“So, now we have some corroborating evidence that a supernova occurred near Earth about two to four million years ago.* The new findings support a supernova not much more than 300 light-years from Earth. Lucy or her australopithecine ancestors or descendants could have seen it. I’ll bet that was something to behold though I doubt Lucy’s kind paid much attention unless they observed its first appearance. Think about it, when the Crab Pulsar went supernova it was bright enough, as they say, for ‘Chinese astronomers’ to see in 1054. We call its shroud of expanding gases the Crab Nebula, and we know it centers on the remnant neutron star made in that supernova 6,500 light-years away. Sixty-five hundred light years! And still bright enough to be seen by naked eye and recorded by the advanced modern hominins of the eleventh century!”
“Other than a bright light in the sky, what’s the big deal? I’ve seen the fireworks over the castle in Disney’s magic kingdom. Quite impressive. What’s a single bright light in the night in comparison?”
“But you don’t understand. A nearby supernova 2 to 4 million years ago showered Earth with cosmic rays and with iron and manganese found in Earth and moon rocks. Cosmic rays, you know, well, cosmic rays can cause mutations. They can change an atom or a molecular arrangement here or there quite by random. I might be different from Lucy because her species got hit by those cosmic rays that generated some new gene. They got hit, and some new gene evolved that allows me to think, to reason, even to daydream. That ancient stream of cosmic rays might have cascaded into a river of hominin change; I might be a product of that supernova. You, too.”
“Still, what’s the big deal? If cosmic rays have caused mutations, don’t we always undergo the changes they make? We’re being hit by them as we speak.”
“Yes, but the shower of cosmic rays had to be a bit larger than usual after that star exploded, possibly producing a rain of change, so to speak.”
“Still not seeing why you’re fussing about it. We’re different from Australopithecus afrarensis, plain and simple. What’s happened, happened. Nothing we can do about it, except live with the result into which we seem to have been fated. Life changes as Heraclitus’ river always changes—even more so down the... .”
“It just shows that we’re not isolated from events separated from us by either time or space. It isn’t proof that some specific mutation occurred because we can never trace a cosmic ray bombardment to a specific change in biology. It is evidence that such bombardments have occurred, however. Just talking in a stream of consciousness here, but speaking of stream of consciousness, I should say that maybe Finnegan’s Wake or Joyce’s Ulysses wouldn’t exist if that supernova hadn’t hit the australopithecines.”
“Novels! Now you’re talking about novels because of a supernova two to four million years ago?”
“They just popped into my head as though they were unexpected cosmic rays arriving out of the blue, er, the dark sky of the universe, just a flash, but there’s some relevance. I mean, think of Finnegan’s Wake that Joyce begins and ends in the middle of the same sentence, making a cycle that relates present to past and past to present. Joyce begins the novel with ‘riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs’ and he ends the book with the beginning of that first sentence: ‘A way a lone a last a loved a long the…’ and then back to the word riverrun.”
“You’re losing me.”
“Well, here we are in 2020, definitely a tumultuous year…but there I go in my own stream of consciousness…anyway back to cosmic rays and Finnegan’s Wake. The ‘route of the commodious vicus,’ or ‘wide village’ is a trace around Ireland that begins and ends in the same place. Here we are, as I said, in 2020 finding a possible connection to our own ‘Adam and Eve’ and our own origins in a blast of cosmic rays that hit Lucy or her kind or some other group on its evolutionary path to us, to our brains, to our ability to stream both consciousness and history, and to our looking up to the skies not just in wonder, but in knowing what we’re looking at and how it might be connected to who we are and how we got be what we are. And it makes me think of how I’m connected to events that I could not possibly have known unless I had some mutation that led to my and my species having the ability to see the past and relate it to the present. Wow! Now there’s a stream of thinking. But see what I mean? We find manganese-53 in a rock, and we find a connection to our evolution, to our ancient ancestors.”
“Don’t worry. We all do that stream of consciousness thing. But I am beginning to see something in your rambles: An explosion in the past is the reason that we can think about and know about the explosion in the past. It’s almost as though that ancient blast made sure we would know about it though that would be too teleological an interpretation. I know the star didn’t know that it might have made it possible for us to know about it. It was ironically an unconscious substance and event that might have helped us arrive at a state of consciousness capable of a stream of thoughts. And I’m wondering now whether or not this current generation isn’t being hit by some cosmic particle that will lead to some change in our species and an unforeseen future ability. That makes me think that some fleeting event today might affect which genes get passed on through the filters of disease, accident, murder, war, or cosmic event just as certain genes passed from the australopithecines to us.”
“Sorry, what? I was drifting down the riverrun of daydreaming about supernovae, Lucy, iron, manganese, and rocks.”
*Korschinek G. et al. Supernova-Produced 53Mn on Earth. Phys. Rev. Lett. 125 031101. 17 Jul 2020. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-stellar-explosion-earth-proximity.html
Technical University Munich. Supernova iron found on moon. 14 Apr 2016. https://phys.org/news/2016-04-supernova-iron-moon.html
“Other than a bright light in the sky, what’s the big deal? I’ve seen the fireworks over the castle in Disney’s magic kingdom. Quite impressive. What’s a single bright light in the night in comparison?”
“But you don’t understand. A nearby supernova 2 to 4 million years ago showered Earth with cosmic rays and with iron and manganese found in Earth and moon rocks. Cosmic rays, you know, well, cosmic rays can cause mutations. They can change an atom or a molecular arrangement here or there quite by random. I might be different from Lucy because her species got hit by those cosmic rays that generated some new gene. They got hit, and some new gene evolved that allows me to think, to reason, even to daydream. That ancient stream of cosmic rays might have cascaded into a river of hominin change; I might be a product of that supernova. You, too.”
“Still, what’s the big deal? If cosmic rays have caused mutations, don’t we always undergo the changes they make? We’re being hit by them as we speak.”
“Yes, but the shower of cosmic rays had to be a bit larger than usual after that star exploded, possibly producing a rain of change, so to speak.”
“Still not seeing why you’re fussing about it. We’re different from Australopithecus afrarensis, plain and simple. What’s happened, happened. Nothing we can do about it, except live with the result into which we seem to have been fated. Life changes as Heraclitus’ river always changes—even more so down the... .”
“It just shows that we’re not isolated from events separated from us by either time or space. It isn’t proof that some specific mutation occurred because we can never trace a cosmic ray bombardment to a specific change in biology. It is evidence that such bombardments have occurred, however. Just talking in a stream of consciousness here, but speaking of stream of consciousness, I should say that maybe Finnegan’s Wake or Joyce’s Ulysses wouldn’t exist if that supernova hadn’t hit the australopithecines.”
“Novels! Now you’re talking about novels because of a supernova two to four million years ago?”
“They just popped into my head as though they were unexpected cosmic rays arriving out of the blue, er, the dark sky of the universe, just a flash, but there’s some relevance. I mean, think of Finnegan’s Wake that Joyce begins and ends in the middle of the same sentence, making a cycle that relates present to past and past to present. Joyce begins the novel with ‘riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs’ and he ends the book with the beginning of that first sentence: ‘A way a lone a last a loved a long the…’ and then back to the word riverrun.”
“You’re losing me.”
“Well, here we are in 2020, definitely a tumultuous year…but there I go in my own stream of consciousness…anyway back to cosmic rays and Finnegan’s Wake. The ‘route of the commodious vicus,’ or ‘wide village’ is a trace around Ireland that begins and ends in the same place. Here we are, as I said, in 2020 finding a possible connection to our own ‘Adam and Eve’ and our own origins in a blast of cosmic rays that hit Lucy or her kind or some other group on its evolutionary path to us, to our brains, to our ability to stream both consciousness and history, and to our looking up to the skies not just in wonder, but in knowing what we’re looking at and how it might be connected to who we are and how we got be what we are. And it makes me think of how I’m connected to events that I could not possibly have known unless I had some mutation that led to my and my species having the ability to see the past and relate it to the present. Wow! Now there’s a stream of thinking. But see what I mean? We find manganese-53 in a rock, and we find a connection to our evolution, to our ancient ancestors.”
“Don’t worry. We all do that stream of consciousness thing. But I am beginning to see something in your rambles: An explosion in the past is the reason that we can think about and know about the explosion in the past. It’s almost as though that ancient blast made sure we would know about it though that would be too teleological an interpretation. I know the star didn’t know that it might have made it possible for us to know about it. It was ironically an unconscious substance and event that might have helped us arrive at a state of consciousness capable of a stream of thoughts. And I’m wondering now whether or not this current generation isn’t being hit by some cosmic particle that will lead to some change in our species and an unforeseen future ability. That makes me think that some fleeting event today might affect which genes get passed on through the filters of disease, accident, murder, war, or cosmic event just as certain genes passed from the australopithecines to us.”
“Sorry, what? I was drifting down the riverrun of daydreaming about supernovae, Lucy, iron, manganese, and rocks.”
*Korschinek G. et al. Supernova-Produced 53Mn on Earth. Phys. Rev. Lett. 125 031101. 17 Jul 2020. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-stellar-explosion-earth-proximity.html
Technical University Munich. Supernova iron found on moon. 14 Apr 2016. https://phys.org/news/2016-04-supernova-iron-moon.html
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