#of once-in-a-century auroras visible in Egypt. because of course it was.

[sheliesshattered]

ongoing solarstorm research is telling me that this is the furthest south that auroras have been seen (in the northern hemisphere) since 1921

and I'm suddenly reminded of that little detail about the solarstorm in 1921 that I didn't quite manage to work into This Isn't A Ghost Story

[lati-will]

Is Our Sun Conscious?

I have been studying our Sun for some years, focusing on the influence of erratic solar behavior (erratic from a modern human perspective) on the course of human development and civilization. One of my major conclusions is that the last ice age ended abruptly circa 9700 bce due to a major solar outburst (or series of outbursts). Solar activity is intimately tied to climate changes on Earth, which in turn have major effects on life on our planet, including humanity.

Following the solar agitation and disturbances that ended the last ice age and possibly continued for several millennia, during the last 8,000 years or so the Sun has been relatively stable, with periods of quiescence.1 For example, in historical times during the Maunder Minimum (circa 1645 to 1715) the Sun appeared to “shut down” or go dormant (as reflected in the rarity of sunspots), corresponding on Earth to the middle of the “Little Ice Age” (which in totality lasted from circa 1500 to circa 1860). At the end of the “Little Ice Age,” in 1859, the Sun “burped,” spewing out two coronal mass ejections (CMEs), accompanied by solar flares and other solar activity, that hit Earth. This become known as the Carrington Event (named after British astronomer Richard Carrington who observed a solar flare that preceded the main event). At the time unusual auroras were seen around the world due to the solar outburst, and the primitive mid-nineteenth century telegraph lines were overloaded by the incoming charged particles and accompanying geomagnetic storm.

Overall, in 1859 the solar outburst caused little more than minor damage and a bit of an inconvenience for those who utilized the telegraph lines. If a Carrington-level event were to hit today, the story would be much different! A Carrington-level event could knock out modern electronics around the globe, bringing computer systems, electrical grids, the Internet, communications, satellites, and much more to a standstill.2

In modern times, that is since about the middle of the twentieth century, the Sun has shown increasing signs of agitation, of variability, of erratic behaviour, of “mood swings,” the likes of which have not occurred since the solar outbursts that ended the last ice age. And the solar outbursts of circa 9700 bce and the succeeding millennia were orders of magnitude greater than the 1859 Carrington Event. Prior to 9700 bce sophisticated cultures – civilization – had developed (witnessed dramatically by the archaeological remains found at Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey). This early cycle of civilization was devastated by the solar outbursts of circa 9700 bce and a solar-induced dark age (or SIDA for short, an acronym coined by my wife Catherine Ulissey) ensued for thousands of years until civilisation fully re-emerged in places such as Mesopotamia and Egypt during the period of circa 4000 bce to 3000 bce.

If we were to witness a repeat of the events, the solar outbursts, that ended the last ice age, there is no doubt our modern technological civilisation would be utterly decimated. We would be thrown back to a “stone age” and worse. Why do I say “and worse”? Because today we have hundreds of nuclear power plants around the globe. If a Carrington-level event, much less a solar outburst at the level of that at the end of the last ice age, were to hit us today, power lines would be disabled, the cooling systems and other components of nuclear power plants would be compromised, and we would have Fukushima type situations or worse around the world releasing radioactivity into the environment, compounding all of the other problems brought on by the failure of modern electronic and electrical systems.3

What are the chances of a Carrington-level event, much less a 9700 bce-level event, occurring in the foreseeable future? I suspect very high! I do not want to be a scaremonger or doomsayer, but there is evidence to suggest that our Sun is going through a volatile period, with major ups and downs in activity.4Some researchers suggest that although the Sun was very active in the last few decades, it has in recent years gone into a quiescence period. Some even claim we might be headed for another “ice age” (whether a mini or major ice age).5 I feel this is an invalid extrapolation of the limited data we have.

Activated Sun

It could be that the Sun is once again going through a period of extreme variability, manifesting as a pattern of highs and lows in solar activity. That is, we should not extrapolate from a few years (or even a couple of decades) of relatively low solar activity to the conclusion that we are imminently entering another ice age. Indeed, the Sun may suddenly become active again, or it might undergo a major solar outburst even in the midst of an overall period of relative inactivity. The 1859 Carrington Event occurred between a solar minimum and a solar maximum during a rather mediocre solar cycle; based on short-term methods of analyses, it is unlikely to have been predicted even with modern techniques (at the time, scientists were not even aware of the modern concept of major solar outbursts so no one was even attempting such predictions).

Looking at the longer term pattern of solar activity over the last 12,000 years (reconstructed from such data as isotope concentrations in Greenland ice cores), my judgment is that our Sun is showing all of the same signs of extreme variability and disequilibria which occurred at the end of the last ice age.6 The implication is we may experience a major solar outburst in the very near future. Indeed, in July 2012 a significant solar outburst barely missed hitting Earth.7 If the eruption had occurred just a week or so earlier it would have been Earth-directed, and most likely destroyed or compromised much of our modern electronic and electrical technology and infrastructure. Even now, years later, we would still be attempting to rebuild the modern world. And the July 2012 event occurred during our current solar cycle,8 which has been unusually quiet overall, to the point that (as noted above) some people predict a partial solar shutdown and a “mini ice age” or even the beginning of a true ice age.

With this introduction, I want to turn to the subject of the title of this article: Is Our Sun Conscious? I wonder, in all seriousness, if it was just luck or good fortune that the July 2012 solar event was a near miss from Earth’s perspective, or if there was possibly something else involved?

A Conscious Sun?

Katie often comments to me that otherwise very active sunspots strangely lessen the severity of their activity, producing smaller solar flares and so forth, or even appear to become temporarily dormant and shut down their activity, when they are Earth-facing. Then, as they move around to the side and back of the Sun (as viewed from Earth; the Sun rotates on its axis and of course Earth revolves around the Sun), these same sunspots begin firing again, increasing their activity dramatically. It is as if the Sun is aware of Earth’s presence and is attempting to avoid spewing a major solar outburst (whether a solar flare, CME, or some other type of solar eruption) directly at us.

Katie is not the only observer to comment anecdotally on this apparent pattern;9 others have independently suggested, perhaps in jest, that our Sun is consciously attempting to protect us from being hit by a major solar outburst. In analogy, imagine a person who is about to sneeze, but is able to hold it long enough to turn away and avoid sneezing on someone else.

This may seem like a very weak basis for suggesting our Sun has the property of consciousness, but there is additional evidence. The Sun is a fairly typical star, and it has been found stars exhibit anomalous behaviours that are not easily explained by the theories of standard physics.

As physicist Gregory Matloff (New York City College of Technology) has discussed,10 stars do not appear to move in the ways that standard theories, such as formulations based on Newton’s theory of gravity, predict. Stars typically move around the center of the galaxy in which they are located. Standard theory predicts that stars closest to the galactic center should revolve more rapidly than those farther from the center (just as Mercury travels more rapidly around the Sun than does Saturn, which is much farther from the Sun). However, this proves not to be the case. On the whole, stars farther from the galactic center move more rapidly than stars closer to the galactic center; it is as if all of the stars are mounted on a huge rotating wheel. Another problem with standard theory is that the masses of clusters of galaxies (as best as can be calculated based on our observations) are not great enough to hold the clusters together gravitationally. To address these issues, the concept of “Dark Matter” has been hypothesized. In simple terms, Dark Matter, which according to its advocates is said to compose the majority of matter in the universe, is essentially undetectable except for its gravitational effects on visible matter and radiation. Supposedly, Dark Matter can explain the anomalous movements of stars and the clustering of galaxies.

Do Stars have a Will of Their Own?

There is another explanation that could also account for the anomalous behavior of stars, an explanation that does not need to invoke undetected Dark Matter: stars are conscious and move according to their own will or volition. In one of his articles, Gregory Matloff defines “a conscious entity as one capable of volition – it has enough self-awareness that it can decide to take (or not take) a selected action.” Thus “a conscious star can decide to alter its motion to participate in the great stellar dance as stars orbit the centers of their galaxies. Such a star need not have a human-level or god-like consciousness. A simple herding instinct is enough.”11 The existence of such consciousness in stars, which are following a herding instinct (similar to a school of fish swimming together or a flock of birds flying together), would adequately explain their otherwise anomalous motions. Is this a simpler explanation than invoking Dark Matter?

Matloff has also discussed several potential mechanisms by which stars might be able to express their will and consciously change their trajectories. The best established mechanism is the use of jets of material emitted from the star. Young stars emit intense jets of material, often bipolar but not necessarily symmetrical. Asymmetric jets exuded by young stars could be used to preferentially change and adjust their trajectories. Mature stars, such as our Sun, emit a “solar wind” consisting of electrically-charged particles. Variations in the intensity, in various directions, of the solar wind could change the path of the star. One must remember that, as Matloff points out, changes in the trajectory of a star that may be “significant” to the star over its long lifetime of millions or billions of years (our Sun is estimated to be nearly five billion years old) may appear trivial or imperceptible to us. The use by our Sun of jets and variations in the solar wind to express will and volition could be related to the idea that our Sun may consciously attempt to avoid throwing solar eruptions toward Earth – and if this is the case, it is then also the case that the Sun could consciously decide at some point to hit Earth with a major solar outburst. Is this what happened at the end of the last ice age, circa 9700 bce? Or was the solar outburst at that time an “accident”?

Matloff tentatively suggests two other mechanisms by which our Sun, or any conscious star, might theoretically change its trajectory: 1) Variations in the pressure of electromagnetic radiation, including visible light, given off by the star; and 2) by psychokinesis. Electromagnetic radiation pressure seems like a plausible possibility, although little work has been done to model how great the variation would have to be to change a star’s trajectory. Possibly changes in electromagnetic radiation could be used volitionally by stars for other purposes, such as communication among themselves. Psychokinesis (also known as telekinesis or mind-over-matter) has, to my satisfaction, been demonstrated to exist among biological organisms such as humans.12 Whether psychokinesis could (or does) exist among other conscious entities, such as possibly stars, is currently unknown – although I am not aware of any theoretical reason why it should not.

But how can the Sun and stars be conscious when they are not even biological organisms, at least not in the sense of carbon-based cellular creatures like ourselves? A common notion, which is not to say it is correct (all too often common notions and “common sense” are wrong), is that consciousness and volition (at least in nature) can only occur in carbon-based forms of biological organisms, and many people would limit the notion of consciousness to “advanced” biological organisms like vertebrates, mammals, or, according to some, only human beings. However, various researchers have argued that consciousness may arise at a quantum level and may not be limited to familiar biological organisms such as ourselves.

For instance, the British physicist Sir Roger Penrose (University of Oxford) and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff (The University of Arizona Medical Center) have developed the theory of orchestrated objective reduction as an explanation for how consciousness arises. Essentially, an orchestrated coherent series of quantum reductions (wave function collapses) result in moments and sequences of consciousness and choice or decision-making.13 As it turns out, according to such analyses, the conditions conducive to the manifestation of consciousness may occur on and in stars. Indeed, at a more fundamental level, consciousness may be inherent to the manifestation of matter and exist throughout the universe – with most conscious beings taking forms other than “biological organisms,” yet we as carbon-based life forms may have a difficult time recognizing consciousness in other forms of matter. The physicist Max Tegmark (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA) has suggested consciousness may be a “state of matter” (“perceptronium”)14 – perhaps this is a state of matter that our Sun, and stars more generally, possess.

“Afterthoughts” of Our Sun

Possibly related to the concept of a conscious Sun is research that found a correlation between patterns in solar activity and earthquakes on Earth.15 Furthermore, there may be a correlation between earthquakes and major atmospheric disturbances, such as cyclone activity, on our planet.16 If our Sun is conscious, does it consciously influence storm activity, weather patterns, and earthquake activity on our planet? Or are these types of phenomena linked to the Sun, yet “afterthoughts” from the Sun’s perspective? Is the Sun sometimes rather oblivious to its influence on Earth, just as we might be rather oblivious when we unknowingly destroy a colony of bacteria or step on an ant mound by mistake?

When we look at traditional mythologies and ancient beliefs, many past cultures considered the Sun and stars to be conscious entities – and this can perhaps be seen as the basis of astrology. The gods were associated with stars (including objects in the sky that we now classify as planets), and the ancient Egyptians (to give but one example) hoped to be united with the Sun and stars upon death. Plato in Timaeus (circa 360 bce) wrote, “And when he [the Artificer] had compounded the whole, he portioned off souls equal in number to the stars and distributed a soul to each star…”17

Building on such ideas, my wife Katie has speculated that perhaps when human beings die their hydrogen is released (hydrogen can potentially carry information, and many would argue that information is an essential element of consciousness) and at least some of the hydrogen escapes to space where it collects as clouds, collapses under gravitational attraction, is compressed, and ultimately gives rise to stars – stars which may retain some of the information, some of the consciousness aspects, of the former beings who gave up their hydrogen. In this way, perhaps we (and possibly all biological organisms) may be reborn as stars. Of course, this is a highly speculative hypothesis,18 but if we can demonstrate our Sun and other stars are conscious, it may lend support to the idea that ultimately (perhaps after a number of incarnations on Earth) we join our consciousnesses with those of the Sun and stars.

At this point some would suggest I have crossed the boundary from “science” to “science fiction,” but I prefer in this case the label of “speculative science.” What might we conclude? Is our Sun conscious? While the consciousness of our Sun and the stars has yet to be definitively demonstrated, I do not think we should simply dismiss the idea. Indeed, a conscious Sun and stars may go a long way toward explaining various “anomalies” that standard paradigms cannot readily accommodate.

Footnotes

S. K. Solanki, I. G. Usoskin, B. Kromer, M. Schüssler, and J. Beer, 2004, “Unusual activity of the Sun during recent decades compared to the previous 11,000 years”, Nature vol. 431, 1084-1087; G. Usoskin, S. K. Solanki, and G. A. Kovaltsov, 2007, “Grand minima and maxima of solar activity: new observational constraints”, Astronomy and Astrophysics, vol. 471, 301-309.

For more detailed discussion of the topics in this paragraph, see: Robert M. Schoch, Forgotten Civilization: The Role of Solar Outbursts in Our Past and Future, Inner Traditions, 2012.

See Note 2.

See Notes 1 and 2.

Anonymous, 2015, “Diminishing solar activity may bring new Ice Age by 2030”, available at https://astronomynow.com/2015/07/17/diminishing-solar-activity-may-bring-new-ice-age-by-2030/, article dated 17July 2015, accessed 29 October 2016; Zoë Schlanger, 2015, “An atmospheric scientist explains why that ‘mini ice age’ is bogus”, available at www.newsweek.com/mini-ice-age-bogus-global-cooling-climate-change-354632, article dated 17 July 2015, accessed 29 October 2016; Michael J. I. Brown, 2015, “The ‘mini ice age’ hoopla is a giant failure of science communication”, available at http://phys.org/news/2015-07-mini-ice-age-hoopla-giant.html, article dated 24 July 2015, accessed 29 October 2016.

See Notes 1 and 2.

NASA, 2014, “Near Miss: The Solar Superstorm of July 2012”, available at https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm, article dated 23 July 2014, accessed 29 October 2016; Jason Samenow, 2014, “How a solar storm two years ago nearly caused a catastrophe on Earth”, available at www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2014/07/23/how-a-solar-storm-nearly-destroyed-life-as-we-know-it-two-years-ago/, article dated 23 July 2014, accessed 29 October 2016.

Solar Cycle 24, which began in 2008; this is the twenty-fourth cycle of magnetic polarity changes and minima to maxima to minima in sunspots since astronomers began systematically recording and numbering such cycles, starting in 1755. The average solar cycle is about eleven years in duration.

This apparent phenomenon is also noted in Ben Davidson, Observing the Frontier: Eyes Open, No Fear, 2015, Space Weather News, LLC, 68-71.

Greg Matloff, 2012, “Stars That Wander, Are You Bright: Are Stars Conscious?”, available at www.baen.com/starsconscious, article dated 2012, accessed 29 October 2016; see also, Gregory L. Matloff, 2012, “Star Consciousness: An Alternative to Dark Matter”, available at www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=23203, posted 13 June 2012 by Paul Gilster, accessed 29 October 2016; Greg Matloff (introduced by Paul Gilster), 2015, “Greg Matloff: Conscious Stars Revisited”, available at www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=33995, dated 18 September 2015, accessed 29 October 2016.

Matloff quotations from www.baen.com/starsconscious, accessed 29 October 2016; italics in the original.

See discussion, articles, and references in: Robert M. Schoch and Logan Yonavjak, The Parapsychology Revolution: A Concise Anthology of Paranormal and Psychical Research, Tarcher/Penguin, 2008.

See my discussion of their work in: Robert M. Schoch, 2014, “Life, Death, and Raymond: Exploring the Nature of Death and Consciousness”, Darklore, vol. 8, 189-212.

Max Tegmark, 2015, “Consciousness as a State of Matter”, available at https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.1219 and https://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.1219v3.pdf, accessed 29 October 2016 (original paper dated 6 January 2014, revised version of 18 March 2015 consulted).

See, for instance, the following works and also references cited therein: John F. Simpson, 1967, “Solar activity as a triggering mechanism for earthquakes”, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, vol. 3, 417-425; A. Zátopek and L. Krivsky, 1974, “On the correlation between meteorological microseisms and solar activity”, Astronomical Institutes of Czechoslovakia, Bulletin, vol. 25, no. 5, 257-262; A. L. Morozova, M. I. Pudovkin, and T. V. Barliaeva, 2000, “Variations of the Cosmic Ray Fluxes as a Possible Earthquake Precursor”, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, vol. 25, 321–324; S. Odintsov, K. Boyarchuk, K. Georgieva, B. Kirov, and D. Atanasov, 2006, “Long-period trends in global seismic and geomagnetic activity and their relation to solar activity”, Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, vol. 31, 88–93; Jean-Paul Poirier, Jean-Louis Le Mouël, and Vincent Courtillot, 2009, “Microseismicity, meteorology and the solar cycle”, Académie des Sciences, Comptes Rendus Geoscience, vol. 341, 977–981; Jeffrey J. Love and Jeremy N. Thomas, 2013, “Insignificant solar-terrestrial triggering of earthquakes”, Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 40, pp. 1165-1170; Mikhail Kovalyov and Selena Kovalyov, 2015, “On the relationship between cosmic rays, solar activity and powerful earthquakes”, available from https://arxiv.org/abs/1403.5728 and https://arxiv.org/pdf/1403.5728v2.pdf, accessed 29 October 2016 (original paper dated 23 March 2014, revised version of 10 February 2015 consulted); Ben Davidson, Kongpop U-yen, and Christopher Holloman, 2015, “Relationship between M8+ Earthquake Occurrences and the Solar Magnetic Fields”, New Concepts in Global Tectonics Journal, vol. 3, no. 3, 310-322. Interestingly, various seismic events on our Moon (moonquakes) are apparently correlated with, or triggered by, some phenomenon or phenomena outside of our Solar System; see Cliff Frohlich and Yosio Nakamura, 2006, “Possible extra-Solar-System cause for certain lunar seismic events”, Icarus, vol. 185, 21–28. If this is true, it suggests the possibility that in at least some cases phenomena on our Sun and earthquake activity on Earth (as well as moonquakes) may be correlated with each other because both the Sun and Earth (or Earth-Moon system) are responding to common phenomena outside of our Solar System, or perhaps the Sun is responding to something from outside the Solar System and then causing effects on Earth (and presumably on other planets and bodies in our Solar System as well). Such studies are still in their infancy.

See discussion in: B. Davidson, Observing the Frontier [see Note 9].

R. D. Archer-Hind, The Timaeus of Plato, edited with Introduction and Notes, London and New York: Macmillan and Co., 1888, 141 and 143.

Discussed further in: Forgotten Civilization [see Note 2], 255-259.

By: Robert M. Schoch, Ph.d.

[sheliesshattered]

I’m trying to get back into the swing of writing my Whouffaldi s8 AU For As Long As We Get, the next part of which will be a retelling of In The Forest Of The Night. It’s been slow-going lately, and I’ve mostly been stuck on plot elements. The entire idea of the s8 AU series is keeping the major events seen in each episode, but changing the emotional context they’re happening in, given the shift in Clara and the Doctor’s relationship. Their trip on the Orient Express In Space is their honeymoon instead of their last hurrah, that sort of thing.

At this point in the fic series, they’ve been married about a month, so the emotional context is completely different from what it is in the show, wherein Clara and Danny are still dating, and Danny finds out that Clara has been lying to him about not travelling with the Doctor anymore. That shift changes the entire tone of all of their interactions, and changes the sort of decisions each of them would make when facing the same external circumstance. (I can’t imagine Clara refusing to leave with the Doctor in this AU, for instance.)

So there’s a lot to figure out there, and I’m having to write more Danny content than I would really prefer -- though I will say I’m excited about the scenes with him that I’ve written so far. I thought that was what was sticking in my gears and holding me back from writing this installment in the AU series, but as I’ve started re-reading the episode transcript, I’ve realized that there are a whole lot of other structural/plot issues in this episode that really bother me, separate from Clara’s relationships with the Doctor and Danny. A lot of the science just doesn’t sit well with me with even just my hobbyist level of physics knowledge. And I feel like Maebh is really under utilized in the third act, after they figure out that she can talk to the trees. The core idea of the episode is almost good and almost scientifically coherent, but not quite, and it bugs me.

The other fic that’s really been calling to me lately is Home The Long Way ‘Round, that huge unfinished epic I’ve been returning to every now and then since 2015. That one is built on a backbone of quantum physics, and I love all the research I’ve gotten to do with that, I love fitting in as much science as makes sense for the story, and then just letting it go and leaning into the fiction part of science fiction. It’s a bit similar to This Isn’t A Ghost Story, weirdly enough, in which I did as much research into a couple of specific topics within Egyptology as it’s possible to do without actually attending university courses on it. I love doing that sort of research, I love putting as much of it into a fic as I can manage, and I love just letting go and coasting once I’ve reached that point.

So now I’m thinking that I should probably do the same thing for this AU version of In The Forest Of The Night, really let myself dig into the known science and have fun extrapolating from there. Solar flares, geomagnetic storms, and coronal mass ejections are actually pretty well understood, we just haven’t had any really big storms for a century or more now, since back when telegraphs were the height of technology.

Which, of course, is how I ended up re-encountering a bit of research I originally did way back in the summer of 2020, when I was working on This Isn’t A Ghost Story. A significant beat of that story is set on May 13, 1921, and the week that follows -- those of you who have read it know what I’m talking about. It just so happens that May 13-15 1921 was one of the largest geomagnetic storms on record, the strongest of the entire twentieth century, known as the New York Railroad Storm, because the coronal mass ejection caused a fire at Grand Central Terminal. Telegraph wires conducted the current of the CME, causing fires and electric shocks world-wide. 

Auroras could be seen in the night sky the world over, including at the equator, and definitely would have been visible in Egypt on that fateful night of May 13, 1921, and the pivotal days that followed. It’s such a cool historical detail that perfectly lined up with the story I wanted to tell, but I couldn’t find a way to mention it without derailing the action of the story. But for those of you who read it, I thought you might enjoy that little extra detail. ;)