exploding geek heads

For one misspent semester while I was a student, I "studied abroad" and hung out with the social flotsam that are Duke students. It was there, I witnessed very geeky, rather bright, and although penniless themselves, the offspring of the unfathomably wealthy, get stoned on a regular basis and bend their minds around impossible ideas.

One of the popular ideas was how large the universe actually is, or rather, isn't. The theory goes something like we have no ability to know how large our universe actually is -- it could be huge or it could merely be dust in a jar on someone else's shelf. I believe the idea comes from a science fiction work - I want to say ray bradbury, but I wouldn't stake my life on it. Any way, the stoned-overpriviledged would debate both sides of the theory. Other times, the debate centered on the notion of life on other planets. Of course, the assumption is always that if such existed, they had to be a "higher" life form than humans. I rather fancy them to be something like myself - highly ethical, evolved monkeys.

Which brings me to the point of this blog. In an article to be published later this week, scientist types are announcing that there could not possibly be any life on the planet Mars. Then, realizing how very disappointed a segment of their peer group will be upon learning this news, they qualify it by saying that life could not exist in the top several meters of Mars' surface - but then again, there could be microscopic life very very far under the surface, and in fact there are some craters we haven't completely explored yet that could yield something interesting too.

As I read of this "announcement" I envisioned highly evolved, superior to human, but very very tiny societies existing far below the Mars surface. Of course, one would imagine that life forms so tiny couldn't possibly be superior to human life. But, if they found a way to survive the radiation levels on Mars' surface, the argument could be made . . . .

And there you have it ladies, gentlemen, and evolved-ethical critters - the exploding geek brain.