WE ARE ALONE, FOR NOW

The Washington Post recently had a story about a question that humans have pondered forever: where are the other intelligent beings in the universe?

Italian physicist Enrico Fermi once famously exclaimed "Where is everybody!" “Scientists have been trying to answer his question with this logic: we exist, so aliens should exist too.

According to one new solution, we have not seen or heard from any galactic neighbors because we are still waiting for them to be born. And it will, according to the calculations, be a long time before we can throw other solar systems a baby shower. If you grade earthlings on a cosmic curve, as recently hashed out by Harvard and Oxford University astrophysicists, we’re at the head of the class.

And this done make some common sense. In school, we learned the basics about our universe. And we were told about the Big Bang Theory, that the center of the known universe exploded outward to form all the mineral, chemical and cosmic properties (galaxies, stars, comets, etc.) Earth sits at the outer edge of the center of the universe. When science has been trying to find other life, they direct their telescopes and listening devices towards the center. But should not they be pointing them at the sides of the Earth's outer edge - - - to systems as old as our solar system?

A new study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics calculated the probability that life as we know it should exist at any given point in the universe. Based on their assumptions, Earthly life is quite likely premature.

By the standards of the universe, humans are some of the earliest intelligent life around. You may have heard of ancient aliens on basic cable television. But, according to cosmic probability, the ancient aliens are us.

For life as we know it to arise, organisms require three things: carbon-based chemistry, liquid water and an energy source. The most crucial source of all three requirements is a star. Stars  fuse protons and electrons into carbon and other elements; stars heat up water in the so-called habitable zone and stars provide a steady sunny stream of radiation. Scientists scan the solar systems to find the right combination of star, planet distance and likelihood of water to see if it possible for organic life.

Stars play such an important role in our understanding of life that they dominate the researchers’ equation. The scientists’ timeline begins about 30 million years after the Big Bang happened, which as far as we can tell was 13.8 billion years ago. Their timeline ends far in the future due to the long-lasting red dwarf stars, which have lengthy wicks that burn for roughly 10 trillion years. (A yellow dwarf, by comparison, has a only 10 billion years of fuel.

Crucially, what red dwarf stars also have going for them is strength in numbers. The Milky Way is filled with red dwarfs. About three-quarters of all the stars in the galaxy are red dwarfs.

Our sun is not a red dwarf. It is a rarer thing, a yellow dwarf, a star 10 times more massive but one that will flare out much sooner. That we exist around a yellow dwarf, per the scientists’ equation, makes us the true space oddities.

So if Earth humans are the only intelligent life in the universe, why did our ancient ancestors almost universally say that the planet was seeded by alien beings? Why do most religions believe in a creation story of extraworldly gods and angels creating mankind? 

It could be the natural curiosity hard wired into the human brain - - - ancient humans looking up at the stars in the sky may have asked the same question as Fermi. We cannot be alone in the vastness of space.

Human beings also have a sense and need to belong to a bigger group, a family and a community. At a planetary level, that need stills exists. Ancient ancestors were wandering nomads scraping by a subsistence existence. They were one with nature and nature was bigger than them. And when small bands of people found other people in their journeys, it solidified the notion that they were not alone in this world. Communication and trade of ideas and beliefs would reinforce the global notion that there has to be life in the magical stars.

Scientists are still searching for confirmation of that magic in the stars.

LEADERSHIP IN A SERIES

Fox posted part of a GQ interview with television icon Tom Selleck.

Selleck, 70, is a recognizable actor with a string of popular series.

Selleck said he had his struggles early on, and credits working with James Garner for showing him how to be a TV star the right way.

The then 34-year-old Selleck "had done the leads in several pilots, but nobody saw them because they didn't sell, and I did this thing on 'Rockford,' and I watched Garner, because I'd been on a lot of shows where everybody was walking on eggshells and there were battles about who was coming out of their dressing room first,” he told GQ. “[Rockford] understood that leads in a show like a television series involved leadership, probably: When you're not feeling so good, put on a happy face, it's infectious—these things sound kind of corny and stupid, but this is our life.”

Selleck took his experience on "The Rockford Files" and put it to use the very next year on "Magnum PI," the show that made him a star, and again on "Blue Bloods."

“We all like each other, and we don't have anybody stir the pot on 'Blue Bloods,'” he explained. “I like to think I've set some of that example. I'm older than most of the actors. I play the patriarch, and it's a rare opportunity to show a positive example.”

Most television series has a central lead actor who is the focal point of the show. As such, it is this lead actor who has considerable clout in how his or her show is run. But in LOST's ensemble cast, there were no major stars in leading roles. 

Now, the show producers may have decided early on that secondary actors would give the show more "reality" and connection to the viewers. The writers probably preferred to have 10 main characters to 1 in order to flesh out more back stories. The actors may have had some subconscious relief that they did not have to carry a big budget television series on their own shoulders.

 But in all the articles about the show, I don't recall one mentioning that the actors took a leading role in the direction and creation of the series. Michael Emerson clearly stated that he had no idea where the show was going from episode to episode. He merely got his script, memorized it and worked through the shoots.

Which may be the reason why LOST seemed to take sudden right turns without much explanation. The actors had no idea what was going on except that more mysteries and plot twists were being written for them. But if the show did have one strong lead character, such as a Garner or Selleck, he or she would have asked questions like "why are we doing this," or "what does this mean in the overall structure of the plot?"  Like the show's own filmed serial, there appears to be more fractions than actual leaders.

Fans will think that Jack was the lead character in the show, but in reality he was supposed to die after the pilot episode. Kate was originally thought as going to be the lead, and perhaps counterbalanced by Locke's character. So early on in the process, the producers had little idea who would become fan favorites or leading characters.  As such, the producers and writers held all the control in the series' direction.

STAR CHILDREN

In the lore of Native American people, there is creation story about their ancestors being star children. It goes that mankind was created from beings from the stars. As such, they believed that one day they would return.

The concept of children of the stars can be adopted to the LOST mythology.

If you break a part the main story periods, pre-Flight 815, post crash and the sideways arc, you can get a formula for the native legend.

We must assume that the events in the flashbacks were true, that the main characters lives as represented in the story. The issues, personalities, crimes, emotional problems, etc. were all part of each individual.

We know that the sideways arc was the after life. Everyone in that plane of existence was dead, but remembering their past lives seems cloudy or confused. Most of the characters actually were living separate and distinct "new" lives such as Jack, as being amicably divorced from Juliet, and being a father.

So what is the in-between state? The island may represent the transition between life and death. A level of existence where both body and soul are in the journey of dying, perhaps along the analogy of the ferryman carrying souls across the River Styx, for a price. Flight 815 was that ferry.

If the island was a world of semi-life and semi-death, the process of removing mortality to immortality, the island setting is that bridge. The characters became "star children" because in order to migrate to the universe of pure souls, they had to work out their earthly human issues and become better, content souls.

And as "children" on the island, they acted like children. That would help explain the inconsistent behavior, the lack of common sense, the elementary school soap opera romances, the "war games" in the school yard, and the fantasies that kids would like to act out.

The characters needed the island and its events to release the baggage of their past lives so their souls were properly prepared for the white light of the stars.

CRASH JACK

After rewatching a blended fan video of what happened during the 815 crash in S1E1, I noticed for the first time what Jack was wearing: a dark tie with light blue but large stars. Could this be the pilot Easter Egg? Stars represent the heavens. Christian, as ghost dad, calls Vincent to go find and wake up Jack in the jungle. Jack opens his eye as Vincent approaches him.