A Disgrace In Space

This Is Going To Take A Bit Of Development
So I hope you'll bear with me.  What else do you have to do on a cold, dark, wet, windy, rainy night here in the Pond of Eden?*
     Okay, this post refers back to this afternoon's first post, which I'm not going to detail too much, in the hope that you'll go back and read it again.  To recap: it was about signals from space, and predictably ended with "Aliens" as a suggestion.  The scientist judging how likely this was to be poo-pooed any such thing, although they didn't dare come out and say "Absolutely not", just in case.

CAUTION!  They may eat your face off.

     This got Conrad to thinking - and little good usually comes of such a thing - about whether we might have actually inadvertently contacted aliens already, and what the consequences might be.
     Here an aside.  We haven't had an aside for a couple of days, so I thought you might be pining a bit.  Okay, you remember that titan of science-fiction, Arthur C. Clarke?  Despite all his high-flying literary works, Ol' Al remained a very down-to-earth Cornishman, who speculated about some of the incredibly violent energetic events that take place in our and other galaxies.  "Industrial accidents" was his worryingly prosaic explanation, where a Class II Civilisation has been mucking about with their sun, until some idiot drops a spanner.**

"Ooops!  Sorry.  Right butterfingers, I am."

     So, too, might the phenomenon of Fast Radio Bursts an industrial process, where different alien cultures have all discovered this really neat way of tapping the power of their solar system's sun, and doing inscrutable alien things with it.

Helping cook the biggest pancake ever made?

     Back on track.  Hang on, let me just look down -


     Erm, no, that's not the kind of track I want to be on.  Let's just shift a few realities over and check again -

Perfect!

     Here is where I shamelessly steal from the late great Carl Sagan, who wrote "Contact" upon which the film of the same name is based.  This makes sense; if the film was based on "A Confederacy Of Dunces" then things would be badly awry.
     Anyway, in the fillum we see an alien culture beaming back human television signals that they had just received.  These turn out to be broadcasts from the 1936 Olympics, staged in Nazi Germany, because these were the first such signals powerful enough to get out into space.  I am relying on Steve, my memory here, as it's a verrry long time since I watched "Contact".  Fingers crossed, Steve!

Featuring Jodie, she of the immaculately-chiseled nose

     Here I have to resort to a bit of maths, which I shall try to keep as painless as possible.  That television broadcast has now been travelling outwards for 83 years, meaning it's covered 83 light years.  I don't have to go into light years again, do I?  Therefore, your our planet Earth is at the centre of a sphere with a radius of 83 light years, where this broadcast has passed through.

NO!  You don't have to do the maths.

     Therefore, thanks to a handy web plug-in, the volume of space within that sphere amounts to over 2.3 million cubic light years.  That's an awful lot of space, and it would take quite a bit of astronomical mucking about to discover how many solar systems were present there, how many had rocky planets or moons capable of developing intelligent life and <fades off into Drake Equation mutterings>.  
     So you see, there is a distinct possibility - though not a probability - that we have already informed the galaxy at large that we exist.  Not only that, it would have been pimping one of the most loathsome regimes in human history.  What next?
     Wouldn't you like to know ...

Uninvited guests.  The worst kind.

     Hang on, the motley's gotten away with not being belaboured for a while.  We can't have this - motley - put on this suit of red rags and run round the bullring!

At this point I have hit the (old) word count.  Your humble scribe has so much more to give you, whether you want it or not, that he thinks he'll continue.  You don't mind, do you?  No?  Thank you so much.

"Invincible" By Those Blokes I Mentioned Before
Currently on Volume Seven of this series, and there are another 17 to go in the main series, plus a few one-issue offshoots.  Art?

If the resolution were higher I could name every one of these.
(Smiles smugly)

     Young Marcus Greyson is the chap at port front in blue and yellow.
     There's a couple of points I'd like to make here about the series.  Firstly, it lasted for ages, which means fans liked it and kept buying the issues, so the creators were doing it right.
     Secondly, it wasn't simply a matter of guys with big muscles beating the tar out of each other on a regular basis - there was that, admittedly, but also a whole lot more.  In fact, it got to a kind of soap opera complexity with themes and characters interweaving over time.
     Thirdly, and the most important point: they did not 'Bait and Switch'.  This is where a title begins with wonderful artwork from their lead artist, until he can't keep up the schedule.  The issues then start to appear with inferior artwork from a second-stringer, which is why I dropped "Scalped" a few years ago now.  None of that with Invincible - Ryan Ottley kept up a consistent artistic output, with input from a few <thinks> 'guest' artists over the 15 year run.
     The last point is that it FINISHED.  It had a finite run and came to an end, which is bravery some comic properties will never, ever, not in this universe's lifetime, manage (DC and Marvel's tentpole characters).
     So hurrah! and now beggar off, I've got 17 more trade paperbacks to work through.

Guys, you are officially retired..

     And now we are done.




*  This was a rhetorical question.  Don't go telling me about parties and clubs and gigs.
**  A neutronium spanner clocking in at 1.87 to the 87th power tons.