THE CITIZEN ON MARS

When I was in highschool, Michael Peralta, an old neighborhood friend from Carmen Street but who is now residing in Los Angeles, once spoke to me in a very animated fashion how the Philippines could one day become the richest country in the world. As a prelude, Michael said to me that his father had some vital information why a number of foreigners were in the country for a very secret purpose. I wondered loudly to him how secret it was and asked him if he could actually let me know some of the “secret’. He then informed me without hesitation that the foreigners were here mainly to study and find out ways on how to extract deuterium from the Philippine seas. I asked how come his father knew about all those stuff and what “deuterium” was in the first place. With gasping breath, and with gleaming pride for that matter, Michael told me as a matter of fact that his father was a war veteran and because of this, he had American contacts in the CIA. The CIA thing sounded preposterous to me at that time but when I recently read some articles in the Internet about deuterium, I started to wonder if the CIA talk of Michael was plausible after all and that maybe the CIA was behind the sudden departure of Michael’s whole family to Los Angeles later that year, where in a year’s time he was already driving a very exotic looking red corvette (might be from second hand store) as evidenced by a picture that he had sent to the neighborhood kids through a very kind uncle. This story may start to sound like a brimming Tom Clancy thriller but before anything gets out of hand, that CIA talk of Michael is just that and nothing else t o it I am pretty sure on that and their immigration to America was due mainly to his father being a USAFFE during World War II. But Michael’s rambling on deuterium was completely a different matter—it sounded to me then so awfully good that I had wished it to be true already even though it wasn’t true at all at that time, and even now.

There is really something to this issue on deuterium that lingers long and never goes away completely. It had been virtually popping and bobbing up in the local media every now and then—especially in the last couple of decades. The Cebu-based news outfit The Freeman published the most recent news article on deuterium. In that article, Freeman publicized a certain study on deuterium by a Filipino scientist working in a Canadian agency. Canada by the way is the world’s leading producer and consumer of deuterium as an energy source. There had been many rumors and hush-hush talks before about certain groups of foreigners, possibly American and sometimes German, that were in the country to initiate drilling projects that should siphon-off the coveted deuterium from the Philippine seas. All those talks just died down however and nobody really minded them, perhaps everyone just disregarded some weird-sounding element that is supposedly found in the Philippines in great volume. In fact, even as we speak now, I would not be surprised if Exxon or Shell has some of its people working night and day trying to unravel the key to gathering the millions of barrels of “white gold” underneath our seas.

I was watching Sentro last night, the upstart news program from ABC 5, and heard Ms. Ali Sotto do some lighter take on the news as she reported how hydrogen-fuelled cars were already running in the streets of Washington D.C.. This particular news segment was apparently so short that I had to scour the Internet for a more elaborate rendering of the news item. I read a couple of related news articles from not-too-famous news sites on the net.

It was reported that the United States Government, through the Department of Energy and General Motors had unveiled an $88 Million joint project in order to put a fleet of hydrogen-fuelled cars on the streets of Washington D.C., New York and Los Angeles within a year’s time. The fleet would consist merely of 40 of such cars but most of the money would be spent on putting up a number of hydrogen refueling stations all over the streets of those pilot cities since the main cause why consumers are not buying too many hydrogen-fuelled cars these days is basically due to the lack of gas stations peddling or selling hydrogen gas or liquid hydrogen. Come to think of it, even if any of us had all the money to buy this car stuff right now, like for example if some of us are sons and daughters of Taipans with money to burn, we wouldn’t be able to use them anyway, at least not for long, unless we all fly all the way to America to buy gallons and gallons of hydrogen fuel.
But again come to think about the possibilities. If only there were enough hydrogen-refueling stations all over our city streets, our days of being dependent on crude oil (freshly-drilled from the dusty sands of Sahara) would soon be over and our atmosphere would be a lot more livable since the only end product of hydrogen fuels is water. Water, instead of carbon dioxides that make our urban landscape looked orange or yellow at dusk.

I really hope that this project of GM and the United States Government would entirely succeed for reasons that we all should know by now.

And so this bit of news on hydrogen-fuelled cars reminded me of the high school talk I had with an old friend from the neighborhood concerning deuterium. What is deuterium and how does it become an energy source? Deuterium is the end product when a common tap water (H2O) is subjected to enormous pressurize of gigantic proportion that the oxygen element in the H2O compound is forced out of the combination, making the hydrogen element to purify and consolidated all the more. Since in deuterium, the hydrogen becomes so solid and unadulterated, hydrogen gas can be easily obtained from it since a natural electrolysis happens immediately the moment deuterium is exposed to room temperature. Meaning to say, when deuterium is used as a base in obtaining hydrogen gas, the generation process is much less expensive. Right now, hydrogen gas and liquid hydrogen that are often used to power jets and giant trucks, are sold at very steep prices (much more expensive than gasoline) because it is so costly to produce them, necessitating an energy-consuming and lengthy electrolysis process that are undertaken in order to separate the hydrogen compound from common water. When deuterium is used, the very expensive process of electrolysis would be bypassed and set aside in the production of hydrogen gas and therefore, obtaining hydrogen fuel becomes more efficient and less expensive by a mile.

The Philippines is identified to hold the greatest amount of deuterium deposit, somewhere in the area known as Mindanao Trench, the part of the Pacific Ocean just off the shores of Surigao. Deuterium is most prevalent in an area more widely known in the whole world as The Philipppine Deep. In the Freeman news article (dated August 2004), Dr. Anthony B. Halog, the Filipino scientist working at the Sustainable Technology Office of the Institute for Chemical Process and Environmental Technology, and the National Research Council of Canada described the Philippine deuterium wealth in this manner:

“A big deposit of 868 miles long, 52 miles at widest point, and 3 miles at deepest point, replenished by nature 24 hours a day after deuterium travels more than 12,000 kilometers from Central America to the Philippines through the span of the Pacific Ocean when Planet Earth turns on its axis from West to East in unending perpetual motion.”

And it’s potential in this breathe:
“At 12 million barrels per day capacity priced at US$7.00 per barrel, this is US$84 million per day or US$30.66 billion per year, enough to wipe out all existing foreign debts of the Government in one year, revenue-wise in foreign exchange.

Public works, private construction, economic and financial booms are expected to happen in the Philippines in the same manner as those which happened in the Middle East and financial centers of the world from 1974 to 1984, with everybody earning their respective comfortable livelihood, while pricing basic prime necessities at reasonable and affordable levels.”

At present, deuterium seems to be produce exclusively through an expensive synthesizing process, by subjecting ordinary tap water to enormous pressure using some highly-advanced machinery or equipment and thus the price of hydrogen fuel remain relatively out of reach from the ordinary consumers of fuels. But if the deuterium deposit under the Philippine seas can be obtained, hydrogen gas prices could become far more reasonable and affordable. If natural deuterium is utilized as the base in the production of hydrogen fuel—in both its most widely used form as hydrogen gas and liquid hydrogen—the generation process would become more efficient and much cheaper. And mind you, deuterium as a source of energy is not only useful to power cars, trucks and planes. It is also being utilized to power factories and power plants in the same manner that nuclear power plants are operated. With deuterium as moderator, nuclear power plants could do away with enriched uranium as a main fuel source and this means, deuterium use could generate a whole new specie of power plants that are a lot safer—safer by a grand mile.

The problem faced by those who wants to extract natural deuterium from the Philippines seas is probably the enormous pressure that is existing in the very area where deuterium are supposed to be found. To reach the area of deuterium concentration, a drilling system should reach a level of at least 30,000 feet deep into the ocean, where the water pressure could reach as high as 10,000 psi, or the equivalent of 10,000 tons of load pressuring from all direction. Apparently, there is no material known today that could withstand such enormous amount of pressure. Maybe diamonds could be strong enough to endure the extraordinary pressure down there but imagine how much diamonds should be needed in order to manufacture a very long tube. That’ll be unimaginable in both cost and expanse. But scientists nowadays always finds a way and when the time comes that a kind of metal could actually be developed, one that could reach ten thousand meters underwater without breaking apart and efficiently drill out barrels and barrels of sea water that contains deuterium, then that’ll be the time the Philippines could become the main hawker of fuels for the world’s cars, airplanes, buses, factories, power plants and whatever that runs and hums not by its own accord.
So deuterium may be the gasoline of the future, the main energy source of the next millennium, and the Philippines is the only country that has them naturally tucked under its seabed in an amount and breathe that replenishes on its own every time the Earth rotates and the sea shifts from side to side.

Look in Wikipedia for more information.

(Note: This is an old post that I am resposting since I am so very busy these days. You might find this write-up interesting since it's the most searched post that I have, almost twice a day.)

What is a mind? It is not yours; therefore it is “mine”. No, not the right term usage here. Sorry.

Is mind synonymous with brain? Sometimes, having a brain does not necessarily mean one has a mind, like for example when one could not even count from one to ten or spell the word “photosynthesis” (many thanks to the gritty Microsoft spell check for helping me with this one).

Where is your mind? How come your thirty-five years old with four kids and your just sitting there infront of the computer all day long doing God knows what you’re doing with that square contraption in your face? Now that’s my wife with her usual vitriolic tongue aiming and shooting at me and observe carefully how sometimes she thinks I am completely of no mind.

We all know what mind is. It is something within the brain that is impalpable and ethereal, having no physical form. It is the one thing that controls another formless fact of our being, consciousness. See also how consciousness is as formless as mind and examine circumspectly how we all feel it and know it but just could not see it or touch it. Yet we know it is there, our consciousness, like a timeless shadow.

Any old guy with a whiff of something between his ears would surely realize this, that we are a being mostly dependent on consciousness for every movement or act that we make, even those we do without intending like breathing or blinking our eyes, for they just become automatic and routinely. It is like Sting---watching us with ‘every breath we make’ or ‘every vow we break’.

We have all gotten so extremely familiar with consciousness---so familiar in fact that we hardly give a thought about it most of the time. If it is true what many says about familiarity breeding contempt, then we’d be trashing and elbowing and smacking-down our consciousness like hell by now. This despite that it is probably the most startling reality of our own being, and perhaps the most important of all.

Even scientists are far from certain where consciousness comes from or how it actually permeates from the material brain. They have already uncovered the minutest element of the brain and had discovered how the cells inside it emits varied and myriad of electrical pulses that allow the whole human body---and being---to function as it is. But how this happens exactly is what they are at a lost. Perhaps like a computer’s central processing unit, the electrical pulses send commands and programmed codes in order to move the hand, to instill feelings, to smile or frown, to cook, or blog, to ride a jeepney or eat a budget meal, to love and hate---such and such things.

Now scientists have actually delved into an in-depth examination of the consciousness, as neuro-scientists in Chicago have deduced how out-of-body experiences are not so outlandish afterall, contrary to popular belief. By using virtual computer technology, they have observed how subjects put under a virtual mindset have actually felt their virtual selves being threatened as they were beaing approached at (virtually). I am not so particular at how the experiment really went but generally, it was reached as a conclusion that even in mind---without physical structures of the body involved---human beings would react positively to non-physical intrusions or introductions and thereon bolsters the probability that out-of-body experiences might just be a probable human experience. Read this very concise discussion on consciousness and the attempt to uncover it.

Easily, this could be set aside as merely the result of extreme imagination for the mind could imagine possibly everything and when it perceives a threat even just in mind, the body reacts accordingly---physically and mentally.

Yet despite of this major loophole, the study abovementioned is a major headway into the investigation of the human consciousness and then, ultimately of the soul.

Previously, information on out-of-body experiences have been collated solely through accounts by those who have experienced traumatic experiences, mostly by those who had cardiac arrests, as they gain full consciousness after being declared clinically dead. We must note very well how in every such experience, it is extremely startling how every account of an out-of-body experience consists of one very unifying theme, that of seeing tunnels and a bright light at the end of it. As an empirical basis, these testimonies from those “who have came back from the dead” are generally weak and undependable, but as a circumstantial evidence, it is pretty strong and establishing; for how could one effectively explain the astonishing similarities in those accounts despite that they have came from different people living in different geographical locations, having had no contact with each other, and those traumatic incidents being separated by years in occurrence.

When I was so young, way before my highschool years, I was once told a story or rumor by older cousins about how a woman in Subanipa (my grandfather’s hometown in Olutanga Island just south of Pagadian City) died and was about to be buried (probably in the islands before, when one dies, embalmment would be so inconvenient that sometimes those who died are buried on the soonest time possible) yet the woman suddenly rose up from where her cold body was laid and just walked away from the vicinity. Everyone present at her wake was startled to no end of course. As the rumor goes farther, she went on to tell everyone that had inquired about the circumstances of her amazing ressurection how she had seen a long dark tunnel and a bright light at the end of it, so bright in fact that the light was so bright and she had to adjust her sight because of this, but the light she said, had been very comforting, and very pleasing to the senses that she had felt a joy she had never felt in the living world.

Now—whether this story was merely fabricated or not---this account of an out-of-the-body experience approximates what were collated all over the United States throughout the years and it had happened when our world does not yet communicate as effectively as now, no Internet or cable news yet, and that was way before I have started to read similar accounts on Reader’s Digest. Those who had been an ardent Reader’s Digest reader over the years would surely know what I am saying.

For certain, it is not possible that those who have out-of-body experience in America have heard about this rumored woman in Subanipa and replicated her story about death and dying.

Such is how startling these out-of-body experience accounts---we have heard many of them every so often from time to time, through those who have gone thru very traumatic physical incidents and had read or heard how they all had testified to the same circumstances, of tunnels and light, and yet whether we like it or not, we could not just as easily believe this as an incontrovertible truth.

Like how we can always believe that there is a sun circling above or below us, but we just do not know exactly how it came to being or what actually consists it.

Scientists are often too smart that some of them have invented and built the smart Tomahawk missile, so smart that it can hit a target many miles away with a margin-of-error merely in meters. I once had joked before that Tomahawk missile were so smart that if one of them would decide to enter Harvard University, it would surely end up with a masteral degree of some sort.

But a recent fossil discovery in Kenya had once again divulged the weakness of established scientific theories on human evolution and scientists have found themselves scratching their heads, realizing that they are back to square one. It was previously well-accepted in the scientific community that humans (homo sapiens) have evolved gradually from apes towards hominids (or human-like apes), into human-like species generally known as Homo Erectus and then towards the present form of humans as Homo Sapiens (see this Wikipedia article on human evolution).

And then this discovery of a skull remains of a Homo Erectus in Kenya, one that was carbon-dated to have lived side by side Homo Habilis and therefore effectively set aside and destroyed the previously accepted table of evolution that had showed how Homo Habilis----termed as “The Handy Man” for having made and used stone tools---have gradually transformed intoe Homo Erectus, the specie heavily believed to be the direct descendants of humans, except for the “missing link” specie that should connect them.

Now, scientists are not merely puzzled about this missing link between Homo Erectus and humans, but have now to contend to the question of how and where did Homo Erectus have evolved from, when it is now found out that they could not have evolved from Homo Habilis.

This new findings in fact reinforces another contending theory on human evolution, one that hypothesizes the sudden onset of the human specie, proposing that humans have not really gradually evolved from apes and hominids but have appeared into the scene in a sudden spurt of generation, revoking thereon the natural selection theory of Charles Darwin, as inculcated in his seminal notes “The Origin of Species”.

How human beings have suddenly appeared on Earth is now a scientific mystery that must be worth inquiring and scientists today might find it more worthwhile to investigate this angle than be stuck with the seemingly never-ending search for “the missing link”, which over the years had became like the quest for the Holy Grail, always searching but no finding. Unless if we believe Steven Speilberg and Mr. Indiana Jones.

Maybe scientists could better enlist some Tomahawk missiles in their quest for the “missing link” for they could prove to be smarter than any scientists living today. Just a suggestion, mind you.

In February 2007, A University of Pittsburgh professor named Dr. Jeffrey H. Schwartz have subscribed to this theory of sudden onset of human beings through a study he made using the “Molecular Assumption” principle where it becomes scientifically accepted as form of empirical result-gathering the use of blood serums in order to established the relativity of different species. It is quite a tricky form of experimentation vis-à-vis the theory of evolution since it did established that man and apes have similar strong molecular reaction in their blood serum and so therefore it is established that they are closely related groupings of mammals.

Now, this would seem to establish more the theory that man could have really come from apes. Not so, said Dr. Schwartz since the strongly similar serum reaction of man and ape’s establishes the assumption that they could not in fact have evolved from each other, either from ape to man or man to ape, since they won’t easily “divulge” from each other, or in plain text, they can’t spread out from each other since in the first place, they have similar structure in molecular terms, closely knitted that they can spread out from one to another, but existing side by side most probably. It’s really a tricky scientific assumption, not easily understood.

But as I understand it, this Molecular Assumption theory can be exemplified by the circumstance of two plastic balls, one was small and simple (apes) and one was huge and quaint-looking (humans). They have been placed side by side in one particular place, there even from the beginning of time, and have not evolved from each other, one did not came from the other, but had always been there and placed there together---not one after the other.

Of course, this new theory on human evolution is very new that at this point it would be hard-pressed to easily overcome the well-established and accepted natural selection and gradual evolution theory that had been there for one and half century now, since the time Charles Darwin had launched "the voyage of the beagle".

So did man gradually evolved from apes? If so, could we see a good evidence of gradual and slow transformation when the “missing link” species remains a mystery till this day and in fact been widened by this new fossil discovery in Kenya?

Or did human beings did came so suddenly as a specie?

Perhaps, it now becomes a question if in fact Adam and Eve were suddenly thrown out from Eden and found themselves suddenly on Earth full of hominids or Homo Erectus.

What do you think?

I was scouring the net for some information and this one current news had just caught my fancy. In an area within the state of New Mexico in America, a sizable number of people gathered there to mark the 60th anniversary of the event that is so-called as “The Roswell Incident” . It must be known that sometime early in July of the year 1947, an individual named Mack Brazel went out to check on his ranch, monitoring the situation of the sheep he was herding at that time, especially after storms have spread toward that particular part of the area. In a while, after reconnoitering thoroughly though his ranch, he found metal apparatus that according to him, he had never seen before and one he describes to be not-of-this-world, whose solidity and strength was remarkably beyond what could be produced here.

The tale about that particular incident easily had spread throughout Roswell and a week after, the local daily headlined that an alien ship had been found in Roswell---and then everything from that day became now part of history---global history even--- and became well-known all over as “The Roswell Incident” (see this wikipedia article).

Now, there is this saying which held that if one would keep on saying that “I am a God” over and over again, sooner or later, someone will finally believe that, and then more and more would follow suit. This is actually what happened to the incident in Roswell after that fateful day in July of 1947, when the buzz of alien ship and alien capture was so insisting that the story had become so widespread that even to this day, it had become romanticized in many pop-culture endeavors. In the 1990’s, Hollywood had made a very famous TV series out of it.

And this goes true to alien beliefs and alien sightings. To this day, no one has ever proven hypothetically the fact of alien lifeform, in concrete and material means. Yet, the presentiment about aliens intruding into earth’s space keep on occuring, time and time again, that in a while, we could not help but keep a closer eye on it and examine it’s veracity.

Like ghost stories and the fact of ghosts by themeselves, tales about alien sightings had become such a very general notion among the population everywhere around the world; that storytellers and raconteurs from all corners of the world keep on relaying them even if they are that hard to believe. The nature of ghosts and spirits had become so inculcated into the human psyche that somehow, we could not help but affirm their factual existence, one way or another. And even if often we are inclined to disregard them, we as consumers of such stories longed for it, we pay hard-earned money to watch ghosts or spirit movies, just because we enjoy such form of narrations or exhibitions, and therefore we like to believe in them and make them all come true.

At night, when the kids become too unruly, we say sometimes that the ghosts is somewhere in our vicinity that they better be at home and sleep so early…or else. Or else the ghost would be coming after them. And such scheme actually work.

Aliens stories are like ghosts stories. We kept on telling about them even if we haven’t seen any of them and even if we do not actually believe in them.

I have read in this Philippine government forum that the probability of aliens occurring has about (1x10^-58)^2 = 1x10^-116 chances of occurring. Sadly I could not actually comprehend such statistical probability but they say at that amount, it is nearly nil.

And then another forum commenter said that it would be of such “arrogance” for any human being to believe that we are the only intelligent lifeform existing in this universe, considering the vastness of the universe. And to me it does make sense. The universe is so wide beyond human comprehension that it wouldn’t be too surprising to realize that in fact, “they are out there” and probably “had been here’ once or twice on earth; just came visiting as one would say. They could be out there. And possibly, they could have been here.

For alien thoughts, many belief that the Nazca lines in Peru could have only been conceived by some alien lifeform since in ancient times, human beings could not be as intelligent and as complicated to be able to do such gigantic images. Unless overhead telescopes---or some form of top camera—had already been invented by that time in order to be able to calculate and execute the gigantic drawings. Even the pyramids, with all the mathematical exactions it had, are sometimes believed to have been of alien creation or inspiration, where in an ancient time humans minds were supposedly still unripe and uncomplicated.

So, do you believe in aliens? If you ask me, pointing to the “arrogance” theory, I may say that in this vast universe, as ever expanding and as ever mythical it is, I could probably be inclined towards believing that aliens do actually exist.

I remember some years ago that once that I was watching this cable television special (on Star World channel, I believe) where it was shown a collection of various videos exhibiting aliens caught on camera. There was one video there (despite that the others were clearly faked and doubtful) that really had amazed me. This particular video had shown how a white luminescent being with nearly human form (but with an unusually square-shaped face was somehow held off by a number of individuals clad in medical robes and the supposedly hidden camera was somewhere from above. I saw that the white human-like figure had got his hands tied behind his back, and then brought face down to a rectangular table, and he exerted to lift his head and his face was facing the camera, as if he knew where the camera was, and then he was coughing and coughing to no end. And he was looking at the camera so hard that I felt he was really looking at me, his face moving as if diagonally--to and fro---pleading and trying to communicate, trying to really imply some idea to me. It felt so eerily strange watching that video.

I then had a thought that if some naughty individuals had intended to manufacture this video of a luminescent human-like being---just in order to fool viewers---how come he or she could be so inventive to ever thought of having a coughing fake alien being dragged by individuals clad on medical robes into a hard metal table? Have you ever thought of a coughing alien? Coughing and heaving from seemingly lack of oxygen?

I thought the video images might really have been caught as it was happening and that it could possibly be the only video of a real alien. And that perhaps aliens would somehow coughed and should be heaving for air since the Earth’s atmosphere might not be too tolerable for them.

It just amazes me, these alien stories. How about you? Do you believe in aliens?

LOOKS LIKE BEAUTY IS NO LONGER within the grasp of the one we often call as ‘the beholder’. Scientists from the University of Aberdeen in United Kingdom have found out through a very simple but fairly compelling experimentation process that human attraction can be largely based on influence rather than on innate qualities, or in simpler terms, one can be considered attractive depending on the number of people who will approve of the way you look.

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