If you study paleontology, especially invertebrate paleontology, you will probably learn about ancient burrowing animals, Marine worms and mollusks are examples. They were among the earliest of organisms whose lifestyle altered place. When life moved onto the land in the Silurian, so also did organisms with a burrowing lifestyle. By the Jurassic there were mammalian ancestors like the burrowing Docofossor brachydactylus.
Seemingly simple animals from our perspective, burrowing invertebrates and vertebrates continue to alter Earth by digging holes. And they will do so long into the future. Humans are not alone in changing the planet, but among burrowing organisms, we are the most efficient at making nothing out of something and then making something out of that nothing. From excavating in natural rock shelters and caves, we have advanced to digging tunnels miles long through mountain ranges, burrowing beneath rivers and ocean channels, and even making a circular tunnel at Geneva that runs for 17 miles. And if we consider all the underground aqueducts and mines, such as the Delaware Aqueduct (85 mi-long), the Päijänne Water Tunnel (76 mi-long), and the Chilean copper mine called El Teniente (2,000+ mi), we find that humans are burrowers on steroids by comparison with all ancient and modern non-human burrowers. That 17-mile tunnel at Geneva run by Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire, or CERN (Conseil européen pour la recherche nucléaire), is the supreme example of making something out of a “nothing” that we made by excavating. CERN is one of the most sophisticated artificial devices ever built, and it’s built underground on a mind-boggling scale.
Nature abhors a vacuum as we all know, and burrows and holes of all kinds are among the abhorred vacuums. Unless they are maintained, they are destined for infilling by collapse or by sediments that wash into them. Ancient burrows aren’t holes anymore, but rather are preserved as lithified casts of sediments that filled them. Even modern mines and tunnels are destined for infilling, a fact confirmed by fatal mine roof collapses. The only exceptions to complete infilling are Black holes, which get larger as matter falls into them. Quasar Ton 618, for example, has the mass of 68 billion Suns, and there’s no limit on how big it might grow over the next tens of trillions of years though Hawking said that all black holes will eventually “evaporate.” We might think of these burrows in Space-Time as destined to destruction not by infilling, but rather by “out-filling.”
All planetary holes are temporary. When they aren’t filled, they eventually collapse. Even long-lived caves like Mammoth Cave will eventually collapse, as sinkholes in Kentucky foreshadow, though that complete collapse might not occur for tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. Thus, holes dug by nature, humans, and other animals are ultimately destined for destruction.
For finite beings locked into the importance of the present, not all holes seem to be temporary. I’m referring to the “holes” in the economy, society, and relationships. We might be hole-makers par-excellence not only in the physical world, but also in the human one. Take the current rise in gas prices, ironically caused by the Biden Administration’s restrictions against making holes, the holes made by drillers. The political war on those drill holes has resulted in an economic hole in the personal wealth of the citizenry at large as people struggle to fill their gas tanks, which are cavities. And the same administration has caused an infilling of the country as two million migrants have passed through or attempted to get through holes in the unfinished border wall. Seems we’re always dealing with holes of one kind or another when political agendas clash with reality. The current administration shut down the holes of oil production that has produced a hole in the supply that it now attempts to fill with oil from holes in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Russia. For an organism that prides itself on having made something out of “purposeful nothings,” we humans have traded productive holes for economic ones. One has to ask, “What is the difference between burning oil withdrawn from holes in foreign lands and burning oil from holes in the homeland?” The answer might be, “Americans can now look forward to filling the holes in pockets of foreigners with dollars that they did not spend on imported oil when just a couple of years ago, the country was an oil-exporter.”
I find it ironic that humans can make holes in the process of useful hole-making, that we can turn something of value into nothing. Oil and gas wells and coal mines are the primary reasons modern civilization is what it is. Cheap fuel has energized industry and agriculture and enabled people to live beyond a subsistence level that might characterize the lifestyles of worms, mollusks, and rodents. But that fuel has come only by making holes in the ground, by turning somethings into nothings and then deriving something from the hole-making process. The current administration seems to believe that they have accomplished a planet-saving goal by closing the hole-making at home while at the same time encouraging hole-making in other countries. And to what end? To "save" the planet from change? Organisms have been changing the planet as long as there have been organisms. That we are better at changing the planet than all predecessors is the reason our species has seven billion living members. That we can distinguish between developed and developing countries or Third World countries is the product of all that hole-making, all the burrowing for sources of energy and materials. Burrowing has long been a significant way of sustaining life, of making organisms independent and safe. To shift where the hole-making occurs simply makes a hole in the economy at home.
It seems that the Biden Administration wants to turn burrowers into borrowers.
Seemingly simple animals from our perspective, burrowing invertebrates and vertebrates continue to alter Earth by digging holes. And they will do so long into the future. Humans are not alone in changing the planet, but among burrowing organisms, we are the most efficient at making nothing out of something and then making something out of that nothing. From excavating in natural rock shelters and caves, we have advanced to digging tunnels miles long through mountain ranges, burrowing beneath rivers and ocean channels, and even making a circular tunnel at Geneva that runs for 17 miles. And if we consider all the underground aqueducts and mines, such as the Delaware Aqueduct (85 mi-long), the Päijänne Water Tunnel (76 mi-long), and the Chilean copper mine called El Teniente (2,000+ mi), we find that humans are burrowers on steroids by comparison with all ancient and modern non-human burrowers. That 17-mile tunnel at Geneva run by Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire, or CERN (Conseil européen pour la recherche nucléaire), is the supreme example of making something out of a “nothing” that we made by excavating. CERN is one of the most sophisticated artificial devices ever built, and it’s built underground on a mind-boggling scale.
Nature abhors a vacuum as we all know, and burrows and holes of all kinds are among the abhorred vacuums. Unless they are maintained, they are destined for infilling by collapse or by sediments that wash into them. Ancient burrows aren’t holes anymore, but rather are preserved as lithified casts of sediments that filled them. Even modern mines and tunnels are destined for infilling, a fact confirmed by fatal mine roof collapses. The only exceptions to complete infilling are Black holes, which get larger as matter falls into them. Quasar Ton 618, for example, has the mass of 68 billion Suns, and there’s no limit on how big it might grow over the next tens of trillions of years though Hawking said that all black holes will eventually “evaporate.” We might think of these burrows in Space-Time as destined to destruction not by infilling, but rather by “out-filling.”
All planetary holes are temporary. When they aren’t filled, they eventually collapse. Even long-lived caves like Mammoth Cave will eventually collapse, as sinkholes in Kentucky foreshadow, though that complete collapse might not occur for tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. Thus, holes dug by nature, humans, and other animals are ultimately destined for destruction.
For finite beings locked into the importance of the present, not all holes seem to be temporary. I’m referring to the “holes” in the economy, society, and relationships. We might be hole-makers par-excellence not only in the physical world, but also in the human one. Take the current rise in gas prices, ironically caused by the Biden Administration’s restrictions against making holes, the holes made by drillers. The political war on those drill holes has resulted in an economic hole in the personal wealth of the citizenry at large as people struggle to fill their gas tanks, which are cavities. And the same administration has caused an infilling of the country as two million migrants have passed through or attempted to get through holes in the unfinished border wall. Seems we’re always dealing with holes of one kind or another when political agendas clash with reality. The current administration shut down the holes of oil production that has produced a hole in the supply that it now attempts to fill with oil from holes in Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Russia. For an organism that prides itself on having made something out of “purposeful nothings,” we humans have traded productive holes for economic ones. One has to ask, “What is the difference between burning oil withdrawn from holes in foreign lands and burning oil from holes in the homeland?” The answer might be, “Americans can now look forward to filling the holes in pockets of foreigners with dollars that they did not spend on imported oil when just a couple of years ago, the country was an oil-exporter.”
I find it ironic that humans can make holes in the process of useful hole-making, that we can turn something of value into nothing. Oil and gas wells and coal mines are the primary reasons modern civilization is what it is. Cheap fuel has energized industry and agriculture and enabled people to live beyond a subsistence level that might characterize the lifestyles of worms, mollusks, and rodents. But that fuel has come only by making holes in the ground, by turning somethings into nothings and then deriving something from the hole-making process. The current administration seems to believe that they have accomplished a planet-saving goal by closing the hole-making at home while at the same time encouraging hole-making in other countries. And to what end? To "save" the planet from change? Organisms have been changing the planet as long as there have been organisms. That we are better at changing the planet than all predecessors is the reason our species has seven billion living members. That we can distinguish between developed and developing countries or Third World countries is the product of all that hole-making, all the burrowing for sources of energy and materials. Burrowing has long been a significant way of sustaining life, of making organisms independent and safe. To shift where the hole-making occurs simply makes a hole in the economy at home.
It seems that the Biden Administration wants to turn burrowers into borrowers.
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