The Grand Illusion

The Grand Illusion

   Scientists searching for intelligent life in space appear to be trying ever more intriguing avenues, the most recent being a high-speed camera (some earth-bound cameras such as those by Photron can records at a rate of over 12,000 images per second).  If you recall one of the Star Trek, the Next Generation episodes, a being boarded and lived at such a faster pace that even the laser weapon fired at it was too slow, the beam of light (moving at a rate of 186,000 miles per second) moving at such a visibly slow pace that the being was easily able to dodge it and otherwise create havoc for those "stuck" in our slow pace of life.  It's an interesting concept, that perhaps we are missing signs of life simply because it might be moving too quickly for us to recognize.

   This first happened in the 1960s, when, according to the excellent radio series, Star Date: Soviet astronomers were studying an object known as CTA 102, which had been discovered by a radio telescope in California.  One of the Soviets said the object’s odd radio waves were produced by a civilization that could harness the power of a star, or even a galaxy.  And in 1965, another Soviet reported a regular variation in those radio waves — like an interstellar carrier wave.  The source turned out to be a quasar, an astronomical anomaly not even known at the time.

   But it brought up an interesting suggestion, not only the possible discovery of distant intelligent life, but also the possibility of such intelligence harnessing "the power of a star, or even a galaxy," much as we now tap into the power of our sun.  But who knows what other "power" might be out there.  And if such power was already tapped by such intelligence, would we really want to make contact with them (or them with us)?  Or perhaps such intelligence is simply beyond our sight or comprehension (new satellites are also searching for intelligent life signs via different spectrums of light, such as infrared and ultraviolet).

   Back down to earth, you may have read about the controversy occurring just outside the national park borders of the Grand Canyon.  There, at the confluence of the Little Colorado merging into the main Colorado River, a point where many guided rafting boats pull out and have their patrons frolic in the banks and gaze at the Canyon's walls ahead, a developer is proposing to build a tramway-gondola called the Escolade that would transport an estimated 10,000 visitors a day from the top to the bottom of the canyon and back.  Shops and hotels and restaurants would line both the top and bottom of the area.  Jobs galore would arrive, or at least that's the story being told to much of the Navajo nation in the area, an attractive proposal to a population seemingly mired in a poor economic state.

   But there are a few questions remaining, not least among them being the water itself (the aquifer in the area has not been tested and could possibly drain other areas nearby).  And perhaps more importantly, the other native American nations in the area, such as the Zuni and Hopi, the Hualapai and the Havasupai, are feeling as if they're not being allowed a say.  For among the nations, the entire canyon area is considered sacred, a site for their "Holy Beings" who now hear their prayers.  This was written in detail in a recent issue of Smithsonian in a piece titled Grand Canyon on the Edge by David Roberts.  In the awesome beauty of the Grand Canyon’s 277 miles of river passage, of the national park’s 1,902 square miles of cliff and ledge and rim and pinnacle (a tract the size of Delaware), the true heart of the Grand Canyon has always been the confluence.  The first non-natives to reach the junction were the team under Maj. John Wesley Powell, who made the first descent of the Colorado River in 1869...As Powell wrote on August 13: “We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown....What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not.”...Long before Powell, however, Native Americans held the confluence as sacred.  For the Hopi, as well as for other tribes, it is central to their origin story.  The sipapu—a travertine bulge of mineral deposits with a hole in the center, which lies on the banks of the Little Colorado River a short distance upstream from the confluence—is the place through which all human beings migrated from the subterranean Third World to today’s Fourth World.

   It might prove to be that in our deep space searching, we may be missing (and perhaps losing) intelligent beings right here on earth, beings that we also cannot see but exist, at least to some human believers.  And their ancient beings might be as real as any we might find in a distant galaxy, beings that we cannot see but perhaps possess unknown powers to harness energy and beauty and awe.  One only has to visit the Grand Canyon for the first time, or the second, or the tenth, to be staggered at the sight (and to imagine that filling such a canyon with molten lava, 11-times over, is what has recently been mapped under Yellowstone).  Maybe our own searching should begin inward instead of outward, not only on our earth, our home, but within ourselves.