I: Good morning
They say over there in the mid-nineteenth century, Joseph Johann Littrow, director of the Vienna Observatory, proposed the idea of \u200b\u200bdigging canals giant geometric designs in sands of the Sahara, fill with water, then with kerosene and set on fire. That way, he said, could be extraterrestrial civilizations communicate the existence of intelligent life on Earth. At that time, not a few believed that the moon might be inhabited, and the question of life on Mars was widespread conjecture. Some years before, Franz von Baron assured Gruithuisen have identified a city on the moon through his telescope, and even speculated that the Venusian cloud cover (which we now know is sulfuric acid) was due to festivals devoted to native fire agreements. In December 1900, Madame Clara GOUGET Guzman, wealthy French aristocrat, announced a prize of one hundred thousand francs to "a person of any nation in the next ten years to find the means to communicate with a star and get an answer." There was talk of stars, not planets: Mars, it was assumed, was an inhabited planet, so that communication with the Martians would be too easy, not worthy of the award. The mysterious words today are: a gourd TV.
II: Calling all aliens
The issue of communication with other planets has been present in the scientific community and among the popular since long before space exploration allowed us to get out of ours. Has been an inspiration to a lot of novels and movies, and so in general we consider it more a matter belonging to the realm of fiction. However, some have raised interesting questions about what would be the reaction of the human species to a possible communication of this type, and suggest that, at the end of the day, as a species we are not prepared for an event of this kind: we consider so unreal, that if one day come to pass our feedback on both human civilization might not be very good.
This lack of foresight of a possible scenario for alien contact has been the subject of novels (later turns movies) as Sphere, Michael Crichton, and Contact by Carl Sagan. In the first, a group of experts was assembled to investigate a device immersed in the peaceful, presumably, is an alien spacecraft buried there three centuries ago. The group is composed of an astrophysicist, a biologist, a mathematician (by that universal language) and a psychologist expert in trauma. Technical team will add a United States military, missing more. The thing ends in disaster, because the characters, who are very skilled in their fields, unable to drive at the prospect of a meeting that can so dramatically change the paradigms of humanity, and are not prepared to deal with intelligence alien.
In the novel by Carl Sagan, a researcher at the SETI Program (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) captures a signal from a distant star, a sequence of the first 261 prime numbers, which seems to prove the existence of intelligence in space abroad. The message is also contained plans for an interstellar transportation machine, it is built and tested (the least for its occupants) that such travel is possible. The point is that the return to Earth only to find that it has only been here a few minutes (seconds in the movie, where there is only one astronaut) and not recorded tapes proving that the trip is done. Ultimately, the world turns its back to travelers because they can not produce evidence that the trip happened.
III: The lunatics are another cosmos, "said one
Alfred L. Canadian Webre, JD, co-founder of the Institute for Cooperation in Space, pacifist recognized consultant to government initiatives and generating preventive use of outer space for military purposes, Colima was invited to a few weeks (months?) by the Unified Union of Workers of the University of Colima, and the Coordination of Scientific Research, then headed by Dr. Jesus Muñiz, accredited university long career, also coordinator State Science and Technology, guiding man, say the experts. The invitation from one doctor to another occurred in order that the former offer a conference on Expololítica, issue that is expert, and that has to do with the operation maps politics, law and government from a intergalactic perspective.
Presumably Muñiz being a man of science, and understanding the university as a place for ideas, it seemed to bring Webre was correct. In addition, the bottom line of the speech of Dr. Webre, beyond what some can consider extravagant, unlikely or pseudoscientific, focuses on the imperative that the human species deprived of cooperation, peace and harmony to achieve progress as a civilization . Above, the prospect does not seem negligible to hear an opinion on how they can be the possible relationships with other intelligences, just in case. And Crichton and Sagan warned us not to
vaig be.
The point is that Alfred Webre also speaks of things that those who have some respect for The scientific method produce discomfort, so to speak. Accept ideas such as dimensional portals, interplanetary transfer as a matter of daily life, time travel, and international plots, it is not easy. The least that one does in such cases is to stay quietly out of respect for the beliefs of others, to say no, then after you "and take what you consider useful than it provides the speaker. After all who came to her talk all they got was more information and offering a broader perspective to consider the universe, and every one who decided how much or how no use of the info.
III: Check them Polish friend
However, the issue soon escalated into a pretext for political broadside. Supported by the sensationalist media coverage of some Colima they decided to report only the scandal of the conference, and make a mockery of organizing a group of teachers led by researcher Alfredo Arana (who's credentials and academic achievements do not prevent a flowery language in public forums) went on the attack and not the speaker and his ideas (because they were not at the conference he and the new coordinator for Scientific Research UdeC) but of the organizer of the event, making use of ridicule and disqualification a manner, which lueguito becoming apparent political interests beyond criticism for bringing a speaker of questionable ideas. It is no longer aliens, it is to put a public trip to the Rector.
newspaper Ecos de la Costa played their part in the merequetengue to report only the outrageousness of the talk, and then publish a picture of Dr. Jesús Muñiz tricked in which he portrayed as alien. Then the director will "apologize" in a column, saying that "we return to us for a training error" (which raises questions about the internal organization of the day), without removing the fact that the coup had already given.
As a result, the ball keeps rolling, and began the clarifications by those invited Alfred Webre to Colima, and just as some have tried to put Dr. Muñiz under a cloth of ridicule, the doctor has looked Arana alone under his own light artillery to lead the mud, showing the level of discourse. In conclusion, there has been good, neither the speaker nor the organizer, not those who would exploit to attack, or the newspaper. Worse, the deeper message of Webre, who has to do with human solidarity, international cooperation, peace among nations, and the need to progress together, is the least has been vented to the public. Take her there, comrades.
Despite everything, an optimistic interpretation of this may be that although all the characters came scratched, the bailout is that ultimately the University has been shown as an open forum for ideas, however radical they be. Let's stay, at least, with that positive.
The network is the first season of this column: www.ernestocortes.com. The second one can be tracked by Facebook under the name of Lithic column. Ahista every weekend, so soon. On Twitter: @ ernestocortes. I read: Ernesto@CuerdaCueroyCanto.com.
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