We Are the Children of the Stars

by Otto O. Binder

  The reason for this apparently unreasonable procedure of secrecy was as follows:

  Man learns best that which he learns for himself, in his own good time. (And this is just as true for the Earth today and its problems as it is for one of our youngsters growing up.)

  So the colonies on other worlds grew politically, scientifically, philosophically, and in other ways important to the ancestral race. They grew along these paths by trial and error, learning and gaining mental stature, just as we have done for several thousands of years here on Earth.

  When the time arrived for the colony to become aware of the presence of other intelligences throughout the universe, and to begin the process of probing outward to meet or communicate with these other people (we are close to that position today), then at last the first knowing contact could be made between the ancestral race and the colony.

  From then on, for some period of time, the new world gasped in wonderment at the seemingly endless succession of marvels that came to bless its scientific and cultural life.

  Gradually, the purpose of the colony became clear to its inhabitants.

  The colony was to act as a host to the ancestral race. A willing host, because, in return for doing the spadework desired by the ancestral race, the colony was given the marvelous superscientific knowledge gleaned through eons of time – the philosophical wisdom, the social achievements, the political astuteness, and all such finer benefits.

  Thus, the colony fulfilled its destiny and became one more of the endless succession of planets chosen to be the home of original interstellar Man. And there the tale ends.

  This is not meant to be an authentic version of how original Man – or Starman – spread through the universe. Naturally, it must be mainly guesswork. But certain fundamentals are presented that we believe are true – that Man evolved elsewhere in space, that he in time colonized many other worlds, and that on each he used some form of crossbreeding or biogenetic manipulation literally to create rational life ahead if its slow, evolutionary time.

  We now see that this second, colonization part of the theory, along with the first, hybrid part, offers explanations for all the topic headings in Chapter 1.

  It would be wise to note that the main attraction of this story and the theory it gives rise to, is that it reinforces mankind's strong feelings of “special destiny,” his sense of “preordained superiority” among living things.

  Therefore, this theory tends to be relatively compatible with Darwin's work, at the same time partly removing the one feature of his theory the public found repulsive in the extreme: that “Man has descended from monkeys.”

  This hybrid theory proposes that Man is not quite as bestial as that phrase implies. And, in fact, that Man ascended from the apes, through the crossbreeding program of the wise, ultra-intelligent planet-hoppers who visited Earth long ago.

  Further, not quite as obvious but equally as important, is the implication that if we can only get out into space, meet our ancestors, acquire their knowledge and their timeless, surpassing wisdom, then perhaps “Peace on earth, good will to Man” can be ours forevermore.

  But all of the preceding, of course, hinges on one looming question – is there life and intelligence elsewhere in the universe? Is the rest of the cosmos filled only with dead planets whirling around their fierce suns? Or are there other worlds propitious to life, where living things sprang up as they did on Earth?

  And where does life come from in the first place, on any ripe planet?

  Did the primeval atmosphere of Earth, containing several gases – hydrogen, methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide, among others – act as a giant chemical laboratory and accidentally toss together atoms to make molecules? Did these molecules shuffle around in violent waters under fierce heat and radiation until they formed the first organic compounds? Then, finally, did those compounds further unite to form amino acids, the basic units of protein – which is living matter?

  Such is one theory of life's genesis on Earth.

  And it could happen on any other world similar to Earth and with comparable conditions.

  In fact, biologists and biochemists almost unanimously agree that such Earthlike planets could not remain sterile. That life must spring up on them, given sufficient atoms and molecules that are basic to life – hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, carbon dioxide – and billion-year stretches of time for random forces to juggle them together into the first bits of living protein.

  More importantly, the process can no longer stop there, by theory.

  It continues until the first primitive one-celled creatures are formed in the condensing seas of the planet, making an “organic soup.” Now the classic process of Evolution – building up of lifeforms – takes over, and the tiny single cells form larger aggregates that become increasingly complex as nature stirs the brew. Invertebrates, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals – it may all be a sort of inevitable “pattern” that occurs on any and all Earthlike worlds.1

  However, another theory of life's origins has recently sprung up, tied in with cosmology, so that the Evolution of the material universe and of life itself become strangely interwoven.

  This theory is, in reality, a revival of a concept a century old, when Svante Arrhenius, the famed nineteenth-century chemist, propounded his theory of panspermia. In brief, he envisioned tiny life-buds, or virus-like spores, that were wafted through space by the pressure of light waves from star-suns. If they landed on a “ripe” world ready for life, the spores came out of their suspended animation and formed one-celled life, which then again launched the whole climb of species up the evolutionary ladder.

  Oddly enough, this seemingly “way-out” theory has recently been taken up and expanded upon by serious scientists. John A. Ball of Harvard brings forth a peculiar fact, well known to evolutionists, that spontaneous generation of new life has utterly stopped for ages, as if evolution itself had come to an abrupt halt.2 He then offers an astounding conjecture: “Most evolutionists believe that it [life] was generated long ago but perhaps it never was.” (Italics added.) “Perhaps the Earth was infected from elsewhere [in the beginning].”

  Two other leading lights in biological science published a paper in which they suggest that living spores did not merely drift through space, but came as colonies of microorganisms sent in a protective (unmanned) spacecraft by intelligent beings elsewhere, and deliberately aimed at Earth.3

  There are two strong points favoring this concept. One is that all life on Earth has a uniform genetic code in its most basic DNA form, from amoeba to man. If life had formed spontaneously on Earth, it seems more than likely several kinds of genetic codes would have arisen.

  The universal genetic code, say the scientists, could be compatible with the idea of a single ancestral source – such as ancient microorganisms dumped on Earth by a spacecraft, thus “seeding” our planet with life.

  The second odd point is that molybdenum, a very rare metal, plays an important role as a trace element in the physiology of all Earth creatures. It is surprising, therefore, that life so dependent on a rare metal should arise on a molybdenum-poor world like Earth, rather that on some world rich in that metal – a world from which, perhaps, the “microseeding” originated.

  What has excited astronomers and cosmologists in the past ten years is the amazing discovery of organic gases in “empty” space, existing as gigantic clouds along with dust and debris between the stars. They are extremely attenuated gases, so that space is still almost “empty,” but our galaxy is so huge in volume that the total aggregate of the scattered atoms and molecules runs into staggering tons almost beyond count.

  Radio-telescopes were the first to detect the spectral lines of hydrogen gas in the open areas of space, thus opening a new branch of science called molecular astronomy.

  As of May 1974, some twenty-nine different substances had been detected in outer space.4 There will probably be more by the time you read this. Among the detected substances are such
organic radicals (parts of organic molecules) and pre-organic molecules (which make up living matter) as water, ammonia (NH3), formaldehyde (H2CO), methyl alcohol (CH3OH) and acetaldehyde (CH3CHO).

  Biochemists must be utterly astounded that such complex organic substances can exist in the cold, empty reaches of space itself. For by a variant of the panspermia theory, organic chemicals rather than spores can descend on any planet whirling through the space cloud to have its seas saturated with the building blocks of protoplasm.

  “The discovery of an increasing number of organic molecules in interstellar space,” reports Science News, “has led a number of scientists to suggest that the first chemical steps in the evolution of life may have taken place in the interstellar clouds.”5

  Another fascinating hypothesis is that of Dr. J. Mayo Greenberg of New York State University, who set up a laboratory experiment in which he produced “grains” of chemical debris comparable to the estimated size of grains of space dust.6 He then arranged for the grains to collide under ultraviolet light (rampant in space) and found he could produce molecules of high molecular weight. He thinks this mechanical accretion-process, in giant interstellar dust clouds, could produce grains of a size and composition similar to viruses.

  His conclusion is that here may be the very origin of life itself – out in the colossal chemical laboratory between the stars. Hence, according to this theory, every planet in the universe is floating through this thin “space soup,” which can trigger off life in the warm seas of any and all suitable planets.

  Life is, then, not the exception but the rule, throughout the myriad of star-families of planets.

  An entirely different clue leading to this same deduction comes from the examination of the “Murchison Meteorite,” which fell to Earth in 1970. Scientists of the Ames Research Center of NASA have found definite traces of amino acids (building blocks of living protein) in the meteorite, substantiated later by the researchers of two universities.7

  Two scientists of Arizona State University independently examined another meteorite that fell near Murray, Kentucky, in 1950, and detected the presence of all eighteen of the known amino acids. They also found two pyrimidines that are basic ingredients of the nucleic acid vital to living cells.

  Significantly, those meteoric amino acids and pyrimidines have a molecular structure different from Earthly types in various esoteric ways, such as “left” or “right” configurations.

  Hence, they are living matter not of this Earth, and almost a dead-sure clue to extraterrestrial life.

  The consensus is that these findings enormously increase the likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe.

  Even before the great breakthrough discovery of organic compounds in no longer “lifeless” space, astronomers and cosmologists were convinced by other evidence, not only that living worlds were widespread throughout the galaxy, but also that an immense number of them had evolved thinking beings who might be “signaling” their brother worlds.

  Back in 1960, at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory of Green Bank, West Virginia, Project Ozma, under the leadership of Dr. Frank Drake, attempted to pick up intelligent signals from two nearby stars, Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani.

  Results were negative but now in the works is Project Cyclops, an international endeavor including Russia and the United States, which may cost up to $5 billion and involve no less than 10,000 radio-telescope dishes and antennae.

  Purpose? “Its mission would be to add a new dimension to cosmology. It might establish the science of biological cosmology.” Namely, set up communications between intelligent biological beings on different worlds.

  If top-notch, sober scientists boldly ask for the enormous sum of $5 billion to set up apparatus to contact other civilizations in outer space, then surely they must be going by more than flimsy clues that such civilizations exist.

  And they may, in time – to their own surprise – receive a staggering message from the very starmen who colonized Earth long ago and created Hybrid Man!

  Hence, the discovery of organic-space clouds was only a confirming factor in a belief that scientists have almost unanimously held for a quarter century. This belief is based on certain astronomical data about stars that statistically indicate more than half of them must have planets revolving about them, as our sun with its family of planets.

  One of the first famed astronomers to speculate about the presence of life on other planets in the outer universe was Dr. Harlow Shapley, former head of the Harvard University Astronomy Department, who in his famous book Of Stars and Men states:

  Exactly where these other life-bearing planets are we cannot now say; perhaps we never can, lost as they are in the glare of their stars, isolated as we are in space, and equipped with sounding apparatus that is still, we hope, primitive (and will improve). Although not seen or photographed, those planets are deduced as statistical probabilities. There must be at least 100,000 of them in our galaxy, if we accept the frequency the writer prefers.8

  This estimate of Dr. Shapley's is so conservative that it amounts to not more than one populated star per million in our galaxy.

  He ignored in that paragraph the rest of the universe, and we know that the universe contains ten billion other galaxies.9

  More recent estimates are truly mind-staggering.

  We find in one publication the statements of Dr. Harrison H. Brown of the Division of Geological Sciences, California Institute to Technology, Pasadena.10 He estimates that virtually every star in our galaxy has a planetary system, in each of which from two to four planets might have an Earthlike environment and chemistry that encourages our kind of life to exist. He gives the enormous figure of 100 billion stars with planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone.

  That would mean 200 to 400 billion planets like Earth, or perhaps Mars, on which life would almost certainly arise.

  He also makes another startling observation: that, because a large part of the theorized mass of the universe is “missing,” there may exist innumerable “dark stars,” or suns that have burned out and are thus invisible to our optical telescopes.

  Dr. Shiv S. Kumar of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York City, has also speculated along this line and hypothesizes that the “invisible” or dark stars may outnumber the visible stars by twenty to one.

  Dr. Harlow Shapley himself did not ignore this possibility and also spoke of many millions of tiny unseen stars sprinkled through the vast reaches of space, hanging between the giant burning suns we see. He added boldly that it was not impossible that life would exist on the surfaces of these dark and cool stars, which would be in the nature of large planets, but circling no sun.

  And some of these “living” stars would by statistical certainty be between the Earth and Alpha Centauri, the so-called “nearest” star, which is somewhat over four light-years away (about 25 trillion miles).

  It is quite a mind-boggling thought that small dark-sun planets that have given rise to life may be close “neighbors” within a mere light-year or two of Earth, making the possibility of alien visits even more likely. Because, as we have seen, any planet that first spawns life at all almost certainly will produce intelligent beings, simply because Evolution cannot stop at any point – or because the colonizing starmen have visited those dark-sun planets too.

  Dr. Shapley bring forth a really earthshaking idea when he states: “There is no reason not to believe that the biochemical Evolution on . . . one-half of the suitable planets has equaled or attained much greater [technological] development than here [on Earth].”11

  This means that more than half of his estimated 100,000 inhabited planets in our galaxy are occupied by people who are chronologically, and thus (according to Darwin) intellectually, more advanced than we are.

  Obviously, since we have already started an astronautics program, space flight has been known by the inhabitants of some of these planets for thousands or millions of years. Now, the mystery here is – at least the mystery to orthodox
science – why have we not been visited?

  The answer is – we probably have been visited! That neatly solves the mystery, if the science establishment will only accept it.

  No, this is not a reference to the controversial “flying saucers” and Unidentified Flying Objects that have been in and out of the news for more than fifty years, although we shall take up that subject later in some detail.

  UFOs aside, even hard-nosed scientists believe we may have had at least one space visitor in recent times.

  A very huge and puzzling “meteorite” fell thunderously in Soviet Siberia on July 30, 1908. It fortunately fell in a remote uninhabited woodland, but peasants heard the awesome explosion as far as 620 miles away. A large area of forest was flattened as if an immense object had fallen.

  It was put down as a giant meteorite until several Soviet expeditions began exploring the site from 1921 on. They found a series of strange mysteries. No remnants of the alleged meteorite could be found anywhere underground.

  Second, radioactivity had initially been released in enormous amounts. Third, the general destruction showed that the energy released had been far greater that the mere impact of a falling stone, no matter how huge.

  Most significantly, the aerial path of the falling object had not been uniform but had seemingly changed during descent.

  Various Soviet scientists then put forth an amazing theory – that it had been a spaceship, driven by intelligent beings and loaded with great power from a nuclear powerplant, which had exploded through some accident.

  Or, a variant of this was that an antimatter spaceship had attempted to land on Earth and had met the fate of antimatter particles when they meet norm-matter particles – instant annihilation.

  However, most scientists are dubious about any recent visits by starmen, preferring to consider that this happened only in ancient times (why?). Dr. Albert Einstein, for instance, stated that he was in complete sympathy with the idea of a visit by spacemen back in prehistoric times.