Rhea Hawke discovers there is far more to the massacre of a spiritual sect, mysteriously linked to Dust, the contraband drug “of the gods” and a devastating prophesy of a catastrophic End of Age, triggered by the joining of twin souls. She unravels secrets of fractal geometry, deja vu, dreams and clairvoyance, multiple universes and space-time … and ultimately the greatest secret: herself …

“… a master of metaphor, Munteanu turns an adventure story into a wonderland of alien rabbit holes … a fascinating and enthralling read.”–Craig H. Bowlsby, author of Commander’s Log

You can pick up Outer Diverse at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes & Noble, Borders and other quality bookstores near you. For those of you in Toronto, Bakka Phoenix Books is carrying Outer Diverse as well as Nina’s “Darwin’s Paradox” duology (set in Toronto) and her guidebook “The Fiction Writer: Get Published, Write Now!”

Apparently the vegetable kingdom in Mars, instead of having green for a dominant colour, is of a vivid blood-red tint—H.G. Wells

According to Nancy Y. Kiang (biometeorologist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies) green aliens are so passé. Well, she may have a point. In a fascinating article in Scientific American (April, 2008), Kiang tells us that “light of any color from deep violet through the near-infrared could power photosynthesis.” For instance, the cooler type M stars (red dwarfs) are feeble and planets receive less visible light. Plants might need to be close to black in color to absorb as much light as possible. Young M stars fry planetary surfaces with ultra-violet flares, so many organisms would likely be aquatic to survive. Our sun is type G, and on Earth green generally dominates the color of living plants. Around F-stars, hotter and bluer than our sun, plants might get too much light and would need to reflect much of it, so they would tend to absorb blue light and might look green to yellow to red or violet.

Photosynthesis, says Kiang, adapts to the spectrum of light that reaches an organism; and the spectrum results from the parent star’s radiation spectrum, combined with the filtering effects of the planet’s atmosphere. Kiang further adds that photosynthesis can produce very conspicuous biosignatures (see more below): 1) biologically generated atmospheric gases such as oxygen and its product, ozone; and 2) surface colors that indicate the presence of specialized pigments such as green chlorophyll.

When I first learned about photosynthesis in Grade 3, I thought it was a magical process. Scientists who make it their specialty still do. It is truly one of God’s wonderful gifts to life in this universe. Well, think about it: photosynthesis converts light energy (sunlight) into chemical energy through living organisms. The raw materials include carbon dioxide and water and the end-products include oxygen and (energy rich) carbohydrates, like sucrose, glucose and starch. The process is arguably the most important biochemical pathway on Earth since nearly all life either directly or indirectly depends on it. And like all marvelous things in nature, the pigments that harvest sunlight don’t operate in isolation. They operate “like an array of antennas, each tuned to pick out photons of particular wavelengths,” says Kiang. Chlorophyll preferentially absorbs red and blue light. Carotenoid pigments, responsible for the vibrant reds and yellows of autumn, pick up a slightly different shade of blue. All this energy is funneled to a special “hub” chlorophyll molecule, which splits water and releases oxygen.

How plausible is it for photosynthesis to arise on another planet? The process is so successful on Earth that it remains the foundation for most life (exceptions being organisms that live off methane of oceanic hydrothermal vents, etc.). The majority of life on earth depends on sunlight. Photosynthesis evolved early on in Earth’s history, with the first fossil evidence dating to about 3.4 billion years ago. “The rapidity of its emergence suggests it was no fluke and could arise on other worlds too,” Kiang contends and adds, “As organisms released gases, they changed the very lighting conditions on which they depended,” which meant that hey had to evolve new colors. We can see this in the evolutionary range in pigmentation of simple unicellular life, from the near-infrared absorbing first photosynthetic bacteria to the early blue-green algae, red and brown algae and finally the more evolved green algae. “Studying Earth life to guide our search for life on other worlds is the essence of astrobiology,” said Carl Pilcher, director of the NAI at NASA Ames. “This work broadens our understanding of how life may be detected on Earth-like planets around other stars, while simultaneously improving our understanding of life on Earth.”

Predicting alien plant colors takes experts ranging from astronomers to plant physiologists to biochemists. While the longest wavelength observed in photosynthesis on Earth is about 1,015 nm (in purple anoxygenic bacteria), the laws of physics set no strict upper limit. The limiting factor, according to Kiang, isn’t the feasibility of novel pigments but the light spectrum available at a planet’s surface, which depends mostly on the star type. Astronomers describe what’s called a “habitable zone” around each star. This is a range of orbits where planets can maintain a temperature that supports liquid water. In the solar system of our G star, this includes the orbits of Earth and Mars. The habitable zone of an F star, a hotter star, would be farther out and that of a K and M star, would be closer.

Aside from colors reflected by plants, the following features may provide signs of life (e.g., biosignatures) according to NASA:

1. Oxygen plus water: even on a lifeless world, light from the parent star produces a small amount of oxygen in a planet’s atmosphere by splitting water vapor. The gas dissipates quickly (e.g., rained out or through oxidation of rocks and volcanic gases). Abundant oxygen therefore signals an additional source;
2. Ozone: easier to detect, ozone provides an indicator of oxygen, being its product;
3. Methane plus oxygen: these two are considered an awkward combination, hard to achieve without photosynthesis;
4. Seasonal cycles: fluctuations of methane suggest life, given that levels tend to remain constant otherwise;
5. Methyl chloride: produced on Earth from burning of vegetation and the action of sunlight on plankton and seawater chlorine. An M star’s relatively weak radiation might allow the gas to build up to detectable amounts;
6. Nitrous oxide: released when plant matter decays.

• Anaerobic ocean life: where the parent star is a young star of any type and the organisms may not produce oxygen and the atmosphere may be mostly other gases like methane;
• Aerobic ocean life: where the parent star is older and photosynthesis has evolved, building up atmospheric oxygen;
• Aerobic life on land: the parent star is mature and plants cover the land (like Earth);
• Anaerobic land life: the star is a quiescent M star, so the UV radiation is negligible and plants wouldn’t produce oxygen.

With a powerful entrance like that, it is hard to imagine that this 1997 movie directed by Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump) and based on the novel by Carl Sagan, received very mixed reviews by critics. Cindy Fuchs of the Philadelphia City Paper called it “far more mundane than its aspirations to cosmic insights might have produced.” Kevin N. Laforest with the Montreal Film Journal said, “Contact is not a bad film, but I can’t say it’s all that good either.” Even TVGuide.com rated it a two out of four: “It’s really about [Jodie] Foster, and with her lips pressed tightly together and her hair carelessly shoved behind her ears, she’s utterly convincing as a researcher who’s subverted everything to a life of the mind. Unfortunately that adds up to a rather remote protagonist and Ellie is surrounded by a supporting cast of one-dimensional types…far too cold-blooded for summer audiences.” This is ironic, considering that the advertizing pitch calls Contact “a journey to the heart of the universe.” Finally, Christopher Null (Filmcritic.com) recommended it for its looks but not highly. Said Null: “Carl Sagan’s ode to the superior intelligence of aliens (and how us darned humans mess everything up) is consistently beautiful and interesting, but it never makes a point (except for that bit about the darned humans). Well, Mr. Null, I think you’ve missed the point, as have some of the critics I have just quoted. Contact—and its somewhat tortured protagonist—demonstrates much in the way of “heart” and in doing so, makes a compelling story. Hearts beat deeply inside us, and this movie is no different; its “heart” runs deep, deep beneath the surface rhetoric that seems to have distracted several critics who likely prefer to take a shallow sip of their coffee steaming hot than wait and savor the rich flavor of a dark blend in a deep swallow. Perhaps I’m too harsh, you say. Well, hear me out. Here’s my argument:

First of all, for those of you who have not yet seen this 1997 motion picture by Time Warner, Contact examines the moral, social and religious implications of our first contact with extraterrestrial intelligence through the personal journey of astronomer, Eleanor (Ellie) Arroway (played impeccably and sensitively by Jodie Foster). Never knowing her mother (who died at child birth) and having lost her father when she was ten, Ellie grows into a strong-willed scientist who dedicates her life to finding alien life in the universe by foregoing a career at Harvard to join a SETI Observatory in the Puerto Rico jungle. In an earlier scene with her father, she asks the question we have all pondered at least once: “Do you think there are people on other planets?” to which her father blithely answers, “if it’s just us, seems like an awful lot of wasted space,” a simple argument that appeals to the young logically-minded Ellie and one that will dominate the perseverance of her adult life in her resolute search for life in the universe.

And persevere Ellie must, because nothing comes easy for her. Shortly after she settles at the SETI Observatory her teacher (and nemesis) David Drumlin (Tom Skerritt) pays her a visit with implied threats of shutting the place down. Ellie also meets Palmer Joss (Mathew McConaughey), a man of faith, who is writing a book about the effects of science and technology on the third world. Although she is attracted to him, alarm bells go off in Ellie, who feels threatened by his faith (something she does not outwardly understand yet clings to in another form). Wanting to see him again, she introduces him to the man he wants to interview: Drumlin. And one of the most poignant conversations follows:

When Ellie challenges Drumlin’s apparent wish to do away with all pure research, he responds with, “What’s wrong with science being practical, even profitable? Nothing—”
Palmer cuts in, “—As long as your motive is the search for truth, which is exactly what the pursuit of science is.” Drumlin counters peevishly, “Well, that’s an interesting position coming from a man who crusades against the evils of technology.” To which Palmer responds, “I’m not against technology; I’m against the men who deify it at the expense of human truth.”

Palmer and Ellie collide from two different worlds and despite their differences, they are profoundly attracted to one another. But as quickly as she falls for Palmer, she recoils from him.

Nothing comes easy for Ellie: “small moves, Ellie,” her father is accustomed to telling her, “small moves…” Shortly after she and her colleagues have been shut down by Drumlin and have set up anew (thanks to eccentric billionaire entrepreneur, S.R. Hadden, played by John Hurt), Drumlin and others shut them down yet again. But, as though a greater force intervenes, this is when Ellie makes her momentous discovery and intercepts an alien message from Vega, a young star still surrounded by a proto-planetary cloud of debris about 27 light years away from us. The scene is scientifically plausible and elegantly powerful— it gave my husband goose-bumps (even the second time watching!)—as we witness the drama of this phenomenal discovery unfold in a frisson of action. Zemeckis wisely shows us exactly how such an event would really play out. And Sagan didn’t pick Vega out of whimsy: a sphere sixty light years thick of radio communication radiates from Earth from our radio and TV broadcasts. These signals may be captured by alien technology and sent back as a “message”. In theory, such a signal could be received on Earth anytime after 1990, the round trip time for a light or radio signal to travel to Vega and back from the first global signal, which in itself is momentous and telling. In another spine-tingling scene, the scientists who have descended upon Ellie decipher the arcane harmonics of the “message” as the broadcast of the opening ceremony of the Berlin Olympics in 1936 (the first truly global TV broadcast made) over which Hitler presided. In fact, in another stroke of irony, the now infamous swastika is the first icon they decipher. Later still, they discover embedded instructions to build a machine that appears made to take a human on an extra-galactic trip.

At the same time that Ellie intercepts this message, Palmer Joss experiences a meteoric rise to stardom with his bestselling book, Losing Faith: the Search for Meaning in the Age of Reason (which could well have been the alternate title for the film; it certainly describes the subtext of the story and the major thematic element: Faith & Meaning). In an interview with a prominent news show host, Palmer asks the question that most of us have avoided: “The question that I’m asking is this: are we happier? Is the world fundamentally a better place because of science and technology?…We shop at home, we search the web—at the same time we feel emptier, lonelier, and more cut off from each other than any other time in human history…We have meaningless jobs, we take frantic vacations [and] trips to the mall to buy more things to fill these holes in our lives.” Ironically, Palmer touches a similar nerve in Ellie when he brings up her dead parents: “It must have been hard… being alone…” insinuating that her fanatical search for intelligent alien life may simply be filling a hole in her heart. She flees Palmer shortly after, fearing his revealing intimacy. When they next meet, years later, they fall naturally into their familiar banter and she turns the table to challenge his faith in the same way: “What if science simply revealed that [God] never existed in the first place?” She then evokes Occam’s Razor, which says that “…all things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the right one…what’s more likely? An all powerful mysterious God [who] created the universe then decided not to give us proof of his existence or that he simply doesn’t exist at all and we created him so we wouldn’t have to feel so small and alone?” Both of them are saved from an answer by the intrusive rings of their cell phones.

Ironically again, it is Ellie’s lack of belief in God that causes her to be overlooked for the momentous journey in the alien craft, in favor of the crafty Drumlin with the oily smile. Unfortunately, a religious zealot sabotages the mission and Drumlin, along with the whole alien craft and construct, are blown up in a spectacular explosion at NASA’s Cape Canaveral. Ellie gets her chance after all when they build a second one. Her journey in the alien space craft, which we are later told takes up eighteen hours of her time but passes instantaneously on Earth (to the point where they all think nothing actually happened), is truly epic and elegantly portrayed. Her encounter with the aliens is also in keeping with the plot and imagery of the story. One of the most poignant scenes in the movie is the one where Ellie is introduced to the incredible and indescribable beauty of the vast Universe. It is at this point that she experiences her epiphany: science is not the sole purveyor of truth in the Universe. As she gazes at the splendor revealed before her, she acknowledges that the language of science is unable to express the sheer magnitude of the breathtaking scene. Grasping at something to say, she blusters with a scientific term then finally gasps, “No words…to describe it…they should have sent a poet…”
Upon her return, Ellie is challenged by skeptics who think she suffered a giant delusion (remember that on Earth, no time had passed during her supposed eighteen-hour voyage). Ellie offers up a strained scientific explanation (e.g., wormhole travel through space-time also called Einstein-Rosen bridges) which is challenged by National Security Advisor, Michael Kitz (James Woods) as only theory, and must finally resort to her faith; one she selflessly offers to the world: “I… had an experience. I can’t prove it, I can’t even explain it, but everything that I know as a human being, everything that I am tells me that it was real. I was given something wonderful, something that changed me forever. A vision of the universe, that tells us undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how… rare, and precious we all are. A vision that tells us that we belong to something that is greater than ourselves, that we are not, that none of us are alone.”

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat of Spirituality Practice said it best: “Robert Zemeckis has fashioned a truly awesome movie that celebrates the spiritual practices of listening, wonder, love, and zeal. It affirms that there are times and places where reason must yield to mystery.”

The SETI Institute, who currently conduct the search for alien life, have a website dedicated to the move: http://www.seti-Inst.edu/phoenix/contact.html.