From the Olympics to the Oort Cloud: An 100 Meter Sprint that Became Part of an Interstellar Space Marathon

The NeverEnding Story 

The bedtime stories we are told in our childhood years generally start with the phrase, “once upon a time”. To prevent these stories from exhausting the attention span of their young listeners, these stories normally come to a swift conclusion. A happy ending, in which good prevails over evil forces, normally ensures a peaceful nights’ sleep and keeps away disturbing, scary nightmares.

The German author, Michael Ende, was a little unconventional when he published a fantasy novel in 1979 which covers the adventures of a boy, Bastian Balthazar Bux. In this novel, Bastian, discovers and reads a book entitled, “The NeverEnding Story”.  This fictional story that Bastian reads is set in the magical land of “Fantastica” and this novel was later adapted into several films. The first film in the series adapted only the first half of the book and consequently did not convey the message of the title as it was portrayed in the novel. The second half of the book was subsequently used as a rough basis for the sequel. The third film, “The NeverEnding Story III: Escape from Fantasia”, first screened in 1994, has an original plot which was not based on the book.

But what if there was another “never-ending” story? What if the alternative was a non-fictional account of a sequence of events that have unfolded over the past fifty years and which will continue to unravel for many eons to come?  

Surprisingly, there is such a story, and unlike the creation of the Multiverse, which, according to some, may have originated through divine intervention, this story has been solely created and produced by humankind.  To get us started, we need to turn the clocks back to the summer of 1972.

Then starts a part of this story. A story that may continue for more than a billion years. A NeverEnding Story that is not fantasy.

The Munich Summer Olympics (1972)

No Malaysian soccer fan will ever forget the 1972 Olympics. Our soccer team had successfully qualified for the Munich Games as one of the representatives from the Asian continent. This was the first time our soccer team had made the grade and it would be the only time to-date that a Malaysian soccer team would actually participate as Olympians at a game that is domestically extremely popular (the team also qualified for the event in 1980 but chose not to participate in the Moscow Games as a reaction to the military invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR).

At the games in Munich in 1972, Malaysia was placed in a preliminary group comprising Germany, Morocco and the United States of America. 

A series of stamps issued in 1972 celebrating the XXth Olympics held in Munich

On the 27th August 1972, Malaysia played the host country, West Germany, in front of 60,000 partisan home fans. There was to be no giant killing act that day and a 3-0 score-line, in favour of home nation, rightly recorded the overall difference between the two teams on the pitch.

Two days later, the Malaysians faced the United States of America (USA). This time, the Malaysians returned a 3-0 victory and for a few days, Malaysian heads were held high.

Then followed the crunch game. Played on the 31st of August, the Malaysian team succumbed to a 6-0 defeat against Morocco. The dream may have been quickly over for the followers of Malaysian soccer, but the memory has never faded.

The Malaysian victory over the USA at soccer did not raise many eyebrows in American homes, schools, colleges, workplaces, restaurants and bars. This was only an emerging sport in the USA at the time, but when basketball is the topic and the USSR is the opponent, American interest and conversation assume a different level of intensity altogether.

The 1972 Olympics men’s basketball final has been categorised as one of the most dramatic events in the history of the Olympics. This match recorded the first ever loss for the USA team since the game became an Olympic sport at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Until that memorable final, the USA team had chalked up sixty-three straight wins building an Olympic pedigree, on the basketball court, that was second to none.

Then came the Munich final between two teams, the USA and the USSR, that had each won their first eight games of the tournament. The rivalry between these two nations spanned many battlefronts over several of the past decades. I have recorded some of this rivalry of the “Cold War” in previous posts but suffice to say that political confrontation and military tensions between the Soviet Union and United States extended from space to the sports arena. The Soviet Union had achieved many space-related firsts before Munich, but the Americans had beaten the Soviet Union to a prestigious, crewed landing on the Moon.

Indeed, by the onset of the Munich Olympics, the United States had already made five successful crewed Moon landings, with the latter Apollo missions (from Apollo 15, in July 1971) delivering motorized vehicles to the surface of the Moon, thus allowing the visiting lunar explorers the flexibility of making even longer excursions away from their landing site.

 

The Lunar Rover had already made several excursions to the Moon by the time the Munich Olympics were held

The Olympics represents the most premier of international sporting events. For the Soviets to use the stage of Munich to beat a nemesis in a sport that they had dominated since its introduction as an Olympic event, i.e. basketball, for the ultimate prize of an Olympic gold medal, would be a major coup. 

It should be noted that at the time, the Olympics strictly prohibited any involvement of professional athletes. The Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries used this rule to their advantage, listing all their top sportsmen as soldiers or state employees, thus circumventing the rules permitting only amateur participation at the Olympics. On the other hand, leading American players were unable to play in the Olympics as they were officially professional and played in National Basketball Association (NBA) matches. That disadvantage had not prevented the Americans from winning the first seven Olympic basketball tournaments without a single defeat.

The Munich Olympics: A Controversial Basketball Final

A game of basketball, at the Olympics, normally comprises four quarters, each of ten minutes duration. It was around midnight, local time, on the 10th of September 1972 and on the basketball court in Munich, the Soviet team donned red and the US team wore box-fresh white. With six minutes of a forty-minute game left on the clock, the Soviets held a ten-point lead.  But then the Americans, led by Kevin Joyce, began, finally, to fast-press and hustle and so commenced a Hollywood style comeback.  Slowly but surely, the gap reduced, until, with less than 10 seconds remaining, the Soviets led by just one point, 49-48, although they had possession.

With seven seconds to play, American player, Doug Collins, stole Alexander Belov’s cross-court pass at half court and was subsequently fouled by another Soviet player as he drove towards his red-shirted opponent’s basket. As a result, with three seconds remaining on the game clock, the match was halted by the lead referee. Collins was awarded two free throws.  He sank the first to tie the score at 49 all. Just as Collins lifted the ball to begin his shooting motion in attempting the second free throw, the horn from the scorer's table sounded, triggering a chain of events that left the game's final three seconds mired in controversy. Whilst lead referee, Renato Righetto,  turned away from the free throw attempt upon hearing the horn, he  failed to stop play and Collins continued with his shooting motion, converting his second free throw to put the U.S. ahead by a score of 50–49. Gold medal to Team USA or was this to be the case?

There has been much analysis of what happened next but suffice to say that the reason for the horn sounding at that juncture was unclear. Amidst much debate, repeated interruption and controversy, the final three seconds were replayed no less than three times!

At the end of the third replay, the Soviets scored with the ball going through the American basket just as the horn blew, this time signifying the end of the match. Wild scenes of celebrations erupted amongst Soviet players and supporters from Munich to Moscow. On the other hand, American emotions run high, till this day.

At the Munich basketball arena, the Americans quickly appealed. Their key point:  the game had lasted forty minutes and three seconds. And in those additional three seconds, a gold medal award was snatched and redirected from North America to the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, the jury was loaded: of the five judges on it, three were from countries aligned to the Soviet Communist regime. The representatives from Cuba, Poland and the Soviet Union all voted in favour of the Soviet Union, and the USA appeal was rejected by three votes to two.

Team USA competing in basketball. Stamps issued by Ajman, one of the Emirates of the United Arab Emirates.

Team USA had two alternatives: accept the decision by receiving the silver or boycott the medal ceremony.  They chose the latter, and for the first time in Olympic history, a spot on the podium was left vacant with a set of medals unclaimed.

Nearly fifty years on, those medals remain in a Swiss vault. In-fact, Ken Davis, the captain of Team USA, has taken steps to ensure they will stay in Switzerland in perpetuity. Article IX of his last will and testament states, “I devise and bequeath at my death that my wife, Rita, and children Jill and Bryan never accept a silver medal from the 1972 Games in West Germany”.

As had ended the Malaysian Munich Olympic soccer dream, so had concluded American basketball hopes - an incomprehensible nightmare that had taken place in waking hours.

But these were not the worst of the nightmares of Munich.

The Munich Massacre

The Munich Games marked the first return of the Olympics to a German city since the 1936 Berlin edition. In Berlin, in 1936, Adolf Hitler had used the Olympics as a platform to propagate Nazi ideology. Thus, the Munich Games were characterized, by the hosts, as something significantly different to that of the 10th Olympiad of Berlin. Indeed, when the 20th Olympiad commenced thirty-six years later, on 26 August 1972 and thousands of athletes from more than 120 countries celebrated the opening ceremonies, they were met with an event that the organizers dubbed “Die Heiteren Spiele” which translates to “The Cheerful Games”.

Sadly, what was to follow would only cloud Munich under a pall of grief and sadness, spiked with sentiments of anger and outrage, hitherto unseen at an international sporting event.

For more than a week, the Games unfolded without incident. Then, at 4:30 am on the 5th of September 1972, eight Palestinian militants, affiliated with the Black September terrorist group, scaled a fence surrounding the Olympic Village. Disguised as athletes and using stolen keys, they forced their way into the quarters of the Israeli Olympic Team. There, they killed an Israeli wrestling coach and a weightlifter. Another nine Israeli athletes and coaches were taken hostage.

The terrorists group demanded the liberation of more than 200 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons and the release of other notorious radicals from German incarceration in exchange for the release of the Israeli hostages. They also asked for an aircraft to fly them to a safe destination in the Middle East.

At about 10:00 pm the same day, believing they had reached an agreement, the terrorists led their bound and blindfolded hostages from their quarters into buses that transported them to waiting helicopters. The helicopters carried them to Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base, 25 kilometres west of the Olympic Village. At the Air Base, police were lying in ambush with a rescue plan apparently in place.

Suffice to say that the entire rescue operation was a catastrophic failure in both planning and execution. Every one of the Israeli hostages and one police officer were killed. Five terrorists also lost their lives. Three of the Palestinian gunmen were captured.

Guyana honoured all the Israeli representatives killed at Munich  the Munich Olympics with this series of the stamps

For the first time in history, the Olympic Games were suspended for 24 hours as a tribute to the murdered athletes. The site of the Cheerful Games had become a terrorist target. Once again, dreams were shattered, this time with the cost of many human lives.

 The Munich Olympics: The Missing American 100 Meter Sprinters

To be hailed as the fastest human in the world is the accolade given to the winner of the men’s 100 metres sprint event at the Olympics. At the 1972 Munich Olympics, the heats and finals of this prestigious athletics event were held on 31 August and 1 September. Eighty-five athletes from fifty-five nations competed in this event and each nation was limited to three athletes per the rules in force since the 1930 Olympic Congress.

This event is memorable for the absence of favourites and then world record holders Eddie Hart and Rey Robinson from their quarterfinal heats.  American sprint coach, Stan Wright, was (somehow) provided with an outdated schedule which stated incorrect starting times for the heats involving his athletes. Instead of being at the stadium securing their places in the semi-finals, the  three qualified American athletes, Robinson, Hart and Robert Taylor, were instead at the American Broadcasting Company’s television station in Munich watching what they believed were replays of their morning, preliminary races.

At the eleventh hour, they were informed that they were watching live coverage of the races they were scheduled to run in. The athletes rushed to the stadium, but Hart and Robinson, scheduled in the first two races, missed their heats.  Taylor had to hurriedly take off his warm-up attire before running his heat. Once again, an appeal by American officials to have Robinson and Hart run in another heat, was rejected.

The event was won by Valeriy Borzov of the Soviet Union, the first medal in the men's 100 metres Olympic event for that nation. The silver was won by Robert Taylor, the American who had just made it to the starting block on time for his heat.

 

Valeriy Borzov featured on this stamp from the Republic of Equatorial Guinea

In the years that followed, this turn of events would have almost eternal consequences but once again, the hopes and dreams of a potential American champion were devasted by an unusual set of circumstances.

 Voyager 1 & 2

In 1964, long before the flame signifying the start of the Munich Olympics was lit, Gary Flandro, an aerospace engineer working at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the leading American centre for the robotic exploration of the Solar System, was assigned the task of studying techniques for exploring the outer planets of the Solar System. Through his investigations he discovered that a rare alignment of the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune), was scheduled to occur in the late 1970s.  This type of alignment occurs only once every 175 years and this was clearly an opportunity too great to be missed. Thus, was conceived the concept of the “Planetary Grand Tour”, a multi-planet mission utilizing the “gravity-assist” technique, in which gravitational forces of one planet would be used to slingshot an orbiting spacecraft into a new trajectory towards another object. The specific alignment that was projected to occur in the late 1970s could reduce the overall journey duration of the Planetary Grand Tour from forty years to less than ten years.

Gary Flandro’s work on the Planetary Grand Tour was exploited by NASA and became the core of the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 missions which were launched in 1977.

Voyager 2 was the first to be launched in August, 1977. Its trajectory was designed to allow flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Voyager 1 was launched a few weeks after Voyager 2, but along a shorter and faster trajectory that was designed to provide an optimal flyby of Saturn's moon. Titan.

The accomplishments of the Voyager missions over the decades are almost legendary. Between 1977 and 1990, these twin spacecraft made many discoveries and achieved many firsts. Some of the distinctions achieved:

• ·       First spacecraft to fly by all four planets of the outer solar system (Voyager 2)
• ·       First mission to discover 24 new moons of the four outer planets (both spacecraft)
• ·       First spacecraft to fly by four different target planets (Voyager 2)
• ·       First spacecraft to visit Uranus and Neptune (Voyager 2)
• ·       First spacecraft to image the rings of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune (Voyager 2)
• ·       First spacecraft to discover active volcanoes beyond Earth (on Jupiter’s moon Io — Voyager 1)
• ·       First spacecraft to detect lightning on a planet other than Earth (at Jupiter — Voyager 1)

 

  Voyager 1: A series of stamps from the Republic of Central Africa celebrating the many achievements.

               

After Voyager 1 departed from Saturn in November 1980, it began a journey into an area where no human-made object had ever gone before: the space between the stars. On August 25, 2012, it crossed over into interstellar space, leaving behind the heliosphere — the enormous magnetic bubble encompassing our Sun, the planets of the Solar System and the solar wind.

A series of stamps from the Caribbean island of Nevis commemorating the many achievements of Voyager 1

Voyager 2 set course for interstellar space after departing from Neptune in August 1989, and followed Voyager 1 into the interstellar medium on November 5, 2018,

Today (30 April 2021), after a journey of more than 43 years, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are at a distance of 14.19 billion miles and 11.79 billion miles from the Sun respectively. Each is travelling away from Earth at approximately thirty-five thousand miles per hour. If a torchlight was switched on at  Voyager 1, the electromagnetic waves from that light source of the torch would take about 21 hours to reach us (One-way Light Time: contrast that to the time of eight minutes being the duration it takes for the light of our Sun to travel 93 million miles and reach Earth). Even more amazingly, NASA keeps in communication with the two interstellar robotic explorers through its Deep Space Network.

The Adventures of Earth's Robotic Interstellar Ambassadors

Even when traveling at 35,000 mph, the Voyager probes will need another 300 years just to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud (first described in 1950 by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort as a theoretical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals proposed to surround the Sun and the Solar System). The Oort Cloud is thought to be the birthplace of the long period comets that sometimes make forays into the orbits of the inner planets. The outer edge of the Oort Cloud could be so distant from its inner edge that is estimated that it would take the Voyager probes about 20,000 - 30,000 years or even more, to completely traverse it.

About 10,000 years after it exits the outer edge of the Oort Cloud (about 40,000 years from now), Voyager 1 could finally approach an alien star, specifically a red dwarf, called Ross 248.

Its twin, Voyager 2, however, will need about 300,000 years before it comes close to bathing in the light of another star.

Cometh The Hour, Cometh The Man!

During the Munich Olympics, the morale of global sport participants and followers was oscillating like a pendulum clock invented by Christiaan Huygens himself. The Americans had finally been dethroned in basketball. The world record holders were “no-shows” in the 100 meters sprint glamour event for men. Then, there was the massacre of the Israeli athletes and coaches.

The world needed a boost. The Olympics needed a hero. Someone who would restore American pride and help anesthetize Jewish pain, rage and hurt.

And cometh the hour, indeed, did cometh the man!

Mark Spitz

American swimmer, Mark Andrew Spitz, arrived in Munich after having failed to deliver in the previous Olympics, held in Mexico. He had gone to Mexico promising to deliver six gold medals. He returned with two, both won in team, relay events.

The American Jew came to Munich with the same goal. Six gold medals.

A stamp from the Republic of Guinea honouring American swimming icon, Mark Spitz

Mark Spitz did not win six golds. He won seven! And Spitz won each of those gold medals with a new world record. His record of winning seven gold medals at a single Olympics stood for thirty-six years, until 2008, when it was surpassed by fellow American Michael Phelps, who won eight golds at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

All of America cheered his victories. And the sobs of sadness heard in some Jewish homes were slowly replaced by tears of joy.

The Golden Records

Mark Spitz broke records in the swimming pool and in the years to come, Voyager 1 and 2 would break many more records. So why do I blend the stories of the transformative scientific and engineering achievements of the Voyager Twins amongst some of the most unforgettable memories of the Munich Olympics.

I link these stories because there is a connection. A connection of eternal romance.  Each of the Voyager Twins carries a time capsule – a “Golden Record”. The contents of the Golden Record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University, et. al. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, together with the spoken greetings from the inhabitants of Earth in fifty-five languages. They also included printed messages from American President, Jimmy Carter, and United Nations Secretary General, Kurt Waldheim. 

A series of stamps from Ghana commemorating the 30th anniversary of the launch of Voyager 2. On the second row on the left, a photograph of one of the Golden Records can be seen. It should be remembered that in the mid 1970s, CDs and DVDs had not been invented yet and this phonograph records were used for information storage.

The Voyager’s phonograph records, built to last at least a billion years in space are intended to provide a snapshot of life and culture on Earth, should the spacecraft ever come into contact in the future with other alien space travelers.  

Which alien race will encounter Voyager 1 and 2? What will they see when they decipher the code of the Golden Records? 

In all, the content of the Golden Record comprise 115 analog-encoded photographs, greetings in 55 languages, a 12-minute montage of sounds on Earth and 90 minutes of music. Amongst the 115 images on each of the Golden Records is an iconic photograph from the 1972 Munich Olympics. Surprisingly, this photograph does not feature Mark Spitz. Instead, it presents the finish line of the 100 meter men's sprint final and shows:

• ·       Valeriy Borzov (USSR – 1st)
• ·       Robert Taylor (USA (who just made it to the starting block in time for his heat) – 2nd)
• ·       Lennox Miller (Jamaica – 3rd)
• ·       Aleksandr Kornelyuk (USSR – 4th).

What started out as an Olympic sprint event for these sportsmen of the Munich Olympics has become a part of an interstellar space marathon to the stars.

The Munich Olympics was not the Cheerful Games that was intended but like all happy endings to bedtime stories, we recall the strength of spirit of Mark Spitz.

As for Eddie Hart, the world record holder in the men’s 100 meters who had not get to his heat on time, he ran the final leg for Team USA in the 4 X 100 meters relay. His team won the gold medal in a world record time of 38.19 seconds.  As Eddie Hart approached the race finish line, he sneaked a peep to his right, to see Valeriy Borzov, just behind him. He knew then that he would return to America with at least one gold medal to his name.

 

Good night!

The photograph, captured at the finish line of the 100 meter sprint of the 1972 Munich Olympics that became part of an interstellar space marathon as part of a dataset stored on the Golden Records of the Voyagers

PS: In the 90 minutes of music on the Golden Records is the 1958 hit "Johnny B. Goode". I wonder, what our extraterrestrial listeners will think of that when the music of Chuck Berry resonates on a far off planet in another galaxy.

And if you wish to know more about this subject, watch this two minute video from CNN.

https://edition.cnn.com/videos/sports/2020/08/31/voyager-munich-olympics-to-immortality-sprinters-nasa-teaser-spt-intl.cnn

All stamps displayed above are from my personal collection.

From the War of the Worlds to Star Wars: Are We Alone?

The War of the Worlds 

“The War of the Worlds” is a science fiction novel by British author Herbert George Wells (H.G. Wells). The novel was published in 1898 and is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between humankind and an extraterrestrial life-form that has invaded Earth from Mars. The War of the Worlds remains popular, spawning several feature films, radio dramas, a record album, various comic book adaptations, a number of television series, and parallel stories by other authors. 

In 1938, the novel was most memorably dramatized. An up and coming radio presenter, Orson Welles (no relation to H.G. Wells), produced an adaptation of Wells’ novel which was performed and broadcast live as a Halloween episode of the “Mercury Theatre on the Air” program at 8 p.m. (United States Eastern Time) on Sunday, October 30, 1938, over the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) radio network. 

A stamp issued by the Royal Mail of Great Britain honouring H.G. Wells and his book "The War of the Worlds". This stamp was one of a four part series, all honouring various works by Wells.

The one-hour program began with the theme music for the Mercury Theatre on the Air program and an announcement that the evening's show was an adaptation of H.G. Wells novel, “The War of the Worlds”. This was the only indication that listeners received of the broadcast being a fictional event. 

Orson Welles then read a prologue which was based on the opening of H. G. Wells' novel, modified slightly to advance the story's setting to 1939. For about the next twenty minutes, listeners were presented with a typical evening of radio programming being interrupted by a series of news bulletins. The first few news flashes were broadcast during a presentation of "live" music and they described a series of unusual explosions being observed on the planet, Mars. This was followed by a seemingly unrelated report of an unusual object falling on a farm in Grover’s Mill, near the township of West Windsor, in New Jersey. 

The musical radio program then returns briefly before being interrupted by a “live” report from Grover's Mill, where apparently, police officials and a crowd of curious onlookers have surrounded a strange cylindrical object that has fallen from the sky. The situation gradually escalates when bizarre-looking life-forms emerge from the alien cylinder and attack observers using a lethal heat-ray. The credibility of the story is further enhanced when the stunned “reporter” at the scene describes events until his audio feed abruptly goes dead. This is followed by a rapid series of increasingly alarming news updates detailing a devastating alien invasion taking place around the country and the futile efforts of the U.S. military to stop these attacks. As the broadcast progresses, an increasing number of alien cylinders are reported to land, all over the world. 

The illusion of realism was further accentuated because CBS sustained the broadcast without interruptions, the program only taking its first commercial break a full thirty-eight minutes after Welles's introduction. It is alleged that the broadcast caused widespread panic as those listeners, who did not hear Welles’s initial introduction, were unaware that the Martian invasion was fictional even - though the actual scale of the "widespread panic" has been disputed by some.

Orson Welles went on to become an Oscar (Best Writing / Original Screenplay) winner in 1941 for the movie “Citizen Kane” but my personal favourite rendition of H.G. Wells’ novel is Jeff Wayne's musical version of The War of the Worlds. The album was released in the United Kingdom in June 1978. Its emotive music score, overdubbed with the regal and distinctive voice of Richard Burton (delivering the narrative of the of the on-site journalist), the soothing and melodious voice of Justin Hayward (of Moody Blues fame delivering the sung thoughts of the journalist), and Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy) amongst others, perform on this enjoyable and thoroughly captivating example of rock opera. 

A series of stamps from the Republic of Togo, a country on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa, commemorating the works of the incomparable and much respected Welsh actor, the late Richard Burton 

The two-disc album remains a bestseller, having sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. In 2018, it was named the 32nd best-selling studio album of all time in the United Kingdom. 

The War of the Worlds is a story of how Earth is overrun by Martian invaders but eventually, the technologically advanced aliens are defeated by an invisible ally of all humankind. Pathogens, which are harmless to humans, infect the invading aliens and this proves to be fatal, saving the human race from extra-terrestrial annihilation. Thus, concludes the story of The War of the Worlds, as life on Earth returns to normal and the aliens are eliminated. 

But can a story about aliens from deep space ever really have a final conclusion?

COVID – 19 and UFOs 

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an illness caused by a novel coronavirus, which was first identified amid an outbreak of respiratory illness cases in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China. It was initially reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) on December 31, 2019. On January 30, 2020, the WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global health emergency. By March 11, 2020, the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. As of the date of this post, 1 April 2021, nearly 130 million humans have contracted COVID-19 and about 2.8 million have succumbed to the disease. The containment of the spread of the disease required a virtual global restriction of movement. The resultant negative impact on global economic activity has been extremely severe, prompting governments to act. 

As vaccination programs are frantically rolled-out, people continue to suffer the fatal effects of this disease.

A series of stamps from the People's Republic of China commemorating the fight against the
COVID -19 disease

These stamps were issued by the United Nations, probably to demonstrate the global nature of the medical battle against COVID - 19 faced by humankind.

In the United States, a gargantuan US$ 2.3 trillion Appropriations Bill (which included $900 billion in stimulus relief initiatives for the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States) was passed. The legislation, which President Donald Trump signed into law at the end of December 2020, was a bureaucratic nesting doll, that at 5,593 pages, is the longest Bill ever passed by US Congress. 

I write about this Bill because within its 5,593 pages nests the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. This Act carried an unusual provision, instructing that the Director of National Intelligence collaborate with the Secretary of Defense and deliver a report to the American people detailing everything the US Government knows about unidentified flying objects (known also as “unidentified aerial phenomena” or “anomalous aerial vehicles”). 

For the first time, it has become a legal requirement for US Government agencies to disclose all they know about UFOs. It is likely that this disclosure will be made by June 2021 and the expectation is that released documents will contain testimonies of numerous sightings, observations, and encounters of unexplained aerial phenomena, some of these reported by credible witnesses. 

Are We Alone: The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence 

Starting from 1899, when Nikola Tesla thought he had detected a signal from Mars, there have been many searches for extraterrestrial intelligence. In 1960, Cornell University astronomer, Frank Donald Drake undertook the first modern search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) experiment, code-named “Project Ozma”. Project Ozma entailed using a radio telescope 26 metres (85 ft) in diameter located at Green Bank in West Virginia, to examine specific stars (Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani) for signals that could indicate the existence of intelligent life. Drake found nothing of interest. 

The 1960s were heady times in the Space Race (see my previous posts dated 7 July 2020 and 19 July 2020) and Soviet scientists also took a strong interest in the SETI activities. They performed a number of scans of deep space with omnidirectional antennas in the hope of picking up the evasive radio signals but their efforts were to no avail. These setbacks did not deter Soviet astronomer Iosif Shlovsky from writing the pioneering book in the field, “Universe, Life, Intelligence”, published in 1962. His seminal work was later expanded upon by American astronomer, Carl Sagan, as the best-selling book, “Intelligent Life in the Universe”, published in 1966. 

A stamp issued by the Ivory Coast, a country in West Africa, quoting the words of American astronomer, Carl Sagan 

In the realm for the SETI, the name of Frank Donald Drake recurs. He proposed and developed the Drake Equation, a statistical approach to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilizations existing in the Milky Way Galaxy. To avoid introducing a mathematical equation in this post, the Drake Equation is shown as a Post-Script to this article and summarizes the main concepts which scientists must contemplate when considering the question of other radio-communicative life. 

The Drake Equation should be thought of as an approximation rather than as a serious attempt to determine a precise number - more simply put, it attempts to present the odds of finding intelligent life in the Milky Way. The challenge (at least for now) is that astronomers do not have firm inputs for most of those variables that are required to resolve the Drake Equation so any result derived from using the Drake Equation remains currently, only a rough estimate. 

Nonetheless, estimates have been offered for each of the parameters used as an input into the Drake Equation. Using a reasonable minimum value for every parameter of the Equation indicates that 20 planets within the Milky Way Galaxy could be populated with an intelligent life-form able to beam radio signals into deep space. On the other side of the scale, if instead the maximum value was used for every parameter of the same Equation, then we would compute that 50,000,000 planets within then Milky Way Galaxy could be inhabited by civilizations of intelligent extraterrestrials. 

A stamp from the Ivory Coast. It features the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), the Drake equation and Carl Sagan, noted for his pioneering writings questioning if we are alone in this Multiverse.

Another approach would be to use alternative techniques to physically count the planets orbiting the stars of the Milky Way. This approach is considered in a section later in this post subtitled "Exoplanets". 

The Wow! Signal 

It would be remiss of me to write about the search for extraterrestrial intelligence without making reference to the “Wow!” signal.

On August 15 1977, a SETI program under physicist, the late John Daniel Kraus (known for his contributions to radio astronomy and the design of the “Big Ear” radio telescope at Ohio State University) gained fame when one Jerry R. Ehman, a project volunteer, witnessed a startlingly strong narrowband radio signal received by Big Ear. The signal appeared to come from the direction of the constellation, Sagittarius, and bore the expected hallmarks of a signal of intelligent, extra-terrestrial origin. It lasted for the full 72-second window during which Big Ear was able to track it. 

Jerry Ehman quickly circled the indication of the signal on a printout and scribbled the exclamation "Wow!" in the margin, thus christening the event the “Wow!” signal. This event is  considered by many to be the strongest candidate for a radio signal from an artificial, extraterrestrial source, ever discovered. Unfortunately, it has not been detected again after several additional searches. 

Coverscape commemorating the Wow! signal

Many hypotheses have been advanced to explain the origin of the Wow ! radio emission, including natural and human-made sources, but none of them adequately explain the signal. 

Exoplanets 

Since the early 1960s, astronomers could imagine the existence of other planets outside the Solar System but it took until 1995 for the first confirmed exoplanet, orbiting a sun-like star, to be discovered. 

Didier Patrick Queloz FRS and Michel Mayor, both Swiss astronomers, discovered 51 Pegasi b, the first planet discovered that orbits a sun-like star, 51 Pegasi. The planet was detected by the measurement of small periodic changes in stellar radial velocity produced by the orbiting planet. For this discovery, Queloz shared the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics with collaborator,  Michel Mayor. 

A stamp from the Maldives honouring Didier Queloz and Michel Mayor - 2019 winners of the Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery of the first exoplanet in 1995. Also sharing the Nobel Prize in Physics was Jim Peebles (in another field).

Estimating the total number of planets in the universe is difficult but one statistical study suggests that within the Milky Way, each star has an average of 1.6 planets. Given the estimate that there are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way alone yields a potential 160 billion alien planets in our home galaxy. 

In the two decades since Queloz and Mayor discovered the first exoplanet, more than 3,700 of these have been confirmed. 

Appropriate for Life? 

Among the planets that have been discovered, only a tiny fraction of them are likely to have an environment suitable for life. Astronomers have not been able to precisely measure this metric but a few factors are likely come into play, such as how close a planet is to its parent star and what its atmosphere contains (also known as the “Goldilocks Conditions”). 

As of March 2018, the Habitable Exoplanets Catalogue has 53 planets, that on an optimistic basis, could be suitable for life. Among those, 13 that are more likely to be habitable.

Finding life outside of Earth within or outside the Solar System — even microbial life — would likely be the most amazing discovery made in the history of humankind and would also be an  important step towards an improved comprehension of the validity and utility of the Drake Equation. 

The Fermi Paradox 

“The Fermi Paradox” presents the conflict between the arguments that scale and probability seem to favour intelligent life being common in the Universe, against the fact that there is a lack of evidence that supports intelligent life having ever arisen anywhere other than on the Earth. Other names closely related to Fermi's question ("Where are they?") include “The Great Silence”, and “Silentium Universi” (Latin for "silence of the universe"), though these only refer to one portion of the Fermi Paradox, i.e. we see no real evidence of alien civilizations. 

Enrico Fermi was an Italian (later naturalized as an American) Nobel Prize winning physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor (called the “Chicago Pile-1”). He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age” and the "architect of the atomic bomb", which effectively brought World War II to an end. 

Stamps from the USA honouring the physicist, Enrico Fermi - the "architect of the nuclear age” and the "architect of the atomic bomb", which effectively brought World War II to an end. 

 

He also asked the critical questions which resulted in the construct of The Fermi Paradox. It is reported that in the summer of 1950, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Fermi and his colleagues, Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller and Herbert York had one of several casual lunchtime conversations. It is uncertain as to whether the conversation was about the existence of aliens or whether it related to the probability of travel at the speed of light but at one of the lunches, Fermi suddenly exclaimed, "Where are they?" (Teller's remembrance), or "Don't you ever wonder where everybody is?" (York's memory), or "But where is everybody?" (Konopinski's recollection). 

In 1984, Herbert York wrote that Fermi "followed up on these questions with a series of calculations on the probability of the existence of earth-like planets, the likelihood of life given Earth-like conditions, the probability of intelligent life, given life-supporting conditions, the likely development of high technology, and so on. Apparently, Fermi concluded that on the basis of such calculations, Earth ought to have been subject to repeated and multiple alien visits since a very long time ago. To Fermi’s mind, the fact that no evidence had (and has) been presented to demonstrate these visits to Earth coupled with the fact that we see no signs originating from deep space (notwithstanding the Wow! Signal discussed in preceding paragraphs of this post) of the existence of alien civilizations, then it is more likely that we are indeed alone in the Universe and that The Great Silence, or Silentium Universi, should be of no surprise. 

Eric von Däniken

Whilst Enrico Fermi was making conclusions on the unique place held by humankind in the Universe, Erich Anton Paul von Däniken, a Swiss author of several books, has made claims about extraterrestrials having already visited Earth and influencing very early human culture. Von Däniken has been responsible for popularizing the "paleo-contact" and “ancient aliens” hypotheses. His books and movies include “Chariots of the Gods?”

The ideas put forth in his books are rejected by a majority of scientists and academics, who characterize his work as being unsubstantiated even-though, according to von Däniken, books in his series have altogether been translated into 32 languages and have sold more than 63 million copies.

Barney and Betty 

The characters of Barney and Betty Rubble have been immortalized through the animated television sitcom series “The Flintstones”. Unlike the stories of Barney and Betty Rubble, which are set in the prehistoric town of Bedrock, Barney and Betty Hill, inhabitants of Portsmouth, New Hampshire in the United States, claimed they were abducted by advanced extraterrestrials while travelling in a rural area of the state of New Hampshire. 

This was the first widely publicised report of an alien abduction in the United States. 

Stamps from Mongolia celebrating the characters of the animated sitcom series, "The Flintstones"

The incident came to be called the "Hill Abduction". Their story was later adapted into the best-selling 1966 book, "The Interrupted Journey" and the 1975 television movie “The UFO Incident”. 

The alleged UFO sighting occurred on 19 September 1961, at around 10:30 p.m. The Hills were on a five-hour journey, driving home after a brief vacation in Niagara Falls and Montreal in Canada, when Betty claimed to have observed a bright point of light in the sky. Betty reasoned that she was observing a falling star, only that it moved strangely upward. Since it moved erratically and grew bigger and brighter, Betty urged Barney to stop the car for a closer look. Betty, looking through binoculars, observed an "odd-shaped" craft flashing multi-coloured lights travel across the face of the visible Moon. 

Betty later testified that the craft was about 40 feet (12 m) long, and that it seemed to be rotating. 

The couple watched as the silent, illuminated craft moved erratically and bounced back and forth in the night sky. Using the binoculars, Barney claimed to have seen about 8 to 11 humanoid figures, who were peering out of the craft's windows, seeming to look at him. In response, Barney "tore" the binoculars away from his eyes and ran back to his car. In a near hysterical state, he told Betty, "They're going to capture us!" 

Barney watched the object again shift its location and move to a position directly above their vehicle. With great anxiety, he drove away at high speed, telling Betty to keep a lookout for the object. At some later stage during this journey, the Hills claim they were captured, physically examined, and then released. 

Both Barney and Betty Hill had only vague recollections of these events which seem to have occurred over several hours. 

On September 21, Betty Hill telephoned Pease Air Force Base to report their UFO encounter, though for fear of being labelled eccentric, she withheld some of the details. On September 22, Major Paul W. Henderson telephoned the Hills for a more detailed interview. Henderson's report, dated 26 September, determined that the Hills had probably misidentified the planet Jupiter. (This was later changed to "optical condition," "inversion" and "insufficient data.") (Report 100-1-61, Air Intelligence Information Record). 

His report was later forwarded to Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force's UFO research project. 

In later years, the Hills were separately subject to several sessions of hypnosis by Benjamin Simon, a Boston-based psychiatrist. After the sessions, Simon concluded that Barney's recollection of the UFO encounter was possibly a fantasy inspired by certain dreams that had been affecting Betty. 

Whilst there may be some uncertainty surrounding the authenticity of the events surrounding the Hills encounter of  September 1961, on 27 April 2020, the Department of Defense released three videos taken by U.S. Navy pilots, taken during training flights,  revealing mysterious flying objects that remain unidentified. One video was captured in 2004 with another two being shot in 2015. The video footage shows unidentified objects flying at high speeds in the Earth’s atmosphere along with the accompanying audio of Navy pilots expressing shock and awe.

Drake or Fermi? 

In the 1898 novel by H.G. Wells, technologically advanced aliens are defeated by an invisible ally of all humankind – pathogens - which are harmless to humans but fatal for the Martian invaders. 

In 2019, it is humankind that is subject to the deadly SARS-CoV-2 virus which results in a global economic meltdown that has, in an unexpected manner, brought to the fore the potential disclosure (by June 2021), of hitherto classified records of sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena as maintained by various, credible American government agencies. 

These forthcoming disclosures could well challenge the very validity and robustness of the Fermi Paradox leaving humankind to contemplate the high probabilities as suggested by the Drake Equation or even the much criticized hypothesis of von Däniken.

Indeed, Barney and Betty Hill may soon be be vindicated! And the myths of the heroism of that famous Jedi knight, Luke Skywalker, the antics of Earth-stranded extraterrestrial, E.T. (of the much loved and commercially successful 1982 movie by Steven Spielberg entitled "E.T."),  or the pioneering journeys of Capitan Jean Luc Picard of the Federation Starship, the USS Enterprise, may soon all move away (at warp speed) from the silver screen and cruise into the realm of everyday reality.

Stamp from the U.S.A. celebrating the most famous of extraterrestrial superstars "E.T." from the 1982 movie of the same name, produced and directed by Steven Spielberg. This movie won 4 Oscars at the 55th Academy Awards. In 1994, the film was added to the National Firm Registry of the Library of Congress, being cited as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant."

A First Day Cover, issued by the Royal Mail of the United Kingdom celebrating the characters of the movie (and its prequels and sequels) "Star Wars"

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Post Script:

Note: Stamps / the First Day Cover / the Coverscape shown in this blogpost are all from my personal collection. 

Djokovic, Milankovitch and Tesla: 21st Century Tales of Tennis, Climate Change and Electric Cars

I have been watching some tennis on the television this past fortnight. The Australian Open, held in Melbourne as it usually is at this time of the year, reached a climax last weekend. The stars were on-show and thankfully, for the finals, the players, match officials, ball boys and girls were joined by a reasonable number of fans (in this COVID-19 era) in the first “Grand Slam” tennis event of the year. 

The Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, where the finals are held annually, owes its name, and pays tribute to, Australia’s most decorated tennis son who played his game with a strong left hand and won eleven Grand Slam titles. Most incredibly, Rod Laver is the only male player to have won a calendar Grand Slam (i.e. winning the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open all in a calendar year) twice. An icon and truly a superstar from an era gone by. 

The Joker

World No.1Tennis Player - Novak Djokovic 

On the court today, as I watched the men’s final of the Open, was one of my favourite players, Novak Djokovic, currently ranked as world no. 1 by the Association of Tennis Professionals. Affectionately called “The Joker” because of his impersonations of his fellow tennis professionals, Djokovic is a Serb and it was this thought that flashed through my mind as I watched him dispatch Daniel Medvedev, the colourful Russian, in three sets without much ado. He made the whole affair look easy through courtcraft, mental focus and the flawless execution of his sublime skills, the result of dedicated practice, discipline and probably, divine gifting. 

The Climatologist from the Danube 

The Republic of Serbia has produced several talented sportsmen and women, but apart from Djokovic, none of them were on my mind this week. Instead my own focus has been on the work of Milutin Milanković, sometimes anglicised as Milankovitch, who was born in 1879 (and died in 1958). Like Djokovic, Milankovitch was also a Serb and extremely talented in his own field. If one wishes to understand why so many, including Bill Gates, Joe Biden, Al Gore, and Elon Musk, have been mobilized to address the issue of climate change, then look no further than this mathematician, astronomer, geophysicist, civil engineer and scientist. But above all, an early pioneering climatologist. It is his work that is the starting point of any discussion on the subject of the human impact on climate change. 

Milutin Milanković - Scientist, Engineer and Climatologist 

Milankovitch was born in the village of Dali, a settlement on the banks of that famous River Danube, quantitatively, the second longest river in Europe (after the Volga) but qualitatively, the serene, flowing source of inspiration for some of the most prominent musical compositions of Strauss, Beethoven and Mozart. 

At the age of seventeen Milankovitch  moved to Vienna and six years later, in 1902, graduated as a Civil Engineer. It was not too long before his contributions started emerging in this field as he built dams, bridges, viaducts, aqueducts and other impressive structures, using reinforced concrete, throughout the region of Austria-Hungary. As a Civil Engineer, he was responsible for at least six patents in the field of reinforced concrete and as his reputation in his chosen profession soared, so did his abundant financial wealth. 

Milankovitch continued to practice civil engineering in Vienna until 1 October 1909 when he was offered the Chair of Applied Mathematics at the University of Belgrade. Though he continued to pursue his investigations of various problems pertaining to the application of reinforced concrete, he decided to concentrate on fundamental research. 

In the construction of his concrete based structures, Milankovitch was required to understand an area of science called meteorology, in particular the forecasting of weather. When studying this subject, he was introduced to the work of the contemporaneous climatologist, Julius von Hann. Known today as the “Father of Modern Meteorology”, von Hann was an Austrian who, in his works, discussed (but was unable to explain) the cold periods or “mystery ice ages” that had occurred in the Earth’s history. 

The Mystery of the Erratics

The root of this mystery lay in the presence of “erratics” - boulders of a material composition that was inconsistent with the geology found around them – in certain parts of Europe. It was believed that these erratics were deposited by glaciers. What made these erratics a mystery was the fact that there were no existing glaciers in close proximity to these isolated erratics. As erratics were generally expected to be found in the path of glaciers, the absence of glaciers in the vicinity of some erratics, soon led to the hypothesis that the climate of Earth had been far different in the past. 

Milankovitch set about applying his mind to solving this mystery.

Before long, he advanced predictions on the climates of all the resident planets of the Solar System. This was ground-breaking work for the times but his second contribution was even more impactful. Milankovitch examined how variations in three types of Earth orbital movements affect how much solar radiation (known as insolation) arrives at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere. He also calculated where exactly this insolation reaches. 

The Milankovitch Cycles

These cyclical orbital movements, which collectively became known as the Milankovitch Cycles, cause variations of up to 25 percent in the amount of incoming insolation at Earth’s mid-latitudes (the areas of our planet located between about 30 and 60 degrees north and south of the equator) and thus impact average temperatures that are experienced. 

The Milankovitch Cycles take into account: 

• the shape of Earth’s orbit, known as its eccentricity resulting in summers in the northern hemisphere being 4.66 days longer than the winter and spring bein 2.99 days longer than autumn; 

• the angle Earth’s axis is tilted with respect to Earth’s orbital plane, known as obliquity; and

• the direction Earth’s axis of rotation is pointed, known as precession. 

The small changes set in motion by the Milankovitch Cycles act independently but together, influence Earth’s climate over very long timespans, leading to larger changes in our climate over tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. 

The Milankovitch Cycles depicted on a postage stamp from Serbia

Milankovitch combined his understanding of the Cycles to create a comprehensive mathematical model for calculating differences in solar radiation at various latitudes of the Earth along with the corresponding surface temperatures. His model was like a Climate Clock or Time Machine, not solely able to predict future weather patterns but which could also be regressed to provide a picture of the Earth’s climate at various points in its history over many eons. 

Milankovitch calculated that Ice Ages occur approximately every 41,000 years. Subsequent research confirmed that they did occur at these 41,000-year intervals between one and three million years ago. But there are some (as of yet) unexplained constraints and exceptions. As an example, about 800,000 years ago, the cycle of the Ice Ages lengthened to 100,000 years, matching Earth’s eccentricity cycle. Whilst various theories have been proposed to explain this change, scientists do not yet have a clear answer as to why this transition occurred. 

Milankovitch’s work was supported by other researchers of his time, and he authored numerous publications on his hypothesis. But it was not until about 10 years after his death (in 1958) that the global science community began to take serious notice of his theory.

Validation of Milankovitch's Theory

In 1976, a study in the journal Science by Hays et al., using deep-sea sediment cores, found that the Milankovitch Cycles correspond with periods of major climate change over the past 450,000 years, with Ice Ages occurring when the Earth was undergoing different stages of orbital variation. Several other projects and studies also upheld the validity of Milankovitch’s work, including research using data from ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica that provided strong evidence of Milankovitch Cycles going back many hundreds of thousands of years. In addition, his work was embraced by the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. 

Whilst scientific research is a continuous process, Milankovitch’s work had moved from conjecture to hypothesis and is today classified as accepted theory that predicts the timing of glacial- interglacial cycles. 

So, what do Bill Gates, Joe Biden, Al Gore, Elon Musk and many others have to do with the presence of erratics, orbital cycles and the findings of Milankovitch? What has been the cause of all the recent hullabaloo? 

The Evidence for Climate Change

Well, per the theory of the Milankovitch Cycles, the Earth should be naturally cooling, with average temperatures reducing at this time in our astronomical history. Glaciers should also be advancing (accumulating more snow and ice than it melts or calves). But empirically, what is being observed is contrary to the theoretical predictions (which are supported by eons of historical data). Instead of the Earth cooling, average temperatures are increasing, and glaciers, are retreating (more snow and ice melting rather than accumulating). 

The Callendar Effect

This observed anomaly suggested that either the theory of the Milankovitch Cycles required review or something else was impacting the long-term trends of global temperatures. In 1938, Guy Stewart Callendar, an English engineer (who was born in Canada), first postulated that the astronomical related foundations of the Milankovitch Cycles were reliable but it was the increasing levels of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere that were leading to an increase in global temperatures. Over the subsequent decades, his theory has been demonstrated to be accurate and has since been christened the Callendar Effect. 

Callendar showed that in the 50 years prior to 1938, average global temperatures were increasing in tandem with carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. Initially he thought this to be a positive development, postponing the advent of another Ice Age, but over the next several decades, complex computer models revealed that uncontrolled levels of carbon dioxide emissions would cause irrevocable damage to the environment of the Pale Blue Dot that is Earth, our collective home. 

The Carbon Culprit 

Once carbon dioxide was identified as one of the primary culprits of global temperature increase, it then became imperative to identify the sources of the production of this gas so that real reductions could be made in its use. The finding is that it is our lifestyles and expectations that are changing the trajectory of the evolution of Earth. The growing global population is demanding more energy to live in greater comfort and to perform industrial work activities more efficiently. It is also no secret that human longevity has increased in tandem with carbon dioxide emissions. The paradox is that in emitting more carbon dioxide today, we increase our immediate personal longevity but we also erode the possibilities for those who will follow us as the future custodians of Earth. 

In the long term, our actions or inaction today may threaten the very existence of humankind itself. 

Paris, 2015 

On 12 December 2015, a legally binding international treaty on climate change, involving 196 countries was adopted. It came into force on 4th November 2016 and is called the Paris Agreement. Its vision is to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial (1750s) levels. 

First Day Cover - The Paris Agreement 2015

There are many strategies that cascade from the pursuit of this planet-wide mission, but one obvious common feature does seem to repeat itself. The fact is that the less we rely on carbon and the more we harness the five major renewable energy sources: i.e.: 

• Solar energy from the sun; 

• Geothermal energy from heat inside the earth; 

• Wind energy; 

• Biomass from plants; and

• Hydropower from flowing water;

the greater our chances of delivering on the goals of the Paris Agreement and the greater our chances of survival as a species.

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Inventor

Irrespective of the source of renewable energy, the method of transmission of the renewable forms of energy from its source to its user will likely be electrical. Enter then, probably one of the greatest inventors the world has known, Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American inventor, engineer and futurist. Sometimes called, “the genius who lit the world”, Tesla is well known for the Tesla coil (which laid the foundation for wireless technologies), the development of the alternating-current electrical system, while also being credited with the discovery of the rotating magnetic field. 

Nikola Tesla - Inventor of the Alternating Current Electrical System  

In the coming decades, Tesla’s discovery of the alternating current electrical system will become increasingly critical for delivering clean energy to users the world over. It is reported that Tesla never really cared about money, repeatedly saying that what he wanted most was to provide free electricity to the world. His wish may yet be granted as renewable energy sources come to the fore. 

Tesla Incorporated

To close this post, I would like to relate this story about the other Tesla that is making the headlines these days. The Tesla motor vehicle is synonymous with the name of Elon Musk. The reality is somewhat different. Elon Musk did not have a say in the naming of Tesla Incorporated as he joined it only after it had been formed. Tesla’s name was actually thought up in Disneyland’s Blue Bayou restaurant, when Tesla Inc.’s co-founder, Martin Eberhard, pitched it to his then girlfriend (and now wife), Carolyn. 

Martin Eberhard chose the name, after months of unsuccessful pitches, to honour Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-American inventor who created the AC electric motor that is used in Tesla’s cars. 

Perhaps, when we next see a Tesla motorcar and we wonder what we could do to make the world a cleaner and healthier place, we should remember the words of Nikola Tesla: 

 “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples"

Please note that all stamps and the First Day Cover used in this post are from my personal collection.