Spiritual Gates

 by shaun lawton 

 a cascade of bones 

from the deck  

 of the Orizaba have led

me to take steps

 

below the water

 of my life line down 

into the drowned world

 the one of memory 

 where a reminder 

that the repeated 

 waves although 

much the same for us

on down the line 

 when we built a little

step ladder of bones 

 to find our way

 to reach the shores 

of our faces after having 

 turned them away

one time too many 

what else could we say

 heart stopped from 

the endless chord

 of the cables in suspension

 revived from  

then succumbed to

 the echoes of

this fountain's overture 

to our fading song

 

Population Zero Stars

      by  shaun lawton

I liken our species' breathless anticipation over the possibility of extraterrestrial life existing "out there" amid the skein of stars we can see (which represent less than one-millionth of a single percent of the total stars in our galaxy) to be relatively tantamount to the "watched pot never boils" syndrome. 

   Try to think of it this way.  If Population III stars are the oldest among our galaxy, and Population II stars still a little less ancient, and Population I stars (such as our own Sun) are even younger, then there should by all means be a classification of Population 0 stars—even younger than ours. When you consider the extreme distances in our own solar system between the Sun and our planets, and factor in the even more difficult to comprehend distances in between the stars in our far-flung spiral arm of the galaxy, and so on and so forth, it should be an elementary matter to at least be able to understand that these distances far outstretch our ordinary expectations, attuned to the micro-level here on our planet as our perception of them happens to be. We tend to project our own micro-perceptions out onto the macroverse. It's but the slightest fraction of a small wonder we haven't found any indication of extraterrestrial life.  It's a no-brainer, really. 

   All of which is to point out quite frankly that one important reason we haven't yet made ourselves aware of having discovered any signals or so-called evidence of extraterrestrial life in our region of the galaxy may just be due to the fact we are veritably surrounded by an inordinate number of what we should be considering as "Population 0" stars.  

   Think about it. 

Neutron Star 2004 by NASA

War of the Orb

by Shaun Lawton

                                      art by Prince Satyrn




Before our empire's crest of cracks spread out
The grinning armies crooked boned await
With dreams of glory blind and blissful shout
The troops of light stand tall to face the great
Night's iron sledge drops hard on the anvil
Of day as walls of fools advance with shields
Stars disintegrating dance with evil
Fueling fury of frozen eyes that yields
No quarter to the flaxen rows of fear
Swords fall to the ground, golden soldiers frown
Dulled blades rust and goad the gruesome foe's leer
Fresh corpses feed the grasses turning brown
The living fight and drown; the moral here
Proving the dead must gain new souls each round

Return Tomorrow for a poem by

John Shirley

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POPULATION BINARY

     by  shaun lawton 

 Humans have been dwelling around a Population One star for longer than our collective memory can hold. Population Two stars are much older than ours. Therefore, "Population Zero" stars (as an alternative classification) must then include all the yet-to-be-formed or much younger stars, either still developing or in the solar process of preparing to give birth to their respective planetary systems. Its important to keep in mind that all the potential extraterrestrial civilizations out there that SETI has been obsessed with discovering will naturally come to follow in and out of the wake of our own existence. In a world where travel to other stars in search of their possible colonies remains an unreachable dream or a challenging proposition to say the least, there may linger a contiguous chance of contact with systems whose civilizations have yet to manifest. The chances of our making first contact would then involve the matter of our continuing to survive as an advanced civilization for long enough to do so; an interval in time that may yet remain beyond our ability to withstand.

   A Population Zero Star would be the type, super rich in metals and requisite materials, that will eventually spawn a good brood of exoplanets that might one day host their own civilizations or life-forms. The systems we've discovered with exoplanets could very well qualify as Population Zero stars according to this line of reasoning. (Remember that here and now, on Earth, we circle about a Population One Star.) Do the math. The best we might do toward establishing some form of contact with a possible extraterrestrial civilization or pristine alien ecology, in my view, would be to send a remote probe to that system that will monitor its ongoing development. Of course the main problem with that would be the human race may not exist long enough to finish receiving the necessary feedback. If we did manage to survive that long, by the time that life form's monitored assessment appeared on our radar, they'd be mere hatchlings in contrast to our far more ancient (more likely extinct) species. They would be newly emergent beings from nonexistence into becoming their very own Population One star life forms. Perhaps in a sort of "dream-time"—communication with this sentience may be possible. For example, something of our essence may be imprinted upon them if we were to succeed in contacting them somehow through dreaming. Who knows? There's a lot about the nature of dreaming we still have to learn about. An extraterrestrial society might end up becoming somewhat familiar with us by that method. We could try to devote ourselves to this long distance dream communication. By virtue of a sort of illimitable dream-meditation we might succeed at broadcasting across the timeline—and for all we know, might be capable of planting a suggestion into their consciousness. Again, who knows? Perhaps this idea may only work one way. They might discover our presence as long-vanished ghosts that left post-hypnotic suggestions of our existence in their dreams. We might haunt them yet. Think about what it must really mean to be haunted.

   The point which remains as we move along these mysteriously configured celestial pathways together (our potential distant solar neighbors and ourselves) shows how we're separated by aspect of space and time as we somehow manage to each exist independently disassociated from one another. Our very electromagnetic nature may keep us discrete from one another, rather than any perceived limitation of our nurtured capabilities. Being surrounded every moment by the enigmatic void may incur both terror and wonder if pondered over long enough. On the other hand, by the same token, there may also not be that much substance to this apparently tangible mass of our bodies, minds, and lives. Existence: what, exactly, does it appear to be, really? There's the rub: appearance must be relegated to that which we perceive. It may just as easily turn out to be that we aren't merely scaled-down sentient bipeds in a colossal universe, so much as it may end up that we're aspects of the entire cosmos itself experiencing a case of confused identity.

   We may not necessarily be able to engage in a practical discussion about things such as interstellar travel and the search for extraterrestrial life for the fundamental reason that our existence itself—irregardless of how we've chosen to define it—may more realistically equate to being the totality of the cosmos and even potentially the surrounding void itself (rather than our limited viewpoint or any single one of its microscopic and seemingly separate components). As we continue to unpack the quantum information still streaming in at our disposal, the strange dynamic of our position within the spacetime continuum in relation to the remainder of our sprawling cosmos should crystallize in our minds and gain more focus over time. After all, both Einstein and Minkowsky helped lead us to understand that space and time are part of a singular continuum.

   Toward this end I have enjoyed ruminating over various strange notions, such as my Law of Inversion with its ties in counter-intuition (which posits that truth, being necessarily a relative matter, may often be closer to the opposite of what we generally perceive it to be). My POPULATION BINARY hypothesis aims to both help point the way towards resolving the Fermi Paradox as well as to try and provide a more realistic designation for the whereabouts of potential extraterrestrial civilizations or ecologies. Taking relativity into account, if alien wildlife were to appear not concurrent but before and after us in time, then by definition all the old Population Two stars' and even older Population Three stars' respective life-forms would've gone extinct long before our own inception here, leaving stars forming in the wake directly after us which could conceivably become hosts to extraterrestrial civilizations or life-forms, thus neatly rendering their designation as "Population Zero" stars—solar systems that are yet to complete their process of bearing exoplanets for the cultivation of a future progeny. There may not be any stars alongside us. 

What A Quantum Computer Looks Like

by  shaun lawton 

a)the universe b)a galaxy c)our solar system d)Earth
you must choose but choose wisely or the computer
ends up using you we already built the thing
in the future in the first place its how we store
information after all's said and done here now

Me: The real me: Who What Am I Are We

by shaun lawton

Me: The real me: Who What Am I Are We: The real me: Who What Am I Are We : Who am I if not the sum of my parts Who are we if not the total sum of our parts What am I if not c...

Ending Fast

     

     "You eat your sandwich, then you can have more juice." 
     Nothing can be said that's too prepared for the human race. 
     To be met with a sullen stare just three and a half years old.
     The primordial depths roil in silence underneath our skin. 
     Let us descend to the secret underworld of our microbiota and mycobiome. 
     Here we undergo a journey not unlike the one we operate in the exterior world.