The Roswell spacecraft crash couldnít do it. Hoaglandís face and city on Mars from Nasaís Viking photos presented to the entire UN couldnít. Hundreds of thousands of UFO sightings couldnít, nor an entire genre of space movies, TV shows, and science fiction literature.

But a 4 billion year old potato sized meteorite with microscopic structures one hundredth the thickness of a human hair has given NASA, much of the scientific community, and President Clinton a collective erection, resurrecting the space race, and redefining the entire attitude toward life in the universe.  

Until now, the scientific community has considered Earth to be the only locus for biological life. But most thinking humans consider that since our Sun is but one star in a galaxy of some 200 billion stars, in a universe of billions of galaxys, the odds are we are not alone.

So for scientists to make this kind of discovery rotates and pretzels conventional thinking in many dimensions. For if this theory holds water, life may evolve almost anywhere there is water. This universe may indeed be percolating with life, some of it far more ancient and evolved than ourselves. Earth life may not even be from Earth; it may have first evolved on Mars and then hitchhiked to Earth, making our origins Martian, not terrestrial. And if life sprang up there before here, it may also have completed its life cycle and extinguished before us. What we see may not be the way it was.

Mind you, weíre not talking about seeding or colonization from the Pleiadean, Syrian, Lyran, Arcturian, or other star systems many light years away. At light speed, it would take less than fifteen minutes to journey from Earth to Mars, and just several months by our current technology. Who is to say the development of life on planet Earth hasnít come from many directions at different times in the 4 billion year old history of our Earth mystery.

So letís put our thinking caps on for just a moment. Most scientists refer to a missing link, when they try to explain the human species in the light of Darwinian evolution. Others feel the rather sudden appearance of multiracial modern man on planet Earth thoroughly discounts Darwinian theory, and look to the heavens for human origins. Nobel laureate, Francis Crick, estimates there are over a million planets in our galaxy alone where life could have originatedónot to mention the other hundred billion galaxies. Still, most scientists claim the vast distances of space isolate us to being the only biological base.

Five hundred years ago, the official story was that the Earth was flat and the center of the universe. Just fifty years ago, most scientists thought weíd never land a man on the Moon. When you consider our technological advances in just the last century, imagine the possibilities of progress in another century, or an entire millennium! Perhaps by then, we will have mastered time, space, and gravity, or at least know our own real story.

Scientists tell us that in a vicinity of just fifteen light years, there are fifty Suns like our own ten billion year old Sun, capable of evolving lifeópossibly millions of years before us. So, try to imagine the possibilities of a civilization another million years more technologically advanced than us! And Earth has been circling around for more than four thousand times that long. 

Albert Einstein theorized a space-time bridge where you can move forward in space, and backward in time, into zero-time. His theory of relativity proved time dilation as a matter of fact. At the speed of light, a craft could traverse our solar system in a few hours. And beyond the speed of light, time becomes non-sequential, and may even move backward. Given these possibilities, the scientific view that we are alone in the universe seems about as plausible as the flat Earth theory.

Now, getting back to the issue at hand: Lots of scientists have big reservations about this fossilized rock from space. UCLA paleobiologist, Dr. William Schopf feels "the biological explanation is unlikely." For one thing, these fossils are a hundred times smaller than any found on Earth, too tiny to be chemically analyzed or internally probed. They have no evidence of cells, cell division, or life cycles-leading him to feel that NASAís discovery was most likely some mineralic material....like mud. Other researchers feel the microscopic organisms might have hitched a ride in space, some feel the rock may be Martian and the microbes terrestrial, while others doubt the meteor is even from Mars. 

That hasnít stopped the govenmentís plans for Martian exploration. In the next year, two missions have the green light to visit the red planet. And in the next ten years, ten trips are scheduled, with the first two launching later this year. I certainly hope that high on the mission agenda is a plan to thoroughly photograph and examine the Cydonia area where the Monuments on Mars might provide some other information about the history of the Martian mystery. Wouldnít it be grand if our scientists started insisting we were all a bunch of Martians!

Itís been an outer space kind of year. In my book, The Grand Catharsis, I spoke of the gateway of a true new astrological age opening in January, and the 2160 year new epoch activating at the Spring Equinox. Sure enough in January, mystery comet Kyutake was suddenly discovered to appear visibly bright in the Spring skies, bringing up the Hopi prophecy of a blue star kachina comet. 1996 has been filled with several discoveries of planets in other solar systems which because they had the elements, were considered possible breeding sites for extraterrestrial life. 

Summer brought us a plethora of space movies. Independence Day, vivified Area 51, the Roswell incident and government coverup for mainstream Americaís dinner table. In his Hollywood speech on morality in movies, even Bob Dole gave Independence Day his endorsement. Does this mean he also endorses a major premise of the film: That on July 4, 1947 an alien spacecraft crashed into the desert outside Roswell, New Mexico, with the wreckage and pilots taken to Area 51 for study, all covered up by the government?  

Do you think it is possible that all of this space energy is preparing us for our ambassadorship with other intelligences, and the real story of our "human" origins? Stay attuned!