3I/Atlas: Oenologists Work With Astronomers to Unravel Mysteries of Wine Bottle Shaped Space Visitor
Does Large Interstellar Object Contain a Message for Earth?
The 20 kilometer wide interstellar space object, 3I/Atlas, could be billions of years older than Earth itself. It is racing through our solar system at 130,000 miles an hour. Like two other recent travelers from outside our solar system - Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov - astronomers are puzzled by 3I/Atlas's non-comet like characteristics.
Scientists are particularly piqued by 3I/Atlas's brilliance, its peculiar travel path, its composition, its distant origins, its phenomenal age, its high speed, its motive force, and, ultimately, whether it is a natural phenomenon at all... or something sent by another intelligent world. Some university professors have wondered whether 3I/Atlas is simply a very large Winnebago. Are its out-of-this world travelers looking for a rest stop at some trashed-up nearby planet (like Planet Earth) where they can pump out their space RV's huge bilge tanks?
Or are its alien intentions more subtle?
Could 3I/Atlas be a mission of curiosity and diplomacy? A voyage of investigation and education? A project of exploration or... in the sense of bedbugs, cockroaches and rodents... a house-cleaning project of galactic pest control vis-à-vis us?
But there's more. Informed observers have detected another anomaly: its distinctive shape.
At one of their daily three martini lunches, astronomers at SETI (the Senter for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)1 located at Omphalos National Observatory at Weinflaschen Staatsuniversität in the Himalayan Mountains near Umbilicus, Switzerland came to a startling conclusion: 3I/Atlas most closely resembles a very large wine flask hurtling through Space. Indeed, SETI astro-oenologists conjecture that the mysterious bottle-like object could contain remnants of (very) vintage Madeira, 5 billion year old Schnapps or Tequila fermented by an alien civilization.
If 3I/Atlas is, indeed, a very large wine bottle lofted into space by marooned castaways from a distant world billions of years ago, might there be a message in the bottle? Might it contain a message from an alien intelligence that we are not alone... or that others elsewhere would rather that we left them alone... or simply that 'Kilroy was Here?'
The mere mention on television news that 3I/Atlas could be an "alien" spacecraft caused President Donald Trump to sign an Executive Order (Monday's Executive Order No. 76,4092) declaring that if 3I/Atlas is, indeed, an alien visitor from another world, then it will be immediately arrested by Immigration Control officers and deported to El Salvador, Somalia or back to wherever 3I/Atlas comes from.
The President appeared at an impromptu news conference where he donned his signature red chapeau that proclaimed his omniscience. Upon jutting out his chin and affecting his trademark tough-guy scowl, the President declared: "Whoever tries to infiltrate America with this alien, and most likely Communist Chinese, technology will also face 2,500% import tariffs. Because America is the greatest marketplace in the Universe, and if these Communist Chinese aliens want to do business here, then they have to bend the knee and pay the price."
But Mr. Trump quickly withdrew Executive Order No. 76,4092 with Executive Order No. 76,4093 after spectral analysis of 3I/Atlas led the newly rebranded "Department of War" to conclude that 3I/Atlas contains not only organic brewer's yeast and vinting compounds, but also many valuable rare earths necessary to make America's sense of exceptionalism exceptionally exceptional again.
The spectral analysis revealed that 3I/Atlas seems to be largely composed of mineral compounds like democracium (a glittering mineral similar to pyrite aka 'fools gold'), neofascistium, eurobaloneum, and zionesium - all highly toxic compounds that, even in small quantities, cause brain death, historical amnesia, colonialism, genocide and delusions of grandeur.
Scientists also noted that 3I/Atlas seems to be off-gassing the not-so-rare organic compound stupidium.
Stupidium can be found almost everywhere on Earth, but mostly in the capital cities of Europe and North America. It is a completely useless mineral good only for manufacturing even more stupidium. Scientists thus warn against efforts to capture or mine 3I/Atlas fearing that additional stupidium introduced into Earth's environment could lead to terminal civilizational collapse, increased French, German and British military engagement in NATO's never-ending war against Russia, and inevitable nuclear conflagration.
3I/Atlas's retrograde orbit will bring it closest to Earth around the first weeks of October, roughly coinciding with the Jewish High Holy Days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the so-called Day of Atonement.
This coincidence caused Benjamin Netanyahu to lay claim to the entirety of 3I/Atlas as an integral part of Greater Israel as prophesied in the apocryphal Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Books of Moses carved in ancient COBOL on 8" not-so-floppy stone disks. "In the Sixth Book of Moses," Mr. Netanyahu explained, "all of the negativity of the original Five Books of Moses was restated from right-to-left as positive commandments instead of negative ones -- such as Thou Shalt Kill (especially, but not exclusively, Palestinians), Thou Shalt Steal (especially, but not exclusively from Palestinians) and Thou Shalt Covet (especially, but not exclusively the homeland of Palestinians)."
Israel then beamed messages at the flying object from deep space welcoming its chosen people to help annex and colonize the West Bank of the Jordan River along with the soon-to-be constructed Sodom and Gomorrah Club Med Resort and Trump Gaza Plaza (where Gaza City used to be before it was razed and depopulated).
3I/Atlas, however, immediately began to counter-transmit communications back to Mr. Netanyahu stating (loosely translated from the space alien vulgate): "Fahgettaboudit schmuck! Ain't no 'atonement' possible for a traif mamzer like you!" It then began to emit images of a fluttering Palestinian flag while broadcasting the following message in Arabic, Aramaic, Farsi, Chinese, Russian, Old Icelandic, Celtic, Khoisan and Esperanto: "Palestine Will Be Free From the River to Alpha Centauri."
This, in turn, caused Israel to demand that the United States nuke and radioactively sterilize 3I/Atlas because it likely was inhabited by doctors, hospital workers, students, children, mothers, journalists and similar types of terrorists. The U.K., Ukraine, France and Germany followed suit and proscribed support, contact, or any mention of 3I/Atlas in public gatherings, on social media, in any scientific journal or even in private conversations, all in the name of preserving democracy, capitalism, freedom of speech and whatever.
Mr. Trump additionally proposed that after the United States bombs 3I/Atlas, it should be colonized and developed with luxury hotels, golf courses and, especially, nuclear missile bases from which to attack China, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, India, Lichtenstein, Yemen, Lesotho, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
In furtherance of America's civilizing project, Mr. Netanyahu proposed that the United States should undertake the ethnic cleansing of 3I/Atlas with U.S. weapons and tax dollars; but thereafter the U.S. should deed the property over to Israel.
As part of his lobbying for this proposal, Mr. Netanyahu issued a personal invitation for Mr. Trump to join him at a private viewing of the 5 Eyes' director's cut of the not yet (and never to be) publicly released movie entitled "Epstein's Kompromat Videos of the World's Richest and Most Powerful." Which, in turn, caused Mr. Trump (who wishes to win the Nobel Peace Prize by re-imagining America as some kind of Warrior Valhalla) to... immediately change the subject... by bullying yet another small and defenseless country and serially invading Chicago, Los Angeles, Vatican City and Minneapolis.
The Democrats unanimously decried Mr. Trump's war-mongering and colonial projects, but voted, as always, to continue to fund them.
As 3I/Atlas entered into its closest fly-by on the far side of the Sun (making it impossible to observe directly from the Earth), astronomers noticed that first the moons of Saturn and then the moons of Jupiter suddenly... disappeared. Shortly after that, the planets Mars and Venus, too, entirely vanished as though someone or something had swallowed them whole.
3I/Atlas then braked and changed its trajectory. It circled around, then hovered above Planet Earth.
An enormous "Buuurrrrrrp" was heard from the darkening skies overhead as, around the globe, people started thinking, I wonder what's for dinner tonight?
* * * * *
Funny story? Maybe so; maybe not.
But these are not such funny times, are they?
I completely understand why people check out of reality. It's hard enough to deal with one's own difficulties without becoming overwhelmed with those of others. It's intended to be like that, of course. It's like Degas' painting of the absinthe drinkers - we seek a release, a drug to anesthetize us against the incessant barrage of evil.
The faces in Degas' painting are our faces at the end of a hard day. Worn out. Isolated. Numb to the world. It's very difficult to accept, let alone acknowledge, bitter truths that gob-smack us, even as we live just marginally better at the expense of those who live significantly worse.
What's the least one can do and still remain sane? And human? Speaking truth to power, to be perfectly frank, is one of those meaningless platitudes that, ultimately, is just a cop out. Power doesn't care about truth being spoken to it - it's not even listening. Power cares only about being pulled down off its pedestal.
I grew up in the Vietnam era. Did protests really end that war?
I don't think so, at least, not by themselves. The Vietnam War ended (although the global and never-ending world war did not) only partly because of protests in the streets and anti-draft campaigns on the campuses. It ended, also in part, because young American soldiers - of all races, ethnicities and social classes - increasingly recognized that this war (like all wars) was a racket that profited others at the cost of their lives.
The Vietnam War ended primarily, however, due to the courage, the sacrifice and the determination of the Vietnamese partisans who took on the world's biggest, baddest colonialists. They persevered for decades. And they won.
Do I have the strength or the stamina to take on that kind of a sacrifice? Sometimes I feel like I do. Sometimes, I feel like I don't.
I respect the younger folks of this age (by which I mean everyone young in age and spirit!) who are, once again, willing to take up the cudgels of resistance. I do not mean joining in sclerotic party politics or one-off protest marches. Millions and millions and millions of autochthonous, city-and-port-clogging protests extended over long periods of time might achieve something. Anything less than that, however, will only lead to personal exhaustion.
Nor do I mean meaningless drawn-out courtroom arguments over the rule of law and the law of rules.
What I do mean, is that I am not quite sure what I mean. Or maybe I do, but I can't, or won't, say it out loud. But there are hopeful signs in today's more gutsy youth movements, those movements far more meaningful that the silly, manufactured, nonsensical non-issues of recent years past. You know, the ones that were intended to Balkanize us and deflect our attention elsewhere.
One day, people around the globe will recognize that the superficial social and economic phenomena that we want to ameliorate today are the result of decades - no centuries - of just a few fundamental, systemic, core problems that have a name, that have been deliberately mislabeled, that have been deliberately misprinted into our collective psyches, that have been historically inverted and perverted, that have been intentionally masked by one cultural, social and political distraction or the other.
Perhaps one day. But not today.
There is no Deus ex machina. Alas, because a Deus ex machina would be so easy. But it won't be easy. It cannot be easy or it wouldn't be worth it. No one will 'save us' except ourselves. Not even 3I/Atlas, even if it is an emissary from a more advanced alien life form.
Prost!
Here's to 3I/Atlas, the 5 billion year old giant wine bottle from elsewhere in the Cosmos that might - but probably doesn't - contain a message to all of us on Earth. Intelligent… or dumb as a rock (by which I mean both 3I/Atlas and us)… welcome to our world, Stranger!
Bon voyage! And... bon appétit??
* * * * *
Readers will immediately appreciate that the Senter for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is misspelled leading one to question this institution's (and the author's) own intelligence. "Senter," of course, should be spelled with the Continental spelling, "Sentre."