"Prepare people for the future and empower them [for they can change the outcome]."

—Richard Clive Neville, futurist

THE FUTURE BEGINS TODAY

After hundreds of millions of years, we have seen the emergence of a variety of creatures great and small on this blue-green and brown planet, of which one has evolved to become the dominant species. This particular species has developed a large brain capable of recording, creating and recognising a wealth of patterns with ease and speed, and a set of manipulative limbs to change its environment and those living in it, as well as produce sophisticated new tools to achieve many things. This species has a name, and we call them humans.

Today, humans has reached a level of sophistication in what it can achieve as we near the moment in its history when it can solve the problem of interstellar travel and reach for the stars inside exponentially-accelerating symmetrical EM flying vehicles based on the emission of radiation from a charged surface.

Not only that, but humans have acquired sufficient brain power to ask the more fundamental, deeper and difficult questions, consisting mainly of the following:

• Why are we here?
• What is the purpose of death?
• Why does the Universe exist?
• Why does life follow this general law of increasing order and greater complexity? Or is life providing a balance in complexity and simplicity depending on the nature of the environment in which organisms are made to live in?
• Where are we heading?
• Who else exists in this Universe? Or are we alone?

Of course, the answer to these questions must also include an understanding of the purpose of evolution. Without it, how would we know what's our destiny in all of these changes and adaptation?

Indeed, why should there be evolution at all? What do all these changes mean? What are we reaching for through these changes? Are we meant to be heading somewhere? And what will we find in the end when the ultimate goal is finally attained, assuming we know what this goal should look like?

Does this mean the ultimate goal is for us to become immortals where we eventually conquer death and can enjoy absolute stability in our bodies, and so there is nothing new to learn and improve ourselves? Will we ever become truly immune to all evolutionary changes where we can adapt to virtually any condition the Universe throws at us, including the ability to withstand the effects of radiation on our bodies using the right technology while our biological repair mechanisms can fix our DNA to such a level of efficiency and accuracy that we no longer have to worry about aging or death? In other words, we can live very long lives, or possibly even become immortal and hence become God in some way? And will this ultimate goal give us the ultimate truth about the purpose of this mysterious Universe and why we are here?

Or is evolution getting us nowhere other than to survive the here-and-now moment depending on our environment that we choose to live in? In other words, should we see ourselves as having no specific goal to reach for in this evolutionary process other than to adapt to the current environment and be happy and free of stress (e.g., predators), while finding ways to extend our lifespan and create a kind of heaven for all living things in this Universe looking to survive in this environment we live in as part of our aim to share our love with all living things?

For example, if we moved to another planet in the Universe that could be described as a little larger than the Earth and mostly a watery world, would our bodies merely adapt to those conditions, such as the development of webbed feet and hands? Well, at least we will survive better, and we might be happier as we cope with the environment more easily. So, in a sense, we create the experience of love under those conditions, and ensure others are able to experience this same love through our actions and the goals we achieve with the help of evolution for all to benefit.

This is seen as the popular view of most scientists, including Andrew Forrest, Chief Engineer at Solstad Offshore (2005–present), when he said:

"A common misconception about evolution is that there is some sort of goal that things are aiming for. The only goal is survival of the line, and that’s the driving force behind natural selection."

For others, it is more a case of looking for hidden patterns in the Universe. The answer to these people is not as clear-cut as the scientists would like everyone to believe. There is something else going on in this Universe. A kind of paradox that we have yet to clarify and resolve.

Whatever the truth, evolution for all living things on this planet will not stop into the future. The Universe with its ubiquitous radiation has a unrelenting way of forcing change on our bodies at the genetic level whether we like it or not. Nothing will stop its incessant need to change who we are and what we will become as part of the natural evolutionary work of pushing us to become something different and more adaptive of the current environment we live in, and hopefully better than we are today. Of course, the only thing that is naturally complicating this is our knowledge of genetic engineering, which has the potential one day to keep us the way we are. For example, Forrest stated:

"Another misconception is that some animals stop evolving whilst others continue. ALL animals are evolving at all times, seemingly primitive cockroaches are just as highly evolved as we are, but just down a different path."

All we can do is slow the rate of change for a species using the right technical means of manipulating the genes and so maintain how we generally look for a long time, thereby defying the natural evolutionary processes.

On the other hand, we could decide as a species to use our technology to accelerate the evolutionary process for us to become something far greater than natural evolution could ever achieve. And if that happens, does this mean we become God? Indeed, why should there be death at all? Is it to encourage us to find the answers and perhaps prolong and eventually stop death from taking place? Or is death inevitable and we cannot become God because of some fundamental restriction or principle of the Universe that forbids all of us from becoming God? And when we do die, where will we go? Or are we forever bounded to this Universe in an endless cycle of life and death as we achieve some unseen and ultimate goal (or continue our existence in this mysterious Universe so we may be entertained and curious for all eternity)?

These are certainly difficult questions to answer even for the most scholarly minds in the business.

Assuming these changes do have to continue and will follow certain current trends based on our environmental conditions and the choices we make for ourselves, let us begin this controversial next epoch by presenting below some of the things scientists are fairly confident will happen in the future assuming our neck of the woods in the Milky Way continues to remain relatively stable and predictable. It will be based on current trends and behaviours observed today among humans as well as cutting-edge scientific knowledge and technologies emerging as we speak. And we will apply a realistic extrapolation of this trend and behaviour to help explain where we are likely to be going into the future.

It is clear our greatest journey has only just begun.(1)

5 YEARS FROM NOW

Just as in the Cambrian period has seen much of life reach up to the surface of the oceans for a better future, in the 21st century, humans will be reaching up in their own way. This time to the final frontier known as the Universe. Such a move will have important implications for humanity. Of greatest interest in this regard is answering the age old question of whether we are alone in the Universe.

As you read this, more and more scientists (especially the astronomers) are coming around to the view that our planet cannot be the only life-bearing planet in the Universe. The indirect scientific evidence supporting the existence of alien life include:

1. the vast numbers of long-lived and stable Sun-like stars (literally millions in our Milky Way);
2. the great abundance of planets orbiting other suns;
3. the considerable time we already have had in the formation of stars, galaxies, planets, and ultimately our own form of life (and by implications alien life as well); and
4. the common conditions and materials needed to create life are available in great abundance everywhere.
5. the discovery of an electromagnetic technology in genuine UFO reports that can solve the problem of interstellar travel.

All this is telling scientists one thing: there has to be alien life out there. Therefore, the only remaining questions to answer at this stage are:

• Where can we find these aliens?
• How do we contact them?
• Why have they not contacted us?

Sure, we can be highly rational about this and fully trusting of our eyes by saying there is no alien life. As some hardened scientists might say, "I don't see aliens. Therefore aliens do not exist."

However, science is not all about what we can see all the time in a direct sense. As Dr Carl Sagan once said, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Because not everything can be directly seen, broadminded scientists have learned to gather the evidence by indirect means, and from it deduce the probability that something could exist. Astronomers do this all the time when it comes to detecting black holes at the centre of the Milky Way and other galaxies. The same is true of a group of quantum particles that we can never directly observe but know they exist, but can only give a probability of where those particles are likely to exist. And so it is with detecting exoplanets that cannot be directly observed with our telescopes. We have to use indirect techniques. Therefore, there is no reason why we cannot extend this to alien life.

With this in mind, there are enough scientists who are willing to go out on a limb to state that, on the basis of probability, alien life should exist, and probably in great numbers. It is inconceivable at this stage and level of indirect evidence to consider our Sun the only one to support a life-bearing planet. What makes us so special if this were to be untrue? Plenty of sun-like stars out there to consider. We have many millions of sun-like stars in our Milky Way alone. Any one of them can have Earth-like planets. As we all should know, truly curious and open-minded scientists hate the idea of us being special by being the only lifeform in the Universe. There should be nothing unusual about us, our planet, and our Sun. Therefore, it is reasonable to consider other lifeforms in the universe, not because we can't directly see them, but because the probability is so high thanks to what scientists are already seeing in space to indirectly support the existence of alien life.

Of course, this is not proof as some scientists would like to see. But then again, there could be a reason why direct evidence is still eluding us. For example, if we look at UFO reports of strange occupants in their symmetrical glowing electromagnetic flying vehicles, aliens appear to be doing all they can to avoid us and prevent us from relying on our eyes to get to the scientific answer through direct observation and ensuring we do not have direct access to their machinery. They seem to want us to gather the evidence by more indirect means and to use our imagination to solve the problem. Perhaps they are more concerned about our direction in life and how we do not use enough imagination to solve world problems. By keeping away from us, we have to look at ourselves in the mirror to better understand why we are not considered approachable as a species. At the same time, the lack of direct contact with everyone probably forces enough people to use more imagination and visualise things when finding solutions to problems. Whether it is to find out whether alien life exists, or ensure there is no conflict between our fellow human beings here on Earth, imagination has the potential to solve every problem set before us.

Well, some scientists in the 21st century are using their imagination and conducting careful analysis of the UFO reports. Already we see evidence of a new electromagnetic technology in action based on the solution of the Abraham-Lorentz formula. Scientists can now explain many of the common UFO observations, including why the objects have to be symmetrical, and why they glow over large region(s) when in flight. Scientists can finally see how UFO occupants can reach us based on the "exponential acceleration" solution of the formula. The kind of solution that occurs commonly for charged particles accelerating inside particle accelerators. However, it seems that the UFO occupants have found a way to set up the same electromagnetic conditions outside of their symmetrical flying objects and adjust their vehicle's shape slightly to achieve a recoil action leading to the same kind of phenomenal speed that many witnesses have reported for a long time. Whoever has built these UFOs has discovered a means by which electromagnetic energy can be recycled and amplified to enable this type of acceleration, and at the same time figured out ways to control inertial forces inside their symmetrical metal boxes.

If all this is true, testing of this technology will soon take place to confirm this evidence. If proven, scientists will have the closest evidence yet for the existence of technically advanced alien life reaching our planet. Not some alien bacteria or tiny slug slithering around somewhere in our solar system, but more sophisticated two legged intelligent humanoid creatures capable of driving one of these vehicles and reaching for the stars, including our Sun and Earth.

Even if people still want to have direct evidence, we can be certain the time will come to employ one of these electromagnetic vehicles to reach the nearest stars and gather this evidence.

If all this sounds too controversial to contemplate, there are enough scientists observing the universe and acknowledging the existence of exoplanets, of sun-like stars sauntering about the Milky Way, and the elements and molecules needed to build carbon-based life are out there in abundance. Not even an argument of insufficient time for alien life to establish themselves on some Earth-like world and evolve to a level of biological sophistication, intelligence, and technical abilities can be used at this time. There is more than enough time for alien life to exist.

From the indirect evidence we have so far, it is clear that the time is fast approaching when scientists will be able to prove this situation beyond any reasonable doubt.

But before we do get to this answer and see the direct evidence, there is another question we need to ask ourselves before we do meet up with these intelligent "people of the stars" and become part of the cosmic community: Have we learned enough about ourselves and our time on this planet to know how to meet and treat aliens in the right way?

We must ask this question because there is something else we are going to need to carry with us to the stars to give us the guarantee that we will survive an encounter with other technically-advanced aliens (assuming no asteroid, comet, or supernova explosion comes along to affect us in our neck of the cosmic neighbourhood). Imagination is one thing to see through the problems and discover unexpected patterns. Having a strong rational mind is another to help us implement and make real certain patterns through the use of a technology. But neither of these skills on their own, or even together, is going to be enough to solve all problems. The third and final ingredient we will need must become an essential and normal part of who we are as a species if we are to properly interact and behave appropriately with intelligent life.

It requires including our emotions, and in particular a positive emotion we call love. That positive emotion for which all life in the universe constantly strives to reach for to be happy and balanced because of the long-term benefits this emotion can bring to them (and others).

Obviously, being able to survive is one benefit. But in the context of meeting up with alien civilisations, we need love to play an important role in teaching us how to interact in an appropriate way with all living things in the Universe.

Love is extremely broad in its application and definition, but generally love is the feeling that all living thing experience from time-to-time when balance is restored in some aspect of their lives, such as to eat food and remove hunger as well as not being pursued by predators. We should know about this given our long evolutionary history. We have seen how life has struggled to survive and be happy.

The same is true for advanced aliens capable of travelling to our planet. They have to survive too. And the way they implement this principle of love includes choosing to hide from us at the present time. A case of taking on a non-interference approach with all living things, especially humans, on Earth. There is something in the actions of these people of the stars when they arrive here that is not enticing them to immediately say "hello" to us, and certainly not on a grand scale or even to invade and take over our planet. If this were to be untrue, why are we still here? Surely the aliens would have done the dirty deed on us millions of years ago when things were a lot easier. The fact that these aliens have not done so must speak volumes about what these aliens have learned in their encounters with other lifeforms, especially the intelligent and technological kind. Aliens that can travel the stars must have learned an important lesson. Not only can they influence and affect other forms of alien life in a way that they see is meant to promote the principle of love, but their encounter can cause potential harm if it is not done right. And there could be devastating consequences on the survival of any intelligent lifeform if they deliberately cause harm. So, perhaps the only true way to express love is for advanced aliens to let us go. Stay away from us. Try not to interfere in our affairs. Let us work things out on our own. But to understand this properly, you have to know something about the principle of love.

We see this all the time in genuine UFO reports. As soon as the aliens are sighted by humans, they prefer to run away into their vehicles and take off. And by staying away, perhaps there is a message in all of this? More specifically, they are probably more concerned about the way we behave on this planet and what we do in the presence of other living things, including our own fellow human beings, trying to carve an existence here. But there could be other reasons. For example, to protect us from potentially foreign biological organisms that could affect our immune system. Or perhaps it is just merely their way of enticing us to use our imagination and find out how to solve problems without the expectation of seeing the evidence with our eyes all the time. That is likely the reason why aliens are choosing to stay away from us and let us solve our problems, until we finally "get it" in our heads of how we should behave and treat one another, as well as know whether they exist.

And if we don't and we discover a way to reach their alien worlds without love in our hearts, we should not be surprised if we get a rude awakening from the aliens if it helps us to learn our lesson, assuming we are allowed to survive in this Universe.

If anyone knows the importance of love, it would be the aliens, especially the ones who have travelled around and visited other alien civilisations. They know how to behave and interact appropriately, and solve problems with good imagination and rational skills while ensuring everyone is happy. They know how to work together and do the right thing. If you want a good lesson in the principle of love, we should be listening to these great teachers if, for any reason, we are still grappling with implementing this principle of love in our daily lives.

This means that when it is our turn to travel to the stars, humans will need to do the same. If we want to experience the positive consequences of our actions and survive in this Universe, then there is only one path that will guaranteed our survival in this universe in the presence of other intelligent lifeforms. That path is a "path with a heart", and a path of expressing our curiosity with all living things.

If you need a clue about the kind of creatures we should be treating very well when we encounter them, make sure those humanoid beings are given the respect and kindness they deserve. You know, the ones who already have two arms, two legs and a large head, just like us. They are the ones to have a technology. They can reach our planet and see what we do, and what our attitude is to life on Earth. They are the ones we need to show the greatest respect and kindness for they have learned far more than we have about the principle of love. (2)

If we have learned anything about our long evolutionary past, it is the fact that all living things have been forced to change over time leading to what we call evolution. The change has come about because part of the pressure has been from predators that also need to survive in their own way. We force ourselves to adapt to new environments and try different things with our bodies to hopefully develop mechanisms, behaviours, and tools to help maximise our chances of survival. It is a dog eat dog world because love is lacking at times which requires brutal solutions in order for one or the other to survive and briefly experience love once again, but never rarely both at the same time unless there is some kind of symbiotic relationship that can be formed. The reality is, all living things search for a solution that they think is best for them and they implement it in what they consider to be a form of love. For predators, they don't always seek solutions on a Win-Win basis. Often the simplest solution is to see the demise of one living thing in order to provide the sustenance to another living thing.

As humans, things can be different. We do not need to kill for food. We don't need to harm other animals to create the environment we want to live in. There are alternative solutions. For a species with a large brain, we are meant to be showing how intelligent we are. We can work together to find solutions that can benefit all animals and plants if we so choose. This more co-operative approach becomes even more pertinent by the time we meet up with intelligent and technically-advanced aliens. We have to be thinking differently and see each other as solutions to any problem.

It does not matter whether life is still evolving on this planet or elsewhere, or a technically-advanced alien civilisation decides to come down to Earth to knock on your door and ask for some water. No one deserves any less love than the next living thing. We all need love. You need to provide that love no matter what. Help them as best you can. And make it free and accessible, and of the highest quality. Give that alien a glass of the cleanest water you can provide. Grow that tree in the garden or countryside to help provide animals the shelter and food they deserve.

Give all living things what they need to be happy and develop more of the feeling of love. Similarly on our planet, we cannot go ahead and cut down trees and cause a desertification of the environment, thereby preventing other Earth-based life forms from having the water, shelter, and natural foods they need. Who are we to cause this level of harm and eventual extinction to other life forms? Clearly it is not a form of love We think we are God by performing such actions on other lifeforms, but we are not God because we do not know what we are doing. We don't have a complete understanding of the principle of love. We need to stop acting as if we can do anything we like. Sure, we understand the need for humans to feel happy and survive by making money. But how much money is enough? Is it worth making so much money that our planet has to be destroyed?

Remember, all living things merely want to survive and feel loved. We cannot deny the love all living things deserve, from the moment we are born to the day we die. We need love, and that means looking after each other's survival needs and showing the feeling of love and inclusiveness for all times. The same is true when it is our turn to visit other life-bearing worlds around other suns. We have to apply our love to those living creatures, no matter how unusual they may look, by at least letting them live on their planet and not interfere, as they will in return when they have the technology to reach our planet. What we look like, how we do things, and what our hopes and ambitions are for the future, must all be cherished and welcomed, especially when we meet up with these lifeforms. Such diversity, no matter how they look to us, should never change the way we treat all living things. They, as do all of us, deserve the same kind of love as anyone else. The kind of positive and helpful action that allows others to grow and develop in their own unique way. There is no discrimination. Love is the summation of all that we know and will ever know and should already have figured out by now from our long and arduous evolutionary past.

In summary, there should be no holding back in terms of the love we must show to all living things, even with the aliens.

With all this in mind, the next question we need to ask is, Are we showing our understanding of the principle of love to all living things, at least here on Earth?

The evidence is not exactly overwhelming to say the least. We only need to look at the past few thousand years to realise quite a few humans look more preoccupied with plundering and using up the available natural resources, and throwing the waste back at nature without adequate recycling. There is also a remarkable desire to interfere with other people and the natural world in order to get what we want (i.e., acquire the wealth and other extra resources, or deal with people we don't like or look different in negative way), often at the expense of reducing the quality and diversity of life. It seems humans on the whole are happy to destroy other lifeforms if they do not provide something of value when they are alive, which today usually involves making huge profits while enjoying our extravagant lifestyles. Or else we somehow cannot be creative enough to come up with alternative, long-term, and sustainable solutions to all our problems, especially the ones designed to ensure the survival of everyone and all living things on this planet. So we choose to stick to what we think is cheapest and easiest to help us stay alive (e.g., our reliance on oil from the middle-east and soon the Arctic regions and in the South China Seas, and the fish in the oceans as food not to mention the freshwater on land etc.). On top of this, all our interference is intricately linked to the size of our population and how rich we all want to become when acquiring and selling these remaining resources (and soon how well we can survive as life gets more complicated and difficult) even if it means increasing one's insecurity with other humans who don't have the same resources (hence the origin of a military force and the danger this can bring to the future of humanity as the population grows and the resources dwindle over time).

Why do humans pursue this agenda?

One possible explanation is that we are still incredibly insecure in ourselves, our future, and what we think we need to survive on this planet. One thing evolution has taught us is how insecure and fearful we are. Our predators have helped immensely to form this thinking and feeling in many people's minds. But other factors may also exacerbate this situation, such as the issue of death and what will become of us.

Is this feeling of insecurity warranted? Maybe in the past we can understand why, but not today. Nowadays we are far more intelligent, and we have a technology. There is no need to be afraid of anything. We are all on the same journey of surviving and being happy. So why fight with each other all the time to have what we need? It is unnecessary. The more solutions we can create and implement to solve all problems relating to our insecurities, the more open and friendly we become. Not enough food to go around? Well, surely one solution would be for all of us to learn to stay within our means, and have an intimate knowledge of recycling. Then look after the natural environment and produce food on the land for all to benefit at the lowest cost (or preferably free). Surely having food is the simplest solution that doesn't have to cost the earth, and yet has such a massive benefit to humanity in solving so many world problems at a social level.

As for other solutions, we need to go beyond what our eyes can see all the time. To try something different and see where it takes us.This requires us to look more on a grander scale of things so we may visualise the grander "unchanging" invisible patterns of the Universe to help make us feel more secure and happy in the universe for all times, even at the moment of our death and what is to come afterwards for all of us.

At the present time, it seems many people are hopelessly short-sighted, highly reliant on their eyes, and in need of instant gratification and living in the present moment that we just don't notice how immensely unbalanced we are in our thinking skills despite all the rational knowledge and technology we have acquired to this moment. With our limited knowledge about love and the purpose of our existence in the Universe, we tend to focus our efforts in acquiring as much as we can from our materialistic world. Such acquisition to the extreme is suppose to make us think it will give us greater security and happiness. But, in fact, it is doing the opposite. The same is true of money. Money is seen as the be all and end all for our very existence, and our happiness is intricately linked to how much money we have. Soon people think money is all that matters in life and there is nothing wrong in being rich, even to the point of being greedy. And, because we are afraid of the future, we live in the here-and-now moment of enjoying what we have acquired, materialistically speaking, including having a large family and a large house. We think this is security and stability. To some extent, it can be. But go overboard with it and it can become the opposite. Little do we know, as the population increases and more people compete more intensely for their share of the remaining and finite resources on this planet, the feeling of security and stability starts to wane. News of people fighting for their share of the remaining resources or against people who have more than others becomes a regular event.

Then our greed and interfering in the natural world on a large scale thanks to our population sees global warming take hold on this planet. This is followed by widespread extinctions of various animals and plants. Less food in supermarkets, or food that seems to be getting more expensive over time until only the rich can afford, and even then they may need to sell their assets to afford the high prices. Either it is greed or there is something else that is making it harder for farmers to grow the food and provide clean water.

Over time, what we think is making us more secure and stable is not. Soon the idea of greater security erodes in pockets of society and in the environment, and later grows to become a bigger problem. It won't be long before it affects everyone. Even the ones who are rich and have everything they want will feel the pinch. Eventually a time will come when everyone will feel so insecure that they sense a radical change is just around the corner. Something is needed to shake up society into a new world order to get back that sense of security and stability. We can only hope it is better than before, and promotes genuine peace, stability and true security for all living things.

As intelligent beings we don't seem to have enough imagination to come up with long-term and permanent solutions. And we can't seem to apply our emotions when selecting the best solution that will make as many people as we can happy or can at least see a better future for everyone.

Due to a lack of imagination and being entirely trusting of what we see and think is the only solution we are familiar with and kind of works, we somehow end up maintaining the same flawed way of doing things and solving problems using existing methods and approaches. We don't try something different. As a result, people tend to solve problems by acquiring more of the same kind of tools and surround themselves in more materialistic things. They think this will protect them and avoid (or make us forget) the things they fear, such as the issue of death and/or other people or what's happening in the environment.

Because of our short-sightedness and reliance on the eyes and rational thinking to make all kinds of decisions without much imagination or application of our positive emotions when choosing the best solution, we do everything we can to create bandaid solutions, or to change those few things around us to help make it suit how we think things should be just to get that sense of security and stability again. People will buy security alarms for the home and car while staying in the same large house and family car, they will purchase bigger cars and houses on the assumption they will feel more secure and possibly make more money when we sell them again as a way to further insulate ourselves from the rest of the world and think this will make us safer. Heaven forbid, if anyone tries to interfere in this approach to greater security and stability. Otherwise, we have to pay other people to protect us, such as the creation of a police and military forces, or pay security guards and all the rest. Or else people enjoy life to the fullest in an attempt to forget the things they don't like to see or hear about.

Yet such actions show that we don't think long-term. We don't look far enough into the future and use our imagination to see what's coming and find better and more permanent solutions. Things like global warming is an example of the consequences we will face when we don't think long-term in what we do and the types of solutions we choose to implement when seeking to make money from others who are willing to purchase those solutions.

As greed, a growing population, and limited resources persist, prices for food will eventually go up. Freshwater supplies dwindle and more technology has to be employed to desalinate the ocean water or build new dams. Places dry up and become more desert like, and soon we need greenhouses to help keep the moisture inside and grow the food. Continue the expansion of the human population and at some point the natural ecology collapses. Not enough natural shelter for animals, trees struggle to grow in limited fresh water in the ground after much of it has evaporated into the hot and dry air. We see the insect population will target the remaining natural resources and soon there is a plague of insects vying for an opportunity to find enough food to survive. Then the insects die from hunger, heat, and lack of fresh water, and the population suddenly drops dramatically. Plants struggle to survive as there are insufficient pollinators. There are fewer birds to eat the insects and keep the harmful bugs under control. Fewer birds to pollinate the flowers. Plant-based animals soon die without enough access to green pastures and plants in the natural environment. Predators that rely on plant-based animals disappear too (or certainly the largest one), except for humans who must become the dominant predator to control the harmful bugs (and probably have to eat them for protein as a last resort) not to mention the last remaining fast procreating small animals such as rats trying to survive in human society (already China makes a great delicacy out of rats these days). And humans must also do the work of fertilising the plants by transferring the pollen in order to grow the food, all because the bee populations, birds and other animals have disappeared.

Yet all of this is really making our lives more insecure and unstable (and far more busier than it needs to be, rather than letting nature do much of the work for us).

So while it is difficult to change, or change properly to where we need to be, we observe the crimes that people undertake because they are missing something in their lives (i.e., love through food, money etc.). We observe changes in the environment leading to natural disasters that should really never occur. As the problems increase and get harder to solve, older people will reminisce about the good old days. For middle aged people, it is about acquiring more of the resources and protecting what they have through the establishment of a military and police force, not to mention fortifying their homes with alarm systems and security guards, and to establish borders around homes with a fence as well as create geopolitical borders around countries just to protect this unbalanced way of life. Only young people may see a problem here. But at the end of the day, they need money to survive. They need a job to pay for things. How can they change everything if they can't afford to pay for the food on the table or a roof over their heads? No wonder they are likely to commit crimes in society.

This is the only way L-brain people have learned in life. There is no other reality they can see except for the one they trust the most based on what they see, their experiences, and their preferred approach to solving problems.

And we do this knowing fully well the damage we are doing to the environment and to certain people in society without thinking long-term because people believe this current life is the only life we we will ever have.

It appears that fear is what's driving L-brain humans to think and take on a short-sighted view of life and the Universe. It is the reason why we have developed the kind of society and artificial environment in so many developed nations to help avoid this fear. It seems these people don't know of another way, only what they know works right now and can see. And we have our long evolutionary past to thank for this. The difficulties we have had to endure when surviving has required us to stand up on our two feet, to use our eyes to observe the world around us, and to apply our L-brain to solving the observable problems in a quick and efficient way. As our memories, earliest writings, and the study of fossils has revealed, our time on Earth was filled with countless episodes of observing and experiencing fear as we tried to tackle or run away from the numerous predators and various geological cataclysmic events. We know all about fear. We are literally experts in this field and ingrained in the primitive parts of our brain. It is an inherent part of who we are when we look back at our past. Evolution has taught us to instinctively fear things, especially things that are different and unfamiliar, and we know it so well.

Even today, there are enough people still living in fear because they do not know what the future will bring.

Is there a solution to all this fear?

For the L-brain person, it is generally to do more of the same and what they are familiar with, and do it because this is the only life they have. There is nothing more to look forward to when we experience death.

For the R-brain person, it is to think and do the opposite of what L-brain people are doing until balance is restored because they see a different reality.

First, it is the aim of the R-brain person to tackle the fears head on. Next, he/she must look beyond what we see to find unseen patterns, some of which could bring new solutions, while others can help to change the way we think at a deeper level. And these patterns have the power to change our view of reality and life in a totally different way. But for this to work, people must be willing to think differently. For example, when it comes to world problems, R-brain people can see the value of recycling as a long-term solution to many world problems (whether it is the food we throw out and new food need to be grown, to the type of energy we must use for transportation etc.), as well as recognising the cyclic nature of life and the universe rather than the short-term linear approach. Another example is how R-brain people are able to see people as part of the solution, and all the while can continue to show compassion and empathy.

As well as seeing the hidden patterns in life and the universe, such as the cyclic nature of life and the universe, R-brain people can observe in their minds certain other hidden and positive patterns among people when the principle of love is applied, and not just what's in the environment. When it comes to people, they stop looking for different things and instead look at what's in common with people and even all living things on this planet. They start to realise we are all searching for and struggling for the same things. With a little sharing and helping one another, we don't have to be at each others throats. We don't need to focus on the differences with people. Yet, on the same token R-brain types look for differences in the environment as these can be a source of new insights and solutions. By applying this approach in a balanced way, R-brain people have the power to view, and teach others, a different reality. We can see an alternative solution.

With people, R-brain types learn to take the hate away from our hearts when they get to the essence of people. They can understand why people do what they do. They start to forgive them for the things they have not done right. But to really see why you must forgive one another, it requires that you bring out the creative side of your brain (also known as the right side of the brain, or R-brain) to see the hidden and common patterns and what we will all go through, why we do the things we do (in a process known as empathy), as well as how to solve the fears and problems people have through different solutions.

Once you have these new insights and solutions, you can implement better and more balanced solutions. Imaginative solutions that have the right amount of rational thinking to make the solutions practical and achievable. Then we apply our emotions for the right solution to bring the most positive emotional outcome we can. That is how we show love to others. It is only when these types of solutions are implemented will enough of the more highly rational people see the benefit to everyone including themselves. Then there is hope that they can begin to change themselves to be more balanced.

Remember, within this new world set by the R-brain types, there is a chance for everyone to work together to survive and be comfortable, happy and more fulfilled in a simpler way. There is greater stability in life. Everyone can be focused on the important things we need and ensuring those needs are met for people. Everything we do is recycled for a plentiful supply of what we need to return again and again and so keep us alive and happy (i.e., love) for all eternity (barring any natural catastrophe which we must keep an eye out for and use our technology to help protect and prepare us). So the fear of not surviving among L-brain types can be avoided. There is no need to fight for the things we need. We don't need to feel insecure with other people all the time. Once people settle down and understand why and realise their needs will be met, so many problems are alleviated. As for the thing we want when achieving other goals, we must ask what is important to achieve. Do we need everything? Of course not. Nor is it reasonable to expect that we can. We must choose our life's work and reach that goal with the tools we are given or available for us to borrow. Perhaps we can keep one item that we use all the time to achieve our life's work until we move on to the next life, but never any more. Beyond that, a roof over our heads, a productive and healthy natural environment, and people having what they need should be more than we ever need. And whatever we make or produce of great positive value to us and potentially to others should be shared, preferably for free. When we do produce the things we want, things will be built to last for much longer, to serve many more people for a longer period of time, and can be recycled easily when we need to build better and more durable solutions. There is more sharing or borrowing of the things we have, so everyone gets an opportunity to use something and achieve important goals for the benefit of everyone. As for the things we all need, everyone will have a primary activity assigned (and later people can choose) to ensure this fundamental goal will be achieved. and that is mainly to assist in the new world to look after the natural environment and make it productive for all living things, and not just for ourselves to stay alive.

Furthermore, this new world presented by the R-brain types with their long-term vision and simpler solutions will include an expansion and presentation of new educational materials that will broaden our view of life. Not about how to make money. Rather, we learn how to help people on the fundamental level. How to socialise is one thing. How to work together on a common goal is another. How to solve problems is crucial. And understanding why there can be conflict and how to resolve them is important. But at the end of the day, we need to learn how to love.

And that love must also include learning the hidden patterns as needed to solve our fear of death and see the importance of recycling everything that we do. If we open up our minds as well as our eyes, the hidden patterns of the Universe and of life itself as seen by R-brain types will give many more people, including the L-brain types, a greater sense of hope and a new future. We will discover that nothing is ever a straight line with a start and an ending. Everything cycles, and recycles. Our bodies in this Universe are merely the clothes we wear, and at some point we must change our clothes for us to begin a new chapter in our adventure of experiencing more of this Universe. And as we experience more, and tell others about it, and have the knowledge recorded by some means, the mystery of the Universe reveals a little more of its secrets. We start to see more things. Give it a little time, perhaps hastened by our need to share our knowledge and experiences and have it all recorded, and before we know it, we will see the purpose of the Universe and why we are here. Then something truly amazing will be recognized by everyone.

This bigger reality is just the beginning under a new more R-brain-focused and loving world.

So, why so much fear?

It seems at some point we need to address these fears and to use love to conquer them if we are going to overcome our insecurities and paint a more positive future for all of us, while at the same time encouraging others to do the right thing.

Let us look at one of the biggest fears people have: the issue of death.

The fear of death is most prevalent among what psychologists describe as L-brain people. These are the ones who are totally trusting of their eyes and make rational decisions based on what they see. So if they can't see something, then at least they try to control the situation or delay the inevitable and perhaps everything will be okay. Otherwise, fear starts to creep into their lives. Or else these people will do anything to ignore it if their technology cannot solve the problem (e.g., extend their lives). Or else these people find something else to pre-occupy their minds and watch and experience the things they enjoy, such as their children or at least start a new family, playing video games, go to clubs, find friends to reminisce about the good old days with like-minded people, and so on. As a result, L-brain people who can't see what happens after death are more likely to say things like nothing happens after death. And so they develop no faith in a new life beyond death. As a consequence of this type of linear thinking, they must accumulate as much as they can now so they can enjoy life to the fullest extent possible in the present moment and often without due regard to the protection of other living things and ensuring we have what we need.

This is clearly an imbalanced view of life.

Somehow L-brain people need to be comforted by the knowledge from genuine R-brain people that there is indeed a brighter long-term future about how this Universe has been designed.

According to the more R-brain types, death may be inevitable for all living things (but yet to be proven with enough time as we learn of all the things that forces us to change and how to control it, as well as acknowledging the existence of living things that can live as immortals, such as certain types of jellyfish in the oceans), but it is not the end. Rather, it is viewed as the beginning to a new adventure. Death should always be seen as just another experience (just like we have a birthday, we get married, have children, meet new friends etc.). Each experience can be frightening or difficult in their own right, but it is an experience that we must all face. Why should it be an experience? Well, the grand recycling nature of the universe and the way everything comes around in circles to repeat itself and start again from the smallest scale to the largest scale is telling the R-brain types that life is no different. It is an experience that moves us forward to something we don't know yet what it is. It is a learning experience. It is a chance to be flexible and learn something we have not seen before in our current or previous lives, either because of our age or limitations set by our current life and environment we live in, or the choices we make and the beliefs we wish to hold onto to make life seem easier to cope and survive. Death is kind of like a chance to be "forgiven" in a sense for our past actions and to move on to a better and new life and start again, while learning something new and different. But the core aspect of us is not lost. We don't lose absolutely everything. Those things we need to survive over millions of years will be with us always. Our DNA is the one thing to keep remembering who we are physically and what we need to survive at the deepest level. So too is the knowledge we record with our technology to help us become better than we were before through education, and learn it more quickly the next time around and in a more easier and engaging way. However, there is another aspect to us that defies death. The true part of us that is genuinely stable and unchanging. As part of the balance of life and the changing universe, there is absolute stability that goes beyond death and continues. We kind of sense it a little when we do things to try to minimise change throughout our lives, to give us that sense of stability from all the changes around us. But deeper down, there is the ultimate form of stability.

It is hard to describe what this is. Some religious people called it "the soul". Others may have different names. Whatever it is, if there is anything that does not change no matter what happens in the Universe, even at the moment of death, while the rest gets recycled and renewed is this thing called "our true selves". It is something that feels like it resides within our mind and joined to our body and brain to become one. This thing is what is truly "us" (i.e., you). It is hard to describe. It is the only thing that does not change or need to get recycled because it is already perfect. You are who you are. The only thing that is not perfect is our body and brain. And the two physical aspects we use to engage with the universe will react to whatever forces and events occur in your environment. You will appear to make decisions on your own, but in reality you are relying on what your brain has learned and think is the solution. And you will choose what the brain thinks is the solution. You may think this is you who is making the decisions, but deeper down, you are merely looking at information acquired by the brain and making informed choices or quick decisions that seem reasonable as suggested by the brain based on the experiences and knowledge it has acquired over time. Then, you further "experience" the things in the environment in response to those choices and decisions through the actions you make with your body. We call them consequences. It is a constant feedback system, and we learn from it. The brain is kind of already doing much of the work of helping you decide for you, and yet done in a way that makes you think you are in control. Until you are forced to experience something different or you can use your imagination to visualise a different way of doing and seeing things, you will never know of a different way of thinking and doing things. You will do what you think is best and works for you, but may not be the absolute best for all. You just follow what your brain decides is right based on memories it has acquired from all your experiences and knowledge. You will just do it the same way while your true self is acting as the pilot of your body. The brain will just make you think this is the right way to do things, but it doesn't know what's the best and most balanced way, and one that promotes love to all living things. Until we experience the consequences of our actions, we don't know whether we need to change. And even if we do see a need to change, how it affects our survival can affect our decision-making on whether to actually change or stay where we are familiar and helps us to survive and be happy. Yet consequences and experience will tell you whether or not what you are doing is right or not, through the process of feedback and whether further changes are needed, or you decide to maintain it. If it is the latter and seems to work well, you can keep a memory of it to reinforce what you already know, and eventually you will develop a strong belief that this is the best (and possibly only) way to do things. But you have to remember, your brain and body are not perfect. Other people may know something more. They have a greater diversity in views and ideas, and can potentially see another solution, and one that could be better and more balanced than yours. You have to listen and be prepared to challenge your thinking and what you believe. You don't know any other way of doing things until you find out and learn. You think this is the only way. And from those decisions, your brain (and thus your mind) will experience feelings of pain and pleasure as it acquires and remembers more experiences and helps you to refine what you believe to be true. But in all of this, the thing that doesn't get affected by such experiences, even at the moment of your death, is your true self. In religion it might be called a soul. To non-religious but spiritual types, it might be called a ghost. To rational L-brain types, it is nothing. There is no separation of soul from body as there is no benefit from doing so. Everything else that can and is separated outside the mind and in the materialistic world will be done in the name of creating a benefit, either to survive more easily or to get what they want (which is usually to get rich).

As an analogy, the energy constituting the mass of our body, the brain, and the rest of the physical (or materialistic) Universe, must go through a kind of incessant recycling in order to maintain perfect balance. This thing is essentially electromagnetic and does its recycling through an incessant and endlessly oscillating behaviour in order to make the solid matter we see around us as well as to help us to see these objects. This oscillating behaviour of the energy is what creates this inherent feeling of solidness in the matter we see around us. But despite the constant changes we see in this energy, the concept of energy in its fundamental sense does not change. Energy is energy. Adding solid matter to it to form fossil fuels, nuclear power and all the rest to create what scientists describe as different types of energies is just the clothing. Deep down, the fundamental energy running the show is called electromagnetic energy, for lack of a better term. Whatever this energy should be called, it remains constant and fundamental at the core of everything that in a sense this is the true "self" and truly stable part of the energy of the universe. No matter how the energy oscillates, at what frequency, or what it does to itself to help create solid matter, electromagnetic energy is still electromagnetic energy. Nothing in the latter aspect ever changes here. We all have the same energy in our bodies. And our bodies are immersed in this ocean of oscillating energy to keep us warm above absolute zero kelvin. Warm enough to at least allow molecules to form DNA, our proteins and eventually life itself. Electromagnetic energy is the true constant that link all of us together, as well as the solid nature of how all matter in the universe feels. Despite the incessant changing nature over time of this energy to oscillate and create this sensation of solidness in all matter, balance is constantly restored momentarily before going to its opposite extremes, and what it forms are the things that are stable for eternity. The same is true of your true self. This mysterious "thing" that is locked away for a short period into the current physical body and brain. The brain and body will still change over time through experiences and whatever the Universe throws at us, but your true self remains your true self. There is nothing that will ever change the real you for all eternity.

Thus the soul is the stable part, whereas the body and brain are the changeable parts. These are merely the biological clothes we must wear to help us experience this Universe and what it has to offer. It changes and responds to what is happening in and around these materialistic parts. Then, as we grow older, we become more stable in our own way, making us think what we have learned and the solutions we have found are the best. And to some extent, this is true. We feel more stable. We have a roof over our heads that hopefully we have paid for and is ours for the rest of our lives. It is perfectly fine to achieve this stability in your life. You just have to remember that stability can also cause the brain and body to get stuck in a certain way of doing things. It can be difficult to adapt to different and unexpected changes. But that is normal. That is how it tells us that there is an equal and opposite part of life that can lead us naturally to greater stable if we try different things. We often achieve greater stability in our lives through education. And even life experiences, if we try something different, can push us to experience a more stable and more balanced position in life. But for some people, as we age, it becomes harder to change and learn new things. That is why we need to pass the batton over to the young as they find new and batter, more long-term solutions. Let them become leaders in their own right in areas that they think will contribute and make a better world for everyone.

Humans are a bit like a shape-memory alloy (e.g., NiTi). When it is brand new, the alloy is soft and pliable. Regular bending back and forth of the alloy between two preferred shapes in the cool and hot states helps to improve its memory response by going back to its original state when cooled, but when heated (or under thermal stress), goes into the preferred shape for handling those hotter conditions. And as time goes by, this repeated change along a specific and preferred pattern leads to not only an improvement in memory of those two shapes, but it also gets harder to bend into any other shape except the one it has been trained to perform. Until the whole alloy is renewed by heating it above a very high temperature to soften things again and so allow the alloy to re-learn a new pattern and hence new shapes to move between, the alloy simply ages and remains stiff and resistant to adverse and unexpected changes. The same is true of humans. We are born with a pliable and soft brain and body to quickly adapt to specific patterns we are taught by our parents and from society. As we age, changing those patterns can be challenging unless we find innovative ways to change the way we think. Hence the usefulness of the Arts or other techniques to getting everyone to think differently. Otherwise, having children is often the alternative way of changing things if parents and society allows for it. Eventually, give it enough time, our bodies and brain will "wear out" so to speak. At some point we need to change our biological clothes to start afresh, return to balance, become pliable, and learn of new experiences and, with it, create new solutions in our next life. Hence the purpose of death. Eventually we must experience the moment of our death like it is another experience in our lives, if we are to adapt to new experiences, learn more, and to experience more of this Universe in the next life (and so allow for greater balance to take place if we record our knowledge for generations to benefit from). And that means we have to wear new clothes. Yet all the while the thing representing our true self remains constant and carries on beyond death.

Nothing in the Universe will ever affect who we are at the deepest level. You are going to be you today in the same way that you will be you in a hundred thousand years from now, or an infinite amount of time. Only your knowledge and the body/brain will change over time.

This is how the Universe strikes a balance with all living things. Where there is change, there must be stability. Where there is stability, there has to be change. But at the extremes, they are the absolute constants. And the best position to understand all the extremes and see the perfect balance is right in the middle. The kind of enviable position that can bridge the gap between extreme opposites. Whether these are differing views on a situation, or some other problem you are trying to solve. Until we understand why there is a need for change when living in this Universe and for us to understand how to balance it with stability, it is a lesson we must all learn in the classroom of the Universe (and happens to be the Teacher of experience too). We must listen and learn. Experiences what others experience. Understand the knowledge that others have created. And do different things to get the opposite extreme insight. Only then can you see the best solution, and the one that is balanced and works best for all concerned. This is the only way to understand why the Universe exists and what's our purpose in it.

We have to remember that change does not have to be a negative experience. Change is only there to help us to see things differently and get us to learn of different ways of living in the Universe. We learn from the changes because we are not God. Nor are we the most sophisticated gods in the universe to act close enough to God to know how to handle everything, let alone how to properly love all living things by giving them what they need. We can still make mistakes on occasions, and that is normal. Nothing wrong here. So long as we learn from the experiences and do things better do we experience the greater stability to come from doing something different. And for that, we have to be like children still learning something new, something different, something we have not seen before. We must be continuously curious creatures, and loving ones at that if we are to accept the diversity of life and the Universe and to see the benefits of those differences and why everything have their place in the universe. Understand and use those differences to the benefit of all. Help one another find better solutions and at the same time help us to see the greater reason for our existence and get more of an insight into the hidden goal of the Universe. The more diversity we have, the more insights we can gain about the Universe and how we can become even more stable over time.

This is how the Universe seems to work. The answer never gets served to us on a platter. Just as the aliens will not provide us with their technology. Well, certainly not without some work on our part to get to this Truth or understand how something works. The Universe does not allow us to attain true stability and hence perfect balance at all times straightaway while we remain in this Universe. And the Universe will not give us the answer. We need to find out. That means we must be curious and willing to learn. By doing so, it has the effect of improving our brain functions and making the L- and R-hemispheres of the brain switch faster in the information flow through the corpus callosum, and allowing us to find a more balanced and effective solution to whatever problem we want to focus on. We need to be somewhat paradoxical in our way of thinking as a way to force us to try and see different things for there to be better solutions. That's the nature of things. We must work at it, and improve ourselves to get closer to this balanced and more stable position, to switch things up in unexpected way, so we may be able to come up with solutions that are original and different.

Even if we don't want to do anything to get closer to this balanced and stable position, the Universe has a way of forcing change within us. We call this evolution. Whether evolution is good or bad, the constant forces from radiation, other life-forms, and various events on Earth and in the Universe will make us change and move away from what we think is our stable and unchanging position. The Universe has a way of keeping us constantly on our toes and needing to change. It teaches us how we must adapt to new environments and ways of doing things. We have to constantly apply ourselves at regular intervals in this cyclic manner to help bring back a sense of balance and that feeling of stability, and love. Like food, we can get a feeling of hunger, so we do what is necessary to alleviate the hunger by finding food. Then stability and balance is restored when we have what we need.

We see it in life, when something goes to one extreme, at some point in time something will reverse or push us in the opposite direction. Until we see the balanced position, it is natural for us to be pushed from one extreme to another as we learn, find out why, and determine where balance should lie. We see this cyclic extreme in light when the energy oscillates about the mean or average position. We see it in our brain when we switch information back and forth between the l- and R-brains, and then suddenly have an insight at the moment of balance. The same is true when we experience hunger and later fulfilment when we eat, and back again. Everything is in a state of constant change (yet another hidden and constant pattern, and one promoted heavily by the Buddhists). But at the fundamental level, there is also absolute stability. There is something deep down that never changes.

So, for R-brain people, anything that changes, no matter how slowly or quickly it happens, must go through this incessant cycle that pushes us to opposite extremes. The more we go through these changes, the more stable we become through our refined or improved knowledge and technology as we find a more balanced a better solution to handling these extremes. Otherwise, life and death and the development of DNA is there to automatically retain the core knowledge of how to survive. This cycle will repeat for as long as the Universe is around. Only the absolute self is the part that has already achieved this true stability, is perfect, and will never be affected by these cyclic changes. What will change will be our biological "clothes" and our experience of wearing it and using it to help us experience the Universe, as well as the Universe itself. Whereas our true selves and the thing (or energy) making up our new clothes and the Universe will remain untouched and unaffected by this experience and the materialistic aspect of the Universe.

If all this is true, then how does our true self move from one body to the next at the moment of our death? Well done! You have come to the biggest mystery for R-brain types. Finding a solution to this ultimate question is extremely difficult. Not even the most talented R-brain people can figure it out as yet. We should not be surprised by this. R-brain people are not God. We cannot as yet expect them to be this ultimate entity of absolute knowledge to know the answers to everything. They can work towards getting closer to what God might be by gaining new insights. But no one can know the final great answer, at least not by any one individual. Yet there is nothing in this Universe to stop us from getting as close as we like to the ultimate answer, just like we can approach the speed of light and get closer with every improvement in our technology to accelerate us faster and faster. By getting closer, we get to see more of the Universe. Then new insights emerge. Given enough time (or quickened by the knowledge and experiences we record), getting closer to the answer should be possible. That is why we have multiple lives and different people who come into the Universe. We record what we learn and continue the work with each life and with each individual born to continue the work, and before long we will all get closer and closer to the truth. This is why R-brain people continue to meditate and contemplate the issue to its deepest sense. If they are relatively balanced, they will also record what they have learned or to speak of the knowledge to others. Then others can continue the work to look more deeply at the issues and with any other problem. But since no one is God, more time is needed to gather more information and to visualise the observable patterns, and hopefully the creative side of the mind will uncover what is missing and remains left to figure out, and with it the unexpected new hidden pattern that may ultimately solve why we are here.

For many R-brain people, this is where they are at. For L-brain types, all this can be difficult to understand, even to the point of thinking it is unproven and not worth discussing. Yes, it is difficult to prove, but it does not mean it does not happen or exist. This is their shortfall. They are not trained well enough to apply the R-brain to see beyond and observe the hidden patterns of the Universe. Constantly reinforced in our modern L-brain society by other similar L-brain-thinking people to think and observe in the same way all the time using the eyes and made to become fixated with materialistic things they can see and use as the only solutions to problems, an imbalance in the cognitive style of thinking and solving problems in the L-brain person develops. Then the L-brain types lose sight of the hidden patterns that could help them to become less fearful of death and gain a better understanding of why the Universe exists and the purpose of our lives.

Somehow we need to break this vicious L-brain cycle and the attitude we have formed from it when we live in this Universe.

In summary, all we have to remember is that there is something far more mysterious about the Universe we live in than we can dare imagine, let alone can see. Superficially, we know it has the ability to recycle the physical parts. That's a given. Beyond all of this is a mystery and we are part of that mystery through our "true selves" that allows the very essence of who we are to continue on in this Universe no matter what happens in the physical sense, as we head toward some great and unknown goal. Maybe the ultimate true balance of the Universe. Perhaps God itself? No one knows yet.

But, of course, there are other things L-brain types fear too. It isn't just the issue of death.

What about the fear of our fellow human beings and all of life on Earth having certain differences?

Perfectly understandable. The L-brain is highly trained to pick out differences. As a general rule of thumb, the greater the observed differences in our appearance, actions and views, the more L-brain types fear them, especially if they think those difference could affect their survival. A natural reaction considering other living things that have affected us throughout evolution tend to look quite different from us. These tend to be the predators who are looking for food. Or, some species may only want to establish a territory that makes them feel safe and have the resources they need to survive, which is mainly by way of plant-based foods. Either way, living things will naturally look different. This is their evolved solution to adapting to an environment that is filled with change. There are things that are looking for food, and all living things want to survive and be happy (i.e., loved). Any likely interference by another species to enter that territory or see us as food may be seen as a threat to the survival of the original species that established the territory or is merely trying to exist and be happy. All this is normal. Our brains in the past were small and finding new solutions is never easy. It also takes time to implement a new solution when we see it, and over time evolution has a way to improve the body and brain and make it more effective and efficient in implementing the solution that we think help us to survive in the best way possible. But at the end of the day, everything wants to survive and be happy. It is as simple as that. No need to complicate the picture by L-brain types.

Being different is natural. The environment will play a role in this aspect. But so too the choices we make and implement in the real world can create these differences. And we do it because all species need to eat in order to survive, or we want to highlight the imbalanced nature of society and show an opposite view to life. In the animal kingdome, ff one species gets too hungry, it will learn to eat anything. Even a plant-eater can be turned to become meat-eaters during times of great famine (and vice versa). At some point, animals will learn to interfere with other species. And that usually means to kill in order to get the food it needs to survive. No surprise by this revelation. It happens on any Earth-like planet where life develops. On this planet we call Earth, it is in this latter case where humans know interference can be non-beneficial to us (e.g., getting eaten alive). Because of this possibility, we create fear and a need to remember those differences so we may quickly act on or run away from the living thing that is different and possibly interfering with us. Hence we may either run away, to fight and ultimately eliminate, or to understand and control the thing that might interfere with our survival needs. All this is perfectly understandable.

As a result of our long evolutionary past, we have become conditioned to being fearful of anything that looks different from us. Knowing other animals must find ways to stay alive, we have come to see these differences as a potential threat to our survival. Yet when we encounter intelligent and technically-advanced alien life that are capable of travelling to the stars, we may find quite the opposite. Some may look like us, but the majority are going to look different and yet friendly. Well, they have to be if they want to live in the Universe and travel the stars while encountering other intelligent lifeforms. They have their own solutions, and even an environment that may not be identical to our own. Fair enough. We can't blame them for that. They can be different for very good reasons, and we must accept those differences as normal and natural. Well, let's face it. aliens or not, they really do not have much choice, certainly in the initial stages of surviving and evolving. But to them, those differences are not seen as a disadvantage. There are reasons for those differences. And, those differences do not have to pose a threat to us. Highly rational L-brain types may not know this, but we will realise there is nothing to fear irrespective of how different aliens will look. If anything, such differences should be seen as new opportunities, and new ways of looking at the Universe and how to solve problems. Until we see this as a reality with our eyes to confirm what we expect is the most probable scenario and while we are stuck on this planet, we continue to think like a child having nightmares. Any differences tend to be seen as something we should fear. In the modern world, the differences extend to language, race, culture, some physical attribute, education levels, behaviour or something else. And, some of the differences may again make us feel concerned about our own survival, or even whether we might be loved.

Even today, we have yet to overcome our fear of differences.

We have observed the consequences of this fear among different groups of people that live in Africa and how they try to get along together. In times when survival is paramount, any slight differences in human appearance within a high population/low resource region (even subtle differences like a flatter forehead structure compared to another) is enough to be seen as a disadvantage (i.e., we think this means less intelligent or not deserving to be alive and have access to certain resources). Then to survive, these differences are seen as a reason why populations must be reduced and made sustainable and who to target in this negative approach. Choice of words to suggest inferiority or whatever can escalate to ethnic cleansing and other forms of war, mainly as an excuse to lowering the population levels in order to make the remaining resources seem plentiful again for everyone.

It doesn't stop there. We see evidence of this feeling of being threatened by anything that looks and acts differently to us in those science fiction films such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Deep Space Nine, Farscape, Alien, and War of the Worlds just to name a few. It was more prevalent in earlier films of the 1950s and 60s. Yet it remains a continuing concern to this day while we live on this planet — a kind of fundamental issue that somehow we have not overcome despite our intelligence.

Do we need more reminders?

We have to remember that there is nothing wrong with being different. Differences provide new insights and ways of doing things. It can help us to get closer to the answer of why we are here and how to solve problems. It can help to broaden our minds and ways of thinking, as well as understand why the differences exist and how they can benefit all of us in finding a solution. To see the differences, we must not all travel the same beaten track. Sometimes we have to take the side route or carve out a new path and see where it will lead us, so we can better appreciate the differences. Again it comes back to the cyclic nature of life. If we follow what everyone does, it may make us think this is the balanced path and everything is right, but in reality we do not know if what we are doing is right. We are not God (well, not yet). Somehow we need to push ourselves in different directions, to see and try something different. That is one of the purposes of the Arts, to make us see things in different ways. Or just talking to people, and even participating in the life of those we see the differences can help us a lot to understanding why those differences exist and how beneficial the differences can be. We have to go to extremes and away from what we think is the balanced position. If we don't, nature has a way of forcing the change on us through the moment of death, as well as radiation and adapting to our environment. This is the problem of being too L-brain in our thinking and those of other like-minded people. We get ourselves into a rut and can't see another way. In fact, we deny there is a problem or something is unbalanced even if many people with differences are saying there is a problem. We only have one perspective from the life we lead now and it need not necessarily be the most balanced one. To push us properly towards greater balance, we need different experiences and to learn different things, and to be associated among different people and other life forms, even ones who look different from us. More of a reason to accept the greater diversity of life.

To find these unique perspectives and insights, maybe we have to associate ourselves with living things having those differences. Find out what it is like to be in their shoes. Sometimes we have to be different in who we are, how we look, and what we do through our life's work (e.g., a painter of new artworks). Or even a business entity has a need to set itself apart from the competition by showing a difference that is better and hopefully gives it the unique selling point needed to make greater profits. Obviously the difference has an advantage in that you can make extra money. In normal life, the differences and understanding them can make you more well-rounded and balanced in your thinking. Then you can achieve even greater things in life once you see the benefits of the differences and how to apply them, and eventually solve world problems.

At an individual level, it may mean nothing more than solving a variety of different problems and doing it properly and permanently by getting to the deepest level and from a unique angle. It can also mean reading up or a broader range of books or articles in journals. Try the controversial areas and learn what you can before following the mainstream knowledge. Stop following traditions or using bandaid solutions if the solutions are not good enough or is causing harm, or is clearly not balanced or not helping people to get closer to God or the most balanced solution. Differences can teach us that there can be better ways of doing things leading to a more balanced solution by looking more deeply from different perspectives. Being normal and/or indifferent will never bring this out no matter how much time is spent or how many similar-thinking people with years of experience you may surround yourself with. You will never change, or know of a better solution. We stay the same and continue following the same traditions and same way of doing things. At some point in our lives, we need differences in order to push us in different directions and discover a truer position of balance that leads to greater harmony and love.

Given the problems we see in the world, something is telling us that we have to be more different, and yet we must acknowledge that we are the same. Is this what it will take to re-evaluate and break old traditions and move us to a different direction that is better for everyone?

For example, when we see young people trying to be different in their actions and appearances to the point that it may be interpreted as rebellious to their elders, it is not because they don't respect their elders or are going against authority or society in a negative way. Rather, it is because they can see differences that can solve problems that the elders and other people cannot see. The differences can be beneficial for them and potentially for other people if they are allowed to develop their imagination and apply them to solve the problems young people can see for themselves. Such differences can further develop their imagination, but may often lack the practical knowledge of how to make those differences work to the benefit of everyone (so other people can see it too). On the other hand, the adults probably already know they have to do different things to solve world problems and achieve other things (if they don't choose to deny the problems), but are often too comfortable and stable with what they know to make them feel like they do not have to change and, therefore, stick to the same practical solutions and traditions they have known for a long time. Some of those practical solutions could potentially help young people to implement new ideas and make them work. In other situations, new and creative practical solutions have to be developed by the adults to support the younger people's new vision of the future and the ideas they have come up with. Or we let the young develop those new practical solutions.

At some point, there has to be a balance between the two groups by working together if we are to push things along and in the right direction of greater hope and balance for everyone in the long-term. And if necessary, for adults to learn to relinquish control and power at times and on the systems they have created and let the young people, with some guidance, take the lead and develop the practical and original solutions needed to solve all 21st century problems and beyond.

Now that we see differences as a positive and something that can help transform the world to become better, and that death is not the end, why are we still fearing so much today? What are we afraid of?

For a start, there should not be any lingering fears from our evolutionary past to relive in our nightmares. Seriously. haven't we learnt anything from our long and arduous past? Don't we know why animals are frightened, why they are struggling to survive, as well as why they need to act in ways that help them to survive? And don't we know why people are preoccupied with getting rich and the fears they have about their own lives and their future to make them do what they do? They need to be forgiven, to receive love, and to experience a whole new set of changes leading to more original and balanced solutions if world problems are going to be solved properly, and with greater stability and long-term benefits.

Finally, we should see our differences in a positive light. See them as unique opportunities to do something different. Then, perhaps we can see new solutions. The kind of solutions that solve a greater range of problems, and do it with greater balance and long-term effectiveness for all.

A quick look around us today suggests that we have not learnt a great deal despite our knowledge of the issue of death and of our differences. Possibly because there are too many old men running the show and not being imaginative enough to find long-term solutions. However, it is possible that many people in society are not given adequate education and access to tools they need to solve problems. Not just the ones to get them into jobs, but education that helps us to see the grander hidden patterns of life, why we are here, and how we can solve world problems from unique perspectives. We are still too fearful of so many things. And at the same time we are too rational in our thinking skills (because it has helped us to survive, develop a technology and language, and given us a relatively comfortable and stable life through the money we can earn) at the expense of diminishing our creativity, and now interfering with the survival of other life forms on this planet. Ignoring our technological feats (which are great in their own right), already there are millions of people still dying from starvation and countless others committing suicide or fighting against society in negative ways (i.e. war, murder, theft, terrorism, vandalism etc.) at an alarming rate. While this is happening, an increasing number of people in developed nations seem more preoccupied with conquering new worlds, exploiting new resources, selling the resources to others who can afford it at high prices, and maximising their own profit and security so they can have what they want (i.e. be rich, powerful and even famous) at the expense of interfering and losing a few living organisms on Earth.

There is nothing inherently "intelligent" about this behaviour.

If this is how far we have travelled after all this time on this planet, our chances of survival in the future is very slim. Maybe we have another 20 to 50 years and then it is downhill for the rest of us. And if we somehow find a way to travel to the stars, very few if any alien civilisation will want to associate themselves with a feeble-minded and selfish creature that we are because of our limited understanding of the principle of love.

As Ronald Wright in A Short History of Progress said:

"Joseph Tainter, analysing the collapse of civilisations, described three models of collapse. These are the Runaway Train, the Dinosaur and the House of Cards. These usually act together, so they are really aspects of the same collapse.

Why do we need a military force and weapons? It is because people are unable to use their imagination and visualisation skills to see what the real problem is and how to solve them differently.

Often many of the problems leading to war is the result of some kind of essential resource that has gone missing or has gone down drastically, and people are searching for a solution to help them survive. Everything else is just our attitude to differences and whether we accept them.

If we don't have a war, then creating a hierarchical system is not an unheard of approach to solve problems. The invention of agriculture, enabling large population growth until it hits the bounds of the food supply, is the Runaway Train. It encourages the growth of hierarchical systems, with an upward concentration of wealth, ensuring there is never enough to go round. (It is horrifying that no matter how wealthy people are today, they still claim to be unable to buy everything they need!)

The rulers' failure to tackle these problems is the Dinosaur aspect. The swift, irreparable and unforeseen (by the rulers, anyway) collapse represents the House of Cards."

There is clearly something missing in our lives. It is just that our L-brain and materialistic world is not going to provide this solution.

There has to be another way to deal with this situation.

Well, one way is to foster diversity in society. We need the differences of others to help us achieve greater things. We need their creativity and/or original insights and perspectives to help us solve all our problems. With a little guidance from the rational types to make the solutions practicable and achievable right now, there is nothing we cannot achieve and solve on this planet. And, of course, we also need the diversity of life on Earth to provide the life support system and the food to keep us alive.

Secondly, we need our imagination to break free from the shackles set by our L-brain and our fixed ways of doing things in society.

Thirdly, we need to become aware of the hidden patterns of the Universe and life in general in order to begin alleviating the fears we have about life and death.

And finally, we have to love if we want others to love us back and so keep us alive for all times.

Fortunately, we should know the answer. There is light at the end of this L-brain and highly rational tunnel we have made for ourselves. And no, we don't have to destroy ourselves through war and diseases in order to see this light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. There is a different light to our future. We can implement it right now while we are still alive. It is simply for us to love all things, and to be more creative while thinking about things and visualising how the ideas will work before putting things into practice in the real world.

But no matter how creative and rational we are, there is always one factor that will override everything we do: love.

The power of love must never be underestimated.

Remember, we all need love. No living thing can survive without it. Only through love does it guide us in the right direction.

With so many extraordinary and unique creatures in the history of the Earth who have, from time to time, lacked this necessary love, which has resulted in them having to find food, reproduce, fight and manipulate and/or adapt to new environments and with other creatures as quickly as their little L- and R-brains and bodies can permit them or else face the threat of being eaten or extinction. And today more and more people are increasingly feeling not much different from these living things or even other humans from prehistoric times (unless you are immune to this because you are living a comfortable, stable and rich lifestyle), it seems love will play an increasing role in the survival of all remaining life on this planet (and not just our rational and creative skills). Because it is through love that we begin to appreciate how far we have come, what we have learnt after all this time, and what we are going to do for the benefit of all living things in the future.

For example, can we call it love to continue populating the world with more human beings when the resources are already dwindling and getting expensive, and more people alive today are struggling to survive?

Should we continue to erect massive high-rise artificial monuments by mostly males of the human species (almost like looking at a scene from "How big is my penis?") to show how rich and powerful we are?

Indeed, is it truly love to cut down so many trees in an old natural rainforest when millions of living things have already established a home and are dependent on those trees for their survival (and could also provide us with benefits, such as new medicines and new insights into life and the Universe)? Of course not. We must bear in mind that such differences, or biodiversity, in living things can be a great source of knowledge and insights into solving many problems for humanity, such as understanding how we live, discovering new chemicals to combat cancer, and potentially help provide a reliable source of new foods (and not to kill animals to get it). There is much to learn from our natural environment.

And, why tread heavily on the natural environment to the point of literally destroying our free natural recycling systems just to satisfy the selfish wants of a few and everyone else losing out on the benefits of those difference in living things? No, this is not the way to show genuine love.

For example, with a bit of love, we can help people to learn how to create their own free "recycling" fertiliser using green 'nitrogen-fixing" manure called moocoona beans. Once the green manure has reached maturity and dug into the ground, the soil becomes enriched and fertile in a matter of months to help grow a healthy and rich crop. Such a self-fertilising system is now vital not just for economic reasons where poor farmers simply cannot afford expensive artificial fertilisers (usually sold by big multinational US companies) or to buy more plots of land, but also for environmental reasons where the farmer can keep to the same plot of land without needing to cut down more trees in the natural forest just to acquire fertile areas.

Likewise, it isn't love to force families in third-world and developing countries to pay for termination seeds from companies such as Monsanto just to prop up the massive profits of big corporations and their shareholders selling the seeds and providing short-term food benefits. Should there be cross fertilisation of natural and man-made seeds, there is a risk that one day the genes for terminating the seeds may suddenly become activated again and all of the plants in that species will disappear in a matter of weeks. Then people will starve to death. This is not love. It is too risky to follow this kind of sheer profit-mentality when it comes to the absolute essentials we need to stay alive and be happy. We need to let nature recycle on its own using genetically original and pure plants, and it should be done for free (the aim of all our work to produce it, especially for the needy things to help us stay alive), or low-cost if we must continue maintaining a monetary system to help pay for people's efforts to help one another. Let people access the natural and original seeds for these plants, let them grow the plants where they can if they so choose, make sure there is an abundance of food, and let them show us the benefits of their efforts through those plants, from feeding people, to uncovering new natural chemicals to combat diseases, and so on. If we should make any changes to the genetic code, there has to be significant benefits for all living things and not just for ourselves. And that means properly testing the new genetically-modified species over a long period of time. Or better still, visit other Earth-like worlds and see the long-term testing that nature has already provided to the alien plants. Then see how the plants interact with other plants and animals. Finally visualise, and latter test on a small scale, to see if it will work at home. The aim is to make sure that we are not likely to cause harm to living things on Earth. For example, any new proteins or other so-called "natural" chemicals must be beneficial to the human body and all other living things.

However, for this to happen, we must think long-term. None of this short-term profit mentality from the L-brain types. We must be more R-brain. We need to visualise and use more of our imagination before we apply our rational skills to making them practical and easier to implement. And we must apply the emotions associated with love to see whether those solutions will help everyone. What's the easiest way to achieve anything? Will people be happy with a certain solution? Is there a better solution that will help more people to be happy and will solve the original problem in the end? Whatever we do, it means that profit should always come last. This is particularly true when we are dealing with our food supply and anything else that will affect how all living things survive. That is the order it should be taken. Not the other way around.

As for the demands of a large human population on agriculture to create enough food, a combination of good education, population control.

Speaking of population control, there should be better sex education, and access to contraception. Or, better still, see the value of R-brain skills and strong visualisation to teach men (and women) not to be controlled by sex and how the opposite gender looks. Seeing another person naked should not lead to immediate sex. The idea of separating the sexes in change rooms, toilets and so on is the result of too much L-brain thinking and letting it have direct control of our primitive and older brain parts that lead to reproductive behaviours. We need to do more thinking and visualisation, as is often done by dominant females who teach men to think differently and control their desires. Add the R-brain thinking (frontal cortex) part and with training, visual pictures can be formed to control the primitive behaviours. Then men and woman can walk happily and safely, even naked, without ever needing to think about sex unless both genders choose to do so.

However, the greatest power of the R-brain has to be the imagination. We should actually be encouraging and helping people to create different forms of employment and solutions to problems, and be rewarded for it. If that work involves growing certain types of beneficial plants to meet our needs for quality nutrients as well as anything to help reduce our need to eat excessively, then so be it.

For example, it is a well-known fact that the Hoodia Cactus of southern Africa contains a special molecule capable of suppressing hunger for up to 20 hours by raising the level of the hormone leptin as needed to tell the brain to eat less. Currently the "vitamin pill" manufacture known as Swiss is making use of this plant chemical to produce its own hunger suppressant pill. Now imagine some of the benefits of this substance to Western society. There is an excellent chance for some people to eat less food and solve obesity issues. It may not help those selling the (junk) food to fatten their wallets through shear profit. Basically some businesses prefer that you eat as much as possible of their tasty fat-filled and sugar-ladened foods. That is how profit is made. But we have to focus on the long-term. And profit is at least several orders of magnitude below the real priority level of other things we should be focusing on today, such as the health of people and not just keeping them alive. In other words, better long-term health for the people and more research focus on this type of substance found in plants would result in far less impact on the environment through massive human agriculture. Who knows? It could greatly improve the public health system, thereby lowering costs substantially, through less patients needing medical help to deal with the consequences of obesity — such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Now if we could develop more recycling systems and to focus more on plants like this on a grand scale, can we properly help everyone to have what they need?

Well, certainly if all the money spent in the American Defence forces could be redirected to more socially and environmentally useful causes, not only will we have the new world order established and create an environment that is far more socially useful and productive (and immediately arrest the worse aspects of global warming), everyone in the world can be fed and have access to fresh water several times over and still have ample left to feed the poorest people on the planet. Really, as human beings, we do not know how to set the priorities right. We do not have enough love and balanced thinking within us to help every person and every living thing on this planet to have what they need through this knowledge without asking for a buck for literally everything relating to our survival just to survive? Come on now, for goodness sake!

And what's wrong with talking about population control through sex education? What? Politicians, businesspeople and certain religious people don't like it because they think more people in the world equates to greater love from God, as well as more consumers to consume products, and more voters to keep governments in power all the time, and more profit for businesses? Well, if there is nothing left to consume on this planet, God will not come down from the skies to save us. Instead, everything will be too expensive to buy, and soon there will be nobody around to support the economic system. You can be sure people will destroy themselves through war, disease or starvation. And what that happens, there would be no one around to vote people into political power, no consumers to buy products, and certainly no love from God when it comes to visit you. Come to think of it, there would be no religions in the world for people to promote their beliefs, or highlight the possible existence of God (whether a localised form or not). People simply won't exist. End of story. And no, it isn't God who is punishing us. We have punished ourselves for our stupidity because we can't see any other way of doing things and to balance what we are doing.

In the end, we are the ones responsible for our own demise, not God or the rest of the Universe. We can't even point the finger of blame at the aliens too (they are too far away to come in time to stop our actions, and even if they could arrive in time, we can only be told so much).

In the end, we have to figure it out for ourselves. If we still can't figure it out, we never really deserved to live in this Universe. Let's face it. No alien is going to come down and shed an alien tear for us. Instead, it will show to its own offsprings the lesson that we have failed to take heed and learn: to love and be more creative and curious creatures. We will be used as the example in the alien classroom and throughout the Universe of what not to do and the aliens will just prove once again how much smarter they are compared to any human that has ever lived on this planet. We are just too stupid for words to describe.

It is as simple as that.

And now that humans are fast approaching the tipping point where we could face our moment of extinction and nature is becoming less able to support us and other living things thanks to our efforts to affect climate change and change the landscape to grow more houses, but not enough food, because of our need to survive and desire to make a profit, the time has come to show exactly what love is all about as the great religions and psychologists should be teaching us. It is our first supportive step we can make before tackling world problems using non-emotive methods of rational and creative thinking. Because love develops the necessary self-esteem, an acceptance of who we are, and an acknowledgement we have everything we need, to be happy with ourselves and ensure others are happy too. Only then can we do the right thing by taking what we need (and not what we want), and give back whatever we take through the contributions we can make to society and the natural environment many times over, without having to prove to everyone and everything who we are and how much we are worth.

If this is not true, then how else are we going to guarantee the survival of the human race? With guns, money, and computers only?

We already have all the manpower, the technology, the language for effective communication, and the resources to keep virtually everyone and all living things alive without having to satisfy all our selfish wants. We have the ability to apply our own imaginations. And we can show the emotion of love to all. So why are there people still struggling and fighting to survive as we speak? And why must we continue to spend money on defence simply because we don't know how to love ourselves, all our brothers and sisters, and the living things on this planet? Is the military there to protect the rich (and perhaps to hide some great secret in the case of the US military since July 1947) and to go to war so that the rich and powerful can continue with their greedy and "extravagant patterns of consumption" attitude after the war?

In other words, should politicians, business professionals and other rich and powerful people have to feel teary-eyed whenever they see their own (or more likely other) people's sons and daughters return home in coffins or terribly deformed after a war and yet expect to see their forgiveness by getting on with what's left of their lives while the rich and powerful continue carrying on making more money and doing what they please, including selling weapons to other nations to help with this monetary greed and desire to maintain the current economic system? Or has our lust for power and money blinded us to the real aim in life? If this is true, we are truly a pathetic lot of creatures not to see it.

Fortunately there are some people who can see the futility of war. Take, for instance, the words of L. York, a citizen of O'Connor in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT):

'Marching on Anzac Day and meeting so many people who'd lost loved ones, or who'd lost eyesight or limbs, one realises the futility of war.

'When are world leaders going to learn that wars do not solve anything? For life's sake let some wise nation start a sincere conference for peace.' (3)

As the great Indian philosopher Gandhi once said, "There is enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed."

So either we learn to love all the remaining life on this planet by giving them food, shelter and a place they can call a home (and later we learn to apply language, science and the arts, interspersed with plenty of rest and quiet time to think) by changing the way we do things and balancing our preferred cognitive thinking styles for solving problems; or we must be prepared to die through war, crime, famine and disease thanks to how L-brain people think on a scale and speed never seen before thanks to our technology and the shear number of people living on this planet.

And if we should ever choose to take the road to human extinction (simply because we all want to have what we want and not what we need), we might as well forget about calling our new millennium a part of the Holocene epoch. It might be more appropriate to call it the Obscene epoch!

Or in the words of Australian National University ecologist Professor Breandan Mackey:

"Welcome to the Anthropocene — the era of human-forcing of global change.' (Beeby, Rosslyn. "Tiny evidence of a very big problem": The Canberra Times. 23 June 2007, p.B5.)

Let us hope there is time for humans to realise this fact, or we will definitely end up joining the scrap heap of so many millions of species that have become extinct over the past 4,500 million years.

It seems not enough action has been taken to solve world problems by mostly male-dominated leaders focused on koney and th economic system. A large human population and a desire for many to get rich and change the landscape, but not in a balanced way with nature, is causing environmental degradation, and is reaching crisis levels in many parts of the world.

One example of this has to be the massive plastic waste ending up in the oceans and killing off seabirds and fish, and soon humans as we ingest the plastic from the fish as it affects our ability to reproduce or create higher than expected rates of cancer. Then we have reduced supplies of freshwater in places such as South Africa and any place where conditions are drying up. If any rains can come, the top soil is quickly washed away and what remains is harder to grow food and be productive. Then the dry spell returns, the freshwater disappears, and the land becomes drought-stricken yet again, and this time too difficult to grow food at low costs. Then food has to be imported to support an unsustainable population in a desert-like piece of land. The cost of the food is excessive, partly because of greed by those selling the food, but also how much it costs to reach the population. We are in serious trouble. Scientists are already talking about the next massive extinction of life on Earth as other life forms struggle to cope on this planet.

It does not take much to realise that humans are contributing to the problems. We can't blame God for this, or mother Nature. We can't blame it on volcanic eruptions.

Sure, there have been changes in the position of continents on the surface of the Earth through the evolution of life on Earth. There have been extensive mountain-building, and the flow of ocean currents have changed. Even the Sun's output, and angle of the Earth's tilt, to affect the plants and their ability to absorb enough carbon dioxide, have changed over time. However, we are talking about the last 10,000 years. Over that period, there hasn't been substantial changes in the Sun's power output. The Earth's tilt is relatively stable. Ocean currents can change but in recent times there has been nothing significant to change the distribution of warm waters and the displacement of cold waters to warrant dramatic variations in world temperatures. Not even the few massive volcanoes since the end of the last Ice Age have contributed more than 2 per cent of the total carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — not enough to explain the continual rise in world temperatures and especially in the last 200 years where the carbon dioxide emissions have risen sharply and temperatures are just about to take a jump for the worse. Not even the continents can move fast enough in 10,000 years or create enough mountain building to explain the increasing world temperatures. There is only one factor that can explain it in the relatively short timeframe we are talking about here: humans, and their domestic animals. Yet for some reason, the trees and other plants are just not able to reverse the trend quickly enough.

There has been talk of our activity helping to contribute to the warming of the planet for some decades, and still there are people who continue to ignore the warning signs at our peril. Soon the environmental problem will rear its ugly face thanks to a particularly potent greenhouse gas emerging from the Earth. And it will not be carbon dioxide that will be the killer.

From here, our story moves forward with purpose and urgency. We see humanity is standing at a crossroad in which, on the one hand, our species has achieved so much remarkable progress, yet on the other, we have expanded our numbers, consumed resources, and built non-recyclable and polluting technologies designing to emit greenhouse gases and other dangerous chemicals. But there is a change in the air taking place, and it is now tipping the ecological balance in a direction that is not going to be in our favour, or for most of life on Earth for that matter. It concerns what is happening to our climate, and the threat it brings to the planet’s life-support systems.

We face an environmental reckoning centred on two interlinked threats. First, the warming of the Earth caused initially by greenhouse-gas emission known as carbon dioxide. However, what is not appreciated enough in this discussion is another lesser-known greenhouse gas. Known as methane, this gas is considered far more dangerous.

We see this concern in the high-latitude zones, in places known as the vast permafrost regions, frozen soils and sediments that have locked away methane for millennia. Yet we cannot ignore those regions deep within the oceans where cold waters sink to help keep methane locked away inside icy structures to prevent the gas from reaching the atmosphere.

We know the atmosphere is warming up. There is plenty of evidence for ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctic regions breaking up and melting to add more water into the oceans. The oceans are warming up, thereby increasing its volume. But as with any positive feedback system, as these areas warm, ice melts, and the stored methane will be released to help add to the higher temperatures, and so exacerbate the process of warming and melting of ice and the carbon stored within it.

Forget terrorism, refugee influx, crimes on the streets, and every other social problem. A lot of these problems are intricately linked to the environmental problems we are creating as well as the financial capacity of the people to buy what they need to survive. We see this through the cost of producing food, the rising cost of materials to build homes, the difficulty in finding adequate jobs of reasonable pay for a growing population, the expense of keeping ourselves cool as global warming kicks in, and the greed of humans in selling what we presumably need to survive or want to have, to name a few.

There is no better evidence of this link than in the poorer nations. Here, we see the nations struggle to find enough food for its citizens, and for citizens to not have enough money to buy what's available. Where there is food, it either costs too much or is of poor quality. And when life is hard, there is another consequence to see the cycle of poverty repeat, grow, and exacerbate the environment problems. People seek love and anything to make life enjoyable (e.g., sex, drugs, stealing from the rich etc.). Before you know it, the human population expands, and the problems of insufficient food and water worsens due to a further reduction in natural resources. The environment cannot sustain the freshwater supplies and natural foods needed to support so many people. Unless the nations have an abundance of some other resource to sell, such as oil, timber or something else, and the profits returned to the people (Cough! Usually it ends up in the pockets of the rich and powerful) to rebuild the environment, it would appear that once the natural resources are gone there is nothing the nation can do to support its citizens. Then things get really bad. Social unrest is the expected outcome for this scenario.

We should see these poorer nations on Earth as like the "canaries in the coal mine". They are the first and most acutely vulnerable to the looming environmental crisis emerging over the next 50 years. Not located in the tropical belt? You are in worse trouble than the poor sods living in the rainforests. At least for those people living in the tropical regions, they are more likely to have access to timber and a little extra freshwater, and certain animals and plants. Yet even in the tropical regions, the rate of depletion of natural resources is phenomenally high for those countries involved in making a profit from the selling of the natural resources (e.g., rainforest hardwoods in Brazil and Indonesia, poaching of animals etc.).

Unfortunately all this is going to worsen the already high world temperatures.

Certain people who are benefiting from the current economic system have tried their hardest to ignore this additional complicating environmental factor. Too preoccupied with making a profit, maintaining the current economic system, and thinking science and enough socially conscious businesses with profit will find a solution. Or else they are in complete denial of the reality surrounding them (because the problem is too hard) or prefer to convince others that global warming is all natural, or it really does not occur. Among the excuses given include the presence of extra volcanoes spewing out a little more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and even changes in the Sun's output (i.e., presumably emitting more heat). Basically, these people think world temperatures will go back to normal very soon. How wrong they were. At this time, the temperatures continue to rise. And how much higher should it go to wake people up from their nightmare?

It has to be clear by now. Our activities are contributing to global warming, and it is not slowing down enough. Indeed, more and more scientists believe global warming from human activity is fast becoming the next and biggest environmental calamity for life on Earth.

On the positive side, we see some businesses are trying to do the right thing. Moving to electric cars and offering solar panels and wind farms is certainly a start. Some leftist-thinking politicians (while R-wing politicians are still debating on whether climate change is real, or whether we should do anything and let nature take its course) are also trying to set ambitious targets to reduce emissions. But are these changes enough? How long will it take to get to these targets? Should we aim for zero emissions, or implement some method of balancing the emissions with something that humans can do to re-absorb those emissions (such as paying people on the land to carbon-farm through planting of trees, shrubs and grasslands)? Even if we could achieve zero emissions, have we left our run to deal with climate change too late? Or are we going to face a grim reality thanks to our desire for profit and selling any kind of product we could in the past?

Even if we do nothing, there are some people living in the right places on the planet who will benefit from global warming. The residents of Greenland, for instance, have long waited for the extra warmth to come to their part of the world. Even better is how the mass migration of a greater number of fish to the far northern latitudes seeking the slightly cooler waters and extra food supplies is going to support these people in Greenland to a far greater extent and potentially grow new businesses in selling fish to other nations. Give it enough time and a sufficiently warmed planet will allow Greenland to live up to its name as the greenest nation on Earth with new trees growing in this part of the world.

Yet not everyone will benefit from these new opportunities. In fact, not all living things will benefit from global warming.

Mind you, not even those living in the Arctic regions can be expected to be entirely safe as the planet gets warmer. Everyone else living in the more drastically hotter temperate and tropical regions will face extreme stress and social unrest. If these people don't choose to invade the Arctic and Antarctic regions, expect a third world war to begin against developed nations seeking the last remaining resources on the planet. Should there be any use of nuclear weapons in that war and you can be guaranteed no place on Earth will be safe to live for anyone, not even in Greenland.

However, it is on the issue of global warming where the greatest concerns will come. And it is all because of a couple of silly greenhouse gases we are emitting into the atmosphere.

Sure, the plants can take up the slack by absorbing the carbon dioxide. However, we have another problem to contend with: our inability to use our R-brain to see other trends and our impact in creating those trends. As a result, the dwindling freshwater supply is making it harder for plants to do their job of absorbing the carbon dioxide. In fact, a scientific study in Australia has found plants in rainforests actually emit more carbon dioxide if the rainfall patterns go down. And the evidence is in that it is actually happening.

Yet some people cannot see the trends.

These trends are not distant speculation — they are the logical outcomes of our current path and global warming. The more we heat the planet, the more we destabilise frozen carbon stores. The more carbon we release, the more the planet warms, launching a self-reinforcing loop. And if humans continue to affect the surface of the land in a way that doesn't protect fresh water supplies and moisture content in the soil, we have less plants to act as the natural means of storing carbon into the plant and soil structures.

What does this mean for life on Earth, for human civilisation, and for the future? It means our window of safe operating space is narrowing. It means that even if we were to dramatically cut fossil-fuel emissions tomorrow, part of the damage is already baked in. However, what warmth is already present and any continued emissions at the present time is going to create enormous risk of what scientists believe will be the time when methane bursts from the oceans will occur. In other words, things are expected to get worse, before they get better. And the better part assumes we are able to implement solutions quickly enough to slowly reverse the trend and force methane and carbon dioxide back into naturally stored structures for world temperatures to reduce to safe levels.

But what if those methane emission burst(s) are too great? Would they cause a complete collapse of life on Earth? This is certainly a possibility. It is just that many people are trying not to think about it, and instead try to take on a positive spin on this global warming. They do this by presenting graphs of world temperatures rising gently, may increase slightly at the end of the 21st century, and then hopefully by then, world temperatures will reduce when our economy has stopped all greenhouse emissions.

But nature is never nice and predictable. Methane emissions has a habit of emerging as bursts to cause temperatures to rise beyond what the graphs and the most optimistic computer modelling might show. For all we know, perhaps the first and major methane burst might occur in the next year or so, and within a matter of a few years when the methane circulates in the atmosphere, we will experience an "unprecedented in human history" rise in world temperatures. Just how would life on Earth cope with this situation?

In the past, we could rely on vast forests to absorb mainly the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and break it down into carbon for storing in the trunk of the trees and the rest as oxygen for us to breathe, but only if the moisture on the ground can continue to support the plants. Today, humans have cleared vast areas of natural forests to allow the development of housing and roads to support a population and an economic system.

Elsewhere, humans have cleared the land to grow mainly one type of agricultural plant as a source of food for humans, but rarely do farmers grow trees to protect the ground from the baking sun and reduce the speed of the hot winds across the ground surface. As a result, the water is not staying on the ground, or at least not long enough to do the job of supporting a variety of different plants to perform their photosynthesis activity and provide adequate shading to minimise water evaporation, not to mention to protect animals on the ground. As they say, sitting underneath a thick canopy of a large trees can reduce temperatures underneath by up to 10 degrees compared to the outside region.

This is the problem humans have. Apart from not being able to think long-term and see all the trends, we are woefully inadequate in seeing how higher temperatures can create other problems for humans.

For example, higher temperatures and less plant cover on the ground will cause more water to evaporate into the atmosphere. Less water for the plants means there is an increased risk of the stressed plants emitting more carbon dioxide than it can absorb into the plant structure, thereby exacerbating global warming. As the plants receive less water, they tend to shed unwanted plant material. The material falls to the ground and dries up. A lightning strike, or fire created by humans, can get out-of-control and burn to a higher temperature all the excess fuel load on the ground left behind by the plants. More carbon dioxide and other materials get thrown into the atmosphere. The higher temperatures on the ground created by the fires also sees many of the dormant seeds get destroyed, making it harder for the next generation of plants to grow and in sufficient numbers. Repeat the process of bushfires sweeping through an area at high enough temperatures, and the environment turns into a desert. Then no trees will grow, and it becomes much harder to sustain animal life.

And another problem humans have are their short lifespans. This forces people to focus their attention in the here-and-now moment.

People are preoccupied with the here-and-now of how to survive, how to deal with invaders, how to start a family, find efficient ways to grow enough food, and so on. Rarely is there an attempt to spend time recording what it was like in the environment and repeating the process over time to see if there had been some changes. Humans die and the next generation comes along, looks around, and start to think everything looks normal. A few less trees than before? No one knows as nobody ever discusses it. No one mentions how many trees there used to be, let alone the reason for why they had to be removed. No one knows precisely how the environment changed. People think the cleared land for agriculture or the homes of people has always been there and has been like that forever. So how can a cutting of a few more trees now to house more people make a difference? More generations come and go, all thinking and doing the same as in previous generations while the human population expands. Before they know it, a time comes when people start to ask, "Why is there less rainfall?", "Why can't we grow the crops as we used to in the past?", and "Why has that river reduced to a creek or a trickle of water that only comes and goes sporadically over the years?"

Then the occasional new tree or two may try to sprout out of the ground from the seeds dropped from older trees or left behind by humans. Time is needed for these young seedlings to grow into mature large trees. So long as humans don't destroy the new trees, the only other problem is how these seedlings are unaware of the impact humans are having on its own plant populations. It doesn't, for instance, shoot out more seeds every time it sees a human cutting an old tree down. It does not work that way. Even if the trees could somehow sense this, there is another problem. The lack of sufficient water on the ground after some trees were felled and removed by the humans — it will make it harder for the next generation of trees to grow in the ground. Increased evaporation of water from the surface becomes a reality after the removal of some trees from a certain area. And it takes time to grow a tree. Often too slow for most L-brain people, who tend to want to see results straightaway and make their profit. If the attitude is not one of unlimited resources when looking at the total number of trees in the area, then why not replace the slow-growing trees with more new buildings (and now apartments, which are growing faster than any tree on the planet)? Or else pine trees are the only things to grow fast enough if humans can wait a few years (with great difficulty).

If things get really serious, the new generations may think the gods of the Earth and sky just need appeasing with a sacrifice or two in the hope the rains will come and grow the food.

This is the problem. Humans thinking in a L-brain way are living in the here-and-now moment and trusting of what they see with their eyes. And what they see must be true and right. This has to be normal. Therefore, there is nothing to worry about. "She'll be right, mate!" as they say. Then they continue to have sex, start a new family life, gather food where they can, and protect themselves from other humans and the predators. This is done because people do not have adequate education and information about the past and how to do the right things, and a sufficiently well-developed R-brain and frontal cortex development to help them visualise and make sensible extrapolations of the information to see trends based on past knowledge and experiences, and then predict what the future is likely to be. Whatever things were like in the past and what will happen in the future doesn't enter the realm of people's thinking. Only the here-and-now moment is what matters.

Then one day, things get really bad. Crops fail to grow. Rainfall has diminished significantly. The soil is baked under the sun to kill off many of the microbes in the soil as well as evaporating the moisture from it. So what do humans do? Try to blame it on nature and natural climate change. Perhaps a volcano in some part of the planet was caused all these problems. Or why not point the finger of blame at those mountains in the distance for creating a rain shadow. Or for religious leaders, imagine the gods are unhappy about something and need something from the humans to be happy agan. In which case, it is time to pray a little more. Or why not sacrifice a goat, or a human, to see if this might appease the gods? The blood and nutrients feeds the microbes in the ground, and before you know it, some food crops grow more easily. No wonder more sacrifices are needed. Then maybe the climate will improve. Or, humans might choose to move on and find another place (in fact, Mars is looking like an attractive proposition), only to decimate another area in a similar way after many generations. But to see humans as being responsible for all of these problems? Nah. Of course not. We are not responsible. As some people might say:

"Don't look at me, I didn't do anything. That is how we found it. It must have been like this all the time, or someone or something else must have been responsible for the less rains, and the fewer crops and trees. Must be the gods or something, but don't look at us. We are only trying to carve out an existence in this neck of the woods. And anyway, how can a few humans affect a large enough area of the environment to modify the climate?"

Don't be surprised if people blame the problems on someone or something other than themselves. They prefer to see themselves as innocent creatures that have just popped right out of the wombs of so many mothers and oblivious to the changes. Even if they know changes have occurred, they still do nothing to improve the situation because the problem looks too hard, so why bother? It costs too much, and there is too much work. It is easier to pretend nothing is wrong and to enjoy the life they have created for themselves, isolated from the true reality. Then we justify our innocence by remaining ignorant of how our activities over a long time have shaped the landscape and affected the natural world. Unfortunately, it is this kind of attitude that has brought humans to where they are today, and it is not looking good.

We are incredibly short-sighted creatures.

Looking ahead, the evolution of life on Earth will depend on how we respond to the challenges of global warming over the next few decades. Will we reduce emissions? And if so, will it be fast enough to prevent methane bursts that could make our efforts in keeping world temperatures within a safe level seem paltry? Can we protect and restore natural carbon sinks, and build resilience into our societies and ecosystems? Or will we allow the trends to spiral, locking in higher-temperature futures, more abrupt transitions, and a more volatile world? Because while human ingenuity and adaptation are formidable, they are not limitless — especially when nature’s processes begin to push back.

History has shown that transformation is possible for the human race. Civilisations can survive when they adapt, innovate, and sometimes choose to restrain or recycle rather than exploit the resources and throw away the waste. The challenge now for humans is global, urgent, and complex — but it is also an opportunity. If we embrace that opportunity, we may yet steer the course of life on Earth toward a stable and flourishing future.

Let us hope this will be case.

10 TO 15 YEARS FROM NOW

Not enough humans have heeded the warning signs or were too slow to make the transition to a carbon neutral economy, so now we must face the next stage in global warming, and the most dangerous time in human history. Started by extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, signs of ecological collapse begins. Animals not used to the higher than expected temperatures in the summer time are experiencing stress. Bat populations and a number of birds, as well as insect life (including bee populations), begin to reduce.

Signs of massive algae bloom near coastal towns and nutrient-rich waters from rivers entering the oceans start to emerge. We see evidence of this along parts of South Australia, and it is not going away any time soon. This is the beginning of the next major and widespread oceanic anoxic event (OAE).

There have been periods in Earth’s history marked by extreme greenhouse conditions when ocean current begin to slow down and become less able to reach the shores of continents to help carry away the nutrient-rich freshwaters from inland. When the planet warmed significantly, the temperature difference between the poles and the equator decreased often because the polar ice sheets were significantly reduced or non-existent, weakening the global conveyor belt of ocean currents. Without this circulation, deep waters stopped receiving oxygen‑rich surface water. The oceans became stratified and stagnant, creating ideal conditions for ecological instability.

In these stagnant waters, nutrients accumulated near the surface, fueling massive algal blooms. While these blooms initially increased biological activity, they also set the stage for collapse. As the algae died and sank, their decomposition consumed enormous amounts of oxygen. This process rapidly depleted oxygen levels throughout the water column, especially in deeper regions that were no longer being replenished by circulating currents.

The result was a phenomenon known as an oceanic anoxic event, a time when large portions of the world’s oceans became severely oxygen‑depleted. In some regions, conditions progressed beyond simple anoxia to euxinia, where toxic hydrogen sulfide accumulated. These hostile environments led to widespread extinction of marine organisms, particularly those living on or near the seafloor. Fossil evidence shows that these events in the past were global in scale and had profound impacts on marine ecosystems.

Oceanic anoxic events are most famously associated with the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, when volcanic activity and elevated atmospheric CO_₂ drove intense warming. However, the event is starting again in the 21st century. These episodes serve as powerful reminders of how sensitive ocean systems are to climate change. They also highlight the complex feedback loops between temperature, circulation, biological productivity, and the chemistry of the oceans.

But more is to come, thanks to one additional molecule to affect world temperatures.

The problem lies in a molecule made of four hydrogen atoms and one carbon atom, known as methane. This powerful greenhouse gas is meant to be locked away deep in the oceans and in the permafrosts of Siberia, Canada, and other parts of the world, but only if atmospheric and ocean temperatures are kept below a certain critical threshold. As world temperatures rise beyond a critical tipping point with enough carbon dioxide to warm the atmosphere and sufficient melting of glaciers, the oceans warm up enough to unleash methane in the deeper waters as a gas in great amounts. It is bad enough the permafrosts on land are melting and releasing a fair amount of this gas. But if we have to include,the oceans, look out! Life on Earth will face extreme high temperatures, especially in the summer time.

In roughly 15 years from now, a massive burst of methane emerges out of the oceans.

Humans are oblivious to this extra methane entering the atmosphere. People went about their activities thinking it is just a little warmer than usual until a few years later. Then, world temperatures jumped to unprecedented levels beyond anything humans had predicted. Not the usual gentle rise prior to the industrial revolution in the 19th century, or even of the most optimistic predictions from computer modelling for the end of the 21st century. This jump in world temperatures will put all computer models out-of-kilter.

Methane is 22 times more potent as an effective heat trap than carbon dioxide. All this means one thing. As the world warms up, a moment will come when methane will suddenly get released in a great bulk from massive reserves stored under the oceans. Already there is evidence of methane emissions in smaller amounts taking place in various parts of the world. In September 2019, a US research institution with an observatory in Barrow, Canada, has detected the first signs of a methane burst in the area from permafrosts. But this is small compared to what is about to come from underneath the oceans. The oceans are revealing bubbles of the offending greenhouse gas emerging out of the water. However, by this time, the temperatures in the oceans has reached a critical level. The oceans are too warm. The gas has emerged as a massive burst, resulting in a bigger jump in world temperatures than anyone has anticipated, the effects of which will be felt in a matter of a few years once the methane has circulated in the atmosphere.

Humans are in serious trouble.

If we still do nothing, this process of methane releases in bulk will continue until no more of this gas can emerge.

What would it be like if all the methane is released. Well, the temperatures on Earth at this time is already hellishly beyond anything we have ever experienced following the first methane burst. Any further bursts could see our planet look more like our neighbouring planet called Venus. Our neighbouring planet Venus may be described as our sister planet because of its similar size and mass combined with its thick cloud covers. Now Earth will prove its likeness to Venus with its runaway high temperatures. Should all the methane emerge into the atmosphere, scientists can only hope a widening of the orbit of the Earth around the Sun will help reduce the amount of heat being absorbed by the profusion of greenhouse gases. There is evidence to suggest that this might be happening as we speak. However, if greenhouse gases continue to enter the atmosphere unabated and without any effort on our part to reverse the trend, not even a naturally wider orbit of the Earth from the Sun will guarantee temperatures will return to normal.

The only thing we are not sure of in this extreme case is whether this gas has the power to evaporate the Earth's oceans. Exactly how much methane is lying dormant under the oceans is anyone's guess. On the planet Venus, its closeness to the Sun has helped to raise ocean temperatures to the point where virtually all the methane was released resulting in a massive jump in world temperatures. Whether this resulted in the oceans evaporating or it came later is unclear. One thing is certain, more volcanoes erupted (especially where the crust of the ocean beds was very thin) and contributed to further global warming, releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Any remaining liquid water on the ground evaporated under the high heat together with the methane. The volcanoes kept spewing out other poisonous chemicals to replace much of the original composition of the atmosphere and at a thickness to reveal a very high pressure at the surface. Temperatures kept rising. The thick clouds of water vapour made way for thick clouds of sulfur compounds, such as sulfuric acid, as the water and methane escaped into space. The clouds may help to reflect a lot of the Sun energy away into space, but the few percent of the energy that gets through is trapped under the clouds. Temperatures rise further until it becomes as hot as the hottest oven on Earth (or more than 400 °C). Then the heat trickles out into space to keep the temperature stable. This is the reality for the planet Venus. On Earth, there is no reason the same situation could not occur here. Such a cataclysmic event happening on Earth would guaranteed all life is extinguished forever.

We hope it doesn't get to this extreme level.

History tells us that the last relatively moderate release of methane gas occurred around 11,000 years ago. The amount released into the atmosphere back then was enough to end the last Ice Age. Temperatures rose by a sensible 6 to 8°C. Nice compared to the glacial period when temperatures barely rose above 15°C during the summers in Europe and Russia, and at night dropped well below freezing. But any similar increase in temperatures at this time would make things just a little bit too warm for most people's liking in most parts of the world, especially in the summer time. In 2011, scientists had hoped for a highly optimistic 2°C increase by the end of the 21st century. They were dreaming back then. Not anymore. That was a serious underestimate. Perhaps 3°C increase is more realistic. Only problem is, they simply did not take into account the release of methane under the oceans. All computer models assumed a steady increase in world temperatures, mostly from carbon dioxide emissions (recently re-calibrated to show this optimistic 2°C increase occurring closer to 2030, although there is a feeling of hope that it might come at the end of the century, but that is wishful thinking), but not in terms of sudden and unexpected bursts of the more devastating and highly concerning methane. People were far too conservative in the past thinking methane would stay locked away in the oceans. Not so. We have no direct and immediate experience of what will happen when the Earth suddenly warms up by more than the predicted increase based on current computer modelling.

Looking further back in history we see that nearly 55 million years ago the temperatures rose as much as 20°C from what scientists believe was essentially the same process (6). Just imagine a similar rise in temperature in the next 15 years. Can life on Earth cope with such high temperatures?

We can only hope a similar massive jump in world temperatures will not become a reality at this time. Otherwise there will be a collapse of life on Earth in most parts of the world. Still no one knows for sure. How much of an increase the temperatures could rise in a methane burst is in the laps of the gods at this stage.

Methane gas is such an unknown factor. At this time, methane is still circulating in the atmosphere, so more time is needed before we will know the final worldwide temperatures reached.

What we do know, and is more realistic, is that a sudden jump in temperatures will likely exceed more than 5°C and could be as much as 15°C above current temperatures just for the initial major methane burst. That is more than enough to cause a massive extinction of plant and animal life throughout much of the planet ranging from 50 to 95 per cent of all species. Only the hardiest lifeforms can survive (mainly insects living underground, or are nocturnal feeders coming to the surface), or else they must migrate to the polar regions.

Still think we can survive the massive methane burst at around this time? Think again. The economic costs for many nations trying to survive a post-methane-burst era is likely to see many governments financially collapse. It could be the end of the economic system as we know it, and the start of a new world order.

If we try to maintain the economy, then just imagine the cost to deal with extra refugees moving away from inundated regions on Earth due to rising sea levels and regions that are too dry and hot for humans to live (unless they follow the insects underground). With so much more resources needed to build homes to house all the refugees and those living along the coastal regions, the extra electricity infrastructure to keep homes cool, the greater impact on the budgets of existing consumers to pay for the electricity (food and water), and any attempts at building walls high enough to keep the oceans out of the cities, and the people choosing to buy what is essentials and those businesses trying to sell non-essential items to consumers will go belly up and cause a recession bigger than anything we have seen before. Fewer people can afford things. Yet the needy resources must be supplied or the economies will fully collapse and people will fight each other to get what they want until a new world order begins and a different way of rewarding people to do the right thing is implemented. But if not, it seems governments must build expensive and energy-hungry desalination plants (run on renewable energy to keep costs down over the long-term) to provide the freshwater to the people and to grow the food in massive commercial-sized glasshouses to help provide the protection from too much Sun and heat. Okay. Well, think of the costs for all of this as well as to keep the oceans out of coastal cities, or else build new cities on higher ground and the extra resources needed to achieve all of this. Then think about the number of people needed to take over the work of insects to pollinate plants. What about the younger generation getting lung cancer from the smoke left behind by massive bushfires? Who will pay for this? The government knew about the climate change problem but did nothing or very little. A massive class-action from the people could bankrupt the government and put an end to the economy as we know it. Are you quickly getting the picture? It will clearly cost too much. Not even the richest nations will escape the costs, and possibly will not survive financially speaking.

The economic system as we know it will collapse should at least one massive methane burst take place at this time to cause temperatures to exceed, say, more than 8°C . It will be imperative to prepare for a new world order and a different approach to solving problems. And all because of one lousy molecule in the atmosphere. The Covid-19 pandemic may have been one thing to test the economies of the world. Methane just added the costs far more than anyone could have predicted.

Can we truly afford to ignore global warming?

But wait! There is still hope. The amount of methane that was released at this time was relatively moderate. Not a massive one to cause catastrophic collapse of the natural world as yet. A modest rise of 5°C from this first methane burst is bad enough, but not quite enough to affect all of life on Earth. The wealthiest economies have a chance to pay their way out of this bad situation, so long as the right people on the land are paid to help reverse climate change. Carbon sequestration into new trees is just the beginning, and paying people to do this work and look after the trees will be essential. In the cities, humans have a chance to still do something to reverse this trend by re-organizing society and establishing new jobs designed to stop all our greenhouse emissions. The first and primary job will be to rebuild the environment and re-capture the carbon dioxide greenhouse gas inside the trunks of new trees being planted in vast numbers. As for freshwater supplies to support the environment and people, society must develop the technology to generate freshwater from the oceans and keep the water protected inside underground reservoirs as best we can, and use it to water the plants for food and the trees to grow and provide adequate ground cover at night time to reduce excessive evaporation compared to the daytime.

As for people on land, a fair amount of this freshwater must be directed inland to help them achieve the new goals fo humanity until such time as enough trees and other plants can retain more moisture in the ground and in the air for rainfall to return in a more predictable way.

15 TO 20 YEARS FROM NOW

News in the past of higher temperatures breaking records were mentioned regularly enough on radio and television in places such as in south-east Australia where temperatures reached 46 to 48 degrees in December 2019. By 2020, a number of beaches around Australia showed signs of serious erosion as the ocean warms up, storms are more violent, and sea levels rise. Slowly at first, but already it is rising faster than predicted. Scientists were thinking in terms of tens of centimetres over the next couple of decades. That was way too conservative. By 2035, humans can see the world's alpine glaciers completely melted during this post-methane burst era. Places along the coastal regions and inland will be unliveable for humans, especially in the summer time. And if humans continue to stay put along the coast, they may want to re-consider that thought. A massive ice sheet breaks off from Antarctica and starts to float around the oceans. Scientists at this time were concerned about the amount of extra water in the ice and how this will cause a jump in the ocean levels by as much as 5 metres within a couple of years. It seems too many conservative (mostly older) people were thinking this would be a passing phase and soon everything will go back to normal. Guess what? It didn't. The massive floating ice sheet will make a mockery of this assumption. Even worse, people have not thought about the expansion of the oceans when warmed. The ice sheet was just a start. An increase in the volume of the water because it is warmer is going to put things into clearer perspective for many people, including those in the wealthiest nations. A possible 5 metres increase in ocean levels was yet another conservative estimate at this time.

The younger members of society, in seeing all of this, have been the loudest in expressing concerns about the environment and of climate change and its impacts on society and the natural world. They are no longer supporting the conservative types in society, or even the economic system, depending on the costs to mitigate the damage from rising sea levels. If the young are not paid to help fix the environmental problems and not just prop up the current economies, you can be sure a revolution will begin, starting with the younger generation making their own decisions on what is important for human survival.

Among the young voices are the scientists who are calling for more leadership and an effort to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, seek new types of technologies to recycle energy, and rebuild the environment. Yet those older people in a position of power (mostly R-wing types), and generally the wealthiest ones, continue to stick to the old ways of doing things for the sake of profit and to maintain power, just like the leaders of socialist nations and yet still remain unaware of the major catastrophe to beset humanity. Isolated in their oversized and lavish homes with air conditioners everywhere, the older generation will not be able to see what the fuss is about. Everything is fine. The market forces will find solutions and we can buy better and more efficient products. And all the while, human population increases, and so demanding more resources and products to stay alive. Perhaps they were hoping scientists and business leaders will solve the problem and maintain the economy. However, it wasn't quick enough. Not enough funding. Too much effort of hiding the big elephant in the room of population and the need to get rich by the wealthiest people. And for politicians to stay in power, reducing taxes to buy people's votes tend to be used. However, politicians faced a shrinking budget as farmers struggled to grow agricultural products and consumers faced wage stagnation while governments expect higher productivity in people and machinery. But if the money is not there, people have decided to save money and focus on needy products. This in turn sees a number of businesses collapse, while those focusing on what we need will do a little better. Onl;y thing is, will this be enough to save the planet and humanity for inevitable collapse? Not likely.

The problem is R-wing government can't do anything to focus on the world problems and do something to direct the nation and smart people to come up with solutions in areas that isn't always about how to make money. Some things you just can't put a price on. But the government has to spend big if the people are relying on governments, and governments on businesses, to solve the problems. R-wing people complain it costs too much if there is no return on the investment, yet happy to spend big on defence and manufacturing weapons. This type of government will want to save money (except on defence), but not spend it on where it counts the most for our survival. Only if it can make money and do it quickly will governments spend the money, or else bribe people around election time to vote for the government in power. And while other major polluters of China and the United States were not doing enough to make the transition to a renewable society, Australian politicians thought they did not have to do much either. The delay in making decisions and properly supporting new solutions had slowed the transition to a new economy, and preparing for the consequences of the global warming happening at this time.

Speaking of China, we do see a massive uptake of nuclear power over solar energy and other renewables, only because it wants to maintain its large population. Hopefully the nuclear power stations are based on Pebble-Bed Reactors (PBRs). These Generation IV nuclear reactor designs replaces the traditional fuel rods with spherical fuel elements called "pebbles" made of pyrolytic graphite and packed with TRISO fuel particles. These pebbles are cooled by inert gases like helium, and the heat they generate can be used to produce steam for electricity or industrial processes. The biggest advantage of this modern nuclear react is that they are meltdown-proof. The TRISO fuel is highly resistant to damage, even under extreme conditions, and the reactor can shut down safely without active intervention. A big improvement from older nuclear reactors. If this is the direction been taken by China in an earthquake-prone zone, the country should be well on its way to solving the energy problems so long as populations are kept in check.

For other nations, the energy solutions are many and varied. We see some nations focusing more on renewable energy sources, although those in poorer nations still rely on oil and gas to maintain heir fledgling economies (and keep certain dictators in a position of power as they pay weapons manufacturers in other nations to supply them with arms in order to use against and control the population, and so maintain their position of power).

But even with energy production sorted, there are plenty of other things in society to solve. Not least of which is the rising ocean levels and world temperatures.

If that is not enough to keep humans busy finding solutions, as the oceans begin to rise, there will be a lack of temperature differential in the oceans between the polar and tropical regions. Soon, another problem will emerge just to test the resilience of economies: ocean currents will slow down and eventually stop.

In places such as Europe, a lack of ocean current to permit warm waters in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico to reach the northern Atlantic ocean near the European continent causes massive temperature swings on land from winter to summer and back again. In the winter, Europe's close proximity to the arctic regions will receive blasts of intense freezing weather leading to a kind of annual mini-Ice Age. In the summer, the temperatures will swing dramatically in the opposite direction. Conditions will be much hotter, and drier. In spring, the melting of ice and snow in the winter will see much bigger floods, followed by extended periods of high heat and dry weather. This will continue for some decades until towards the end of the 21st century the continent loses the benefit of much of this freshwater in the spring. Then things will slowly dry up in Germany, Denmark, France and Poland until they become very much like the Mediterranean countries in the south.

There is good news in all of this! The Europeans have begun to get their act together, far quicker than China, United States and even Australia. The more environmentally and socially conscious people in this part of the world, especially those in the north, have implemented a policy to ensure more trees are planted, and more balanced farming practices are employed, together with a move to permaculture techniques over vast areas for increased biodiversity and the protection of moisture in the ground, including the backyards of people's homes. This will prolong the benefits to be had from the freshwater supplies still available in Europe. It is possible Europe will be one of the few places in the world to do better the most under global warming at this time, so long as ocean levels do not rise too much to cover many flat and productive areas of Europe.

Elsewhere on the planet, we see land masses close to the equator experiencing one season, and it will be extremely hot. In fact, it is unlikely anyone will be walking on land in equatorial regions during the day unless there are massive and healthy rainforest trees to keep temperatures cool on the ground. Whether it will also be dry (and with less humidity) will depend on the amount of plant cover present on land. No plants, or places where lots of plants have been cut down for commercial profit-making purposes, will reveal a much drier and hotter environment with minimal, if any, rainfall. Expect these areas to turn into a desert very quickly should humans fail to do anything to reverse the trend and protect the new trees that must grow in the tropical zone.

In the temperate zone of the southern hemisphere, we will see consistently warmer than usual temperatures in winter to extremely hot (virtually unliveable at times) temperatures in the summer in Africa, Australia and South America. On the occasional years, Australia and South America may also experience very heavy rains along the coast of the Pacific Ocean due to the El Nina oceans currents. Otherwise, they will experience extremely prolonged droughts lasting for decades, depending on the amount of plant cover on land and whether any ocean currents are still present to help affect climate over land.

South Africa is already in dire straits back in 2018 after the human population ran out of freshwater supplies. Things will only get drier and hotter for this part of the world, as will much of Africa. The forests of the Congo may be one of the few refuges for animals and humans to escape the sweltering sun, but given the attitude of most humans when they see the resources here, it will be like taking candy from a baby. Expect the jungles to diminish and turn into a desert unless there is a massive environmental program to mobilise the human population and get them to rebuild the environment as quickly as possible, and pay them accordingly with quality food, fresh water, and a roof over their heads to do this kind of work (forget the use of money). If necessary, massive desalination plants and pipes will need to pump fresh water inland to help with this re-building of the environment on a massive scale.

Forget terra-forming Mars to become more Earth-like. Think about transforming Earth to become a lushes, plant-rich and productive environment. It should be much easier, and less costly. If people still want to go to Mars to escape the hell hole they have created on Earth, then so be it. Give them free tickets and let them figure out what to do on Mars when they get there.

With no more ice to keep oceans at a cool enough temperature in certain places around the world, the oceans warm up further. Melted polar ice on its own would be sufficient to raise oceans levels by 70 metres. This is considered the minimum rise amount. In reality, warm water expands. A heated ocean means the water must expand and cause a further rise in ocean levels. Predictions of around 60 cm by the end of the 21st century were woefully inaccurate from the conservative scientists (probably tempered by the government of the day that provides them with funding, and so long as they toe the line and not alarm the population of how serious things are, then everything should be alright). Back then the figure was based on a steady and predictable rate of carbon dioxide emissions from man-made activities and a mere rise of 2°C in worldwide temperatures. Unfortunately, back then no one had predicted how much methane would suddenly emerge as a burst and how high the temperatures reached within a matter of years. In the post methane burst era and with potentially all of the ice in the polar regions melted, the maximum rise in sea levels will be anywhere from 70 metres (if just the melted ice from the polar regions reach the oceans — about 58 metres from Antarctica and the rest from the Arctic regions and Greenland) to 200 metres (when taking into account the thermal expansion from warmer waters). Then, of course, you have tidal forces from the Moon to help raise the oceans just a little higher twice a month just to keep the humans on their toes and running for the hills from all this extra water rushing inland.

Kevin Costner's 1995 American post-apocalyptic science fiction film Waterworld may be closer to reality than you think. Anyone living along the coast would be well advised to move inland and to higher ground at this time.

Humans have come to this drastic position because not enough people could think far enough into the future to implement adequate long-term recycling systems and with adequate investments in these systems. No love on our part to look after all living things, and with expectations that all things will make money for the wealthiest people. How wrong they were. We, as a so-called intelligent and smart species, weren't able to change our ways quickly enough to help all living things survive and provide a suitable environment to protect our natural resources. Profit and making money has caused much of the world problems we see today. Too much concern on the part of politicians to stay in power using the money they have earned, and further bolster their own superannuation and pay packets, and worried about the high costs to do the right thing for the environment while thinking about themselves and business on whether they and others running the economy can remain rich and powerful. We are a greedy and selfish species living on this planet.

For a species that is meant to be the most intelligent, we are doing all we can to act like we are the dumbest.

R-wing (or L-brain) people in a position of power and high wealth might laugh at what's been said here. "This is too extreme," they might say. "We will be okay. Just maintain the economic system and the solutions will be found."

Yes, and so did the captain of the Titanic thought the same when he decided to go full steam ahead through an iceberg infested ocean thinking the boat was unsinkable. Guess what? It sank. Can we afford to continue with this erroneous thinking for the Titanic that is the current economic system?

25 TO 30 YEARS FROM NOW

If we thought environmental degradation through climate change won't get us into trouble, wars will.

Of great concern is the high population levels, limited and unequal distribution of resources, rising world temperatures, the rise of China and the desire of its leader to have his fairytale reunion with Taiwan, Russia being unimaginative and focussed on greed and having what it needs and using violence to get what it wants, and the growing number of male leaders in various countries, but especially in the Middle East, facing the stresses of life and how they choose to go about solving problems in the only way they know how, which usually isn't all that crash hot if the supposed aim of all humans is to show love to one another and provide positive solutions. Talk of male leaders using violence as a means of staying in power and getting what they want and need is just the beginning. This has to be the biggest problem for the male population. Men who get into a leadership role and position of power to control a nation are not well-educated in the skills of solving problems through co-operation, creativity and strong rational thinking to come up with new and innovative solutions to help everyone and the environment. Sure, there have been rumours in the past of one Libyan leader and dictator who tried to turn a new leaf with his idea of pumping freshwater inland using pipes and growing gardens in the desert. But that kind of thinking in a male leader is few and far between. The more common approach is to control the people and the resources remaining and ensure these are made useful and available to the male leaders. In that way, they can maintain their idea of order, avoid protest, and enjoy power and wealth as a way of surviving an increasingly insecure world. Male leaders who choose the latter option are perhaps the most dangerous as they can become more isolated from world problems. Before long, certain male leaders lose sight of the reality surrounding them and in the world. If there are any problems, blame it on the Nazis-supporters in Ukraine, or someone else. These so-called leaders have no idea how to properly solve problems. Instead, they will make the ultimate and extremely bizarre or dangerous decisions on how to survive and what others should do based on distorted views of these leader about the world (or the kind of religious faith) they may hold. No wonder the world is on a knife edge, especially at this time with the high temperatures around the world.

One particular source of contention is the extreme views of socialist leaders and Western leaders. The only thing in common are the desire of men to acquire wealth and make money. But that's where it ends. The rest is how do males find ways to stay in power.

A classic example of this is in Ukraine. Here we see a nation who wants to join NATO in Europe for good reasons, and Russian leader Mr Vladimir Putin in Russia wants to keep Ukraine out of NATO for fear of greater insecurities for the Russian leader and not being able to maintain control of his former Russian states to give him power and access to resources to maintain his economic system. Then he will distort people's view of why Russia must control Ukraine, such as Nazis living in Western society and that some are hiding in Ukraine. An attempt to make everyone in Russia think World War II has not ended and the fear of an invasion of the Nazis is coming again. Or more likely the real reason is because Putin is showing to China that it is okay to invade Taiwan if Putin can invade and take Ukraine, or whatever part of Ukraine he can grab while hopefully the West will sit back and do nothing out of fear of starting a nuclear war. The kind of thinking causes pain and anguish to the people who are ordered to make this a reality.

China is already following in the footsteps of Russia to gain more territory and find extra resources. Russia wants Ukraine or at least one portion of it and a significant part of the Arctic ocean for its own wealthy oligarchs to benefit, with very limited trickle down economics to the average citizens on the street. China, on the other hand, wants Taiwan and the South China Sea. Both offer China considerable benefits to its economy. The South China Sea is mainly for gathering extra food resources and so have its own exclusive economic rights to control. However, other nations see this part of the world as international waters where major trading routes for other nations. As for Taiwan, this is not so much to bolster its own economy, even though it would economically benefit from hi-tech companies located in Taiwan, Rather, acquiring Taiwan is primarily to bolster the Chinese leader's fairytale reunification ambitions of making China whole again based on its past of having the island nation once part of China's long history (but lost during the socialist and democratic fight by the Chinese people). While the leader of China is having expansionist ideas, it is also seeing the benefits of creating a new socialist nation in Myanmar. Just another place to find extra food resources and trees, and a chance to grab a few more of those wild animals as a Chinese food delicacy. We can only hope no more pandemics emerge from China at this time. Already socialist nations are jostling on the world stage to get access to the remaining resources and acquire as much as they can without hopefully starting World War III in the process with other nations.

As for the Middle East, the seemingly never-ending conflict saga between Arabs (primarily between Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon, backed by highly conservative and unimaginative male Iran leaders who simply do not know how to solve problems in the appropriate way) and Israelites rages on. All-out war in the region seems inevitable while one side of the warring factions still don't believe the state of Israel should exist and then try to solve the problems in the wrong way by sending rockets into Israel (as if this will change everything and see Israel dissolve and Israelites walk away), whereas the other side keeps taking territory from the Palestinians as a form of punishment in an attempt to increase security of its people (although that security was shattered recently during a recent invasion by Hamas fighters and killing scores of Israelites, but this only succeeded in the destruction of Gaza and the death of tens of thounsands of Palestinians because of how Hamas hides among the population). In reality, Israelites and ordinary Palestinians would prefer to live peacefully together in a two-state solution. But the ones who are preventing this from happening are those who fuel greater resentment against Israel by the hardline younger generation in the occupied territories. Whether they have been hurt by Israel because Israel was defending itself or whatever other reasons, these younger generations of men fail to see the importance of forgiveness and coming up with alternative and more peaceful solutions. Unfortunately, this kind of thinking are not helping the people of Israel or the Palestinians to feel more secure.

It is totally understandable that the Palestinian people are upset by the land being taken from them. It is also understandable why Israel chooses to defend itself against young male Palestinians who seem incapable of finding a different solution, and certainly not one that uses guns and rockets to hurt Israel. This tit-for-tat leads to one blaming the other, and vice versa, with no end in sight. There is no forgiveness, or efforts to redraw the political lines and start afresh. Not an imaginative bunch of people to be found in this part of the world, because men don't have the imagination to see through the problem and come up with a solution that is a win-win for all parties concerned, or learn to compromise. At the end of the day, people don't care about Hamas, Hezbollah or R-wing political leaders in Israel. If scientists could invent a zombie virus to target and wipe out just those people who choose to fight each other, the rest of the population in the Middle East would happily live in peace with one another, including Israelites (so long as the territory is returned to their original 1947 establishment for the state of Israel). But those in power and influencing other men to stick to a certain view, there is no imagination to see things differently and to try something different. The same throwing rockets at Israel continues, and the same taking of land from the Palestinians continue. And Hamas invading Israeli settlements and causing harm to the settlers who don't know what is happening is not going to help either. If anything , Hamas and the rest of the Palestinian population are paying a heavy price for coming up with a silly solution it should never have been implemented. There is no learning. There is no ability to empathise with those who have been hurt and to find an alternative solution.

War in the Middle East with Israel at the centre of the conflict appears inevitable unless the whole Arab world find permanent and peaceful solutions to the conflict. Let's hope the current conflict in the Gaza strip by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) will change the views of Hamas and others to see the pointlessness of fighting against Israel. Just let it go. People have the right to live on a designated piece of land given to them. No matter how much Hamas may hate Israel, Israel has the right to exist where it is now. Otherwise, why would Israel allow Palestine to exist. They may choose to wipe out the entire Gaza strip and any remaining Palestinian settlement. A form of punishment no doubt, but why should ordinary Palestinian people who want to live in peace with Israel suffer in this way? If Palestine and Israel are to exist together, they must accept a two-state solution and learn to accept one another. The specific details of how to make this work will require far more imagination to come up with new solutions that can make the two-state solution work, and for people in both nations to see the value of each other.

If neither wants to do this, and if both opposing groups still believe in God, then, with a bit of luck, God will probablyt provide the solution that neither Palestine not Israel will like. And it would be the simplest solution. As the world warms up, a sudden burst of methane under the oceans (and there is likely to be more than one burst) will see world temperatures rise substantially. This will only heighten levels of tension in this part of the world with hotter conditions in the desert. No wonder people are cranky with all this heat. Not many people will want to be walking around in the daytime to fight other people. In fact, it might stop people fighting each other (except using drones). But then the major ice sheets in Antarctica break off and within a few years, ocean levels increase beyond any conservative estimate given in the past.

As the oceans rise, the entire Gaza Strip disappears. Palestine (turning more into Israel with each passing year thanks to Israel's R-wing government's attempting to acquire more land) will reduce in size. But so too will Israel lose land to the sea. With a bit of luck, both nations will lose their land in great swathes. Israel's attempts to acquire land over time will be relinquished back to God and lost to the Mediterranean Sea as it expands and encroaches into the desert of the Middle East. The capital of Israel, Tel Aviv, will be underwater. Eventually, both nations will lose a lot, more so for the Palestinians, but Israel will not escape it. Either they will have to learn to live closer together and be friendly on higher ground to solve this common problem of survival, or Israel will wipe out or push Palestinians to another part of the Middle East far away to ensure certain Palestinians with a grudge against Israel cannot send more rockets in Israel's direction. But if ocean levels were to rise by at least 200 metres, there may not be an Israel or Palestine. Only two massive floating barges or pontoons. And if Palestinians still wants to send rockets at Israel, don't be surprised if the Palestinian pontoon is sunk beneath the waters.

Well, this must surely be a sure fire way to end any conflict in this part of the world. Palestinian's losing Palestine to the sea. Israel giving back the land it has taken to the sea (and to God). There might be no winners here, but at least it is the simplest solution to this problem. Don't like the idea? Well, the solution is for Hamas and other people to change their ideology and allow Israel to have a certain territory set aside in the 1947 agreement, and Israel must relinquish the land grabs it has done since 1947. Both parties must make major concessions in order for peace to return and be permanent. There is no choice in the matter. Or God will provide its own solution that neither will like.

Add to this the complications in the Middle East by major superpowers of Russia (desperate to make money by selling weapons to any dictators in this part of the world if they can show support to Russia) and the United States (mainly for oil), and we have a recipe for disaster in the Middle East if Israel, Palestine, and even Iran can't get their conflicts resolved permanently. And the last thing we need is for Iran to build a nuclear weapon and potentially use it against Israel if an Iranian leader can't solve problems differently and in a peaceful way. That would be a sure fire way to see Iran wiped out on the world stage. And if Russia and China try to support Iran, a bigger world conflict would consume many Western nations. Everything is ripe for a major world conflict in this part of the world, if not in Ukraine or Taiwan. Unless the people in this part of the world can wake up from this madness, take responsibility, negotiate and create peace, and use their imagination to solving much bigger problems than whether someone can exist or not in this part of the world, while making sure the few idiots who try to derail peace are kept closely watched and made to learn of a new way to live (and if necessary have an Arab security force at hand to keep the peace), there is very little hope for the future of the Middle East. You might as well as let them destroy each other, except it will have potentially global consequences for everyone.

Perhaps the rising seas can't come quick enough?

The biggest problem throughout much of the Middle East is how male-dominated society is, and how many of these males feel insecure about their own futures. They think the only solution is to have power and wealth in order to gain the sense of stability they seek and to survive more easily. Once they get there, often through the use of violence if not through their own wealth, they will do anything to maintain power at all costs. Then they become what are effectively dictators with their own brutal and unGodly ways of solving problems. Among the ways these leaders will employ to stay in power include inducing fear and showing violence among their people as the only means of controlling a large and growing population and accepting the leader's will, religious views, and/or sense of power and greed. This is a big problem. Males in the Middle East have a bad reputation of getting what they want and treating others badly who get in their way, including women. Bad enough when these males do not know how to wield their power and wealth in a manner that will benefit all of the people and bring greater peace to all nations.

Then the higher world temperatures kick in, as males continue on their merry way in having what they want. Global warming will undoubtedly add another dimension to the extreme stress that many people in this part of the world will experience. And all the while people are continually searching for food and water to stay alive. Surely there are more important problems to solve than keeping certain males in a position of power all the time.

It is no wonder the young and less educated will blame the West, Israel and anyone else in the world for all their problems and before you know it, more terrorism will take place. Give it more time, and these people will probably have to blame God for the rising sea levels. Does this mean God needs to face terrorism as well for young people to get what they want?

It is time will all grow up as adults. Stop the conflict and learn to love one another. And be prepared to change our traditions to something that is much more balanced, in keeping with the principle of love, and is closer to what the Kingdom of God should look like in this part of the world. We need to give people hope and a brighter future. In that way, we can all have that closer relationship to God that many religious people in the Middle East seek.

NOTE: If necessary, these people should have access to the new electromagnetic technology (the USAF should take heed given what it knows in this area) to help them get closer to God among the stars. Then, at last, they will properly learn the true principle of love, and to live in peace forever.

30 YEARS FROM NOW

World temperatures continue to rise, and it is not a pretty sight in many parts of the world. Europe is holding out longer than most and doing the best of all the nations with its massive tree plantings and water irrigation systems, but this is largely in the northern countries. The Mediterranean countries still suffer badly with extreme high temperatures and hardly any rain in sight. Most other nations in the world are not fairing well. These are testing times as scientists predict the winter times in Europe and North America will be bitterly cold and feel like a mini-ice age. This is partly because the 11-year cycle of the Sun is reducing its output by 2050. But don't think climate change has been solved. As soon as summer returns, the filthy hot conditions will be felt heavily even among those living in northern Europe. The ice from the winter melts and great floods affect major towns and soon the cities. This is followed by the high heat and dry spells, which effectively sets the tone for the rest of summer. Unfortunately, this is the reality of global warming. We have as a species on this planet left it too late despite all our intelligence. Even if we started a new world order in 2010 and changed everything for the better, it will take time to reverse the effects of global warming. In the meantime, extinction of such massive proportions on land will see much of the public rally around the scientists to create a genetic Ark for preserving the DNA of every remaining living species. These animals will have to be revived at some point once world temperatures return to normal in a century or two.

Humans have truly stuffed up pretty badly on this planet. They are now seeing the consequences of their actions (or lack thereof) and how everything is coming back to affect them in adverse ways.

Finally, more sensible talk has led to new action as a new world order began at this time. A pity it could not have happened before the sudden temperature rise from the initial massive methane burst. Now everyone has been shocked into action and doing everything to reverse the climate trends, as well as preparing for the inevitable increase rise in ocean levels. It will take time before this trend reverses. We will have no choice but to do the right thing now. Perhaps we didn't before, but now we have to do it right.

Oceans rise quicker than expected. No longer does water respect or obey political borders. A number of nations will disappear beneath the waters. Islands in the Pacific, and Bangladesh are at greatest risk, but that's just the beginning. Those who prefer to live on the coast must migrate and live further inland or live in different parts of the world. The reality has finally hit home that something had to change, and at last something is being done, if only we had done it sooner. Now we have to behave as global citizens (and possibly needing a world government to co-ordinate these global changes on land) working together on a common quest to protect the environment and control global warming while living on the remaining land masses.

A new world order was the only way forward for humans at this time. It is going to be a mammoth task to reverse all the damage we have done to the planet and life in general. The new world order may be run by a new world government, or perhaps to have several local governments assigned to manage their own individual land masses (or remaining nations) and the people that live there, and an overarching global government will oversee the changes needed to save life on Earth and the human race? Whatever the way forward, at the very least, the old economic system had to break apart to form two societies. And neither of them would be focused on profit. One became focused on rebuilding the environment with a different set of guiding principles without needing any kind of monetary reward for the people who contribute to the aim of protecting the environment and producing food. The remaining part of society will be a shadow of its former "economic" self. Whether money is ever maintained or not is something the leaders of these separated societies will decide (these will be voted as true male and female leaders with a social and environmental conscious who can be trusted by the people, and certainly not business people or former politicians of the old system). What matters now is for this second society to focus on manufacturing and developing new technologies to help solve the environmental problems, and sharing the technologies with the other society to fix the environment.

Among the technology to be developed include:

1. New large-scale machinery to reshape the land efficiently and effectively to help improve the collection of fresh water supplies in certain areas as needed to water new plants over a wider area once the rainfall returns, or else to pump and channel the water from the coast to inland sites for distribution among a large number of "new age farmers" working along the waterway;
2. New massive desalination plants and water pumping stations to provide the water for everyone;
3. Smaller tools and machinery for individuals to toil the soil and grow the plants and enrich the soils again from the recycling of waste plant materials;
4. Find sources of phosphates and mine for this as a valuable source of fertiliser to supply the essential minerals needed by plants.
5. Build new, small and efficient self-sustainable homes for the farmers and larger communal places for those who wish to help a group of farmers and later these helpers can become farmers in their own right with a designated plot of land and a home of their own from which they can work from.
6. Record permanently and distribute the best educational information and solutions of benefit to both societies. Initially the kind of solutions we need are those to help solve our environmental problems for the benefit of all communities around the world involved in this environmental rebuilding process;
7. Some means of living outside the Earth (in case the Earth does not return to normal temperatures) and can travel to the stars to gather new ideas and solutions with the help of other more advanced "alien" civilisations and implement those solutions here on Earth.

35 YEARS FROM NOW

Based on AI models that have looked at the rise and fall of civilisations and the reasons why this situation would happen. From this, people are discovering the inevitable trend for societies to rise, decline, and eventually collapse. A society in its rise phase is characterised by openness: social mobility is possible, talent is rewarded, criticism is welcomed, and institutions operate meritocratically. Young societies — regardless of whether they are democratic or authoritarian on paper — tend to behave in this open, flexible way because they are still learning, adapting, and encouraging innovation. Cooperation between elites, the middle class, and ordinary people is based on consent and shared purpose.

As societies enter the decline phase, they become increasingly bureaucratic. The managerial or ruling class becomes more concerned with protecting its own position and available resources its can access rather than with improving society and creating new solutions for generating new resources. Rules multiply, paperwork expands, and institutions prioritise stability over innovation. Instead of open debate, leaders rely more on deception, including manipulating public opinion to maintain control. Social unity weakens, and the system becomes rigid, less capable of responding to challenges or criticism.

In the collapse phase, the system shifts from bureaucracy to authoritarianism. Power is maintained through coercion rather than persuasion. The relationship between social groups breaks down, and individuals focus on survival rather than collective wellbeing. Collapse tends to occur suddenly rather than gradually because rigid, authoritarian systems cannot withstand external shocks. Even simple things like global warming could suddenly see a collapse of society and the current world order. It does not take much to cause this collapse if the stress on the people are too great. While societies may prepare for isolated crises such as drought, war, plague, or economic disruption, they cannot survive a “perfect storm” in which multiple crises strike simultaneously. Because criticism is suppressed in the authoritarian phase, societies lose the ability to identify and correct internal weaknesses, making them especially vulnerable to sudden breakdown.

As the model shows and applied to both contemporary democratic nations in the Western world and socialist nations, it has been predicted that the next 5 to 20 years will likely see a decline in democracy and freedom in the United States and Europe, and/or a decline in socialism in China and Russia, accompanied by more serious economic deterioration as citizens lose faith in the system. Both democratic and socialist governments may respond by increasing immigration (for democratic nations) or directing more citizens (for socialist nations) to carry out work needed to compensate for declining productivity. But this may provoke civil conflict if on the one hand the immigration takes too many jobs from the people who already live in those countries and need the jobs to survive and pay for the high cost of living, which is a problem facing many democratic nations. Or people in socialist nations may resent the governing parties in doing things that are not of benefit to the planet and not just themselves. And if the armed forces decide they too will side with the people on this very aspect, change will definitely be in the air. For example, the need for China to take Taiwan to satisfy a leader's ambitions for reunification and the expected considerable loss of life to achieve this goal. To prevent internal unrest from turning against the state, governments may redirect public anger outward through foreign wars. Something that we see in Israel, Russia and China. But the risk is there for both democratic and socialist nations to face collapse in their systems. These developments may occur in different sequences, but the model predicts that all five trends — authoritarianism, economic decline, increased immigration, civil conflict, and foreign wars — will appear as part of the broader collapse dynamic.

35 YEARS FROM NOW

If there is ever a time when a great religious leader might appear from the skies in a cloud-like structure and eventually land on Earth to sort out the social, political and environmental chaos we have created, this would be a good time if for any reason we cannot solve our own problems.

As it is stated in Mark 13:30: "Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have happened." Here we see the author recalling a statement from a religious leader who lived in the Middle East some 2,000 years ago alleging the return of the leader under certain conditions that will allegedly be occurring on Earth. The kind of conditions that were thought to be not so favourable to our survival.

Apart from that, we see the following pattern:

• Exodus 13:21: God leads Israel by a pillar of cloud.
• Daniel 7:13: "One like a Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven."
• Acts 1:9–11: Jesus ascends and is "taken up into a cloud."

Should religious people believe in the return of this religious leader to Earth, we could expect a similar visitation in a cloud-like structure.

Not surprising. Already some physicists in the early 21st century have become aware of the electromagnetic technology behind genuine UFOs (based on the Abraham-Lorentz formula for charged objects exponentially accelerating through radiation emissions from a charged surface). The ability of those symmetrical glowing and metal flying objects to ionise the air and use strong electromagnetic fields and the ejection of electrons from an oscillating negatively charged glowing metal surface for emitting radiation for propulsion can help to deflect the ionised air molecules away from the metal surfaces. This means we should expect a reduction in air pressure near the surfaces. And from there, we know a reduction in air pressure in an atmosphere containing some humidity can help to form clouds that surrounds and conceals the electromagnetic flying vehicle. We see examples of this in UFO reports like Viljo & Heinonen (Finland, 1970) and Angus Brooks (UK, 1967), where clouds obscure or reveal craft-like objects.

Now if we were to "get help" from someone out there, whether it is an alien civilisation and with it, the return of a great religious leader, the problem is how does one interpret the time frame of when this alleged return might happen? In particular, what does a "generation" mean when religious people rely on information contained in, say, Mark 13:30? And for the passing of a generation to occur, whose perspective are we referring to here? If it is meant to be from our perspective, a generation has well and truly passed and yet there seems to be no evidence of the religious leader's claimed return to Earth. But if it is from the religious leader's own perspective, a generation would make him an old man, and depending on where he lives, the relativistic time it takes to reach the Earth can make the timeframe of a generation for us seem meaningless and potentially a long time.

Let's say what the apostle saw in the departure of their Christian religious leader in a cloud was real in their times. Whether or not the story is true is irrelevant here. Let us imagine that wherever the new Earth-like home planet might be located, we shall assume it is 1,000 light years away. By the time Jesus reaches this Earth-like alien world of where this localised God might live, even at nearly the speed of light, that's 1,000+ years of human time that would go by. From the perspective of Jesus, it might take a few days to a few years to get there. After that, he may spend nearly a generation on that planet before deciding to return to see how humans have faired on Earth and whether we have learned anything. If there is any credence in the idea of Jesus returning to Earth, at least another 1,000 years would have to transpire here on Earth before humans can see this religious leader. In the meantime, Jesus goes about his life on the new Earth-like world. The passage of his "generation" could be 40 years or more. On his alleged return, he is an old man. Still, from his perspective, a generation would have passed, but for us, more than 2,000 years would have gone by based on our frame of reference.

Things are much worse for us if the distances are much greater. In which case, how would anyone be able to determine the true time for the return of anyone who might want to help us?

So, if there is likely to be disaster taking place here on Earth at this time leading to a reduction in food supplies, increased risk of famines in various parts of the wold, a destruction of much of our natural environment, followed by pestilence and plagues to affect the health of many people, sudden lawlessness in society and eventually wars by those alive to acquire the remaining resources, and some of the so-called leaders of these warring factions falsely claiming they are God or a Messiah or prophet to know the answer while acting in a corrupt way to have what they want, and so on, it will be up to us to solve these problems. Forget some religious leader living far away and making claims of his return. We cannot rely on some leader in our society or to wait for a true religious leader from the sky to save us. We can't be expected to leave all the problems to someone else to solve for us, or to leave things too late to act on them. We need to solve problems ourselves well before we get to this extreme level of social breakdown and destruction of our environment.

The reality is no alien civilisation living on any star system can reach us in time to save us from our stupidity, bad decisions, and greed. We must learn to be self-reliant in solving world problems, and use our imagination and rational skills to come up with new solutions. We need to figure things out on our own while we live on this planet.

The point here is that for those religious people who think they can just sit around and simply pray and wait for the coming of Christ, or God, or whoever, to sort out the good people from the bad and solve whatever problems we have created is not a good strategy. The better approach is to face the challenges of today, not in the future when things might be too late. Act now by showing compassion to people and understand their circumstances and what they need to survive, be imaginative in finding new solutions, and apply rational skills to make those solutions practical and viable.

35 YEARS FROM NOW

With the transition to the new world order finally complete, the ones being prized more at this time compared to the rich and powerful (or famous people) in the old economic system, are the farmers and owners of rural properties and anyone else who can work on the land and improve the environment while thinking on a long-term basis on what is needed for the survival of all living things. Without this focus on the environment and people working on the land to rebuild our natural recycling systems, it would have been inevitable for the old economic system to experience another and more significant recession. As Robert Kiyosaki, one of the world's leading entrepreneurs and financial forecasters, said:

The world is in very serious trouble — I foresee a global currency crash, which will wipe out the poor and the middle class — as the rich get richer.

Thanks to this new world order, the situation has changed for the better. People have to live within their means, including the former rich and powerful. It just means more can be shared around and greater goals can be achieved. No more secrets and needing to spend hundreds of billions on defence to protect a nation from other nations. Everyone must work together in a peaceful way. As Robert correctly predicted, "Farmers will benefit as land and food become highly valued commodities."

As for saving animals and many plants, unless we can somehow preserve all the genetic material, it is unlikely we can save much of life on Earth as we know it today. In terms of plants, what little we can save must be kept in cold storage underground somewhere in a technological ark until such time as we are ready to re-germinate the seeds and the conditions are more conducive to growing these plants. Animals will have to be revived later. If we don't preserve the plant materials and what we need by way of food, we will need to replace what we have lost by visits to other Earth-like worlds comparable to our own and introduce new alien plants. There is nothing more we can do at this time while the methane emissions have taken place and done the damage, and it has to be done as a matter of life or death. Because if we leave it too late, the cost will be too great even for developed nations to reverse the damage. No amount of money or technology can repair what we have done. Not even the new world order will save the planet. It would mean our extinction is imminent.

The new world order, arriving just in a nick of time, was really a first and critical stage of initiating a massive solution that humans cannot afford to procrastinate over anymore. It had to occur and done on a massive scale the likes of which we have never seen before.

40 YEARS FROM NOW

It is amazing the work done in the new world order in just a matter of a decade. Thanks to the sheer size of the human population working together on a common quest within the new world order to survive and protect this fragile planet as well as sharing of remaining resources to help achieve this goal for humanity, a lot has been achieved. Truly astonishing. Huge amounts of plastic has been removed from the oceans. Massive greenhouses established and plants are growing. Massive wind and solar-powered desalination plants have sprung up and are pumping freshwater inland at a great rate, thereby supporting the people working on the lands and rebuilding the natural environment. Already huge areas of land in the countryside have been set aside to growing vast amounts of trees and other plants using the freshwater. Much of it is able to supply fresh foods by way of fruits and nuts, or provide the necessary microclimates to grow other natural foods or protect water reservoirs and rivers. We are properly supporting the people on the land to grow and manage the trees and shrubs and making them highly productive to help grow the foods we all need. Indeed, we see dotted around the place numerous small homes for the valuable caretakers looking after plots of allocated land in the new environment. Walking paths can be seen linking many of the homes for people to walk (and stay healthy and fit when exercising). Each owner will be tasked to look after their plot of land and make it productive and healthy. A central area established for a group of homes will allow things to be discussed, or enjoyed at the end of the day, such as a free meal and fresh clean water. Communal buildings will be located here for places to educate the people on new ways to work the land, new plants we can grow, and learn of new technologies from the other society. It will also be where new recruits are taught how to grow food and tender the land before they are sent to various areas to practice what they learn and later be given a plot of land to practice what they have learned with the available freshwater they can access and use. This small home will be part of the reward for many years of contribution to the land, given as society's gift to those who commit themselves to this cause. The rest of the rewards will be access to food and water, and new education. Possibly to help and build new technologies in the other society working in tandem with the non-economic system on the land. Or stay on the plot of land where they can teach and direct new recruits to the latest ways of managing the land and growing food.

Already, it is getting harder to see the human activity. The trees are growing to a size to hide much of what humans are doing on the ground. Still, we cannot sit on our loins and hope the problems of the world will be solved any time soon. There is still much to get done.

The goal of the new world order is to make the big changes now so that later there would be no more excessive changes. Just minor changes at the micro level, including pruning of trees, replacing old plants with new, helping the neighbours, and generally getting recruits to gather up foods produced on the plot of land and distribute to others, including those developing new technologies. For those who are true leaders on the land and have lived the longest, much, if not all of this work, will be taken over by recruits and others as the leaders relax knowing they have contributed significantly to a better society and in repairing the environment. Certainly, once the trees have grown to a reasonable size, the micro-climate formed underneath will help to retain a lot more moisture to allow a fertile soil to grow other, more diverse range of plants. The plants are clearly looking much greener and lushes under the trees because of this extra moisture. Less freshwater from the desalination plants will become a reality. Take only the water you need and divert the rest downstream for new caretakers and plots of land to get the water they need before things can be self-sustaining. This will help to expand the "green carpet" across the hot baked lands further into the continents.

New expanded vegetable gardens can be seen in many places. Permaculture principles will ensure long-term sustainability of the garden and for humans not to work too hard to get the maximum and healthiest results needed over time. Things should get easier and easier for everyone.

Excellent stuff!

What's that? Do we see in the distance an increase in the number of thunderclouds and rain falling in certain places? Great. A sign that some water evaporation from the leaves of vast amounts of trees are helping to form clouds and so increase the probability of rain. Even less of a need for desalinated freshwater to go inland.

60 YEARS FROM NOW

World temperatures remain extraordinarily high. What can anyone expect? We did leave our run to fix the environment late and allowed up to two massive methane bursts to take place. It will take time to reverse the temperatures to pre-19th century levels. As they say, "Rome was not built in a day", and so it is with our natural environment. Little we can do in the short-term to reverse this trend. Only sufficient time under the new world order to rebuild the environment by the worldwide population is the best solution. It won't take thousands of years. The sheer size and number of people working on the land should see global warming reverse its trend in a matter of a century or two. Very quick by geological time scales. The only thing we can't hold back is the inevitable rise of the oceans. We will lose a lot of valuable land. But we will reclaim the land later.

65 YEARS FROM NOW

The new world order has already seen an end to spending trillions of dollars on Defence projects by all nations. The cost of rebuilding the environment (and even protecting some coastal cities) has exceeded the budgets of the most advanced and richest nations. Pointless to keep building weapons of mass destruction and bigger walls when higher priority tasks of surviving and reversing global warming are pressing matters. Many countries have learned that they cannot afford to waste time building tanks, or even nuclear bombs. Nor can they expect to protect every city and town along the old coastline. All manpower and resources of the military will at last be directed towards more useful and peaceful activities.

The new world order will have other important implications for the US military. This is a particularly vulnerable time for this military group to be living within the new world order, mainly because of one thing.

As of 2015, the US military has been trying to make itself useful to society by finding some alternative solutions to the energy situation, such as building a solar farm in space for generating electricity for cities, as well as finding ways to reach and colonise the Moon and eventually Mars. A very good choice, except the USAF also had the ability to go further using the electromagnetic technology it has discovered after it has reverse-engineered one crashed UFO from the late 1940s and studied various UFO reports in secret (ignore Project Blue Book for a moment as this had a different aim to educate and convince the public to see UFOs as nothing alien). After the retrieval, the relationship between gravity and electromagnetism was finally understood by the USAF by 1959 after the U.S. government issued grants to various universities locally and in Europe for people to study this relationship. The work suddenly went quiet after 1959 at a time when the military showed interest in the importance of the radiation reaction force in classical electrodynamics to UFO technology. Next, the USAF also discovered the importance of Thomas Townsend Brown's patented electrokinetic devices for fully understanding the UFO technology during the 1950s, but considerable efforts were made to stop the inventor from gaining the financial support he needed to finish his work and show what else his devices could do (i.e., exponentially accelerate). The inventor died a poor man, still believing that his devices would bring great hope for humanity. The USAF then spent a considerable time in the 1960s and 1970s to build the world's first UFO prototype and by December 1980, a glowing diamond-shaped UFO was tested and flown in an isolated region of Texas (see the Cash-Landrum UFO case). The pilot of this UFO-like object probably made the decision to leave behind symptoms of radiation poisoning on three American witnesses on the ground through the emission of electrons from its negatively-charged metal surface hitting the witnesses' stainless steel car body which in turn emitted ionizing x-rays. Was he trying to inform the world of what the military was doing and thought the world deserved to know the truth by leaving behind some physical evidence? The object was quickly surrounded by black unmarked military helicopters and escorted to a secret military base. Whether this sighting was accidental or the pilot wanted to tell the public something the military was doing, or perhaps it was an opportunity for the USAF to see how the public would react and compare differences between this object and other non man-made UFOs with similar glowing features on symmetrical flying objects and electromagnetic hazards, fortunately for the military, no one has been able to conclusively point the finger of who was responsible for affecting the health of the three witnesses without direct proof.

By 1990, the USAF took their secret project on the EM flying object to Area 51 to conduct further tests of new and improved electromagnetic prototypes, only to be observed at night these glowing objects doing some interesting high speed movements by civilians at a distance.

Then SUNRISE released a book on UFOs to explain the electromagnetic concept and technology being displayed by genuine UFOs. There is a recycling of electromagnetic energy and new ways of grabbing this energy, concentrating it, and storing electrical energy in vast amounts in certain materials, as well as replenishing the energy at high speeds of a charged object using the natural energy already available in the natural environment.

It is clear from history and by the beginning of the 21st century (further details are revealing themselves in Can UFOs Advance Science? Making the Case for a New Electromagnetic Technology) to show that the USAF knows how UFOs work. It has the electromagnetic technology, and has tested it by December 1980. The crashed disc it has acquired from the late 1940s shows that it does not require the use of fossil fuels to generate the energy once the energy is already stored and ready for use. While this technology is aimed at achieving tremendous acceleration based on the exponential solution of the Abraham-Lorentz formula thanks to how radiation emissions push against the charged particles making up solid matter, and how charging up a metal surface amplifies the recoiling force, the clever bit is how we store the initial electrical energy to start things off and create the strong oscillating electric charge. Technically there is no need for a fossil-fuel system to generate the energy if we are smart about it. All this is known by the USAF. It knows what the scientific concept is about. But here lies the biggest problem for the US military. By keeping the technology to itself and choosing to do nothing to help solve climate change for so long, it has effectively stated to the world that it was not willing to solve the biggest environmental crisis to face humanity. For the sake of power and greed, the military has chosen to keep the secret to itself. Because the emission from an electromagnetic flying object is of radiation for propulsion and not hot air or carbon-rich waste products from conventional fossil fuels. Furthermore, the methods of storing energy would be different (e.g., a large superconducting ring to store circulating electrical current instead of fossil fuel inside a large tank). To put it simple, the USAF was not prepared to share this technology with the rest of the world.

So much of the fossil-fuel dependent aircraft and spacecraft technology used by humans could have been replaced before the start of the 21st century, or even since the 1960s, with a far more superior and environmentally-friendly electromagnetic flying technology. If the technology had been released by the USAF by the 1960s, or even at the start of the 21st century, history would have been different for everyone. No concerns for global warming. We could have even maintained the old ways of doing things and make as profit so long as more people applied the recycling principles to many areas of life. But the USAF did not do anything. A decision was made. And the military chose to maintain UFO secrecy at all costs and hide the evidence. It is because those in the know want to maintain their positions of being rich and powerful through the old economic system by selling perhaps some aspects of the technology in a slow piecewise way to avoid anyone finding out.

Not anymore.

By this time, the people will know the USAF has cooked its goose under climate change and has left it too late to help people in the new world order. It has made its position clear when it wanted to work on UFOs secretly, even when "Rome was burning" under global warming. Now, everyone can see the benefits of such a technology, but there will be fatal consequences for the U.S. military. It may be understandable that the USAF was afraid of the implications in letting the technology out to the public in the early stages until it understood the technology and find out what the aliens are doing when they arrive to Earth. But since the 1980s, it has decided to keep it quiet and go at it alone while allowing a few to get rich and powerful. In the face of global warming, they didn't care. They saw the environment degrade and the people suffer and still nothing was done. Too late now. People have learned about the new technology. And by doing nothing, the USAF could also have sealed its own demise on the world stage. Hence the reason why Defence personnel will be given new jobs in the new world order.

The USAF may not want anyone to know about this electromagnetic technology. However, in the new world order, people will have studied more closely the laws of electromagnetism and have discovered what is hidden there, and how it could have solved so many problems for society.

A new electromagnetic flying technology is just the beginning. The next discovery to be made in the world of electromagnetism is the ability to transmit electrical energy wirelessly in the form of radiation where an antenna on a machine can pick up this energy and transform it into electrical power. So why do we need power lines to transport electricity across vast distances, except perhaps to allow power companies to control how much power consumers use and bill them later? In the new world order, it is unlikely power companies can continue to supply electricity in the traditional and highly inefficient and expensive way using power lines and all the dirty forms of power generation to the people. Like the food and water, electricity will be the third essential commodity to be made available free to people in the new world order. And it will be generated where the people live.

When people realise what else is possible in the world of electromagnetism, a new dawn will definitely begin for humankind. People will have a renewed curiosity for the Universe, especially among the young who will take the technology to the next level, as well as visit other worlds, and return with a wealth of new information and some alien samples to satisfy our curiosity.

Human civilisation will enter what is effectively the fourth industrial revolution — this time to focus on the building of new and environmentally-friendly electromagnetic technologies.

But just before this revolution begins, the people will already have built their own prototypes of an electromagnetic flying object for testing.

It would be at this time that more and more people will recognise the similarities in the technological design and side-effects of these "electromagnetic" vehicles to those formerly unidentified flying objects (or UFOs) described in the reports by people in the past, even as early as the late 1940s and possibly even going back to Biblical times when Moses and his people were guided by a glowing cloud he called God. And they will learn about the work done by the USAF throughout the latter half of the 20th century in understanding and building their own UFO in secret. This can only mean one thing. The biggest cover up in human history regarding UFOs will be blown sky high by this time. Not even the US military can hide this situation. More importantly, rumours of a crashed flying disc in the possession of the USAF with the right kind of extreme lightweight and tough materials and apparently operating on electromagnetic principles will be given special focus by the people. In particular, any support by the scientific community that the electromagnetic spacecraft can be brought down by a lightning strike, exactly as the witnesses reported hearing in July 1947 in the New Mexico desert followed by the recovery of remarkably advanced materials and electromagnetic internal parts of construction techniques, means the military must be hiding the evidence, and will be facing a grilling in some new public hearing. This will be a bad time for the USAF. If it has done nothing to share the technology at a time the world was warming up, you can be sure there will be consequences for the USAF and the military force in general.

The USAF would be wise to release everything it knows about UFOs well before the global warming cranks up to dangerous levels, including the crashed disk and bodies it has recovered. If the USAF refuses to do the right thing even when the planet was getting devastated, people will resent the military. Soon the US military will be increasingly seen as irrelevant in the new world order. The refusal by the US military to release the technology well before the environmental crisis began will effectively seal the fate of the military and all defence spending. Other countries will follow suit to express their disgust at the USAF and question the relevance of defence spending in the face of environmental collapse.

In the end, when we see how advanced alien civilisations survive in the Universe and how peaceful they are, there will be no use for the military in any nation on Earth.

75 YEARS FROM NOW

In terms of cheaper and more powerful space flights in the late 21st century using these electromagnetic vehicles, there will be some unexpected benefits to be had on the environment for those travelling to the stars. The mass of the pilots and for those passengers wishing to participate on fairly long journeys will be much less. Of course, losing body weight can have great benefits in the new world order if it means eating less food. But for those young people who will get excited by the prospects of travelling to the stars to see what is out there, they will have further impetus to lose weight.

As Albert Einstein discovered in his Special Theory of Relativity, when you participate in these long distance flights, the faster you move, the more mass (or energy) you acquire, and the harder it is to accelerate faster to reduce journey times. If you can reduce the mass at rest in the first place, it will make an enormous difference in getting to the stars in a quicker time frame.

And why do people get there quicker when those who sit on Earth claim it takes many years for light travelling at maximum speed to reach those stars? Journey times are significantly reduced because of another law of physics — namely, the length along the direction of motion is contracted. Well, actually, the planets and stars do not jolt from their positions to get closer to the spacecraft. This length contraction concept is actually an optical illusion created by the bunching up of electromagnetic energy of space in front of the moving spacecraft to create a gravitational and electromagnetic lens. Much like the lens inside a telescope. Everything in front will appear closer to the observer sitting inside the spacecraft. Thus his measurements of the distance to the star of destination will come back as being much shorter. In terms of time dilation, or the ability to reach the destination much more quickly at such high speeds for the moving observer, space-time composed of this energy has been "stretched". And like a rubber band, spacetime will pull (or push if the gravitational field is controlled by radiation) through space at a speed that is faster than the speed of light. Or, to put it another way, the density of the energy attracted by the moving spacecraft may be higher, but this has been displaced from another part of space further in front of the spacecraft. The lower energy density will not stay like this. The universe will fill the missing energy from the rest of space. So, the rest of space will gravitationally attract, or the rest of space will electromagnetically push, the spacecraft faster through this lower energy density region. As they say (and is proven by experiments), a lower energy density causes light to travel faster than the familiar speed of light we are used to hearing about. Increase the energy density and the speed of light is reduced. It is this lower energy density formed by the moving spacecraft drawing in this extra energy from space to make it increase its mass that causes the spacecraft to travel faster than the speed of light in a normal energy density region of space. Those participating in the flight will not know this. Their measurements will suggest a shortening of the distance as the cause for short journey times when they use their eyes to observe what is ahead of them. However, length contraction is not actually happening. This is an optical illusion. It is all because the density of space-time has been changed by the moving object and the rest of the universe has a way to re-balance this situation.

So while people on Earth will have to wait years or even decades to get the results of whatever was found on another planet while we sit in the current energy density environment in which the Earth is immersed and moving through, those who participate in the flight will experience a quick and painless visit to distant worlds and back again depending on how far they wish to travel (and how refined the technology is). But if you want to travel further, there is another law to follow in the Special Theory of relativity. It concerns the mass of pilots, passengers and the vehicle itself. In a nutshell, the closer you approach the speed of light, the more massive everything gets according to an outside observer. And faster means travelling further into space. So, for the same energy that can be generated to propel a spacecraft to a higher speed, you want to minimise the mass.

To reduce mass, electromagnetic vehicles built by the late 21st century will be of the strongest, lightest and toughest materials ever conceived by humankind. The whole spacecraft will be fully reusable (clearly much better for the environment) for a very long time using these materials. Newspaper thin metal skin for carrying the oscillating electric charge for emitting radiation on the surface will be the norm. Electrical insulators to separate charges on the hull from the internal cabins will be flexible, yet very strong and virtually unburnable. Electrical generators (with voltage multiplier) will be compact and lightweight as possible and able to generate millions of volts at minimal amperage as needed to generate a powerful oscillating electric charge on the surface. Directing the charge to one side as needed to reach higher energy density in the radiation emissions for a higher recoiling force on the spacecraft to accelerate it will be controlled by curvature of the hull. To achieve this, we should expect human engineers to employ large metal balls or spheres (a minimum of one, but more likely three that are arranged to form a perfectly equilateral triangle and positioned precisely over the center of gravity of the spacecraft) to press against a flexible shape-memory alloy hull to help create the asymmetrical hull shape for movement, and the balls can be withdrawn back in to bring back the symmetrical design to stop the acceleration. These are simple design considerations human engineers will make when constructing an electromagnetic flying machine.

As for the pilots, they will be thin and small, especially for very long-distance travelling to quite distant stars. But even the closest stars will benefit those who participate in the flights to be as lightweight as possible for the journey times to feel quick. Having no head / body hair would be seen in a favourable light, especially for very long journeys, not only to reduce mass, but also to avoid electrical sparks that could damage and burn hair when operating these electromagnetic machines. Don't worry if you are bald. Having no head hair could make you a favourable candidate to participate in a flight to the stars.

Need further reduction in mass? No problems. A clip of the finger and toe nails, removal of body hair, and a good laxative to blow everything out could reduce the time to travel to an extrasolar star from say a few months to maybe an hour or less. Or why not go to the extreme of removing unnecessary organs in the body such as the reproductive regions and to have smaller breasts? Indeed, through effective and well-thought out genetic engineering, the nutrients required by the human body can be concentrated in plant materials to the point where it is unnecessary to have a long gut. Eventually the whole digestive tract can be simplified to help reduce mass. Could this be the reason why some aliens in UFO reports are so incredibly thin?

And why stop there? There is no reason why we could not remove the digestive tract altogether and use special skin patches to deliver the nutrients directly into the blood stream. It is certainly not beyond the realms of science to achieve. (7)

Biological scientists of the future will be looking at extreme ways to minimise body mass for long interstellar flights. At the same time, we will have a team of electromagnetic engineers and material experts working together to look at ways to further minimise weight and maximise strength, maximise power output of electrical generators, and use the most durable, high-temperature resistant and reliable materials, just to keep everything safe for the occupants to use throughout the long interstellar flight.

But even despite a lowering of the mass, the greater inertial forces created by the gravitational field generated by a higher mass at great speeds (also considered by Einstein's Unified Field Theory as extra electromagnetic energy penetrating and pushing on the charges making up all solid matter) is still expected to be felt by the occupants near the speed of light and when accelerating to those speeds. So any marginal increase in speed during acceleration performed at this range will be felt as an incredible inertial force on the body. The only way to get around this is to use a symmetrical metal box to lower the electromagnetic energy (the actual cause for the inertial forces according to Einstein's Unified Field Theory) entering the craft and pushing against your body, which in turn reduces the inertial forces.

90 YEARS FROM NOW

Our environmental and social chaos has well and truly stabilised by this time. We are in the most peaceful period in human existence, compared to the distant past. Well, we don't have any choice. The survival of the human race has depended on our efforts to work together to re-build the environment. It required our environment to be returned to its relatively pristine state, and people returning to a reliable source of natural and low-cost foods and energy while forever embracing recycling as nature intended if we are to avoid another serious environmental catastrophe and social conflict by this time.

And, most importantly, people had to resolve their differences and worked together to solve common problems of a higher priority. The kind of priority that was considered a matter of life and death. The time to squabble over petty things or silly conflicts had ended long ago.

People have been working hard on environmental projects up to this time. Still, we are not quite out-of-the-woods as yet. Sea levels are too high. The underwater cities are now relics of the 20th century only good for futuristic divers feeling nostalgic and wanting to see what it was like in the old days. It will be a long time before sea levels fall again to what they were at the beginning of the 21st century.

The most important thing is that there is hope for humanity.

Signs of a stabilising planet will have other positive benefits for our world community. For example, we want the humans travelling to the stars to know there is a stable and peaceful place called Earth to come back to to share their knowledge and bring back alien samples, including new plants.

Our man-made electromagnetic spacecraft has been flying around for some time now. Already a wealth of information has arrived from the Alpha Centauri system. The two principal sun-like stars of this system are sufficiently far apart to allow two Earth-like alien worlds to exist with great stability over billions of years (in fact, scientific calculations have shown a planet can exist to a distance of where Mars is in our solar system for both stars). Will we find one, or perhaps two, alien civilisations living on one or two earth-like worlds in this star system? If any Earth-like world is identified, alien life will be found, and most likely highly advanced considering the sun-like stars of this system is much older than our Sun. That is a certainty. Getting there means that all it will take is for people at home to wait a minimum of 8.6 years to get the results from pilots travelling to this system and returning home to tell us exactly what is out there. We should not be surprised if the word "alien civilisation" does get mentioned by the human space travellers. There should be plenty of pictures to keep everyone fascinated and willing to learn more.

But already more ambitious human pilots are making journeys to more distant stars. If this has started early, say 25 years ago, there will be plenty of information to arrive of yet more alien civilisations and bizarre planets surrounding red dwarfs to keep scientists on Earth busy for decades, even centuries. Imagine the new types of alien plants that could help us on Earth.

Want to see more alien civilisations and amazing new plant life? No problems. There are enough stable Sun-like stars within 12 light years from our Sun to support more intelligent life on other unseen planets. Take your pick. We have Tau Ceti, which is well within the 12 light years range, and sufficiently sun-like to support an Earth-like planet. Or what about Epsilon Eradani? And all the stars we can focus on are older than our Sun. We are really the new kid on the block so to speak. Assuming aliens are smart enough to have solved their world problems, the majority of advanced alien civilisations will be already experts in controlling climate change and knowing how to apply the principle of love. And sure, their technology will be truly amazing and something we can aspire to have. We should be prepared to see truly advanced alien civilisations.

This naturally leads us to the next important question: Will these advanced civilisations be dangerous? In other words, will civilisations capable of travelling to the stars be hell-bent at protecting their own kind by resorting to warfare and showing their aggression towards us? Or will they be peaceful, curious and friendly?

Most scientists are firmly of the view based on sound sociological arguments that ETs with a technology capable of reaching the stars will have to be peaceful, curious and friendly. Yes, they could always choose to behave the opposite. We all have the power to choose one of two opposing behavioural paths throughout life: either to show love, or to not show love. Earth is a fine example of how humans can go both ways very easily. However, in a Universe filled with other star-faring and advanced civilisations, you have to make the right choice. Make the wrong choice and you will certainly pay dearly for this as more advanced civilisations cam unleash untold damage to any aggressive civilisation that does not apply the principle of love in the appropriate way. However, make the right choice, and there is absolutely no reason why we cannot exist forever in this Universe. So long as people are vigilant and able to handle whatever the Universe throws at them such as asteroids, comets and exploding stars, then the ticket to live side-by-side with other civilisations is available to us. This is the difference. You have choice, but in reality you don't. The paradox of human behaviour is that ultimately you must choose what is clearly the better route.

Understandably, there are some scientists who believe life on other planets will not be friendly. A classic example would have to be John D. Rummel, the Planetary Protection Officer at NASA's headquarters. In his words, Rummel said:

"Well, my guess, is that if there's life out there, it would be interesting, it might even be compelling in its lessons but it wouldn't be dangerous. But that's just my guess. And one of the things that I have to acknowledge is that ignorance is not bliss. I'm not going to be able to guarantee anybody that life out there isn't dangerous." (Quote obtained from the BBC Horizon documentary titled We Are the Aliens.)

When we read this quote, we need to be more specific in the kind of potentially unfriendly life we are talking about here.

When Rummel talks of life as being dangerous, he is referring to life that is still struggling to survive predators and other creatures throughout the standard early part of the evolutionary process. And yes, evolution will take place on other worlds. We are not unique. No living thing will appear as God. It must learn to adapt, understand and grow. In the meantime it has to acquire nutrients and the simplest solution is to develop a digestive tract and to eat food, whether from plants, animals or both. Until such time as truly advanced and intelligent creatures can learn to do away with the digestive tract altogether to use skin patches to deliver nutrients straight to the blood vessels beneath the skin or to rely more significantly on plant-based materials as a source of food, any alien animal must find ways to survive. Evolution on Earth will not be unique. It is a universal law of the Universe for all life. In this situation, we should be prepared to encounter some dangerous alien life that simply doesn't know if you are a threat or not, or thinks you are a source of food. That is normal.

However, what we are talking about here is intelligent, technologically-advanced life that have already dealt with its own predators after millions of years and can now travel to the stars.

When we speak of friendly and curious alien life, we are talking about creatures travelling to other stars, not necessarily those who stay behind on a planet with their primitive technology or are still trying to evolve on the planet.

Don't want to be friendly? Fine. Stay on your own planet and don't interfere with alien life. But be careful when you do get out there among the stars. Any attempt to affect other life in the Universe in a detrimental way, especially those who are intelligent and technological, without carefully thinking about the actions and whether it follows the principle of love, will have dire consequences imposed on the aggressor from the more advanced civilisations in the Universe.

Still not convinced? Let us put it this way. Should any creature in the Universe choose the aggressive approach to solving problems will almost certainly risk the survival of itself and its own species. All it takes is a slightly more advanced civilisation (let alone a really advanced civilisation) to notice what is happening and before long they will introduce, say, an incredibly contagious and deadly genetically engineered virus capable of reeking havoc to the aggressors.

Perhaps some of you might be thinking, "Well, we will just blow these little critters out of the sky with our sophisticated guns and missiles if they try to do that to us!"

During a 2014 interview, U.S. President Bill Clinton was asked whether an alien attack would unite the world in fighting them. His response:

"That may be the only way to unite this incredibly divided world of ours. They are out there — we better think of how all the difference among people on earth would seem small if we felt threatened by a space invasion"

Talk about stating the obvious. Why wouldn't people unite? It would be a matter of life or death for humans. Just like a post-methane burst era, if humans want to live, everyone will have to work together to deal with the situation.However, the real question people should be asking is, "Would we survive an alien attack even if we are united?" Not a hope in hell. The extraordinary ability of aliens to use their electromagnetic flying vehicles to enter the Earth's atmosphere and bypass our defence systems will make a mockery of our attempts to defend ourselves. Furthermore, once aliens land on the surface of the Earth, all they have to do is introduce an incredibly contagious virus into the air or water with the right genetic code to specifically target the human species and we would have absolutely no way of handling the virus within reasonable time. Certainly we will try, hence the effort to unite the world. But by the time any solution could be found, probably more than 99 per cent of the human population will be wiped out by the virus. And if we think we can retaliate and do the same to the aliens, you first have to know which civilisation was responsible for devastating the human race. It would be like searching for a needle in the haystack.

Assuming aliens are keen to attack other civilisations, do you think you can defend yourself against an alien attack? Yeah right. Think again! Our technology, not even nuclear weapons, will be advanced enough to protect the "aggressors" (i.e. ourselves) from the kind of surreptitious biological warfare aliens are capable of throwing at us.

Protecting ourselves from (let alone attacking) advanced aliens will be a completely hopeless task. Apart from not knowing which alien civilisation is responsible and where they might be located (really advanced civilisations may live very far away), it'll be like what we see on television with the US military annihilating the Taliban government in Afghanistan, but many times worse because no one will know exactly how dangerous this virus might be until it has infected a large number of people in a very short space of time (and then it might be too late).

Or to put it another way, should the aggressors become infected, the time for their extinction would be near, and all done by an advanced alien civilisation that does not have to show its face to the aggressors. It is simple, quick and highly effective. And the aliens can just go back to whatever they were doing knowing humans will be long forgotten in this Universe.

Don't think this is possible? Well, already the technology for creating a deadly virus (to the aliens the virus would be as harmless as "chicken pox" in their own society) is now in the hands of terrorists and are ready to cause havoc to one or more developed nations of the world thanks to the Internet and readily available biochemicals. As newspapers have reported in July 2002:

"WASHINGTON, Friday: Following a recipe downloaded from the Internet and using gene sequences from a mail-order supply house, researchers have assembled a man-made version of the polio virus to prove how easy it would be for terrorists to make deadly biological weapons.

'Researchers at the University of New York at Stony Brook assembled the virus and then injected it into mice to show that it worked. The animals were paralysed and then killed." (8)

In 2010, Dr J. Craig Venter has successfully combined an artificially developed genetic code with the genetic complexity of a natural bacterium to produce the world's first synthetic self-replicating bacterium. Now Dr Venter is seeing a future where bacteria can be tailored-made to perform any kind of task, even the sinister kind.

Of course, aliens will be a whole lot smarter than this. They certainly won't be going around injecting whatever deadly virus they may create into humans in a direct sense. That's too obvious and time-consuming. Aliens will be much more quieter and energy efficient in their actions. It will be true guerilla warfare "alien-style" to its ultimate extreme. You think the US military had a hard time dealing with guerilla-tactics of terrorists in the urban environment of Baghdad, Iraq in the early 1990s? This was nothing compared to what aliens are capable of doing to us.

If you think about it, it would be very easy for an alien to attach extra gene sequences to help create a virus that floats around in the air, or use another organism as the host carrier to move through say the water. And once the virus enters the human body by breathing it in, or drinking the water, we would easily suffer the consequences. Add a few more gene sequences and the aliens can build a custom-made virus designed specifically to target a particular weakness or common characteristic of humans.

Basically if you should ever make an alien angry because you have not learnt how to control your aggressive behaviours, you might as well put down your guns and start kissing your ass goodbye.

As Dr Eckard Wimmer, co-author of the study conducted by the University of New York, said:

"This approach has been talked about, but people didn't take it seriously. Now people have to take it seriously. Progress in biomedical research has its benefits and it has its down side. There is a danger inherent to progress in sciences. This is a new reality, a new consideration." (9)

The implications for humanity are clear: If you want to go to an alien planet, then shape up (quite literally by showing how big your brain is as well as how well you can control consumption and don't waste resources unless you recycle them, and learn to love) or ship out. Start learning to solve your aggressive behaviours now or you will face the consequences of your actions later from more advanced alien civilisations that will put you in your place very quickly.

Remember, we may think we are overly confident in doing whatever we like in this universe. A look on Earth may give this impression. But we can't do anything to stop aliens from achieving the same goals if they get really p*ssed off with us.

Now let us reverse this situation. Should we think other civilisations will be a threat to us? If we have love in our hearts, absolutely not! We must not think for a moment that technologically-advanced 'star-faring' ETs are going to be a threat to humankind. The day we start travelling to the stars will be the time when humans (and, by implications, all other intelligent and technically-advanced 'star-faring' creatures) learn to put away their weapons of mass destruction and all our negative differences to one side, and start to be curious and loving with all life in the universe. Forget the science fiction movie Independence Day. That's all first-class crap (seriously, we all need to think independently of the way many of these Hollywood producers like to think — not every technically-advanced aliens reaching our planet will be bad asses to us; even if they don't like us, they know the consequences if they do something they shouldn't). Not even Star Wars is anywhere near the true reality of what's happening out there. It will be closer to Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Now that is a more realistic film to watch and based on real scientific facts.

As much as the astronomer and science fiction author Dr David Brin from Encinitas in California likes to think it is possible for ETs to harm us (of course they can, but would they even dare when they know there are more advanced alien civilisations that can kick their pathetic example of an alien ass into smithereens?) when he said in 2007:

"Physical harm is a possibility. A bomb sent through space is much easier to send than a starship full of colonists. There have been many science fiction films in which intelligent bombs can be sent to a new civilisation that is broadcasting into space in order to prevent them from becoming competitors." (Calling All Aliens Part 2: Contact in Space. A television documentary and film by Christian Schidlowski © Vidicom 2007)

The reality is, ETs who venture out into space will have to make a choice. But the paradox of it all is that you have no choice. There will be only one choice. And that choice must be the obvious one when encountering other intelligent beings. Basically, ETs must be kind and respectful to all living things no matter where life is found.

As for sending machines into space to find suitable worlds, extract the resources to build replicas of itself, and send a signal back to its makers of a new world to colonise, why would this occur? The argument given is that these machines can be built to outlast the lifetime of its biological creators, have a simple objective it can follow (i.e. do not think for itself), and can be easier to manufacture and copy itself in large numbers by the machines themselves utilising the raw materials on other planets in the Milky Way. Dr John von Newmann was the first to look at this possibility in the 1950s and he claimed mathematically such a machine could exist and would be easier to achieve for its creators. Scientists call it the von Neumann machine.

Dr Brin is not saying that our Milky Way has millions of these machines ready and waiting to pounce on Earth if they receive a signal from us. Rather he claims "there is no proof that there are not". That's just a naturally L-brain response to what his eyes are telling him.

Well, based on sound sociological principles and how the universe can't afford to allow anything, even a machine, to be aggressive and colonising of other worlds, it is highly unlikely an advanced alien civilisation will allow for a von Neumann machine to exist. If its intent is not good, the machine will be dealt with quickly and efficiently by advanced civilisations. We can safely discount the likelihood of any von Neumann machines flying around through space ready to stumble on or target a life-bearing planet such as our own and doing things to affect the life on that planet. Just like an aggressive alien species, an aggressive alien machine will be dealt with swiftly and efficiently.

If you need further reassurance of the peaceful nature of star-faring civilisations, we have been broadcasting our television, radio and radar signals into space for quite some time now. Such signals would have reached advanced alien civilisations at a distance of more than 100 light years since the present time. Astronomers are already convinced that the nearest star after our Sun called Alpha Centauri at 4.3 light years away has two Sun-like stars older than our Sun and far enough apart to have a stable planetary system up to the distance of Mars in our solar system. If there is a planet lurking in this system and supporting life, it is likely intelligent technological life would exist, have picked up our signals, and would have done something to us a long time ago (10). The reality is that they haven't. Why? It has to be because an alien civilisation with the technical know how to reach our planet must be friendly. The evidence for this is all around (i.e. why are we still here if it isn't true?).

This is a no brainer.

Technogically-advanced aliens will not be bad creatures. No need to fear the aliens. You are guaranteed under sound sociological principles that any kind of life travelling to the stars in some kind of a technology must be friendly. There is no choice really.

Likewise there is no choice for us as well, especially in the long-term and when we do start venturing out to the stars. We have to be friendly and show our love for all living things once we are out there. You have to be good-natured and kind. By practising and making it your life's work to be good, it will feel natural to be good. Then you will know how natural the law of love is being applied throughout the Universe among advanced civilisations travelling to the stars.

Then you will see that you are not alone in this Universe.

250 YEARS FROM NOW

This will be the time when our brains have learned many new facts from our space exploration. The brain will naturally evolve and acquire many more patterns as it thinks and learns more about this great Universe and other living creatures. At the same time, the frontal cortex of the brain will enlarge to find ways to simplify all the facts and make it easier to remember the few key facts that will explain the lot using the right type of knowledge.

So either the occipital lobes at the back of the brain will expand to handle a greater range of visual information, and short-term memory will expand to remember the numerous patterns we see, and/or the thinking aspects of the frontal lobes will push the forehead slightly forward as it simplifies the patterns and finds the most common knowledge for explaining everything.

As French orthodontist Marie-Joséphe Deshayes studying the skulls of ancient and modern humans said:

"As far as the immediate future is concerned, the construction and number of neurons is multiplying. That's happening now. On a cognitive level, the neuronal wiring seems to be happening right now, and fast. So cognitive and neuronal evolution in young children is something we can be sure of in the very near future." (Homo Futurus, a documentary film by Thomas Johnson and produced by Hind Saih in 2005, televised on SBS 6 May 2007)

A continually evolving brain learning from its environment and gathering numerous patterns means that our heads will get bigger thanks to the L-brain. This means the overall brain size will get larger.

Usually working in tandem is the R-brain and the frontal cortex. This helps with simplifying the patterns and finding the few essential patterns that help to explain all the observed patterns. This will help keep the brain to a compact size except a well-developed frontal cortex will almost certainly push our foreheads slightly forward and make the front of the head wider to show the tremendous thinking we do.

But then we have our technology to consider.

In other words, our technology could be used to record the patterns and any simplified knowledge tested in computer simulations. So, the potential is there for our technology to explain all the facts with reasonable accuracy and so the human brain may stay to a modest size. This might be important for childbirth reasons. A head that is not too large will permit natural childbirth to continue in human society. But if we allow the head to expand and gets reflected in the genes, an alternative means of fertilising and incubating the next generation will be necessary. And it will have to be done outside the womb. It will depend on what is valued most in society: a larger brain, or being smart with our technology. Do we need more thinking "introverted" beings to unify and simplify the knowledge and range of facts to what is essential and needed to be remembered when explaining everything? Or do we allow people to remember many facts and other specific patterns in memory and so expand the brain?

The same will be true of alien humanoids with a technology travelling to the stars. Thus we will see some differences in other life forms, not just in terms of head size, but body size and certain physical attributes.

For us seeing these differences, we must take note of them to help us better understand how they came to exist and the benefits those differences have brought to the aliens. We will have many interesting patterns to consider. As we know, differences means new insights, ideas and solutions. Yet at the same time we should expect to see similarities too. For example, gravity (actually it is the radiation pressure from space pushing things according to Einstein's Unified Field Theory) is a universal force. It plays throughout the Universe a pivotal role in the evolution of alien life just as it did here on Earth. So don't be surprised to observe creatures emerging with a humanoid shape to their bodies and with two hands to manipulate their environments, and two legs to walk around on land. This will be a common feature of virtually all technically-advanced aliens. Otherwise, any other differences will capture our interest and we will try to understand why they exist. Perhaps large ears will be observed as some aliens value faint sounds in a forested environment that needs to be picked up and detected and separated from other sounds; or no ear lobes at all if technology can provide sounds at a consistent volume with ease (or could be part of the process of minimising mass for long-distance travelling to the stars). Large eyes may be common in the depth of space and when protected behind large sunglasses or visors or else live in a slightly darker environment on an alien world (such as on the ground level in a thick forest). Small mouths may mean a reduction in food consumption because there is limited food on the planet or a desire to reduce weight for long distance travelling. Or perhaps genetic engineering has done away with a need to eat food for nutrients. Just nutrient patches attached to the skin is enough to sustain the alien bodies. You may also see some webbing between the fingers and toes suggesting that some aliens might like swimming a lot and could live on a more watery world compared to our planet. These sorts of differences will not be unusual and we should be prepared for this.

Even so, such differences will also be seen as a source of interesting new solutions.

The same will be true for humans. There will be physical changes to, for instance, our eyes (our most important sensory organ in the human body) to the darker environment of space. This may result in the eyes getting larger and possibly more wrap-around (and especially if regular protection to the brighter objects and high-frequency radiation is provided through large hi-tech shades through sunglasses), and separate further with a bigger head. Becoming more sensitive and potentially processing more visual information may require the back of our heads to expand slightly as this is the region visual information is processed.

A smaller mouth is likely to develop over time for an increasing number of humans as this may be important not just to increase our attractiveness, but it shows our reduced demand for eating food to achieve a more slender and lightweight body (essential for travelling to the stars). Certainly by the time scientists find a way to eliminate the need for a digestive tract in favour of absorbing nutrients through the skin through special patches will there be a dramatic narrowing of our chin and jawline. A more triangular-shaped face will be apparent. Our mouths might be nothing more than a slit with very small teeth in a matter of a few centuries from now.

In some ways, the physical characteristics we will evolve over time will not be too dissimilar to a number of humanoid aliens visiting other planets. Our goal to be lightweight will achieve the same results as other star-faring aliens out there.

However, reduced body mass for travelling to the stars will not be the only factor. As a case in point, consider our nose. The size of the human nose is expected to reduce in size as the quality of the air improves in a new society that is focused on building a healthy environment. More trees and extra moisture in the air will reduce the amount of dust and pollutants floating around. And that can only mean one thing: the nose will have little need to filter the air through the extra hairs. Expect our nose to change in size in the future with each new generation that appears on Earth in the new world order.

Speaking of looking attractive, this raises another complicating factor in determining how we will look in the next few centuries and beyond — love. The changes we will see at this time and in the future will also be determined by whether we feel loved by those who want to see these features as attractive. Our bodies will, therefore, change to support the way people see us. Because we all want to be loved and to know it from others.

Love shapes evolution.

True, we have heard creative stories in the 20th century from science fiction writers suggesting humans may become cyborgs — a creature half human and half robot to help extend the capabilities of humans thanks to medical science combining artificial materials with human tissue. However, love might determine whether this becomes a reality love. Given how we all want to be loved by someone else, to be loved often means asking, "Are we attractive?" If the answer is no, it is unlikely humans will ever look like a machine. We may receive artificial joints and other additions to the body to help overcome clear medical problems or following an accident. Fortunately they will be designed to blend in or be hidden. The aim is to enhance who we already are or repair damaged components internally. Otherwise, the human body is already a remarkable machine in itself. It is the most compact and lightweight machine ever produced. On the outer surface, humans will want to make sure their bodies remain attractive to their own kind. So, images of a camera lens sticking out of a person's eye, for instance, is a highly unlikely scenario for humans. The problem in making us look less attractive i what happens when we live our lives without the love from others. You see, the biggest problem with making people unattractive using machines to enhance the body is that we risk turning these people into dangerous members of society who may have little regard for living things. Then we will have a situation we see in Star Wars where the least attractive people have the most machines integrated into their bodies to live a long life and not done in a manner that makes them attractive. So the limited love they receive from others effectively turns them into monsters (and who join the dark side of the force). And their treatment of others reflects the way they have been brought up. As a result, their actions and thinking when they are not properly loved are not exactly in keeping with the principle of love once they go about their daily activities. Hence the reason the science fiction film is called Star Wars. There is expected to be a war where love is not equally applied to everyone. People need love no matter who they are and what they look like. If you don't, other people will receive the same treatment in return, and that may mean affecting society in negative ways.

Similarly for those short and very thin humans with reduced or no digestive tracts, they must be loved as well. One way to achieve this is to make sure there are enough individuals of the same characteristics to intermingle and have common things to talk about, and still be able to seek the love they need. At the same time, the rest of society must accept them for who they are with open arms, and love all the differences no matter what. They have their own unique benefits for us to cherish. Let them exploit their gifts and achieve great things for the rest of society.

Remember, this is our test to show that we have truly come of age and have joined the galactic community. Our understanding of the principle of love will prove just how far we have come on Earth and how much further we will survive in the future.

800 YEARS FROM NOW

US scientists have detected an asteroid on the outskirts of our solar system heading towards the Earth. Known as 1950DA, the rock is 1 kilometre wide and will either hit the Earth or come extremely close to the planet in roughly 800 years from now (i.e. 2880 A.D.).

If, heaven forbid, the asteroid does hit the Earth's surface, it will unleash the energy of 100,000 megatons of TNT, or roughly 10 times the energy of the most powerful nuclear bomb known to humankind in the 20th century — the hydrogen bomb.

A normal 20 megaton nuclear weapon will not stop it. A direct impact of a nuclear weapon with the asteroid will only shatter it and create many small nuclear bomb-like explosions over many continents.

Or better still, this would be the time when scientists could remotely manoeuvre a number of self-accelerating electromagnetic flying vehicles and gently place them on the surface of the asteroid. We have already succeeded in doing this very thing in the early 21st century on a large rock in the asteroid belt. It should be even easier to do by the time scientists must deal with 1950DA. Then, by concentrating the radiation and getting the shape of the vehicles or use of protrusions to emit the radiation in an asymmetric form while reaching a certain critical energy density at one end of the vehicles, the electromagnetic vehicles can continuously emit this energy, resulting in a recoiling force on the charged surface of the vehicles, which in turn exerts a force on the surface of the asteroid over a period of time. If we start early, we will have plenty of time to deflect it to a safer trajectory. The aim here is for a more gentle and continuous pushing action (perhaps lasting several years or decades, depending on the size of the object and how many of these self-accelerating vehicles are used) until the asteroid is thrown off course and away from its likely intended target of the Earth.

Sounds like it is time for humans in the early 21st century to get cracking on building these electromagnetic vehicles. It can only serve as another useful tool in our arsenal of solutions for keeping humans alive for longer on this planet and give us the future technological Ark we need for carrying on life should anything happen to the Earth. Otherwise we are sitting ducks in a Universe that could declare open season to killing off any Earth-like planet in our neck of the cosmic woods.

Before this asteroid has any chance of affecting life on Earth, there will be other catastrophes to prepare for. Apart from global warming (which hopefully by this time will be solved), the next biggest issue will be the expected eruption of the next supervolcano. In the past we have seen the great Toba volcano erupt nearly 74,000 years ago. We are now overdue for the next one.

There are a number of places where this could come. Probably somewhere in Indonesia. Or it could take place in the unstable Yellowstone National Park in the USA. Should a supervolcano erupt, enough dust will be thrown high into the atmosphere to blanket the planet and reduce sunlight for many years. The subsequent mini Ice Age would see agriculture collapse and many people starve. (11)

Our antiquated and truly dumb means of distributing electricity through wires on poles as used in the 20th century will not carry the weight of ice forming on them. The electricity network will be serious damaged or completely collapse during a mini Ice Age, making our ability to future proof and protect the network by thinking long-term of all possibilities seem woefully inadequate. As a result of our short-sightedness, many homes will be without electricity, and perhaps only a trickle of energy for those generating renewable energy on rooftops and rural properties. People who don't have the right technology and knowledge will do everything to stay warm, including burning wood, books and finding preserved foods to last the cold period. Hopefully governments at this time will be long-term thinking and provide a better safeguard to all food and electricity supplies. Or else a new world order and method of governing the masses differently and having greater long-term goals will definitely begin by this time. And that means essentially any vestiges of an economic system for making profit as had occurred in the past would collapse in the face of this kind of disaster. We need to take a much longer view of how life should survive even in the event of certain global disasters. If we are lucky to think long-term, there should be new technologies capable of maintaining the power we need even when sunlight levels are seriously reduced and can grow the food under some form of shelter to help support a sustainable population.

Certainly the idea of making electricity from a central point and distributing the energy over great distances for people to pay is likely to be curtailed in favour of technologies that people can employ locally or on their own roofs to give them the best chance of survival.

Or maybe people will be able to grow food in space and distribute it on Earth?

Let's hope humans think far enough into the future to have the right solutions for all living things.

1,000 YEARS FROM NOW

Further simplification for humankind will probably take place. Initially it was with the laws of electromagnetism in the 21st century that has helped physicists to re-align all of physics into a simple and elegant unified field theory that anyone can understand and explain. With the force of gravity solved, and realising the connection between quantum physics and the large-scale universe ruled by gravity and realising all the laws apply on all scales through electromagnetism means people's confidence in simplifying other areas of their lives will gather pace.

This simplification work will not stop with science. Efforts to standardise world languages into one will probably be made by this time (if not sooner). In 2013 there are over 7,000 different languages spoken by people — far too many for everyone to learn (despite the large population of over 7 billion people to help remember these languages). If society is stable and with people having plenty of time to think about things and learn extra languages to retain them, that's fine. However, something suggests time is of the essence and many of the more obscure languages rarely used will not provide significant benefits to other people who have learned one of the more widely spoken languages. Languages are only useful if enough people can learn and make use of it to communicate ideas and share our insights. If not, and very few people know the language, it is usually a waste of time to retain them. Then there is the issue of how to speak in the languages of other civilisations, and deep down we will realise why we need to simplify through a single common and easy-to-learn language to help other civilisations to communicate with us in our native tongue (and vice versa).

In 2013, it is estimated that around 2,400 languages have been classified as being in danger of disappearing forever.

To give as an example, in Mexico, there is a language known as Ayapaneco. It has been spoken among reasonable numbers of people in the past. However, as of 2013, only two people in the world can speak the language and is now facing extinction with the last two individuals having reached an age where they will not be around for much longer. And neither speakers are willing to talk to each other or record their knowledge for future generations. As a result, approximately one language dies every two weeks.

The trend will not stop in the future. As a result of the globalisation of so many facets of people's lives thanks to modern technology, more and more people are seeing the benefits of learning one principal language (or perhaps two or three). It saves on paper, time and effort by everyone. So much resources are used up to maintain the same ideas in different languages. Unless there is an effective translation tool to make communication accurate and quick, the reality is most people will have better things to be doing than learning a multitude of different languages. It is hard enough just learning a language from another civilisation in space, but on Earth as well? We have to be practical about this. Better to use technology to record and understand the old languages for posterity. However, when it comes to communicating to as many people as possible in the here-and-now moment, expect each person to speak one main language in their "country" or locality, which is likely to be very common worldwide. Any other languages, both in visual and auditory forms, will be preserved digitally and AI will help with the translation should anyone be speaking those languages. Otherwise, the storage of large numbers of different languages can aid a powerful AI system to determine how other languages work, including those from alien civilisations.

It is likely by this time, everyone will learn one principal global language, and those wishing to maintain certain traditions and cultural identity in their specific locality (formerly known as a country or province) may choose to learn a second language.

By having one principal world language, it will make it easier and quicker to communicate ideas with anyone using the least amount of resources and effort. And it helps everyone to arrive at solutions to various world and personal problems more quickly so we can move on and progress to higher levels of knowledge and understanding about ourselves, life and the Universe.

2,000 to 10,000 YEARS FROM NOW

Much of human activities we performed in the past and still do to some extent (breathing, and burning things for heat, as well as our old forms of chemical propulsion systems of burning fossil fuels) as well as the natural activities (e.g. bushfires) may lower the levels of oxygen in the atmosphere. A point will come where oxygen levels may need to be topped up. Replanting trees and keeping the environment in pristine health and with adequate fresh water supplies is a start, but may not be enough. It is likely that humans will have to allow at least one good natural Ice Age to dominate the Earth's landscape for literally tens of thousands of years. Over these glacial periods, natural sunlight can do its job of converting water ice into hydrogen peroxide. Then, when the ice melts to end another Ice Age, the hydrogen peroxide can react with water to release oxygen into the atmosphere, thereby topping up our oxygen levels for the benefit of life on Earth for the next few million years.

Or will there be a technological solution to this problem?

1.3 MILLION YEARS FROM NOW

A star is headed our way, and it is called Gliese 710. Currently located 64 light-years away in the constellation Serpens, Gliese 710 is predicted to make its closest approach to our Sun in 1.3 million years from now. Its own oort cloud consisting of various tiny icy and some rocky materials separated from each other by tens of thousands of kilometres of space will pass through our own Oort Cloud. It is possible there may be no disturbance of the paths of rocks and ice in this region given the amount of space between various objects, but this is the least likely scenario. It is more probable that some material in the clouds will collide. It means the number of comets we will see entering the inner planets' domain and encircle our Sun will increase. Whether any of these comets will collide on Earth is unclear. The only saving grace by this time is that humans will have the technology (if we don't destroy ourselves at an earlier time) to deflect relatively large objects away from Earth. Apart from that, we will have an opportunity to visit another star closer to us than Alpha Centauri, and that means the discovery of more planets to investigate. Finding life around Gliese 710 is unlikely. The star is not particularly noted for generating enough light to create any kind of circulation of molecules in the atmosphere of a neighbouring planet and melt water to help create rich and complex organic molecules needed for life. But then again, we might surprise ourselves to see what is possible by the time this star reaches our neck of the universal cosmic woods. Best candidate of finding intelligent and technically advanced alien life today still remains with our closest stellar neighbours to our Sun, which is Alpha Centauri A and B, but by this time, those stars will move further away from us.

Gliese 710 will pass extremely close to the Solar System—about 0.05 light‑years (10,500–13,000 AU). Much closer than Scholz’s star, it will be visible to the naked eye, show noticeable motion over a human lifetime.

15 to 25 MILLION YEARS FROM NOW

Starting more than 22 to 25 million years ago, east Africa is undergoing one of the most significant geological transformations on the planet: the slow but steady breakup of the African continent. This process is centered on the East African Rift System, a vast fracture zone stretching thousands of kilometers from the Afar region of Ethiopia down through Kenya and Tanzania toward Mozambique. Scientists agree that this rift marks the boundary between two major tectonic plates — the Nubian Plate to the west and the Somali Plate to the east — which are gradually pulling away from each other to eventually create a new ocean basin at around this time.

As the rift continues to widen, the land between the Somali and Nubian plates will eventually sink below sea level. At that point, water from the Indian Ocean will flood in, forming a new ocean and leaving eastern Africa as a separate continent or large island mass. The new ocean follows the same tectonic processes that created the Red Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, so there is no surprises here for geologists. However, the timeline is extremely long. While some media reports have suggested faster scenarios, including alleged quotes from Professor Ken McDonald from the University of California that presents or defends the “1 to 5 million years” estimate (with no peer-reviewed paper at present to support this quote), the consensus remains that a fully formed ocean basin will take tens of millions of years to develop.

0 TO 100 MILLION YEARS FROM NOW

If by incredible luck we are smart enough not to create conflict with ourselves and other great civilisations in the Universe (let's hope our brains are big enough, and our hearts large enough to show the love to all living things), we will have to yet again focus our attention towards the heavens. Why? Because this will be the ultimate test of our ability to survive.

Our future is still highly dependent on what happens in the Universe.

It is here where our seemingly stable and safe planet we call Earth will experience many more impacts from asteroids and comets (and perhaps from other stars dying too soon while our Sun travels around the edge of the Milky Way). Certainly they won't be quite as great in numbers as they did nearly 6 billion years ago, but they will come. When? Nobody knows for sure. It could come tomorrow, or we may have to wait for 1000 years or more before it happens. But it will happen!

Because we don't know the full extent of what the Universe will throw at us or where it will land (we have yet to find and track the paths of cool non-reflective dark matter existent outside our solar system known as the Oort Cloud), it would be prudent for scientists and a world government to at least have some kind of a program in place to look for such marauding rocks and ice flying through space in virtually any direction.

Why? Space debris will collide with Earth. This is a veritable fact of life. Most will probably hit the equatorial and temperate zones if they are not absorbed by the other planets in the solar system. Some space debris may come perpendicular to the plane of the solar system and could collide in the polar regions.

Then there is the size of the rock or ice to consider when they hit the Earth — they could be the size of small moons!

When space debris do hit the Earth, they could land in the oceans, creating massive tidal waves ranging anywhere from 20 metres to 2,000 metres in height (a 2 kilometre-wide asteroid hitting the oceans can create a 600 feet tidal wave) when they reach the continents. Others may hit the land masses, creating severe wintery conditions for up to 10 years throughout the planet as the dust is thrown high into the upper atmosphere by the impact and reducing the amount of available sunlight reaching the ground.

In the worse case scenario, the Earth and all its inhabitants could be destroyed by a big enough asteroid as the entire crust crumbles and breaks apart and turns to molten rock. Throw a big enough body at the Earth and all that would be left is a bunch of rocks and ice forming another more spectacular asteroid belt around the Sun (or, with a bit of luck, icy comets from our frozen oceans flying into deeper space will be ready to fertilise another new Earth-like planet with our bacteria and hopefully harbour more intelligent beings than ourselves). Now wouldn't that be an absolute bugger for all life on Earth; and all because we were too preoccupied with making money and/or still resolving conflicts with our fellow human beings!

We do need to get our priorities right.

Among the rocks needing careful mapping and analysis are those known to the scientists as the Keiper Belt just beyond the orbit of Pluto and Neptune, and the larger Oort Cloud extending to about 1.58 light years. Here the collisional family of rocks range from specks of dust to over 275 kilometers. The biggest piece we know of is 2003EO61. There could be other bigger pieces. We really don't know as yet. Until we finally venture out to these places in some kind of appropriate electromagnetic technology, we are merely guessing and hoping nothing is heading our way.

More of a reason for us to be travelling into space as soon as we can to see what's out there. (12)

100 MILLION YEARS FROM NOW

The rings of Saturn will disappear after the bombardment of countless meteorites passing through the rings.

In another part of the solar system, Neptune will have its moment of potentially affecting life on Earth when it gravitationally tugs on the largest known piece in the Keiper Belt named 2003EO61. If this massive piece of rock hasn't been affected before this time, the planet will definitely change its orbit. There are three possible outcomes to arise from this situation. If Neptune does not grab hold of the piece and keep it in orbit around the planet, or absorb the rock, or fling it out into the Universe, 2003EO61 will definitely be flung into the inner solar system. Should this happen, scientists at this time will have plenty to worry about. The biggest question is determining where the rock will go.

However, there is good news. We have a new breed of highly refined electromagnetic vehicles, and in reasonable numbers. More importantly, they can be flown by robots and manoeuvred into position and placed onto the surface of 2003EO61. The aim is to gently and continuously affect its orbit artificially in a way that would allow Neptune or one of the other gaseous giants to absorb the object.

Earth is saved once more from another rogue rock in space.

215 MILLION YEARS FROM NOW

Africa merges with Europe to form a supercontinent.

250 MILLION YEARS FROM NOW

Geologists believe all continents of the world will join together into another large supercontinent known as Pangea Ultima. It will probably be a long time before it splits again. Perhaps requiring another series of massive volcanic eruptions to break through the crust and force the land mass to move apart again? It has happened in the past when a severe ice age with massive ice sheets covered much of the northern and southern hemispheres and helped to apply extra weight to help buckle the crust a little around the equator and eventually cracked it in places. Who knows?

450 to 500 MILLION YEARS FROM NOW

The Sun grows in size. Temperatures on the Earth rise to unprecedented levels. Much of life on Earth struggle to survive under the extra heat without some form of protection. Despite our efforts to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the sun will ensure no more ice ages appear on Earth.

This scenario assumes humans have not gone through another period of plundering the Earth's resources to such an extent that life is nearly extinguished except for perhaps a few humans living in the deserts of the world. Or if we are smart enough and can remember the reasons why we need to control global warming, more likely our greater concern for looking after the environment will pay off through the establishment of a thick canopy of large and tall rainforest trees blocking out most of the sunlight, thereby protecting our exotic and highly evolved animals on the ground. Should it be the latter case, life on Earth can continue to exist relatively intact and undisturbed for the next 750 million years. Of course, all this depends on whether humans have learned anything about the principle of love in preserving all life on Earth by ensuring that there are adequate plants and fresh water supplies. Could visits to other planets and watching what happens to alien life elsewhere provide the impetus for us to apply love to our own planet?

1 BILLION YEARS FROM NOW

The moon known as Triton will break up and collide into the planet Neptune. A new and more spectacular set of rings compared to Saturn in the 21st century will form around the planet.

At the same time, the Sun will increase its brightness by 10 per cent. It is already a middle-aged star and getting older. For every 100 million years that pass, our Sun grows a little larger, using up more of its hydrogen and helium fuel to maintain its fusion reactor at its core. This in turn increases its brightness by 1 per cent.

1.75 BILLION YEARS FROM NOW

The Sun has grown to such an extent that Earth is no longer habitable for life. Just prior to this time, extremely hardy lifeforms will survive inside caves and under the oceans. And a good meal may be hard to come by. Expect tough predators to emerge from this bunch.

However, eventually the oceans will no longer exist. They will have boiled away under the heat of the Sun and any remaining methane gas. The plant life we have protected for so long and allowed nature to maintain will finally dry up, burn and disappear. The microbes in the soil are killed off and the ground baked hard. Soon all the remaining animals disappear. Perhaps a few tough humans might use technology to continue living on some mountain top in the far northern and/or southern latitudes or protected underground. However, by the time volcanoes start spewing poisonous sulfur and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere where the Earth's crust is thin, such as where the oceans used to be located, humans will leave the planet for good. Give it about 10,000 years after the volcanoes erupt and the Earth will look like the planet Venus in the 21st century with its thick and poisonous gases and high atmospheric pressures.

1 to 5 BILLION YEARS FROM NOW

The Moon's orbit around the Earth is expanding.

When the Moon first appeared in Earth's skies nearly 4.7 billion years ago, it was at least fifteen times larger than what we see today. By the time dinosaurs appeared on Earth, the Moon was at least five times larger. In about another billion years from now, the Moon will be about 4 times smaller. Not so bad you might think, except instead of flying away, the Moon could affect the Earth in a more drastic way. While the Moon orbits the Earth, the Earth's rotational energy is being taken away by the Moon. This means that closer to 5 billion years, although some computer simulations suggest that it could be as early as 1 billion years from now, the Earth rotation will be so slow that it could tidally lock with the Moon. Then nothing will counteract the friction provided by the solar wind. It means the orbit of the Moon will get increasingly more elliptical. Eventually the Moon will make a final orbit to collide with the Earth, thereby destroying all life on this planet. So instead of the Sun destroying our planet, the Moon may well do it for us.

However, the end of the world could come even. Should the Earth's rotation slow to a standstill, Earth's liquid metal core would begin to slow its rotation and solidify. The strength of the Earth's magnetic field will diminish significantly. The intense solar radiation will ionise more of the atmosphere, creating spectacular auroras across much of the planet, both day and night. And eventually, the atmosphere will be thinned out and lose its air pressure as the solar wind pushes away the ionised air molecules into space. Animals will struggle to breathe the rarified air. Plants may survive for longer but this depends on whether fresh water on the Earth is available to support all plant life and can stay in the liquid phase under low atmospheric pressure.

However, 4.5 billion years from now, the Sun will be 40 per cent brighter. Temperatures in the atmosphere will be so hot that oceans will begin to boil away, and any water in the atmosphere will be stripped off into space. In a few million years, Earth will look not so different from Mercury if it isn't going to look like Venus today.

3.75 BILLION YEARS FROM NOW

According to researchers T. J. Cox and Abraham Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, the Milky Way will merge with the much larger Andromeda galaxy, nicknamed Milkdromeda.

Apart from the Milky Way, the Andromeda galaxy is the only other galaxy visible to the naked eye (appearing as a faint fuzzy ball of light in the northern sky in the 21st century). Literally at a stone's throw distance of 2.5 million light years (well, anything you throw in space will travel far if you give it enough time), the Andromeda galaxy is the closest neighbouring galaxy to our own. So close, in fact, that at around this time, the night sky on a planet located in whatever part of the Milky Way will be filled with the spectacular view of the Andromeda galaxy.

In case you didn't know, the Andromeda galaxy is at least twice as big as our Milky Way. This neighbouring galaxy holds more than a trillion stars. Our fairly ordinary-looking spiral-shaped Milky Way contains between 100 billion and 400 billion stars.

The Andromeda galaxy is definitely heading our way with an estimated speed of 110 km (68 miles) per second. Latest information on the sideways motion of the Andromeda galaxy — a notoriously difficult figure to calculate for galactic objects — has been finally measured with reasonable accuracy at the end of May 2012 by the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists are certain a collision will take place at this time and a spectacular one at that too. As Roeland van der Marel, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore that operates Hubble, said.

"Astronomers have tried to measure the sideways motion for over a century. However, this was always unsuccessful because the available techniques were not sufficient to perform the measurement.

For the very first time, we've been able to measure the sideways motion — in astronomy, also known as proper motion — of the Andromeda galaxy using the unique observational capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope."

Dr van der Marel dubs the impending collision as "the big smash-up".

What will happen in the collision?

At about this time, the Andromeda galaxy will have its first close fly-by with our galaxy causing the Milky Way to distort and stretch one or more of its spiral arms out into space and towards the second galaxy. Computer modelling suggests that there is a 50 per cent chance (just another way for the scientists to say that they don't really know, but do know it is one of two opposite and equally probable outcomes considering this event is so far into the future) that what's left of our solar system where the Earth once existed will be dragged into a long "tidal tail" extending out from our galaxy. Or we could stay within the Milky Way depending on which spiral arm we happen to be on at this time. If we are moved further away from the Milky Way by the tidal forces of the other galaxy, our Sun will probably become part of the Andromeda galaxy.

In 5.1 billion years from now, the Andromeda galaxy would have encircled and merged with our Milky Way on the second close encounter forming a much larger galaxy in space.

A merging of the galaxies is considered the better of two scenarios (with the black holes of each galaxy merging to form a single massive black hole). Even so, there is a 12 per cent chance our Sun could be ejected from the newly formed galaxy should it be accelerated to a speed that allows it to reach the escape velocity to break free from the galactic gravitational field. The second scenario, and the worse kind according to the scientists, is that the galaxies could have a direct head-on collision causing all the stars to be flung out into galactic space with no massive central black hole (or super "fast spinning" and highly dense star) to keep enough stars together. Should this happen, one can only hope a highly refined electromagnetic spacecraft will be available for the most advanced civilisations to travel closer to the speed of light and so carry enough people and essential equipment to help permit intergalactic space travel. Or else we will have to learn to live on a young Earth-like planet around a Sun-like star flung out into space and stay there for a long time until the star is within range of another galaxy to make the intergalactic hop possible. Clearly the easier option is to do regular star-hops in a direction that gets us closest to a neighbouring and approaching new galaxy and make the final leap. One would imagine only the most advanced civilisations in the two galaxies (hopefully we will be among them) will survive such journeys to a neighbouring galaxy.

Further details about this merger between the Andromeda galaxy and our own can be found in the research journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society of May 2007.

5 BILLION YEARS FROM NOW

The Sun will expand dramatically in size and turn a distinctly dark orange to almost a reddish colour. Our once reliable long-term stellar partner in sustaining life on Earth with seemingly endless heat and light will finally close the chapter on our planet. It will reach the orbit of the Earth, thereby forever devouring and destroying our humble planet.

Not long after that, the Sun will eject its outer layers of material into space. The ejection of matter will not be as great as the ancient star that created our Sun over 6 billion years ago (actually 11 billion years ago from this moment in time). It is more likely the ejection of matter will create what is known as a ring nebula. The Sun will then turn into a bright white dwarf.

Before the Earth is totally destroyed, hopefully humans will have successfully learned to live with one another, with other great civilisations in the Universe, and in dealing with the asteroids and comets flying through the Universe. Who knows? We may need the help of an alien civilisation somewhere in the Milky Way to find us a new place to live. Actually, this might explain why some aliens could be interested in our genetic material as this would allow better adaptation to the Earth if we are welcoming of them in case their own planets get destroyed. Are we ready and willing with open arms to help other civilisations? If so, then expect the law of Karma to apply here for us at this time.

Or the alternative is simply to become vegetarians and build a big enough electromagnetic spacecraft carrying everything we need, including all the plant-based foods. Our successful efforts in the 20th and 21st century to test the idea of growing plants in space will be seen as essential knowledge at this time

Whatever will happen to us in the future, humans by this time will probably not look anything like we do now unless these people choose to use their technology of genetic engineering and the possible intermingling of humans with other similar-looking humanoid-like alien people in our Milky Way to have a particular set of physical characteristics which we might still describe as "human". Possibly the only thing that will give these future "humans" some connection with us today would probably be in the shape of their bodies (i.e. humanoid form) and the memories recorded on their highly advanced technological storage mediums of where they originally came from (i.e. the Earth).

Don't think humans will look anything like we do in the 21st century. Humans will look more like the aliens by this time.

When the Earth is finally destroyed, humans will likely survive and continue our legacy in some distant part of our Milky Way (or Milkdromeda) galaxy.

100 BILLION YEARS FROM NOW

Researchers T. J. Cox and Abraham Loeb have pushed the boundaries of current scientific thinking yet again to explain what they think will happen to the visible universe. The only thing is, other scientists are also discovering, the grander Universe is acting like God through its paradoxical property. It will throw up an unexpected paradox of its own just to keep scientists busy figuring out which answer is the correct one when we reach the limits of observations. Some 20th century scientists who started early to understand the size and age of the universe tended to be fixated on the finite model for the universe, and probably for good mathematical reasons too. Although whether mathematics realte to reality well enough is another question in itself. Before the finite visible universe came along, Albert Einstein did, at one time, added the cosmological constant to the gravitational field equations of his General Theory of Relativity (and by implications would be compatible with his Unified Field Theory he developed in 1929) in his attempt to imagine an infinite universe. However, observations in the 1930s of distant galaxies and the application of the human imagination to find a suitable interpretation of the evidence is revealing a second and opposite possibility. That is, the visible universe could be finite. And part of the reason for seeing this universe as finite is how we interpreting a mathematical solution acquired from Einstein's gravitational field equations.

Let us assume for the moment that the visible universe is going in the way of 20th century (and some early 21st century) scientists prediction of a finite model.

According to the researchers, the only thing we will watch in our part of the universe at this time will be our Milkomeda, or Milkdromeda) — the new name given for the galaxy formed after the merger of the Andromeda galaxy with the Milky Way — and a few Local Groups. All other galaxies will have drifted far from our position until they disappear from sight.

Huh?

"Yeah, but why?" we hear you ask. A good question. It all boils down to one deceptively simple observation made in the 20th century by one scientist and the interpretation he has given to it and the efforts by so many others subsequent to his published theory in the scientific fraternity to support this interpretation, including finding other evidence to support the same interpretation (but are not expecting an opposing and equally valid interpretation to emerge from this evidence). Little did 20th century scientists know, the Universe is a paradox and, therefore, should always reveal another opposing interpretation based on the same evidence.

So what is that initial evidence that has got so many scientists in the 20th and early 21st century so excited and think they have the definitive answer to the mystery of the age and size of the visible universe? It has to do with the red-shifting of the light emitted by other galaxies. It does not happen with our own Milky Way (obviously since we are moving with it), and certainly not for the Andromeda galaxy (actually it is blue-shifting the light, making it an oddball in the sense that it has been found to be moving towards the Milky Way, but scientists are not expecting other galaxies to be doing the same thing the further we look into the visible universe). So how do scientists interpret this redshifting evidence.?What does this represent?

The initial interpretation given for this redshifting effect by one scientist in the 1930s can be seen in the phenomenon known as the Doppler effect. When nearby objects are moving away from us, the wavelength of sound or light stretches out (just another way of saying the wavelength redshifts because the colour red is at a lower frequency or longer wavelength than blue light). We hear it and see it all the time for any object that moves away from us, so why not the galaxies as well? Light is redshifting for some reason when we look at the light of distant galaxies. So what better explanation that to use the Doppler theory. Makes sense and seems logical to think this way. But there are some problems with the Doppler theory. Most notably, where ever we look in space and the further we look into space, the same amount of redshifting can be observed to take place in all directions. This would give the impression that everything is moving away from us at the same rate of speed and imply that the centre of where all these objects have come from if we look far enough in the past is basically where Earth is located? Huh? Something does not sound right. Or perhaps the centre of the universe began near our solar system? Still, not enough scientists like the idea. It just seems too convenient and coincidental for us to be in the right part of the universe to be considered close to this ancient centre of the universe.

Therefore, to avoid looking like we are at the centre of the universe as the religious people of bygone days once did when they assumed the Earth was at the centre of God's universe and everything else revolved around us, clever mathematics from the General Theory of Relativity have been employed to imagine the Milky Way as sitting on the surface of an expanding balloon, thereby making us like any other ordinary galaxy in the Universe, each sitting on their own balloon surface and everyone is racing away from each other, and not just from us, but never are we at the center of everything. With mathematics providing a seemingly rational solution (but no direct proof to support it), no one is expecting any other answer to come along to shatter such amazing logic and rational thinking. It has to be right, surely?

Well, with the exception of the Andromeda galaxy, no one is expecting, say, another galaxy to be moving fast enough in our direction and close enough to defy this redshifting trend. Wherever the Andromeda galaxy came from (it must have moved in from a great distance many tens of billions of years ago and in apparent defiance of the general direction of all the other galaxies that are moving away from us), the assumption is that the red-shifting of light of every other galaxy in existence must be evidence that they are receding from us. And if that is true, going back in time should reverse this trend, with the galaxies being much closer together at some point in space whose location could be anywhere in this visible universe. A kind of single point of highly condensed energy and mass.

It is amazing how no other 20th century scientist has been willing to question this interpretation.

Furthermore, observations of the light from exploding supernovas in other galaxies are also being interpreted as not only evidence of an expanding universe, but also the claim that the galaxies are receding from us more significantly than previously thought the further away they are located. In other words, scientists now think the expansion of the Universe may actually be accelerating. If this is true, and with no evidence of any other matter or energy, dark or otherwise, that can counteract the expansion of the Universe as far as we can tell, then we are assured by the 20th century scientists that the Universe will expand forever.

If there was no accelerating expansion, the best estimate of the size of the universe based on what we can observe of the visible universe is an age of around 13.8 billion years x 2 (i.e., radius to edge of known visible universe x 2) or 27.6 billion years. Hence the visible universe is roughly 28 billion light years in diameter. Add the accelerating expansion to the mix, and it is calculated to be closer to 93 billion light years in diameter. That is currently the best estimate scientists have as of 2024.

How comforting?

If we accept this current man-made cosmological model for the universe, then as the galaxies accelerate away from us, we will eventually see everything disappear from our view and eventually be sitting in a pitch black Universe except for our new galaxy and a few local groups of stars caught in the gravitational field of our new galaxy. Yet even those things will eventually fall apart. According to the laws of thermodynamics, all highly ordered states eventually return to greater entropy, or a more disordered state, where energy is lost to the surroundings. With nothing to spark our part of the Universe to rebuild and re-order itself, scientists believe that give it enough time, everything will slow down. Objects will move away. Even the atoms will slow down and fall apart. Spin rates of subatomic particles and a lowering of the energy density of space with less radiation will see more and more of the particles disintegrate or explode in a shower of intense radiation before disappearing into the Universe. Everything will eventually disappear including the matter composing our bodies. This is the moment when we enter a very low energy density environment in space where even the self-perpetuating ring-like structure of pure electromagnetic energy to form the fundamental particles of electrons and protons will expand and suddenly lose its ability to stay together. The energy breaks out of the ring and gets thrown out into space as high-frequency electromagnetic radiation and disappears into oblivion.

As radiation disappears into a big enough Universe (i.e., the visible universe and the universe beyond), our entire galaxy will disappear and we will reach a temperature at or very close to absolute zero kelvin — the coldest temperature known to science. This is the point at which all oscillating electromagnetic energy stops oscillating (or at the very least is undetectable and, therefore, questions arise about whether quantum fluctuations can still exist). There will no longer be any radiation flying around (or it will be so small at the quantum level that we can't measure it, so we can only speculate on its continued existence depending on the size of the Universe). Effectively there is no space-time continuum. Not even life will survive the great freezer. The end of the Universe as we know it will be reached at this point. And then death will be inevitable and meaningless like what the L-brain people in the 21st century have been saying all along of complete emptiness and total blackness as we will have nowhere to go. Then the purpose of life would be pointless.

And here we have the grand ending to everything according to the scientists because we think the Universe is the visible universe and is finite and expanding according to our interpretation of the observations, which according to 20th century scientists is the red-shifting effect of light from distant galaxies.

How odd?

But what if there is a different and completely opposite interpretation for the same observations? For a Universe that is paradoxical in its existence, would it be possible to show another future that doesn't have to see us get frozen out of existence and yet still be scientifically feasible and valid?

According to current scientific thinking, the light from distant galaxies is said to be red-shifted. That part is irrefutable as we can clearly see the evidence before our very eyes. The part that is a little dubious is the interpretation of that observation.

It began in 1910 when astronomer V. M. Slipher discovered using a spectrograph at Lowell Observatory, the red-shifting effect of light from virtually every galaxy he observed. After much thinking and careful deliberation over the evidence, he found an idea that seems to fit the evidence: the Doppler theory. As the theory states, when an object is moving towards us, the frequency of light or sound emanating from the object and reaching us will be compressed as if the frequency has gone up, and this is how scientists interpret it. Scientists call this frequency shift as blue-shifted because blue visible light is at a higher frequency (or the wavelength is shorter) compared to, say, red light. On the other hand, if the object is moving away from us, the energy stretches out. The lowering of the frequency is then termed red-shifted (or the wavelength is stretched out). Does this mean galaxies were receeding from our Milky Way and possibly from each other? He wasn't too sure and he was unable to determine the distance of the galaxies from the Milky Way at the time.

Around twenty years later, George Lemaitre, a priest and astronomer, looked at the evidence from Slipher and proposed the theoretical model that would later become what is known as the Big Bang. In other words, with the possibility of God existing before the Big Bang, the universe must have started from an explosion that expanded and continues to this day. Whatever happened before the explosion is anyone's guess, and only God will know the answer. To this priest, this made sense. The story of Genesis in the Bible attempts to give the universe a beginning and something had to light the match that initiated the expansion of the universe. Might as well see it as an act of God. For other scientists, they were not quite ready for his radical idea to enter scientific discourse until the scientific evidence and interpretation was presented to them by another scientist. That scientist turned out to be Dr Hubble. Being someone of reasonable scientific standing, he was at the right place and time to provide this information. In the meantime, the religious idea of a God remains safe and sound for now and religion can continue on its merry way, believing it is still part of the Universe.

Then in 1932 when Dr Edwin Hubble saw the red-shifting evidence in every galaxy he observed (except the Andromeda galaxy). He had the added advantage of determining distance to a number of galaxies. What he saw was the further away the light from a distant galaxy is from his telescope, the more the light has red-shifted. With this aspect out of the way and one that no other scientist can refute, the stage was set to bring enormous controversy to astronomy. As required with any scientific endeavour, Dr Hubble had to find a reasonable scientific explanation for what he observed.

After hearing of Lemaitre's radical idea. it seemed logical for Hubble at the time to interpret the observation as probably the galaxies moving away from us because there was a time when everything was close together and some kind of sudden expansion, potentially an explosion, took place.

Sadly, Hubble did not, at the time, credit Slipher for his crucial work.

At last, Dr Hubble had the standing in the scientific community to present the idea and his interpretation of the observations in a more scientifically acceptable way. And ever since then, scientists have been gathering more evidence to support the Big Bang theory, but never against it for some reason, which is at odds for the scientific method. We should be looking for evidence and find new interpretations to question the original position, shouldn't we? Try to disprove the original theory as they say.

As for the religious leaders in Christianity, they must be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect that the story of Genesis in the Bible has to be correct. In which case, religious knowledge is vindicated too. Everything has a happy ending (except it isn't in the far enough future when we get frozen out of existence. So where is God in all of this?).

As with any new explanation, it is not without a few teething problems. The biggest headache at the time was how the theory reeked of the idea that we must be sitting at the centre of the universe as if God had given us the front seat to the grand show of the universe. Of course, scientists loathe such a suggestion. Surely we cannot be that special by being at the centre of everything? It sounds a little too convenient.

Then, Einstein came along with his General Theory of Relativity. Thanks to his theory, he predicted a kind of stretching of the fabric of space-time for the universe. and when you choose a point on this fabric, anything else positioned on this fabric away from this point will appear to be moving away from us. How interesting? Scientists now have a new tool to re-interpret this expansion of the universe idea. Using appropriate mathematics, we can imagine our Milky Way as like sitting on the surface of an expanding balloon. No need to worry about us being at the centre of the universe. While the balloon expands, everything else around us can appear to move away from us, but the center need not have to be located where we are. Basically everything is moving away from each other, including us. At last, the problem of us being at the centre of the universe seems to have been solved. The only exception to this idea is that the Andromeda galaxy is approaching the Milky Way, not moving away from us. But this is thought to be because the galaxy is close enough and moving fast enough for Earth-based astronomers to observe a blue-shift in the light from this neighbouring galaxy. It is probably the only anomaly scientists can observe, so everything else should be fine, right?

So, does this mean at last that we have the answer!

Or do we?

The Andromeda galaxy is the unusual exception to the "expanding universe" rule only because it is travelling fast enough in our direction and close enough to us (or our Milky Way) to make the reading of an approaching galaxy possible. But so far, scientists are not worried about this, and is certainly not expecting more distant galaxies to be moving in our direction.

Nevertheless, what if the interpretation made by Dr Hubble is completely wrong? What if there is another way to look at the same evidence? Or, to put it simply, is it possible for this red-shifting effect to be masking another phenomena, just as common as the Doppler effect?

This is the thing. As any rational scientist would logically do, there is a tendency to connect the dots if it seems obvious and has a natural progression or can be extrapolated, assuming the interpretation was right in the first place. This is fine in most cases, except we are dealing with a paradox of the Universe. Something that Dr Hubble had not considered back in his time. Hubble logically assumed a single "straight-line" answer for the Universe based on what others have seen and said was their interpretation. He just joined the dots more firmly after establishing the distance between galaxies.

But what if the interpretation from Slipher was wrong, or not quite the complete answer?

As an example, scientists know that in quantum theory, the collision of radiation with a solid particle, such as an electron, causes the frequency of the radiation to red-shift by a certain amount depending on how direct the collision has been. This is a familiar observation to scientists of the 20th century known as the Compton effect. Yet remarkably no scientist has dared to consider this simple, but alternative, explanation for the red-shifting effect of light from distant galaxies. Why not? What's wrong with, say, radiation from the galaxies colliding with other radiation in space to create the same familiar red-shifting effect? It was Albert Einstein who made the decision when he developed his light quanta concept and later used to create his Unified Field Theory to see light as like any other ordinary matter. Not only can light move uncharged matter, it can also generate a gravitational field of its own. So, when radiation collides with other radiation, it is like an electron being hit by another piece of solid matter. Radiation really is ordinary matter in every sense of the word. And as a result, some energy has to be dissipated. When energy dissipates, what remains is radiation of a lower frequency. Radiation never slows down like ordinary matter, it stretches its wavelength in the face of energy loss. Well, that is exactly what happens in the red-shifting effect. The frequency goes down, or the wavelength stretches. Now leaving aside what is the gravitational field after Einstein realised its inextricable link to the electromagnetic field according to his Unified Field Theory, we can at least appreciate why Einstein thought radiation, or light in its most general sense, is no different from ordinary matter. We know light behaves in a classical Newtonian sense like ordinary matter because experiments have proven time and time again this particle-like effect of radiation in moving uncharged matter, including itself. More amazingly, light can bend in a gravitational field just like a tennis ball can bend in flight when thrown through the air. And the frequency of the light after bending is not exactly the same. It is redshifted! No one disputes it, not even the scientists. Einstein knew radiation should behave just like ordinary matter. The only slight difference is that light never slows down. It always travels at the highest speed possible as dictated by the density of radiation in space. The only way light can lose energy is not by slowing down, but by red-shifting. Amazing.

Therefore, collision of radiation with other radiation in space, no matter the frequency it initially starts off with, is expected to create a tiny amount of redshifting. And given the ubiquitous nature of this radiation in space, every collision will help to increase the redshifting effect. The only question is, is this redshifting "negligible", or significant enough after enough collisions to cause the light on reaching the Earth to explain what we are seeing in the light of distant galaxies? Certainly, there is plenty of radiation is space, and has been described as like we are living in an ocean of radiation. There is no shortage of energy to be found here. Furthermore, the higher the frequency, the more light redshifts because at higher frequencies, radiation behaves more like solid matter. And the more solid this matter is, the more it is losing energy and changing direction on impact with other matter (including radiation). Under no circumstances is the frequency so low that no redshifting can take place. The redshifting effect is never zero. Radiation always red-shifts when colliding with other radiation, and it is a cumulative effect. No matter how "negligible" at low frequencies it might seem, the redshifting effect is there all the time and keeps adding up with each collision that takes place. So the question we should be asking is, why should we ignore this Compton effect leading to a red-shifting of light from distant galaxies when light can collide with other light in space to create this effect? It would certainly explain why more distant galaxies appear to have a more red-shifted light. It is simply because radiation has to punch its way through more of space with all that radiation, thereby dissipating more of its energy. It seems logical that light would red-shift even more the further a galaxy is from us.

The process is not unlike the way radiation coming out of the core of the Sun will make countless collisions with other particles, including electrons, the nuclei of various different atoms, and other radiation. When the radiation finally reaches the surface of the Sun after millions of years, the radiation has been significantly red-shifted into the lower frequencies. That is how we get the heat, visible light and ultraviolet rays from the Sun. Yet this very same process is happening all the time, albeit to a lesser degree throughout space. As light travels the immense distances between galaxies, it is constantly losing energy. Space has energy like a star has energy. And while each photon has the inherent ability to act like ordinary matter (i.e., a particle) by pushing and colliding with the photons coming off distant galaxies, we should expect a loss in some of its energy.

There is no way of getting around this.

To see it in another way, imagine the light from the distant galaxy is like a stone thrown at the center of a great big pond in order to create a wave disturbance on its surface. The extra energy absorbed by the water molecules at the source of the impact by the stone is slowly lost to the surroundings (i.e., other water molecules) as the energy travels through the water and at the same time pushes some of the water with it. As more and more energy is lost to the surroundings, the amplitude of the wave disturbance reduces and stretches out. By the time the wave has travelled enough of a distance from the source, you may find it hard to detect that there had been a disturbance in the pond unless you look very carefully. Well, guess what? The same thing could be happening with light in space as we speak. A light disturbance such as a million suns in a galaxy, or a supernova explosion, can act as the source. It is the stone in the pond. But give it enough distance and you should expect the amplitude of the oscillating electromagnetic wave from this source to diminish as it loses energy to the surroundings.

In that case, if this new explanation to support the same observation is just as reasonable as the Doppler effect suggested by Dr Hubble, how certain can we be that the red-shifting effect of light from distant galaxies is not caused by countless collisions of light with itself as it moves through so-called empty space, and that the galaxies we see are not receding from us, but rather just going about their usual movements in different directions and speed through space?

A question was put to two NASA scientists named Michael Loewenstein and Amy Fredericks about the speed of light and the red-shifting effect of light with other light:

Scientists say the speed of light can be made to slow down when light passes through a dense transparent material. For example, light moves slowly through a diamond, than in glass. Generally this is because the electrons of atoms are temporarily excited by the energy of the light and there is a time delay before the energy is released again. In the vacuum of space, we have some electrons, protons and free moving positively charged particles such as hydrogen and helium. However, the most abundant particle is the photon. Photons are said to be ordinary particles as Einstein believed and can collide with each other, causing light to red-shift, bend etc. Speed of light might be 300,000km/s in this vacuum, but what's the speed in a perfect vacuum containing no radiation?

In response to this question, Loewenstein said:

Thank you for your question. The constant that is usually referred to as the speed of light *is* the speed of light in a vacuum. As you note, the Universe is not empty, but the chances of a photon colliding with an atom along the way is exceedingly small. Photons are much more numerous (by more than a factor of a billion), but the probability of interaction between two photons is very small unless the photon energies are much higher than is the case for those contributing to the cosmic microwave photon background. For that reason the actual speed of light in the universe is indistinguishable from that in a vacuum.

Really, is it so negligible? Or is this just another way for the scientist to say, "We don't think so, but we are not sure. And we haven't tried performing some calculations yet to find out, or find a way to carry out an experiment to determine whether our assumption is correct. So best to assume it is negligible.".

Loewenstein is quick to be dismissive of this alternative theory for the redshifting effect mainly because at low frequencies (or photon energies), the probability of interaction is thought to be exceedingly small (but not zero, which is precisely what it means when scientists say it is "negligible")) unless the photon energies are much higher. At high frequencies (or high photon energies) the effects of such interactions are observable (e.g., Brodsky, Stanley J., "Photon-Photon Collisions — Past and Future". November 2005. SLAC-PUB-11581, downloadable from https://www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi-wrap /getdoc/slac-pub-11581.pdf). However, the probability of such interactions occurring in the natural "vacuum of space" (which we know is not a true vacuum while the radiation exists) above the Earth's atmosphere is low due to the number of these high energy photons in the cosmic microwave photon background. Even if the volume of space for photons to travel through is made very large, such as the distances between galaxies, the effects of such interactions with both low and high frequency photons in space resulting in light bending and loss of energy allegedly do not multiply the effects over time with each successful interaction. It stays negligible according to Loewenstein by the time light from a distant galaxy reaches our instruments. Hmm. Are we sure about this?

Then we find the response for the speed of light. The assumption made by Loewenstein is that energy density does not change the speed of light. Not so according to the following article:

Light hits near infinite speed in silver-coated glass
17:33 07 January 2013 by Jeff Hecht

A nano-sized bar of glass encased in silver allows visible light to pass through at near infinite speed. The technique may spur advances in optical computing.

Metamaterials are synthetic materials with properties not found in nature. Metal and glass have been combined in previous metamaterials to bend light backwards or to make invisibility cloaks. These materials achieve their bizarre effects by manipulating the refractive index, a measure of how much a substance alters light's course and speed.

In a vacuum the refractive index is 1, and the speed of light cannot break Einstein's universal limit of 300,000 kilometres per second. Normal materials have positive indexes, and they transmit at the speed of light in a vacuum divided by their refractive index. Ordinary glass, for instance, has an index of about 1.5, so light moves through it at about 200,000 kilometres per second.

No threat to Einstein

The new material contains a nano-scale structure that guides light waves through the metal-coated glass. It is the first with a refractive index below 0.1, which means that light passes through it at almost infinite speed, says Albert Polman at the FOM Institute AMOLF in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. But the speed of light has not, technically, been broken. The wave is moving quickly, but its "group velocity" – the speed at which information is travelling – is near zero.

As a feat of pure research, Polman's group did a great job in demonstrating the exotic features of low-index materials, says Wenshan Cai of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the work.(New Scientist, 9 January 2013.)

How interesting? Speed of light does change in space and quite significantly too with any variation in the energy density of space. Perhaps we should not be surprised by this discovery? We are told by astronomers that when light bends in space near the Sun's domain, the higher energy density of space caused by the presence of the gravitational field of the Sun and the extra energy from space congregating around the Sun helps to slow down the speed of light. As soon as light stops bending and travels through the normal energy density of space, light speeds up to the standard 300,000 km/s figure.

Clearly energy density of space controls the speed of light.

What is important are the following points:

1. Local invariance: Each observer always measures light at their own invariant speed depending on the density of mass-energy they are in when the measurement is taken. At high speeds, the frame of reference is such that the energy density has changed to permit the observer to reach the physical distances more quickly along the direction of motion at a higher speed than for an observer on Earth watching the journey from a distance through a different density of mass-energy. The reason you are getting to your destination quicker at relativistic speeds is not because of length contraction when observing and measuring distances in this moving frame of reference. This is more an optical illusion created by light passing through this different mass-energy density environments, causing light to arrive at different speeds and allowing you to see what's ahead at a perceived shorter distance. However, the physical distance you must travel must always remain the same.
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2. Comparison across environments: When the Earth observer compares his own value of the speed of light with the moving observer’s, the values differ because each is tied to their own frame of reference containing a different density of mass-energy in which they are travelling or immersed in.
3. Lower density regions: In a region of reduced mass‑energy density, traversal times are shorter relative to the same physical distance because the observer is moving faster through this region. That means the moving observer’s computed value of the speed of light, or the speed of his spacecraft, when travelling through the same physical distance (not the perceived and observed length contraction when measuring the distances along the direction of motion) comes out numerically higher than the Earth observer’s own value.
4. Consistency: Neither observer ever exceeds their own local measurement of the speed of light. The difference only appears when values are compared across frames of reference as the information about this numerical value travels through different densities of mass-energy in space.

Fortunately there are some scientists today who are aware of this possibility. In that case, what does this mean for the red-shifting effect of light through photon-to-photon collisions? Can we truly be certain that no multiplying effects with each supposedly imperceptible collision will occur to make this "redshifting" detectable at distances beyond a certain point so as to challenge the "expansion of the universe" or "Big Bang" theory?

Here reveals the great paradox of the Universe, and how little we know of what is happening.

Think of the new interpretation as not unlike the way two mirrors facing each other can cause light to bounce back and forth. With each collision with the electrons in the atoms making up the mirrors, not to mention the presence of other radiation and air molecules between the mirrors, eventually the reflected radiation going back and forth will naturally red-shift until the frequency falls below the visible range. Then everything is pitch black right at the centre of the mirrors. The same happens when you put the mirrors in space. The stars reflected off each mirror on each other eventually causes the light to diminish to nothing, and will be pitch black. This is essentially a red-shifting effect. Extend the distance between the mirrors to the edge of the visible universe, and the blackness of the Universe can be explained in the same way, especially while radiation in space exists.

If we don't do the necessary experiments to test this alternative idea out, then we must assume the Universe started from a Big Bang. It is an idea that has got Christian religious leaders all warm and fuzzy inside to the point where they are willing to jump onto the bandwagon of scientific thinking and support the Big Bang. Well, the idea smacks of creationism in every sense of the word. Let's face it, how could the Universe appear out of nothing? What do we mean by nothing? Sure, we have some scientists willing to say that nothing is really just a bunch of quantum fluctuations in space where the changing and dynamic nature of it over time can potentially create particles out of what appears to be nothing. It means that there can always be some energy present at a level that we can't detect and suddenly appear under the right conditions to form solid matter. We just don't know it exists. This is a bit like how a photon can appear out of nothing. It oscillates and when the energy crosses the zero energy point, the photon technically does not exist. But then suddenly the energy materialises again and, lo and behold, at maximum energy the photon reappears almost like magic (or as if God had intervened to help create the matter out of nothing, as religious leaders would like to think). If photons can do that, why not the Universe as well? It all comes down to what is going on in those mysterious quantum fluctuations.

Sounds perfectly fine for scientists to imagine the Universe as having formed out of nothing. Either that, or we have to believe in God, much to the delight of the Christian religious leaders, but not so for the scientists.

Or the likely reality is that science really has no idea what or how the Big Bang occurred. It uses observational evidence and forms a theoretical model that seems to explain what is seen and believe to have been seen in the past, except this only works up to a certain point in the universe's history. Then the model fails to work up to a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. After that, the model kind of explains the universe we see today and seems logical and sensible, or so scientists think. As for what happened before this time and what was in the grander Universe, we have no observations and thus no theory to explain what came before. Not even mathematics can tell us precise what could have happened before other than to imagine a quantum universe where anything could happen. Things materialising out of nothing could still be a reality. Of course, all this could be a matter of speculation.

Unfortunately, there is a big problem for the Big Bang theory, especially in regards to the grander Universe comprising of both the visible universe we can observe with our eyes and instruments, and the invisible part beyond the visible boundary, which scientists have no idea about. Just prior to the Big Bang, the entire Universe must have been compressed into a point or region of space. However, any effort by some mechanism to achieve this would mean that we would have a perfect vacuum surrounding this region. Remember, we are talking about the entire Universe, whether it is infinite in size or not. All matter and energy has to be brought together into a localised region just prior to the Big Bang. Unfortunately, any such effort would be tantamount to saying that what is left outside the region must be a true vacuum. No mass, no energy, and no radiation. The perfect vacuum where absolutely no energy exists — not even those pesky little quantum fluctuations. We are talking about complete nothingness. But here lies the problem. How can we have a perfect vacuum? We know a perfect vacuum is the kind of thing we see when scientists use simplistic mathematical equations. That is good and fine on paper, and hopefully the results closely relate to reality in most situations. However, there are times when mathematics do not match reality. A classic case is, before and at the precise moment, of the Big Bang. Why? It is because the real Universe will never allow any region of space to have a perfect vacuum. It is impossible to achieve. If we need evidence of this, just ask yourself, "Why is it that scientists can never reach absolute zero kelvin?" As we know, absolute zero kelvin means no radiation of any kind, not even the presence of other particles that could emit radiation by any means. This has to represent the perfect vacuum. Yet no matter how hard we try, no scientist can ever reach this perfect vacuum no matter how much energy we apply to extract the electromagnetic energy from this given region. Something in the universe is pushing the energy back in as quickly as we try to remove it.

That means any energy in the localised thing making up our visible universe cannot stay together in a finite form. Energy must be brought out to fill the perfect vacuum of space. Under the Unified Field Theory, the gravitational field is considered the electromagnetic field when oscillating. So either the energy of the universe is held together gravitationally by pulling in everything to a ball, or there must be radiation of the ball pushing on it to keep it together But if Einstein is right and the gravitational field cannot exist without the oscillating electromagnetic field (or radiation), then no radiation in a perfect vacuum cannot produce a gravitational field to pull in matter, and no radiation can push on the ball of energy. It becomes an impossibility for the visible universe to have ever become finite and compressed into any ball-like structure representing our Universe. If it tries to, the external part of space surrounding this energy will pull apart or force the energy out instantaneously, especially in a perfect vacuum. In a perfect vacuum, instantaneous is very quick. Faster than a blink of an eye. So quick that it is mathematically impossible to have matter compressed into anything with a perfect vacuum around it for a time frame that is effectively so close to zero that it might as well be zero. Zero time means there can be no finite and localised ball of energy for our universe to exist. Even if we could entertain ourselves on this impossibility, the energy coming out of this localised region representing our universe would travel at infinite speeds in a perfect vacuum. And infinite speeds is very fast. Faster than you can say, "OMG!". So fast, in fact, that the time frame is effectively zero mathematically speaking. In which case the visible universe has already become the Universe and has filled everything to an infinite distance. But this implies what we are observing in the visible universe is not the limit. The universe goes beyond what we can see. The visible universe extends to wherever the edge of the grander Universe is, but how far? Is there a limit or boundary to the Universe? No one knows. All we know is that the visible universe cannot be finite to the distance of how far scientists can observe. It must go beyond our physical limits of observation.

So, how do we know the visible universe began, say, 96 billion years ago and underwent a Big Bang? We don't. Scientists interpret the evidence one way and use mathematics to make an educated guess, but the reality is that no one knows for sure.

So how could all of the energy in the universe have started from a specified region of space when everything around it is a perfect vacuum? The universe will not allow for it. The mass and energy of the universe must immediately and instantaneously fill the grander Universe to what we see today.

One of the physical laws of the Universe we cannot violate is "never create a perfect vacuum". It does not exist in reality (on paper using mathematics might be fine, but not in the real world) and we must face this fact as a fundamental limitation of living in this physical Universe. It doesn't matter how dense the walls of the container might be or how much energy in the Universe we throw at the experiment to force the energy out of a certain volume of space, radiation will always seep back into the region as quickly as we pump it out thereby preventing it from ever reaching absolute zero kelvin, and hence a perfect vacuum. Mathematically we can create it and imagine what happens in this perfect Universe using formulas (such as Newtonian equations, which predict infinite speeds of any solid matter etc.), but not in reality. Never can you do the same in the real Universe we live in. Energy must always fill the void making up the Universe, and does so to a certain average energy density (something that appears not to change over time as far as we can tell).

Therefore, not even the biggest black hole in the Universe can survive for an instant by keeping its energy to itself in the presence of a perfect vacuum around it. It will be instantly split apart and made to cover the entire Universe. In that case, the Big Bang could never have occurred in the real Universe. Not even for an infinitesimal time frame. The energy and all the particles would never have compressed in the first place to create any kind of perfect vacuum surrounding it. Any attempt to do so would see the Universe extract the energy and push it out to fill the Universe as quickly as it tries to compress itself. In a perfect vacuum, this pushing and filling of the Universe will be instantaneous. Remember, the speed of light in a perfect vacuum is infinite. Mass and energy had to be spread out everywhere and instantaneously knowing the speed of light is infinite in a perfect vacuum.

In recent times, scientists try to get around this thorny problem of compressed energy in a perfect vacuum by saying a gentle Big Bang occurred in the sense that there must have been some energy in the Universe and any partial compression of energy in our visible universe emerged at a slower rate. But if the visible universe is accelerating its expansion, whatever is beyond the visible universe has a lower energy density than anywhere in the visible universe and this is what is causing the energy and mass to expand at an accelerated rate. The further out one looks at more distant galaxies the lower the energy density of space to cause the galaxies to race away faster than where we are located. But how far in the Universe does one have to go to reach zero energy density in space? And if there is any chance of having zero energy density, surely the energy and mass would have instantaneously filled the Universe. Then the average energy density that we enjoy in our cosmic neck of the universal woods should be present everywhere we look.

Some scientists have even gone as far as to imagine we are living in a series of little big bangs throughout the Universe and we are part of one that started some 13.8 (or 96) billion years ago. Mathematically, we could potentially have parallel visible universes exploding all around us to ensure a certain amount of energy density is present throughout the Universe. Not zero for our visible universe to sudden expand to become the Universe. But enough for other visible universes to provide some energy density in space to slow the rate of expansion. And as each visible universe expands, so are we. All the visible universes have not yet fully expanded and completely merged with one another in order to explain the galaxies still moving away from us in our visible universe or "bubble", but not so isolated to force our universe to expand instantaneously. We might be in the middle of merging with other expanding visible universe.

Very creative.

Whether the visible universe is expanding gently and thus part of many big bangs or something else, all this suggests that something already existed in the grander Universe to cause this (and even the idea of a God creating this universe out of nothing is looking like it is on shaky ground). Yet the visible universe is accelerating in its expansion. If there is anything else in existence throughout the Universe, it must be at a lower energy density.

Why does one get the feeling that all these ideas are a "dog's breakfast"?

In fact, how do we know for sure without resorting to mathematics? Well, no one can actually prove it. This is the thing.

For all we know, the visible universe could easily have already expanded by now to wherever the edge of the Universe should be (if at all). In which case, any observation of red-shifting would have to represent another phenomena. Surely it cannot be the Doppler effect. Yet all this hasn't stop scientists making more bizarre interpretations of what they can see at the edge of the visible universe.

For example, observations of blobs of light at the edge of the visible universe are being interpreted as the primordial beginnings of the Big Bang. Huh? But what happens if a 21st century scientist comes along and says those blobs are nothing more than heated gases surrounding very distant galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Just because we can't yet resolve those galaxies with our telescopes does not mean they don't exist. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", as Dr Carl Sagan would say.

As a case in point, the James Webb Telescope has already forced the Big Bang theorists to revise where they think the edge of the visible universe is (and hence how old and big the universe is) after noticing how certain blobs of light previously observed in their older Hubble telescope have resolved themselves in the James Webb Telescope as actual galaxies and clusters of galaxies. How interesting? So scientists attempt to look further. They can see more of those mysterious blobs of light at the new edge of the expanded visible universe. The only problem is, what if a more powerful and bigger telescope gets built in space and discovers that these more distant blobs are yet more galaxies already fully formed? Apart from realising the redshifting effect is more extreme the further we look, the question we need to ask is, "Should we continue to keep pushing the boundary thinking the Big Bang started at 98 billion years ago, 500 billion years ago, or even 1000 billion years ago with each successive and bigger new telescope we build in space?" Or, to put it another way, "Where exactly is this official boundary to make us certain we did have a Big Bang (or one of those mini big bangs) and thus the universe is finite?"

This is the fundamental problem of all cosmology — no one really knows, especially at such extremes in distances and how light gets affected when it travels those distances.

In that case, how can you definitively prove which one is true? In other words, how do we know the visible universe is the Universe (i.e., both visible and the grander invisible part we are trying to resolve and observe), or that the Universe is finite and came about from a Big Bang? Or to put it simply, how do we know the visible universe is finite and expanding, or the visible universe is the Universe an is infinite and radiation naturally loses energy in space?

You can't know the answer. We are not a true God. The Universe is meant to be a paradox. It accepts two possible and directly opposing answers and yet both answers are logical and rational. They both fit the same observational evidence, but we don't know enough about this Universe to get to the answer. The only way one can prove which is the answer is to physically visit the edge of the universe instantaneously through a wormhole (an impossibility one might add as this is merely another example of a perfect vacuum to allow solid matter to travel an infinite speeds). Otherwise, scientists are effectively making educated guesses when, in fact, no one knows what is happening.

Cosmology is not all that different from crystal ball gazing when it comes to an answer to the size and age of the Universe. The answer is, Who really knows? And how can we be God to know the answer? The Universe must hide its secrets, and this size and age thing is part of the ultimate mystery we have yet to solve.

All scientists can say at the moment is that we live in a very big and very old place. How big and old is anyone's guess. Finding the truth is difficult (if not impossible) because the visible universe at the extreme of human observations is throwing at us a paradox of two possibilities. The Universe is acting like the paradox we see in the true God (the one that has no true name) according to Eastern mystics. We simply do not have enough evidence to decide which one is the correct answer, and hence the ultimate Truth. We just have to accept two opposite answers until more evidence can be gathered.

So, either we accept one grim possibility from 20th century scientists of how the universe will end and life will be destroyed, or we can accept the opposite 21st century possibility that the universe will probably always be here and so will life as well.

The choice is yours to make.