Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Thanks to The Great Beyond for debunking a conspiracy theory that’s been making the rounds on the Internet lately. Some people have been saying that a new particle accelerator will create an exotic subatomic particle that will spawn a black hole that will swallow the Earth, or maybe even unravel the fabric of the entire universe.

That’s crazy, of course. After all, there are things in the universe that can accelerate particles at much greater speeds, and in much greater mass, than any puny human machine.

There are more important things to worry about, like the tuatara.

You probably don’t know what a tuatara is, do you? There’s a reason for that. Government officials have decided that it would be unwise to give appropriate publicity to the tuatara problem. They don’t want to see riots and the hoarding of goods.

Another article over at Nature explains the crisis, however, for those who care to know.

The tuatara, once belittled as a kind of primitive lizard, is actually outcompeting humanity, and will soon take over the planet.

“New Zealand scientists who analysed DNA harvested from fossils up to 8,750 years old now report that tuatara seem to do one thing remarkably fast: evolution. In a paper published this month in Trends in Genetics, the researchers show that the rate of molecular evolution in the reptile is among the fastest yet observed for any vertebrate.”

So, first we understand that tuataras are evolving at a greater rate than any other animal with a backbone.

Second, consider global climate change. It’s become plain that humans are adapting too slowly to climate change. Specifically, humanity cannot adapt its technology quickly enough to prevent disastrous consequences.

If human beings cannot provide the adaptation to deal with global climate change, who can? Apparently, the tuataras. They evolve faster than any other vertebrate, after all, and evolution is all about adaptation.

It will be the tuataras who develop clean energy technology, not humans.

Just think of what the tuataras will be able to do with their advanced technology. They’ll be able to do things that we humans never could do.

And just what have humans been unable to do with their technology? Let’s return to the subject we started with: The failure of human engineers to design a particle accelerator with sufficient power to trigger the creation of a black hole.

We’ve already established that tuataras have the power to develop technology that is beyond anything that humans can imagine… and just what kind of technology have humans imagined? Particle accelerators that can trigger black holes, or even the unraveling of the fabric of the cosmos, that’s what. That’s exactly what the tuataras are working on, and they’re the species to get it done.

Government officials may be unwilling to speak about this threat, but I will issue this warning: If you see a tuatara at your local hardware store, call the police.