected to be very long, and the frequencies, then, must be very low, well below one hertz (one cycle per second) and very difficult to detect.

GWB

I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. - Walt Whitman

It looks like (and I want to be careful here) that I am correct about the very low frequency, very long wavelength of the spatial (dark) energy that causes gravity. In June of 2023 astronomers discovered what they call the gravitational wave background (GWB), roughly similar to the cosmic microwave background (CMB). They estimate the wave frequency to be on the order of a billionth of a hertz (0.000000001 of a cycle per second, which is equal to 3.15 cycles per century), and they describe this with the terms "nanohertz" and "These gravitational waves stretch light years across ...". We get closer and closer to connecting the energy of spacetime and the pressure exerted on our bodies that keeps our buns in our seats. I hope a light turns on in somebody's head soon. Rather than "Remember the Alamo!", I'll continue to yawp, "Remember the Casimir!‍"

The symbol for wavelength is called "lambda" and looks like this: λ. The formula for wavelength is:

λ = v / f where v = the velocity of the wave, and f = the frequency of the wave in hertz (cycles per second)

If gravitational waves travel at the speed of light, then the wavelength of a nanohertz wave, a wave that is one billionth of a cycle per second (hertz), is (hold onto your seats) 300 trillion kilometers, which equals 31.7 light years. That is one long wavelength! In case you are not familiar with the wavelengths of energy, to give you perspective, the wavelengths of visible light vary between purple's 380 to red's 700 nanometers (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter). As frequency decreases the wavelength tends to increase, so a lower frequency sound wave that varies between 20 hertz and 20 kilohertz (kilo means "thousand") has a longer wavelength, 20hz = 17 meters (56 feet) to 20khz = 17 milimeters (0.67 inches). Keep in mind also that the velocity of sound is much slower than the speed of light and other similar waves. The thing to remember here is that the wavelength tends to increase as the frequency decreases.

To call all this "science", then, at least two of these three variables, λ, v, and f, still need to be accurately measured so the third unknown can be computed. Yes, I know that science often starts with axiomatic assumptions, but when it comes to gravity, let there be no mistake. If we're going to solve the mystery of the cause of gravity, then we must be as thorough as we can possibly be.

Summary

I think, but cannot yet prove, that it is this extremely low frequency, extremely long wavelength dark energy of spacetime that flows into all matter and causes gravity. It flows continuously into galaxy clusters, into each galaxy toward their centers, into all the stars in each galaxy, and into every material object that orbits those stars. And a tiny bit of this spatial energy flows into each of us. Spatial energy exerts pressure on our atoms, molecules, our organs, our bodies. The rest of this continuous energy flow travels through and around our bodies and then down toward the center of Earth. If I am correct, then such is the cause of gravity.

For me the ongoing mystery here is the source of spatial energy. All energy that we know of has a source – the sound of the crack of a bat in a baseball game has a source, the tiny pinpoints of light in the night sky are the sources of that light, the x-ray energy that shows your doctor your bone structure has a source – so the energy of spacetime, which I believe flows into us and keeps our buns in our seats, must also have a source. It must come from something somewhere, and that is a big mystery of our Universe for me... what could generate, what is the source, of nanohertz spatial/dark/gravitational energy? Is there some kind of enormously huge engine out there somewhere? some gargantuan generator that oscillates at one cycle every billion seconds? Go ahead my friend, you tink a billion seconds ain't so long? Yeah, I know, math-ugh!

U.F.O.

I've been asked my opinion about unidentified flying objects more than once in my lifetime. I saw one once, long ago when I was a boy. My younger cousin's house was within walking distance, and I would often go over to play with him in his backyard. The two of us would walk around the small pond behind his house, watching the minnows swim around near the water's edge, and several role-playing games were also on the menu. One sunny late-afternoon found us lying on our backs in the grass and cloud watching. Almost directly overhead at what seemed a fairly high altitude we noticed several different-colored bright lights revolving slowly around a center. There was no other movement, just red, green, and blue lights circling around an unseen center. My cousin and I watched the lights for several minutes, fascinated and almost mesmerized by their lazy circling in the sky overhead.

Confirmation?: Cuz looked over at me and suggested we call the nearby airbase. I told him that they would probably just say it was a weather balloon or something similar. I went into his house and called the large Air Force base that was a few miles away. The young man who answered, probably a one- or two-striper with phone duty, blurted, "We don't know what it is! We're watching it, too!" Then I went back outside, but by then the lights had disappeared. I told my cousin what the airman had said, and we both remained perplexed by the sighting. We lied back down on the grass, but the circling, colored lights never reappeared. Cuz and I resumed our fun and games. Whenever we told our story to others, they thought we were making it up. So we eventually just kept it to ourselves. Believe it or not, as Ripley would say, U.F.O.s are not always fictional idle gossip. For me, there's another unsolved life-changing event for us to ponder!

Charisma

This is perhaps the greatest mystery of all where human dominance hierarchies are concerned. Not only humans, though. I once read a study of primates, monkeys who lived on an island. There were three distinct groups, each group occupying its own territory on the island, and they all lived in harmony with each other. Then one day, one of the groups went on a conquest of the other two groups. They ravaged the monkeys that weren't in their group, raped and pillaged, made the other monkeys their slaves, and took over the entire island. The scientists who were taking data on these monkeys were astounded! They found that one of the monkeys in the conquering group had recently become the leader of the group, the alpha male. Researchers decided to capture that alpha male to isolate him. After he was removed from the conquering group, everything went back to normal. The conquering group receded back to their traditional territory, the other two groups of monkeys each went back to their previous territories on the island, and there wasn't even any retribution from them against the conquering group of monkeys. All was good, all was peaceful. Researchers then let the alpha male go. He immediately returned to his group, once again led them on a conquering rampage, and proved that even a monkey can possess charisma.

Here is another part of the mystery of charisma

Charisma is listed as an "individual virtue" in the "{{Virtues}}" navbar:

Individual virtues
(list3 =) Accountability · Alertness · Altruism · Authenticity · Calmness · Charisma · Charity · Chastity · Chivalry · Cleanliness · Compassion · Conscientiousness · Courage (Civil · Moral) · Courtesy · Diligence · Discernment · Discipline · Duty · Empathy · ...and so on

I look at some of those "individual virtues" and find them to be somewhere on the spectrum line between virtuous and non-virtuous, and charisma does appear to be one of those concepts that can be a virtue, or it can be most everybody's nightmare. Was the inclusion of the alpha monkey on that study island not a nightmare for most of the other primates on that island? Indeed it was. This same negative type of charisma has been seen in humans throughout our history. Some charisma has been positive in many areas like science, the military, politics, and so on. And some of those who had and have charisma are considered by many to be negative.

How do people like Churchill, Washington, Franklin, Thatcher, Trump, Hitler, Kennedy, Mussolini, Khrushchev, Biden, Putin, and so many others, how do they rise to positions of power? It's that magical property of charisma that's a big part of it. Not having had much charisma in my own life, I doubt that I will ever understand it.

Space exploration

I am totally mystified by how our (us humans) exploration of space has been stifled, essentially halted for so long! In the moon landings article we see that a total of six crewed missions (Apollo) landed on the Moon between July 1969 and December 1972, and since then, for more than fifty years, there have been no follow-ups. Since then the astronauts have pretty much spent all their time in low-Earth orbit, so I must wonder... why have we spent so much time not making progress in space exploration?

We of course must realize that the cost of space exploration is pretty high, both in monetary and in human terms. When I think of all the things we have yet to learn about space and our solar system, I have to wonder what the heck are we waiting for??? I think space explorers are some of the most courageous people on this planet, and I can't imagine any of them turning down a chance to explore Mars and other places as we zoom around the Sun. The robotics we've sent to Mars do help, but Mars rovers cannot shinny down a rope into one of those mysterious holes we've seen to find out what is down in the caves under Mars's surface. Only a human with a strong flashlight can spelunk on Mars.

In the photo on the right, it might appear as if there is a hole in the top of a circular mountain on Mars. It's actually a hole at the bottom of a circular crater on Mars. Remember... perceptions!

References

^ Photo of Buzz Aldrin's bootprint on the Moon – links to a YouTube video: a Carl Sagan series excerpt called "Gift of Apollo"

Killing of civilians during World War II

The dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US-approved flight of the aircraft, Enola Gay, is a mystery for me. Those in power in the US at the time thought that it would save a lot of lives by ending the "world war", and they were correct. That war in the Pacific was started by the Japanese when they attacked Pearl Harbor. The mystery here is that even though many Nazis were tried and executed for war crimes, the US government and its citizens have never been held accountable for the nuclear bombs dropped on two entire Japanese cities. That puzzles and frankly disgusts me. Many non-military Japanese citizens were snuffed out, vaporized, by the detonation of those nuclear bombs. Many more had to endure horrible physical disfigurement, pain and suffering. How is any of that okay?

I've been a war veteran for many years, so I can sort of understand the desire to save the lives of your country's warriors by using anything in your arsenal to stop a war. It just really puzzles me how anyone could justify saving the lives of warriors at the expense of innocent civilian lives, especially innocent children's lives. I think whoever gave the order to drop those nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was insane. Dropping one bomb in the ocean near Japan with a threat to drop more bombs across the face of Japan if an ultimatum was ignored by Japanese leaders might have had the same effect without suffering the deaths of innocent kids. At the time the US only had two bombs, but the Japanese didn't know that. They thought the US had many more nuclear bombs in their arsenal. The US could have gotten that same idea across without wiping two Japanese cities off the map.

All through history we see that the winners get away with stuff and the losers don't. The winners have even written the history lessons to their own benefit and advantage, and they make the losers out to be the bad guys whether they were or not. It has become painfully obvious to most of us that both sides in a war are capable of the grossest atrocities. That is why there should be no more warfare allowed on this planet. None. Sit down together and talk. Try to come to some level of agreement on the issues. Act like grown-ups are supposed to behave, not like petulant children. Children eventually grow up, and now it's time for the nations in this world to mature into places where war is the very worst crime known to mankind.

Long ago when the oxygen level was much higher, insects rose to rule this planet for millions of years. Then reptiles rose to the level of dinosaurs and ruled this planet for millions of years more. Then mammals rose to the level of human beings, who now rule this planet, but have done so for just a few thousand years. What will be next? My guess is that artificial intelligence or A.I. will arise to rule this planet for many millions of years. We humans will either become their slaves or become extinct, snuffed out like unneeded, unwanted flies, exemplary victims just like the vaporized citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – gone forever.

Human aggressiveness will become a distant, ebbing memory in the minds of whatever sentient beings come next. As the winners they will write the history of us, and whether or not they write truthfully, that history will be penned in their favor, not in ours.

The Moon

From a Homeric Hymn...

The air, unlit before, glows with the light of her golden crown, and her rays beam clear, whensoever bright Selene having bathed her lovely body in the waters of Ocean, and donned her far-gleaming raiment, and yoked her strong-necked, shining team, drives on her long-maned horses at full speed, at eventime in the mid-month: then her great orbit is full and then her beams shine brightest as she increases. So she is a sure token and a sign to mortal men.^[1]

Finally we get around to the great mystery of the Moon. I also call the Moon "Selene‍", pronounced by the ancient Greeks in three syllables, seh-LEH-neh. I think of Selene as a full-fledged planet in its own right. Like several astronomers, I do not agree with the arbitrary definitions set by the IAU. Our Earth and Moon form a double-planet system. The giant-impact hypothesis of the origin of the Moon is hard to understand and to swallow. I have my own idea as to how Selene was first formed. So it is a great puzzle. No other rocky planet, and no other gas planet, sports a partner in space that is like the Moon. For one thing, the Moon is gigantic relative to Earth's size when compared to other natural planetary satellites – really huge!

Perhaps you, like I am, might be impressed by how Selene helped out with our evolution? The Moon keeps getting farther away from Earth, a few centimeters each year. When you back that up to hundreds of millions of years ago, the Moon was much nearer to Earth back then. That means the tides were much higher and lower in that era. When the high tide came in it would stretch for miles or kilometers, not the few yards or meters it does today. Imagine you are a fish and you swim in with the tide. As the tide goes back out you are stranded on the drying ground. You flop around for awhile and probably die before the tide comes back in – many, many fish did die that way before our ancestor didn't. Our fishy ancestor had a limited ability to breathe the air and to get around a bit on dry land. So the greater tides from the closer Moon had a significant effect on our evolution from water-going fish to land-dwelling amphibious creatures.

So how did the Moon come about? How did Earth manage to gain a partner in space as big as planet Selene?

References

^ Homeric Hymn to Selene (32) 5–14.

Birds or dinos?

We first came across the ideas that eventually led to the following while reading the great paleontologist Robert Bakker and his theories of dino warm-bloodedness, as well as that some dinos were ancestors to today's birds. These unusual (back then) realizations actually came before I read Crichton's Jurassic Park and watched the ensuing film. I thought that it was pretty cool that the young boy in the movie, Tim, made a passing reference to Bakker's work.

As of today's date, 2 October 2024, we have the following mystery: From the main article about birds:; Birds are feathered theropod dinosaurs and constitute the only known living dinosaurs. (my boldfacing); And from the main article on dinos:; The fossil record shows that birds are feathered dinosaurs, having evolved from earlier theropods during the Late Jurassic epoch, and are the only dinosaur lineage known to have survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event approximately 66 mya. Dinosaurs can therefore be divided into avian dinosaurs—birds—and the extinct non-avian dinosaurs, which are all dinosaurs other than birds.

In my humble opinion (IMHO), that's a lot of hogwash; so sorry if I find the reasoning behind those ludicrous assertions to be unacceptable. Here's the reasoning from a supposedly lucid scientist that I asked: "Birds are dinosaurs in the same manner as humans are mammals." From the mammal article: "A mammal ... is a vertebrate animal of the class Mammalia." There is no way we would accept that a "class", such as mammals, is equivalent to a "clade", such as dinosaurs.

Allow me please to further illustrate this situation, which I believe is a gross error in Wikipedia, one of the few mistakes found within this reference work in the present day. Long ago, there were little mammals skittering around the feet of the big, "terrible lizards", and dinos ruled the world. One of those mouse-like creatures was our ancestor. We'll call it "Mickey" for lack of a better name. Fact is, we have not been able to determine exactly which mammal back then evolved into primates and then into us. So "Mickey" it is. Lots of mammals, even lots of our ancestral Mickeys, were caught by dinos and other predators, food for their gullets. As a species, those little Mickeys managed to survive, thrive and evolve. Mickeys evolved into primates, which of course evolved into us, human beings. So while it would be correct to say that humans are mammals, would it also be correct to say that humans are Mickeys?

Again, IMHO, birds are no more dinosaurs than humans are Mickey mouses, I mean, Mickey mice. Mickey mouse does act like a human in his toons, but those are just cartoons. Mickeys are just Mickeys and dinos are just dinos. Humans are just humans and birds are just birds. Mickeys are our ancestors and avian dinosaurs are ancestral to birds. This does not mean that birds are dinos any more than it means that we humans are Mickeys. Such a travesty should be corrected, and hopefully it will be corrected very soon. The mystery is that such an enormous blunder would be acceptable in the first place. It's difficult to respect such a blatant, enigmatic biology mishap as referring to birds as dinosaurs. It's very probable that Mickeys have gone extinct, and it's a sure thing that every dino that ever lived has also gone extinct.

One more time, IMHO, the science of biology is the most important discipline in the present day. Biology, the study of life, holds the keys to our future, whatever that fate may be. It's high time for biologists to climb back up out of the mud, wash off their character and restore the respect they so richly deserve (in spite of this awful, egregious brain fart – geez how aggravating it is to hear that supposedly intelligent people still think that "birds are dinosaurs" – how mysterious and sucky is that?)‍!

Infinity ('n time)

You study! and you study! and then you study some more! You'd think that after so much study that you would know something about the subject, wouldn't you? But nooOOOOooo! I think I know about as much about the mystery of infinity as I did when I started studying it, and I've read a ton of books and other subject matter. It's just as bad as the symbol "0" (zero), just as bad. Infinity's not really considered a number, you know. There is just no labeling it other than using the vague symbol, . That's really no better than the grouping of letters, ARRRGHHHH, to express how I feel about this gnarly enigma. I'm a bit of a mathe buff (nerd alert), so I think that's one reason I am put off by the concept of infinity. With the exception of calculus, infinity cannot be used in math. And its usage in the calculus seems very strange to me. Very strange.

Infinity – Eternity – "Forever"

I think the challenge of understanding infinity is at least one of the reasons why scientists have really warmed up to the Big Bang theory of the "beginning of the Universe" – the very beginning of space and time! Nobody wants to even try to reflect upon a Universe that goes on and on forever. When you think about it, everything in our lives has a beginning and an end – everything. Life itself begins and ends. We are conceived and born, and then at some point later we die. Every book we read has a beginning and an ending. Every race we run has a start and a finish. Every crisis, happiness, sadness, and occupation began at some point and ended or will end at some point. All the things of which we know about today that are ongoing had a beginning and will someday come to an end. "Nothing lasts forever." So how can we expect to be able to wrap our minds around the idea of an infinite Universe? We have way too much trouble thinking about very large numbers, let alone about infinity or eternity. I've read that in a billion years, the Sun will get hot enough to evaporate all the water on Earth – no water, no life. And that's not even close to the five billion years from now when the Sun is expected to explode in a tremendous supernova.

A billion years is just too long to be able to understand. That's a thousand, million years! I have trouble getting the 65 million years ago when the dinos became extinct. Back then there were no primates, and there were very few mammals, and the mammals were mostly just tiny little things scurrying around the toes of the dinos (although a few were large enough to feast on small dinos). Heck I have trouble with 2 million years ago or so when humans first walked the Earth, not Homo sapiens yet but still genus Homo and so human beings. How do you fare with 10,000 years ago when people first learned how to grow their own food, to settle down in one place and form societies? My mother died 22 years ago, and everytime I think about it, it's just like it was yesterday. So not just infinity, but time is something I also have a problem with, especially the past. That's why I meditate, because meditation trains you to live and be in the present moment. Not easy, but it's definitely worthwhile.

Anything that is infinite doesn't come to an ending, nor did it have a beginning. It just goes on and on and on without end. Think it, talk it, sing it, walk it, you just keep going round and round and round until...

you don't.

Like everything else, you come to a stop. Like magic. There is no tomorrow, no yesterday. And when you think about it even the present moment does not exist. The past blends into the future. So just when is the present moment? What is the real meaning of "now"?

It's this moment. Then it becomes this moment, then this moment. OR... the present moment can be a span of time, the length of which is whatever you choose it to be. Like a circle...

You make it as big a circle as you want it to be. The area inside the circle is the present moment, and the area outside the circle is the past and the future. If the Universe is finite, as the scientists and the Big Bang theory would have us believe, then the outside of the circle is just as finite, even though it doesn't appear to be finite. Time and space are limited – they each had a beginning and they each will end some day far into the future. If on the other hand the Universe is infinite, then the outside of the circle might also be infinite. It's your past, your future, which as sad or happy as it may sound, had a beginning and seems to eventually come to an end. Will we be like some insects? Are we like caterpillars here on Earth and we morph into like butterflies or something (spirits maybe?) when our bodies die? We can only hope that our coffins and urns act as our pupal chrysalides and we transform into another kind of life. We can only hope. The infinity of Life – what a grand mystery!

War

Where's the mystery? Let me 'splain. To fully understand the mystery of War as I do, please let me begin with the parts of war that are not really mysterious. It's no mystery that war can actually be beneficial to a country both economically and creatively. There are usually boosts in financial areas and in inventive scenarios. I also see no mystery in the fact that whichever side is the aggressor or the defender, there are no good guys, there are only bad guys, and either side is fully capable of gross atrocities against the other side. For me, these facts are clues to what the actual mystery of war is. If you haven't guessed it yet, are you at least beginning to form an opinion?

There is also no puzzle that humans have been at war with each other for a long, long time. In ancient times, way before agriculture entered the human picture about 10,000 years ago, roaming groups of nomad hunter/gatherers would occasionally happen onto other groups. Some were familiar and friendly, and some were not so friendly. So there were occasional clashes. As the population grew that would happen more often. It was about 8,000 BCE that war began to become an institution. When humans settled down to practice husbandry and agriculture, we became so much more territorial. Human beings grew to covet their land, and many learned how to form armies and coveted their neighbors' lands. The aggressive human instinct to survive probably aided our ancestors in developing offensive and defensive practices for the art of war.

Where is the mystery? I think there is something mysterious about supposedly grown, mature humans who are unable to control their violent tendencies. So it's not just war, it is any human practice that hurts others, any type of situation where humans tread on the human rights of others, no matter how justified they think their actions are. And war is the very worst of these practices that mystify me. Think of an individual person with a knife or gun that murders another person, then multiply that by hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. I am a Viet Nam veteran. My older brother was killed there about a year-and-a-half before I got there. So I am no stranger to the ugliness of war. Nor was I immune from what I now consider to be terrible feelings of hatred and a lust for revenge (in the form of "justice", of course). Those feelings are not easy to deal with; however, they can be overcome.

Us human beings

Brain (and way of thinking): Specifically the human brain is what this gnarly little mystery is about. The primate brain began small, and in some primates gradually grew to present day sizes and larger. "Gradually grew" is a phrase related only to the perceptions of our present-day observations of time. When compared rather to the greater geological periods, the human brain came about in the "blink of an eye". After many, many millions of years of the primate brain growing almost to the size of a chimpanzee's brain, one type of primate's brain spurted to about four or five times that size (in what in geological terms was a very short period of time): genus Homo. All of the species in that genus enjoyed brains much larger than other primates. Today, of all those dozen or more species of genus Homo, only one remains: Homo sapiens – us folks.

Why did the human brain grow so large so quickly? No one really knows, but there is lots of speculation. Perhaps a diet change from vegetarian to meat-eating had something to do with it. Another idea lists the intervention by extraterrestrials as the reason for the fast growth. It still remains one of the most tantalizing puzzles on record: How did the human brain grow so large, so fast? Primates – monkeys and apes – began to evolve from mammals 65- to 80-million years ago, and it has been only in the last 2.5 million years or so that the Homo brain spurted to modern-day size. Blink of an eye. The human brain did in fact reach about its present size a bit more than half a million years ago, so in about 2 million years (an extremely long period compared to our individual life spans, and yet an extremely short period in geological terms), the human brain quadrupled in size. An astonishing enigma wrapped within the mystery that is us.

Just as important as the brain size is the way human beings think – how we use our minds. To some extent this must be a function of our brain size; however, just as important is how our brains are put together, how they are "wired", as compared with other animals. Our way of thinking appears to be very different, and how that came about, why that came about, may be added to the human mystique.

Human extinction: Where have all the other humans gone? There have been more than a dozen different species of humans, but now only one remains: us, Homo sapiens. This is another fine mystery for which there are only very speculative answers. One idea is that our H. sapiens ancestors killed off all the others. Actually, this is probably true, but not in the way people usually present this idea. It's presented in a way that depicts our ancestors actively murdering all the other Homo species. I don't think there were enough of them to do that. Human numbers, which included all of the human species back then, were too small to allow for that kind of massive and determined interaction. Most likely our ancestors, who competed with the other Homo species for game, were simply better hunters, better "bread winners". Homo sapiens also probably made and used improved tools, so they thrived while the other Homo species dwindled and died out due to their inability to compete with our ancestors. And our ancestors may also have been better at adapting to climate changes. By the time, 8 or 9,000 BCE, that our ancestors began to plant seeds, till the land and raise animals for food, all the other Homo species were long dead. We are all that remain of a phenomenal and mysterious feat of mammal and primate evolution. With all that our ancestors had to endure, we probably shouldn't even be here, yet here we are. We can only hope that we don't wind up like our other genus Homo cousins.

What gets into us?

What the devil gets into us sometimes? We can be the nicest, sweetest and most loving human beings, even most of the time. Then something happens to us to make us snap! I had a friend once long ago who was a policeman. We hooked up one night for a few drinks and he related that he had just had an ashtray thrown at him in a bar, and it was only because he was wearing a police uniform. Of course, the perp was drunk and jailed, and he went away for a good, long time. I told my cop buddy that it must really get to him at times like that. He said yeah, but the thing that really got to him and other cops was not the hardened criminal type, no, the things that got to them were the ones who were usually good, law-abiding people who, for whatever reason did wrong things, bad things. He said he really didn't understand that. And I find it a most curious mystery, as well. This, to me, is as befuddling a mystery as whether or not there is a spiritual existence. We don't know what goes out of us when we die, and we don't have a clue what gets into us that makes us snap and go haywire sometimes. Yeah, I know, there are college kids and grads out there who think they know all about it. RIIiight.

Life

Main un-article User:Paine Ellsworth/Mystery/Life

Life is only a concern for the living, and only a mystery for the sentient.

Encouraging words from Louisa May Alcott, originally by Ellen Sturgis Hooper; I've also seen the first two lines attributed to Lord Byron:

I slept, and dreamed that life was beauty;
I woke, and found that life was duty.
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?
Toil on, sad heart, courageously,
And thou shall find thy dream to be
A noonday light and truth to thee.

I would also like to note the striking resemblance of Louisa May with another of my heroes, Henrietta Swan!

Thank you for reading!

^< * more to come * ^>

Un-article see also

on my Philosophy – 3rd

Aggressiveness – 12th
on Cosmology – 1st
Creativity – 16th
on Death – 2nd
Emerald breath – 6th
Evolution – 13th
Flat Earth – 19th
on Good and Evil – 10th
Grateful! – 4th
Gravity – 8th
Hideous – 20th
on the Life Energy Essence – 5th
Light's nature – 7th
Math-ugh – 15th
Mystery – 21st
- Mystery/Life – 22nd
Our movement through space – 18th
Presmo – 9th
Sensory perception – 11th
The Self – 14th
Smile at Death – 17th

[1] In the 1993 movie Jurassic Park, Dr. Ian Malcolm (played by Jeff Goldblum) attempts to explain chaos theory to Dr. Ellie Sattler (played by Laura Dern), specifically referencing the butterfly effect, by stating "It simply deals with unpredictability in complex systems", and "The shorthand is 'the butterfly effect'." [link]

[2] Photo of Buzz Aldrin's bootprint on the Moon – links to a YouTube video: a Carl Sagan series excerpt called "Gift of Apollo"

[3] Homeric Hymn to Selene (32) 5–14.

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