Andy Lloyd's Dark Star Blog 06, September 2013

Andy Lloyd's Dark Star Blog

Blog 06 (September 2013)

Life Started on Mars?

When I was a graduate chemistry student at UCSD, I toyed with the idea of working for Dr Stanley Miller. In his younger days, he had undertaken experiments looking into how the building blocks of life had first formed from the primordial soup prevalent on the early Earth. He and colleague Harold Urey collected various primordial chemicals together in large flasks and zapped them with electricity back in 1953 (1).

Lo and behold, organic soup of a rather basic kind emerged, and his experiments were lauded across the world. But that was about as far as things went - further, more complex experiments over the next 30 years failed to take this 'evolution-in-a-test-tube' approach much further, and it became clear that the next stages of complex organic chemical formation were rather more complex than these initial successes had implied. As a result, I did not ask to study under Dr Miller, which was moot anyway as personal circumstances made me step back into the real world shortly afterwards!

Even now, over twenty years on from my chemistry days, there remain gaps in our understanding about the mechanism whereby RNA was originally synthesised naturally - RNA being the first genetic molecule needed to kick-start the emergence of life. There are two paradoxes about early emergence of life on Earth that puzzle scientists, and recent findings suggest that the answer to these problems may lie on the Red Planet:

"The first is dubbed by Professor [Steven] Benner [of the Westheimer Institute for Science and Technology] as the 'tar paradox'. All living things are made of organic matter, but if you add energy such as heat or light to organic molecules and leave them to themselves, they don't create life. Instead, they turn into something more like tar, oil or asphalt.

""Certain elements seem able to control the propensity of organic materials to turn into tar, particularly boron and molybdenum, so we believe that minerals containing both were fundamental to life first starting," says Professor Benner. "Analysis of a Martian meteorite recently showed that there was boron on Mars; we now believe that the oxidized form of molybdenum was there too."

"The second paradox is that life would have struggled to start on the early Earth because it was likely to have been totally covered by water. Not only would this have prevented sufficient concentrations of boron forming – it's currently only found in very dry places like Death Valley – but water is corrosive to RNA, which scientists believe was the first genetic molecule to appear. Although there was water on Mars, it covered much smaller areas than on early Earth.

""The evidence seems to be building that we are actually all Martians; that life started on Mars and came to Earth on a rock," says Professor Benner." (2)

Apart from being rather fascinating in itself, there are two aspects to this that I'd like to highlight with respect to the early solar system. Firstly, that life may have emerged on another world, itself rocked by catastrophe sometime in its past. The concept of Panspermia seems to be gaining ground, as well as life's intimate connection with catastrophe.

Secondly, that scientists think that the early Earth was probably completely covered in water. This is one of Zecharia Sitchin's claims for the early Earth, made back in 1976. He argued that the precursor to Earth was a watery world, which was associated with the mythical monster Tiamat by the Babylonians. That world, initially located between Mars and Jupiter, was pummelled by one of the moons of the rogue planet Marduk (my Dark Star) during an early incursion through the solar system. The resultant catastrophe shifted a much-diminished Earth into an orbit closer to the Sun, and rendered what debris remained as the Asteroid Belt. It would appear that Earth's early status as a watery world has now been confirmed!

2021 Update: New evidence suggests that the complexity of the organic materials which were synthesised during the Miller Urey experiment was likely aided by the catalytic action of the borosilicate glass used to make the boiling flasks. It is thought that this glass mimicked similar catalytic effects in the Earth's crust, where silicates are widely available (3)

Written by Andy Lloyd, 2nd September 2013

1) The Miller Urey Experiment"

windows2universe.org article

2) "We may all be Martians: New research supports theory that life started on Mars" 28 August 2013

3) Jason Arunn Murugesu “Glass flask catalysed famous Miller-Urey origin-of-life experiment” 25 October 2021

Author Steve Pearse sent me a copy of his book 'Set Your Phaser to Stun' to review. It's full of astronomical information and technical data about the stars in our solar neighbourhood, and highlights his analysis of the correct positioning of the star map drawn by abductee Betty Hill. Anyone who wants to read an in-depth discussion of the book itself can refer to my review.

Despite many problems I encountered with the way the book had been written and presented, at the core of the book was a pretty solid piece of research. Pearse's critique of Marjorie Fish's analysis was very strong. The data which she had relied upon to build her 3D model of the solar stellar neighbourhood had changed substantially since the 1970s, as more powerful telescopes had come online in the Southern Hemisphere. This meant that her map was now distorted to the point where it no longer works.

Additionally, it is now recognised by scientists that for stars to produce useful, potentially life-supporting planets they need to have a certain degree of 'metallicity'. That is, the elemental composition of the star heavier than mere hydrogen and helium must reach a certain threshold to allow life-supporting rocky planets to form in their proto-planetary disks. The problem for the Fish model is that her favoured stars, Zeta Reticuli 1 and 2 (which are older, Sun-like stars) are now understood to have very poor metallicities. As a result, it is unlikely that they will be found to harbour habitable worlds in their systems.

Now, that's not cast in stone, but taken in conjunction with the positional changes of the neighbourhood stars in astrometric charts, the case for Zeta Reticuli seems increasingly problematic. Steve Pearse argues that many of the well-known researchers associated with the Hill Abduction case should be aware of these issues, yet they continue to adhere to the Fish model as proof of the reality of the abduction event. He offers a new solution which has its merits (right), although I think it's fair to say that the case is really blown wide open. Still, his arguments seem strong enough to contemplate a new world for those pesky ETs, the Greys.

It is well known that ancient Egypt was unified under one King, Menes, for the first time around 3000BCE. Until very recently it was thought that the land along the Nile had been originally settled by farmers about 1000 years before that. As someone interested in the ideas of author Zecharia Sitchin, I always found it curious that Egypt's chronology did not fit closer with the return of the planet Nibiru to our skies, which Sitchin claimed to have occurred around 3760BCE. This appears to be an remarkably important date, marking the beginning of the Nippur calendar and the Jewish count of days. So, if this date was so significant across the entire Levant region, then why wasn't the chronology of early ancient Egypt also configured along the same lines? It's a puzzle I have often pondered over. Fortunately, new radiocarbon dating work, performed by scientists from the University of Cambridge, has lead to a rethink which presents us with just such an alignment:

"Until now, the chronology of the earliest days of Egypt has been based on rough estimates. With no written records from this very early period, a timeline has been based on the evolving styles of ceramics unearthed from human burial sites.

"Now though, scientists have used radiocarbon dating of excavated hair, bones and plants, with established archaeological evidence and computer models to pinpoint when the ancient state came into existence. Previous records suggested the pre-Dynastic period, a time when early groups began to settle along the Nile and farm the land, began in 4000BC. But the new analysis revealed this process started later, between 3700 or 3600BC." (1)

For Egyptologists, this presents new problems, because the gap between the initial inhabitation of Egypt - by groups who farmed the land along the Nile - as indicated by this scientific work, and the acknowledged dates for the unification of Egypt is really rather short; at just several hundred years. By comparison, a similar evolution from agriculture to civilisation occurred over a much longer time period in Mesopotamia. So why was there such an accelerated race to civilisation in Egypt during this period?

Again, from a Sitchinite perspective, this may tie in with the return of the planet of the gods, Nibiru. Sitchin argued that the periodic return of Nibiru, which he configures with the Sumerian Shar of 3600 years, fitted with bursts of acceleration in human development:

"Not only the presence of the Nefilim but also the periodic arrivals of the Twelfth Planet in Earth's vicinity seem to lie behind the three crucial phases on Man's post-Diluvial civilization: agriculture, circa 11,000 B.C., the Neolithic culture, circa 7500 B.C., and the sudden civilization of 3800 B.C. [in Mesopotamia] took place at intervals of 3,600 years. It appears that the Nefilim, passing knowledge to Man in measured doses, did so in intervals matching periodic returns of the Twelfth Planet to Earth's vicinity." (2)

In the case of Egypt, does this argument also apply to the settling and emergence of agriculture along the river Nile, leading to a speedy development towards the high civilisation of the first Egyptian Dynasties? It would make sense, perhaps adding further credibility to the concept that something remarkable occurred around 3750BCE.

I was recently copied in on correspondence from leading author Neil Freer about the existence of Nibiru/Planet X (1), which many readers might find of interest. It highlights the duality of Sitchinite thinking between the Dark Star Theory versus fears of an in-coming Planet X body:

I wrote back to Mr Freer to highlight the fact that the 1983 press releases which he spoke about mentioned a Jupiter-sized planet, which could just as easily be describing a sub-brown dwarf (which are actually smaller than Jupiter, due to a quirk in physics I explain in 'Dark Star'). I urged him to have an open mind about the nature of Nibiru, and what it might turn out to be. Astronomy and planetary science has made many new discoveries since the early nineties, many of which are pertinent to these issues. I'm sorry to say that he did not reply to me.

It seems to me that the debate around Nibiru is becoming increasingly polarised. On the one hand are those who think it is an in-coming planet, spelling imminent doom for our world on a timetable that (like my pension date) just keeps getting rolled back year after year. On the other, that Nibiru is a phenomenon connected to a more distance sub-brown dwarf object lying among the comets.

As I noted last month on this blog, more researchers interested in this topic are advocating the existence of a brown dwarf companion as the more likely solution. There are good reasons for this, because without this potential heat source the claim made above by Mr Freer that Nibiru could still be a habitable world becomes very, very hard to justify.

Brown dwarfs are tricky to study, because even the bigger, brighter ones by definition don't emit an awful lot of light. But using the 1.4 billion pixel camera of the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS), some progress is being made.

In a recent report, this quote caught my eye;

"Spectroscopic follow-up observations on four of them allowed the team to reach several conclusions: These companion brown dwarfs are infrequent, making up only about 0.6% of binaries, at least for those in which the stars are widely spaced (closer pairs were much more difficult to study). More puzzling, the scientists found that the brown dwarf companions are well enough understood to conclude that they did not form at the same time as their more normal, companion star." (1)

Well, that presumably means that these brown dwarf companions were captured (or perhaps formed independently from an orbiting or captured partial nebula later on, who knows?) But it's a pretty small sample range at just 4 such objects, so it might be a bit of a stretch to read too much into this at this stage. Also bear in mind that the kind of 'brown dwarf' I'm focussed on with my Dark Star Theory is some way down on the scale of these objects. So way down, in fact, that the Dark Star companion would really be a sub-brown dwarf, a cosmic entity which lies between the smallest brown dwarf and the gas giant Jupiter.

Even so, could this mean that the Dark Star might have formed or been captured some time after the formation of the solar system? It most likely first made its presence felt 3.9 billion years ago during a period of time known as the 'late, heavy bombardment'. This was some 400 million years after the formation of the Sun, which more or less insinuates that any Dark Star out there should really have formed during the same time.

1) "Astronomers Use Pan-STARRS to Detect Brown Dwarf Companion Stars" 3 September 2013 with thanks to Mark

Mrs DarkStar knows a guy at work who's into Sitchin's writings, and had even heard of me before he met her through work. What are the odds? Anyhow, he mentioned to her yesterday that Zecharia Sitchin and Nibiru make an appearance in a new Scooby Doo episode. I checked it out, and sure enough (note: video no longer available on YouTube)

Thanks to David for this. I kind of want to know what's in that briefcase now... More in next month's blog!