[Long] the planets

MERCURY: This planet makes me think of one philosopher's comment that, if
our skin were transparent, we'd be too ugly to look at. The Earth, too, has
a skin, called the "crust," and it's all we've ever had direct contact with.
Even the deepest mine shaft sinking straight down for five miles has not
gone beyond the inner edge of the Earth's solid crust into the mantle, which
is more-or-less a layer of permanently molten lava hundreds of times thicker
than the crust. And inside the mantle is the core, which we believe consists
of pure metal, predominantly iron.

Things worked out this way while the earth was coalescing from a ball of
gas, because rotational effect, gravity, and materials density caused its
stuff to separate in layers, with density increasing inward. So the gas
making up our atmosphere is least dense; the water on the surface next least
dense; the generally loose and porous rocks and soils of the crust, veined
with light metals and stray heavy ones, next; the lava of the mantle next;
and the heavy metal at the core most dense. Our planet is very much a
segregationist. It knows that things sufficiently different from each other
don't have the ability to f***ing get along and keeps them carefully
separated.

You know how, if a submarine dives deep enough, it can get crushed like an
empty beer can by the pressure of the water above and around it? Well, the
same effect applies as you go toward the centre of the earth. Likely the
Earth started as completely gaseous until the pressure of surrounding
materials made things go liquid, then solid...and then unimaginable. We know
the mantle is liquid, partly because its heat has been trapped inside by the
poorly conductive materials of the crust, and sufficiently hot things are
liquid. It's actually liquid *rock*, or some f***ing s*** we can only
half-understand in a sideways fashion in terms of what we know as rock. And
it's under so much heavy pressure that, even though it's molten rock, it
must also be solid, because gases become liquids become solids if compressed
enough. We get some clues about the mantle from volcanic eruptions, but it's
silly to think that lava rivulets flowing under atmospheric pressure and
surface temperatures are the same as a trillion cubic feet of uninterrupted
lava under temperatures and pressures that no scientific or industrial
equipment yet invented can duplicate on any meaningful scale. Scientists
will huff and puff to make us feel secure and safe, but they're the most
acutely aware human beings on earth that, within their own area of
expertise, everyone is just pulling guesses out of their butt.

My comments with regard to the core are pretty much the same, except that we
kind of wildly guess it's metal--or some f***ing s*** we can only understand
by analogy to crust metal. Even the natural deposits of metal in the crust,
called "ore," are almost unimaginably different from the refined stuff we
are accustomed to calling metal. If mining and metalwork were arcane
Qaballistic mysteries, not even the most creative science fiction writer
would be capable of dreaming up what ore is really like. You have to see ore
the way it is in the ground before you have any inkling that such a thing is
possible. Same, IMO, with dolphins and whales. Before they were observed I
don't think even Baron Samedi snorting a thousand cubic feet of candle smoke
could have imagined them. We can judge from observation of their behaviour
that dolphins are at least as intelligent and sentient as us, and they're
certainly capable of speaking some English; but the experts have pretty much
given up hope on ever being able to translate the dolphin "language" for the
simple reason that it's not language! Language is based on physical
prerequisites in our brains, and dolphins don't have the same brains. Likely
they communicate, but the nature of their communication is something we
don't have the neurophysiological capability to understand. Which is why I
laugh at the notion that we would recognize an extraterrestrial lifeform as
even being a lifeform if it jumped down and bit us on the cock. Likely the
Mars Rovers have blundered across a thriving ecology without our senses
being able to penetrate its sheer alienness.

Since I'm busy f***ing off on tangents let me carry on a bit more about
aquatic life. We land creatures live in a two-dimensional world, because the
directions up and down are not a genuine reality for us. But when a fish
needs to change vertical position, it need not dig a hole or climb a ladder;
it just swims the same way it would swim horizontally. Its ground and its
atmosphere are identical. Up and down for it are the same as right and left,
backwards and forwards are for us. On the other hand, water doesn't have
terrain. Fish don't climb hills or negotiate passes or build bridges and
tunnels; they just travel in a straight line if they're motivated, or
meander around if they aren't. Most of the time they aren't, because where
the heck would anyone bother to go if everywhere were exactly the same as
everywhere else? Fish don't experience travel as we know it, although some
do experience migration. A fish's environment is at once more demanding and
sadly poorer in opportunities than ours. You need to chew up more physical
brain space to handle three axes than two, but unless there are obstacles to
overcome your capabilities never improve, and the featurelessness of water
conspires to keep you stupid. It's sort of the way someone who is homeless
for two years might develop something akin to dementia from the sheer
featurelessness of his boring days.

Dolphins and whales have it even tougher than fish, because they don't
breathe water. Their defining surface is a ceiling rather than a floor--the
surface of the water being the ceiling--and beyond it is stuff they cannot
spend any length of time in, but which they need to sustain life even while
it dries out their skin. And it's no good to say that they hold their breath
when they're underwater because they breathe on purpose! A whale doesn't
"hold" its breath; it just doesn't take the initiative to breathe. All these
differences from us make a whale's mind impossible for us to extrapolate
about, and even the suggestion that a whale has a mind is an anthromorphism,
because it likely has something far different.

One brief mention of sharks. Sharks don't understand the concept of
"inhale." They have no musculature to draw water in through their breathing
apparatus. The water forces its way in as they swim forward, much as a human
might stick his head out the car window, facing forward, while the car races
down a freeway. That makes us choke on wind but is the norm for a shark. And
you know how a shark is supposed to be an eating machine that only thinks
about food? The second it stops moving forward in order to eat, it begins to
asphyxiate. If you can prove to my satisfaction that you have explained the
Heimlich maoeuvre to a shark in a way the shark understands, I'll wash your
feet twice a day for the rest of your life because you'll have earned it.

So I'll come back to the planet Mercury in my next post.

SirFoldalot