The Petri Dish

© By Doug Heffner Jr.

In a science lab in a city somewhere, a microbe society became self-aware. It had only recently begun to multiply and spread out over the vastness of the glass dish. The microbes built great societies and grew across the fertile plain. Over time the microbes noticed that there was activity beyond the boundaries of their own realm, the glass dish. The cunning microbes found ways to look beyond the edge of the glass, and peer into the far reaches of the science room. The microbes noticed other Petri dishes on counters in the room. Could there be life in those Petri dishes too?

For a long time, the microbe society believed it was alone in the science room. The Great Scientist surely made them alone. Some even doubted the existence of a Scientist, even though everything in the science room hinted at his existence. The microscopes, the tables, the chairs, the charts… surely these were there for a reason. Surely the Scientist placed these in the science room for his own purposes.

Much time was spent observing and arguing about what was seen. Theories about how this all got here abounded. Some said that the Great Scientist set up the room for his own glory, and placed the microbes in the dish to nurture and observe. Some microbes assumed they were only there by mere chance. “Nothing special here, we just happened to form on this gelatinous glaze that was curiously ideal for our development“. The microbe society often became divided over the issue. Arguments and fights erupted.

Over a long time, the microbes began to explore their dish. They mutated and were able to send out spores to the outer edges of the dish, but not beyond. The distances outside were too great and the Great Glass Barrier seemed to prevent them from going further. Some theorized they could penetrate this barrier and fly beyond, into the “Great Science Room“, and visit the other Petri dishes. Some of the smartest microbes began to build theories that showed the natural laws and limitations in their Petri dish. These laws and limitations almost seemed to have been placed there on purpose, as is if to maintain the microbes solely within their dish.

Experiments and calculations showed that the many barriers and huge distances to the other observed Petri dishes would prevent physical exploration of the outer-dish areas. This thought seemed ludicrous to some who dreamed of visiting the other Petri dishes. Why hadn't the Scientist told them there were these other dishes? Had anyone from these other dishes every come to their dish? Had they been visited? Would they some day be able to mutate to the point of transcending the great glass barrier?

The microbes continued to look out beyond the dish and regularly adjusted their theories about what was “out there”. For example, they came up with ideas about the Great Basins, which if you went into it, you would never come back. Everything that got close to a Great Basin fell in and went down the mysterious drain. They calculated the heat output of the flickering flames they saw on the desks. They tried to measure the distances between the huge lights in the ceiling. In the end, they could only rely on their visual observations and best guesses.

The Scientist, who had placed the microbes in the glass dish, knew that the isolation he had imposed was critical to creating a safe environment for the microbes to flourish. To put the Petri dishes too close together, or to have removed the protection of the glass barrier, would be deadly for the microbes. They needed the specific conditions he had provided to live and to grow. He didn’t bother to tell the microbes about the other Petri dishes, because it was irrelevant to their growth, and besides… they rarely understood him anyway.

We are like these microbes. We have been placed on a beautiful planet, in precisely the distance from our sun for the particular species here to flourish. Too close and we would burn up. Too far away and we would freeze. Too much of one gas or another in the atmosphere and our lungs would not function. We can easily see this contrast within our own solar system, our Petri dish. Jupiter has poisonous gasses in abundance, and the air pressure there would crush any organic life. It is pretty much the same on the other planets here in our neighborhood. Even Mars, our closest and most similar neighbor, is hostile to life. Our own planet can be deadly if we do not adapt. But the temperature ranges and elements are to a much more significant degree on Mars then what we typically face here.

There seems to be natural limitations on our own outward exploration. Contrary to the popular idea of the 1800-1900’s, there is no breathable “Ether” beyond our planet. It is cold, usually empty, ever-hostile space. The best we have come up with, even at our current state of high technology, it to send unmanned probes to the other planets. The Moon-shot not withstanding, that’s the extent so far.

The Voyager probes have only recently reached the “edge” of the solar system. This was originally measured as being at the line of Pluto’s orbit. They have been traveling since the mid to late 1970’s. Once they were there, they faced a new threat, the Kuiper belt and the Great Oort Cloud. These are immense areas of densely packed frozen asteroids, comets and solar-formation debris. Many (several thousand documented so far) are about the size of Pluto, which is why it was demoted. The Kuiper Belt is in the shape of a band or belt similar to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The Oort Cloud is a theorized to be a bubble surrounding our solar system. Try going through that at 10,000 mph.

Here is the Wikipedia entry for Oort Cloud: The Oort cloud (pronounced ort, alternatively the Öpik-Oort Cloud): is a hypothetical spherical cloud of comets believed to lie roughly 50 000 AU, (note: an AU is one Astronomical Unit, or 93 million miles… the distance of the Sun to the Earth) or nearly a light-year, from the Sun.[1] The distance places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. The Kuiper belt and scattered disc, the other two known reservoirs of trans-Neptunian objects, are less than one thousandth the Oort cloud's distance. The outer extent of the Oort cloud defines the gravitational boundary of our Solar System [2].

This, if you will, is the Great Glass Barrier. - the outer edge of our Petri dish. Unless we make that nearly magical leap to “Warp Drive” or “Hyperspace” technologies, there remains little chance we will become extra-solar space-farers. Unless we develop the technology that allows us to travel through physically occupied spaces and cover huge distances in useful time spans, we are essentially stuck.

We could realistically become accomplished intra-solar explorers. This is certainly possible, yet currently impractical. What is the point of traveling to other planets, even if nearby, if they area not hospitable. If it is to mine them for resources, that would be useful. The environmentalists would probably protest. According to them we are messing up this planet. I doubt they would agree to us tampering with another.

I do not believe that we were not meant to wonder at the heavens. To the contrary, I think we were meant to do precisely that. The Orion Nebula, which is located as the middle star on Orion’s sword, is several light years across. It appears to be a faint star when viewed with the eye from earth. It is several hundred light years from us. If it were only 7 light years from earth, it would take up half of our sky. We would see the sun, and the nebula, and not much else. We would not have the beautiful edge-on view of our galaxy that we do have. We would not be able to see the many galaxies that are far beyond us. Our understanding would be even more limited than it is. As it is, we are positioned in a relatively safe and quiet neighborhood in the galaxy. We have a great view of the heavens. I believe this was on purpose.

I believe that we were placed in this Petri dish, this solar system, with its physical barriers for a purpose. To travel beyond this limit has been, for all practical purposes, prevented. The distance to the nearest star is about 2.5 light years. This doesn’t sound like much. However, it will take the Voyager probe another couple of thousand years to reach Proxima Centauri. It has the current man-made machine speed record. None of us will be around when it gets close. That is, if it does not smash into something in the Oort cloud first.

Why do we not have contact with other civilizations? There is no need. It is not relevant to our growth. It is not relevant for an ant colony in South America to know about an ant colony in Africa. The South American ants can guess that there are ants in Africa, but it has no bearing on their own existence. The distances and barriers are too great. The two colonies will never meet.

I do not doubt that there is other life in the universe. There is just too much out there for God to have wasted the space. He has always been very practical. But we do not have need to interact. God didn’t tell us about them, because we don’t need to know. Man was hardly in a position to even consider other civilizations for most of our existence. We only recently got a clue about our own solar system. Flat Earth, anybody?

Naturally, the counter argument will be to point out the alleged existence of UFO’s. Once you pare down the sightings after eliminating the possible explanations, (such as hoaxes, natural phenomenon, etc), you are left with 5% that can not be explained away. These 5% then lead to 3 possibilities: Intra-solar visitors, extra-solar visitors, and “trans-dimensional beings”.

Intra-solar visitors can be eliminated pretty quickly. We have sent probes to and have observed with telescopes, the planets in our solar system. They have been photographed and observed pretty much daily. There have been no signs of life on any of them. There have been no cities or lights visible. No signs of sentient changes being made to the surface. These things can be observed on Earth when viewed from space. As has been noted, the planets have been found to be deadly hostile to organic life. We are it for this solar system.

Extra-Solar visitors, those from outside our solar system, are not likely either. Their Petri dishes succumb to the same distance and physical barriers as ours. The same problems that would prevent us from leaving our solar system and visiting other solar systems in a timely manner, would apply to them too. In addition, the documented activities of these 5% cases run contrary to organic life forms. The sudden acceleration and deceleration demonstrated by these craft would rip organic tissue at the molecular and possibly atomic level. Newton’s laws of motion still apply. Don’t let Star Trek fool you. Capitan Picard would be a grease spot on the back wall of the bridge if they quickly accelerated to “Warp 1” as depicted.

Even assuming the craft were not occupied, the forces on the inorganic material would disintegrate from the inertial shift. Take the Voyager craft. It travels about 10,000 mph, right? Make it take a sudden 90 degree turn to the right, and it would explode from the inertial forces pulling against the metal’s atomic structure. UFO’s have been observed to have gone from 600 mph to 8000 mph in an instant, and then executed a 90 degree turn. No material or matter known to us could sustain such forces and remain intact, let alone something living, something mortal.

This leads to the final possibility. That something from another dimension is manifesting itself in our dimension. Translated this means “spirit”. Angels and demons are real. The Bible even tells us that much. The true question has not been, “is there other sentient life besides humans“? The emphatic answer is “YES”! The question is do you believe in Angels and demons, or E.T.? It is that simple.

Angels and demons are not bound by the physical limitations of our Universe. They are spirit, and do not have atoms and molecules to be subjected to inertia. Ezekiel spoke of objects we would identify as some kind of craft floating of the ground. He said they were angels, spirits. This seems confusing, until you realize that while God doesn’t need a spaceship to get around the Universe, his other spirit creations might use them, just as we do. We could walk everywhere, but a car works better. The Angels and demons might not need to use ships, but could stand to benefit from them.

In a passage from the 1950’s book, “Truth Stranger than Fiction”, a weird occurrence is documented from the late 1700’s. A small town in New England witnessed the battle between two “clouds” that “moved like warships on the sea“. They maneuvered around each other in the air in broad daylight. Different colored "lightning" came from one cloud and “struck” the other. The objects traded shots for some time, in full view of the gathered townsfolk. These sound like spiritual warships. Today we would have called them UFO’s.

In truth, the UFO’s serve as a mere distraction for some. They waste their lives chasing UFO’s and trying to prove their existence. How many have been lured from Christ to vainly run after these things? I don’t doubt they are there, but they are not occupied by LGMs (Little Green Men). Their purpose seems sinister at best. Anything that distracts you from godly pursuits is inherently demonically inspired. Pretty much every person who has been “abducted” by UFO’s has reported great fear, and being held captive and experimented on; not exactly angelic activities.

We are a cosmic experiment. God made man in His own image, in His own likeness. We are made to mirror Him. We have emotions, thoughts, and are creative like He is. We experience love, like He does. We desire to see the children we create love us back on a voluntary basis, just like He does. We are sad when this does not happen, just like He does.

So here we are, on an ideal planet, in an ideal solar system, in an ideal part of our galaxy. We are effectively separated from other solar systems by distance and physical barriers. We will not likely meet any other mortal inhabitants of this galaxy, presuming that they exist. We have been given this Petri dish to explore and live in. We should fully explore it. We should strive to learn all of the laws and limitations inherent in it. We should use our creativity to develop technologies to push the boundaries. It is in our natures to do so. We are like our Creator, our Great Scientist.