Part two.

On page 84, there’s that stupid mumble about the “protective ozone layer” again. It feels like the author is not an astronomer who knows at least school physics and chemistry, but an illiterate idiot like the honorable members of the Nobel Committee who awarded prizes in physics (or chemistry) to three crooks who came up with this lying illiterate nonsense about holes in the ozone layer!

Ozone protects nothing and no one! It is simply FORMED from oxygen in the air under the influence of ultraviolet radiation (from the Sun or ANY OTHER SOURCE, for example, UV-C lamps, which I have been using since March 2020 to sterilize the air in my apartment) with a wavelength of 1850 Angstroms at any altitude, even 60-30 km. above the surface of the Earth, or in my apartment at home ON the same surface.

Yes, any nurse from the phototherapy room knows that even when quartz lamps are operating in the “A” and “B” ultraviolet ranges, the smell of ozone is already slightly felt, because there is such a micropick of radiation in these NON–BACTERICIDAL LAMPS!

(Explanation: In medical and biological practice, ultraviolet radiation is conventionally divided into three zones, A, B, and C, according to the nature of their effects on the body.

A is a zone of ultraviolet radiation (UV), called antirachitic, with a wavelength from 3800 Angstroms to 3150 Angstroms.

B is a zone of UV radiation called erythemaic (causing redness of the skin, sunburn) with a wavelength from 3150 to 2800 Angstroms.

C is a zone of UV radiation called bactericidal, killing bacteria, fungi and viruses with a wavelength from 2800 to 2000 Angstroms, especially at 2540 Angstroms (sometimes even shorter up to 1850 Angstroms – forming ozone).

“Quartz” lamps are called because ordinary glass does not transmit ultraviolet radiation, absorbs it, and therefore the shell of such lamps is made of special QUARTZ glass that transmits UV radiation!)

So, any nurse and a competent student knows more about ozone and the conditions of its formation than the highly respected members of the Nobel Committee.

And there’s nothing to be surprised about! When prominent physicists of the world, themselves Nobel laureates, strongly recommended Einstein as an undisputed candidate for the Nobel Prize in Physics for his creation of Special and General Relativity, the members of the Nobel Committee, being luminaries of all sciences, commissioned a Swedish OPHTHALMOLOGIST to write a recommendation for Einstein’s work!!! And he wrote it anyway. That’s why Einstein was repeatedly REMOVED from the candidate lists! And when, finally, he was considered worthy, it was not for these theories, but for explaining the photoelectric effect, a work that was undoubtedly very important and also revolutionary (which became the physical basis of Quantum mechanics)! IN THIS CASE, the review was also written by a Swede, but a physicist!!!

And the committee members remembered the skeptical opinion of a highly qualified specialist in the field of Fundamental Theoretical Physics, an ophthalmologist, about the Theory of Relativity!

Page 113 “… In one of those fantastic existences where our Metagalaxy is just an atom in some Superuniverse or in some strange (but equally probable) existence in which the electrons we know are galaxies, in some microscopic world beyond the reach of modern instruments.”

M.C. It’s funny, but it’s nice to read such rehashes of Valery Bryusov’s verse “The World of the Electron” in a very popular book by a world-renowned scientist and astronomer!

Page 130 “Conditions on Earth have undergone such drastic changes over the past few billion years that biogenesis may no longer be possible. However, as Oparin points out, even if biogenesis were currently in effect, its products would quickly be destroyed by the COUNTLESS predatory organisms that inhabit the Earth. (Morgulis, p. X).

M.C. Here is a quote from the penultimate chapter of the book, which contains Oparin’s statements from his work “The Origin of Life on Earth” translated into English by Morgulis and his own preface. The most interesting thing (for me) was the last phrase that if the process of the emergence of the first living beings on Earth could take place now, its “products” would be DESTROYED by COUNTLESS predatory, currently existing organisms. That is, we are talking about the fact that at some fairly early stage, besides the CREATORS of this life, PARASITES appeared who no longer CREATED anything, but USED EVERYTHING READY-MADE! That is, the idea is simple: After some creators created life that transforms the purely mineral crust. The water and the Earth’s atmosphere became more SUITABLE for the existence of these same CREATORS, and multiple parasites immediately appeared, who simply used what they had already achieved and did not “work” themselves to transform the Earth’s minerals into something ALIVE or convenient for the existence of life! Why? Yes, simply because being a PARASITE is incomparably easier and more energetically beneficial than being creators who, by absorbing the radiation of a star, used energy to transform a purely mineral world into an ORGANIC, LIVING ONE! And the parasite doesn’t have to “think” about it! He lives and breeds unrestrainedly on everything that is ready!

Do you recognize the contours of a portrait of a PERSON????

The following are quotes from interesting famous works by S. Miller on the artificial creation of organic molecules from a mixture of gases CH4, NH3, H2 and water vapor by weekly treatment of this mixture with spark discharges (“lightning”) and UV radiation. Very interesting, albeit long-standing, information.

The last chapter. “What should a person’s reaction be?”

There is so much nonsense, nonsense and, at the same time, very sound and adequate thoughts on almost every page that you don’t know where to start quoting and what to end?

Page135 “So we humans are a very ordinary phenomenon in the universe.”

MK. One phrase with a clear tendency towards anthropocentrism of megalomaniac proportions. It turns out that the universe is full of such creatures. We are not alone!! There are many, very many of us, well, absolutely, EXTREMELY MANY! The whole vast universe is teeming with US!

Fortunately, the author is talking utter nonsense! Probably, somewhere in the universe there really are creepy superparasites like us. Yes, God forbid! Because if they are less scientifically and technologically advanced than WE are, we will eat them at the first opportunity. In their own juice.

If they turn out to be stronger than us intellectually and technologically, they will do the same to us.

Although this has been successfully done and is being done by our fellow planets: Fungi, bacteria and viruses.

The “black Death” – the plague ate two thirds of the European population, smallpox also ate a lot, Koch’s sticks – consumption (tuberculosis), were eaten by our lungs for centuries, and phthisiologists only silently threw up their hands and sent the sick “to the waters” or to the “magic mountains” – “Der Zauberberg”

The Spanish flu virus killed more people after the First World War than the war itself.

But, again, returning to our cosmic Brothers and Sisters “in mind,” fortunately, the probability of the appearance of such creatures is limited both “from below” – that is, an extremely small, NEGLIGIBLE probability of the emergence of humans, and “from above” – that is, the absolute inevitability of the RAPID AND RUTHLESS self-destruction of such a form of superparasitic life.

Any parasitic life is doomed to self-destruction precisely by its parasitic character, but the life of superparasites endowed with the sophisticated and stupid intelligence of cannibals is doomed to the same, but super-fast suicide!

So: There are very few chances for such a cannibalistic intelligence to originate and develop (AND THERE CAN BE NO OTHER, NON–CANNIBALLY DEVELOPED INTELLIGENCE, BECAUSE THE ENVIRONMENT, ENVIRONMENT, AND ECOLOGICAL NICHE DO NOT REQUIRE IT – the “Law of Intellectual Conformity to an Ecological Niche”), since it requires some rare combination of highly specific circumstances that have developed for monkeys. two million years ago in Equatorial Africa. And the probability of an early self-destruction of this kind of stupid, but sophisticated, purely cannibalistic intelligence is equal to one, that is, the steady NECESSITY of self-destruction.

Page 136

“If we take measures against NATURAL REGRESSION, which is often the result of adherence to dogmas, then we will continue to evolve while the planets rotate and the Sun radiates.”

M.C. I was just waving my hand at another abusive statement addressed to the author, and here, perhaps, is a thought that is interesting in its criticality, but erroneous in the main. Shepley is right about our natural stupidity and dogmatic thinking, but he misses the most important thing: WHAT kind of development are we talking about?

If we talk about purely scientific and technological things, then we have developed beyond measure in this, but we remain the same superparasites – the faithful descendants of cannibals. And therefore they are DOOMED to a quick and merciless suicide anyway, like any parasites.

If he means MORAL development (and I’m pretty sure he didn’t even think about it!), then YES, we totally abandon the two million parasitism recorded in our genes, first becoming SYMBIONTS OF LIFE ON EARTH, and then the CREATORS themselves, and then we can really live SUCH a LIFE. for a very, very long time!

Page 136

“And we have the opportunity to consciously accelerate our development. This will not be an increase in size, strength, or durability. It will be the growth mainly of those qualities that we associate with thinking; the development of such beautiful, though not precisely defined, concepts as KINDNESS AND COURAGE. And this is the essence of our cosmic ethics!”

M.C. I was mistaken in my previous skepticism. GOLDEN WORDS, BUT, only words – utopia!

Why?

Because ANY PARASITE will never voluntarily give up its parasitism – IT’s ALREADY GOOD in the sense of a gastrogenital, and it doesn’t know or want to know any other “GOODNESS.”

But even if we allow such a utopian rebirth, it must NECESSARILY be accompanied by a parallel huge increase in our military scientific and technological capabilities, so as not to instantly become helpless victims of EXTRATERRESTRIAL AND ALIEN superparasites, which we are now and continue this bloody process called “wonderful life” for the last two million years.

But the “golden words” are just a momentary flutter of Inspiration, because IMMEDIATELY after them the author slips back into half–witted nonsense, saying that we “will be able to participate in the improvement and even transformation of the laws of nature!”

The laws of nature, unlike the deceitful and thoroughly hypocritical “social laws” governing the herd, are UNCHANGEABLE and ETERNAL. And they are not subject to any “improvement or transformation”!

If Shapley is referring to the improvement and transformation of OUR concepts and ideas about natural phenomena, then this has already existed since time immemorial.

Page 139.

The footnote. “Isn’t it true that for caterpillars, God is gray, that he is a Great Glutton, an Eternal Eater!

The Irish poet W. B. Yeats (William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, Nobel Prize 1923) writes that, obviously, the Scottish partridge, the lotus flower and the roe deer all require that God be made in their image and likeness, and adds that he

“I walked a little further and heard the peacock say:

“The one who created the grass, and the worms, and my brilliant plumage is a gigantic Peacock;

This is his tail, decorated with myriad peacock eyes

It’s been floating above us all night.”

Yeats continues:

“Finally, I reached the darkest part of the wooded valley:

Somewhere in the darkness, a voice spoke of man’s faith and pride:

“God, who rules the world, created the stars shining in the sky,

He’s an exact replica of a human being, and I’m his greatest creation!”

And Mary Baker Eddie asks: “Is the God of all mortals also a mortal, only magnified?”

(Mary Baker Eddy, 1821-1910) American founder of the Christian “Church of Christ, Scientist”

M.C. Well, what can I say? The author frolics with might and main in the same tenth last chapter.

And after a page, he again talks about how “we are not alone in the universe, that there are at least a hundred million, and maybe a hundred trillion, such planets inhabited by highly developed (human-like) life!

On page 142, again, an interesting thought about the benefits of the limitations of our senses. For example, vision and hearing. And there the author says that if we could HEAR in a much wider frequency range, we would hear the continuous rumble of molecules knocking on everything (Brownian motion) and would not hear anything ELSE! IT’S REASONABLE!

And already on page 144, once again he talks about the ozone protective layer!!!

Such a strange zigzagging manner from stupidities and ordinariness to interesting and original thoughts, and a little later back to the dull whining of trivialities and stupidities!

The whole book is “torn out” by them!

The end of my pseudo-censorship.

Last question: What do I recommend to readers?

I still recommend reading this uneven but interesting book, if only because of these honest and courageous, though unfortunately few, attempts by Harlow Shapley to THINK EXTRAORDINARY!

P.S. I was horrified to find on the shelf another book on the same topic “We are not alone” (in the Universe) by a certain Walter Sullivan, a physicist, editor of the scientific section of the New York Times newspaper, and it contains 353 pages!!!

26 VII 2025