As I write this morning, Russia is invading the Ukraine. No doubt, there will be worldwide ramifications and local suffering. Bullets and bombs have such deleterious effects on people and economies. Obviously, the Russians think they can do as they wish in the matter, and the Ukrainians seem to have only two choices, acquiesce or fight. I’m guessing they will choose the latter to whatever degree they can muster before surrendering to a larger military force and acquiescing to Russia’s demands. The West saw the inevitability of this collision of forces over a period of months, but it relegated itself to observing until today when it imposed sanctions on Russia.
As I wrote above, the Russia-Ukraine conflict will have effects. The stock market seems to have been affected, and the ruble has lost value. Those economic effects seem to be rather immediate; The conflict is young, however, and wars engender unpredictable variables that will play out over the course of months and even years.
Nine billion years ago two giant black holes collided, shaking their galaxy and even sending out gravitational waves that influenced both time and space across the Cosmos. * Well, not completely across. As we view the black holes, they have yet to merge and still lie about 180 billion miles apart, but their collision is inevitable and highly predictable. Because there’s a lag time in every observation, even in your seeing yourself in a mirror, a collision that already occurred won’t be observed for millennia, about ten, actually. Earthlings, assuming our species survives such collisions as that between the Russians and Ukrainians, have to wait 10,000 years to observe the black hole merger. But trust me; it’s already taken place.
Ten thousand years into our future is a long time, considering that 10,000 years into our past sends us into the beginnings of civilization in the Neolithic Period. Ten millennia hence there might not even be an Ukraine—or a Russia. Ten millennia is a long time.
Just one millennium ago neither country existed as we know them today. Just 1,140 years ago Prince Oleg of Novgorod captured Kiev, starting the past millennium of connections between Rus’ and Slav, or Varangians and just about everyone else in the region, interrupted, of course, by the Huns and, dare I say, Ronald Reagan. So, there was a previous collision of people that generated the Kievan Rus’. And today, it seems that history is about to repeat itself.
There is no way to know whether or not that distant galaxy with two massive black holes has any intelligent life. We’re still wondering about the existence of any life beyond our little planet. But if there were intelligence there, it could not know about the Russian-Ukrainian war for nine billion years. That’s twice as long as Earth has been a planet. If the Sun swells as expected in 4.5 billion years to become a Red Giant that scorches the inner Solar System, by the time that life in that distant galaxy finds out about today’s events, there won’t even be an Earth. In fact, for any intelligence in that distant galaxy, Earth will have ceased to exist 4.5 billion years earlier.
Just weigh that thought for a moment. Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In 4.5 billion years it will cease to exist. In nine billion years, today’s light from our galaxy will reach that distant galaxy. Observers nine billion years from now would see something that no longer exists. I suppose it’s important from the Russians’ perspective to sacrifice life and material to merge Moscow and Kiev as in days of the distant human past and as in a country that is different today from what it was in 882 A.D.
So, here we are, the only known self-aware intelligence with advanced technology still fighting as we did 1,140 years ago. It makes me think of George Lucas’s opening scroll for Star Wars: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….”
Amazingly ironic creatures, aren’t we? We’re capable of discovering the mysteries of a distant galaxy but can’t escape our own folly. We pride ourselves on our intelligence, but we have no more capability of stopping collisions on our own planet than we have of stopping two black holes merging nine billion light-years away. Pretty much all we can do is wait and observe.
*https://phys.org/news/2022-02-colossal-black-holes-heart-galaxy.html
As I wrote above, the Russia-Ukraine conflict will have effects. The stock market seems to have been affected, and the ruble has lost value. Those economic effects seem to be rather immediate; The conflict is young, however, and wars engender unpredictable variables that will play out over the course of months and even years.
Nine billion years ago two giant black holes collided, shaking their galaxy and even sending out gravitational waves that influenced both time and space across the Cosmos. * Well, not completely across. As we view the black holes, they have yet to merge and still lie about 180 billion miles apart, but their collision is inevitable and highly predictable. Because there’s a lag time in every observation, even in your seeing yourself in a mirror, a collision that already occurred won’t be observed for millennia, about ten, actually. Earthlings, assuming our species survives such collisions as that between the Russians and Ukrainians, have to wait 10,000 years to observe the black hole merger. But trust me; it’s already taken place.
Ten thousand years into our future is a long time, considering that 10,000 years into our past sends us into the beginnings of civilization in the Neolithic Period. Ten millennia hence there might not even be an Ukraine—or a Russia. Ten millennia is a long time.
Just one millennium ago neither country existed as we know them today. Just 1,140 years ago Prince Oleg of Novgorod captured Kiev, starting the past millennium of connections between Rus’ and Slav, or Varangians and just about everyone else in the region, interrupted, of course, by the Huns and, dare I say, Ronald Reagan. So, there was a previous collision of people that generated the Kievan Rus’. And today, it seems that history is about to repeat itself.
There is no way to know whether or not that distant galaxy with two massive black holes has any intelligent life. We’re still wondering about the existence of any life beyond our little planet. But if there were intelligence there, it could not know about the Russian-Ukrainian war for nine billion years. That’s twice as long as Earth has been a planet. If the Sun swells as expected in 4.5 billion years to become a Red Giant that scorches the inner Solar System, by the time that life in that distant galaxy finds out about today’s events, there won’t even be an Earth. In fact, for any intelligence in that distant galaxy, Earth will have ceased to exist 4.5 billion years earlier.
Just weigh that thought for a moment. Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In 4.5 billion years it will cease to exist. In nine billion years, today’s light from our galaxy will reach that distant galaxy. Observers nine billion years from now would see something that no longer exists. I suppose it’s important from the Russians’ perspective to sacrifice life and material to merge Moscow and Kiev as in days of the distant human past and as in a country that is different today from what it was in 882 A.D.
So, here we are, the only known self-aware intelligence with advanced technology still fighting as we did 1,140 years ago. It makes me think of George Lucas’s opening scroll for Star Wars: “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….”
Amazingly ironic creatures, aren’t we? We’re capable of discovering the mysteries of a distant galaxy but can’t escape our own folly. We pride ourselves on our intelligence, but we have no more capability of stopping collisions on our own planet than we have of stopping two black holes merging nine billion light-years away. Pretty much all we can do is wait and observe.
*https://phys.org/news/2022-02-colossal-black-holes-heart-galaxy.html
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