Hubble Ultra Deep Field © NASA/Hubble
There are about 10,000 galaxies in this image.
There is still so much to learn...
Copyright © 2025
by Ralph F. Couey
Like most writers, I have a lot of curiosity. Most of that occurs in the normal pace of life. I'll notice something and ask myself, " Why is that there?" or "How does that work?" and especially, "How and why did that happen?" Those questions trigger in my brain a restless little gnome that proceeds to run around wildly in its allotted space, shouting for attention. That tiny imp won't sit down and shut up until I've at least tried to answer the questions.
In the ancient, dusty past, that meant a trip to a library, sometimes at a university, to spend hours flipping through card catalogs, followed by repeated trips into the stacks to chase down sometimes obscure tomes containing the information I would be seeking, hoping that someone hadn't checked it out. Then I had to sit down and read the book and take notes. This is a process that would take hours, sometimes days. Younger folks these days, spoiled by the Internet have no clue about the sheer drudgery and frustration of research.
The problem with books is that events move so fast these days that they're instantly obsolete once published. Today, the world is literally available in our hands or even on our wrists. I am constantly reminded and amazed that humans landed on the moon using a computer that was many times less powerful than my smartwatch. The problem with such an avalanche of information is successfully judging the veracity of sources. The 'Net is full of stupid people saying idiotic things, and care must be taken to ensure factual truth and not be taken in by an attractive stream of rhetoric. That takes time, patience, and even courage, all of which seemingly are in short supply these days.
But I am careful, and my years as an Intelligence Analyst have given me the tools I need to separate truth from fiction, facts from wishful thinking, and what is truly right from what only feels right. One of the adages from the Intelligence Community is once you know the "What" find out the "Why." Because the "Why" will explain the "What."
When we lived in Northern Virginia, I was taken in by the vast canvas of history that spans the area. The Colonial Era, Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, the hard struggle from 13 colonies to a United States were all played out among those beautiful rolling hills. I stood once on a battlefield at Yorktown, realizing that this piece of real estate had been fought over in three separate wars.
Deeply concerned about the widening divisions in my country, at one point I began to focus in on the Civil War. What were the real issues that split the country? Slavery is the easy answer, but I've learned the grim truth that the easy answer is a myth. Human history is a complex interweaving of events, personalities, agendas, good and evil, and always the unhealthy lust for power and glory. These kinds of chaotic non-linear influences always muddy the waters.
Gettysburg was a short 80 miles from where we lived, so I made numerous journeys, mostly by motorcycle (I was always looking for a reason to go riding). In those early visits, I was pretty clueless. I hadn't looked at the battle with any depth, but clarity arrived after I began reading and studying. I knew that it was a, perhaps the pivotal battle of the Civil War, that with the Union victory, the South was on the defensive from that point on. Now, I understood more about the flow of the battle, the tactics that worked, and those that failed. I was clearer on the complex relationships between the senior commanders and their foibles and blind spots on both sides and how those relationships helped shape the battle's outcome.
One beautiful autumn day, I climbed to the top of the hill known as Little Round Top and, with my eyes, traced the events as they unfolded across that battlefield during those terrible three days. More importantly, I now understood not only the what but the why. Why Confederate General Ewell did not attack the nearly undefended Culp's Hill in the waning hours of that first day. Why the Union 11th Corps turned and ran like they did at Chancellorsville, allowing the Union troops to be outflanked. How thin the margin of survival was for the 20th Maine on the left end of the Union line on Little Round Top. And why General Lee willingly sent his troops up Cemetary Hill into a meat grinder of artillery and rifle fire, a fight that cost him 60% of some of the bravest troops ever to carry a weapon into battle.
Gettysburg was a decisive victory that left the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in tatters. But it still took two more bloody years before the war ended.
I discovered in this effort that there is a difference between knowing and understanding.
A few years ago, I read an article from the New Yorker magazine written by Katherine Schulz. It was an amazing piece that brought to light some unnerving facts about what was then a generally unknown or understood tear in the Pacific Ocean floor called the Cascadia Subduction Zone. It runs some 600 to 700 miles (depending on who you read) underwater from Cape Mendocino, California, to Northern Vancouver Island, British Columbia. There, some 60 to 70 miles offshore, the Pacific Plate is pushing beneath or subducting under the North America Plate. For some time, scientists thought it was sliding smoothly (aseismically), a belief based on the complete lack of earthquakes in recorded history. Then, it was discovered that the coastal mountain ranges are rising and tilting to the east. New shoreline is being lifted above the surface of the ocean. These, and many other indicators, showed that the fault was not sliding smoothly but was, in fact, stuck. As the Pacific Plate continued to try to move eastward, that force was humping and tilting the land above it. What does that mean?
Cascadia is a type known as a thrust fault. As the years passed and through data from monster earthquakes off Chile (9.5 in 1960), and Alaska (9.3 in 1964), scientists surmised that these thrust faults, or subduction zones, existed all across that part of the Pacific called the Ring of Fire. This was clearly evident by the massive quakes off Tohoku, Japan (9.1 in 2011) and the Sumatra-Andaman quake and tsunami (9.3 in 2004) that would kill close to a quarter-million human beings. These thrust faults were responsible for not only the largest earthquakes in recorded history but also for the generation of trains of tsunami waves, which devastated huge amounts of land and would kill hundreds of thousands.
In 1996, a group of scientists from several different disciplines announced that not only was the Cascadia fault active, but it had ruptured in January 1700 along its entire length in an estimated 9.2 magnitude quake. Tribal lore from the native peoples who populated the northwest coast told of a massive event, in some cases described as a fight between two gods, Thunderbird and Whale, that shook the land and then sent the ocean streaming inland. Other researchers uncovered meticulous Japanese records that told of an "orphan tsunami" (not accompanied by a local earthquake) that sent a 16-foot wall of water ashore across 650 miles of central and northern Japan. That, plus tree ring records, mud cores pulled from the ocean shore, and good detective work, pinned the source at Cascadia.
I was working for the Hawai'i Emergency Management Agency then, and one of the hazards they plan for is tsunamis. Hawai'i sits in the middle of the Pacific, surrounded on three sides by subduction zones arcing from Tonga through the Marianas, up the coasts of Japan and Russia, across the Aleutian Islands chain, and down the coasts of North America, Central America, and South America. When these faults rupture, it's almost always in the range of Magnitude 8.5 to at least 9.5, unleashing a trans-Pacific train of waves that could devastate the 50th state. We had access to a system that monitored earthquakes from all over the world. One disquieting thing I noted was that there was constant movement in all the thrust faults across the entire arc, with earthquakes ranging from the undetectable to the barely noticeable. But Cascadia was utterly quiet. Not even a hint of rumble. Knowing what's going on down below, I found the silence ominous. I still do.
I began to read everything I could about thrust faults and tsunamis. I found a website that gave me free access to academic research papers. I dove into those (with a thesaurus close at hand) and, over time, gained a better understanding of the magnitude of the possible threat.
I also understood better that earthquake prediction is, at this time, impossible. There are some events that follow a comprehensible sequence of events. A causes B, which results in C. These are termed Linear. But what goes on deep beneath the earth's surface is not linear but chaotic. Scientists know the plates are stuck, and pressure is building, as evidenced by the changing landscapes at the surface. But deep down, where the sticking point, or asperity, is located, they don't really know the makeup of the two surfaces, the temperature, or the elasticity and frictional coefficient of the rocks that are jammed together. Without that information, any kind of accurate prediction just isn't possible. To find out, you'd have to find a way to burrow about 20 miles below the surface of sea and land. Oh yes, and find someone willing to pay for such an expensive venture.
The point at which the fault ruptures is unknown. As one scientist said, "All I know for sure is that today we're one day closer to that happening than yesterday." Despite the uncertainty, a lot of good work has been done in those affected areas. Schools, hospitals, and other critical infrastructure have been moved above the anticipated inundation line. There are good evacuation routes, and local people know that when the earth stops moving after five to six interminable minutes, they need to get to high ground within about 20 minutes. At least one community is building what's called a vertical evacuation shelter, firmly planted in the earth, which will allow people to evacuate upwards above the height of the wave. These and other mitigation efforts will undoubtedly save a lot of lives. Still, a good many of those quaint shoreline villages are likely to be swept clear by the waves. Inland, the shaking will affect major metropolitan areas like Sacramento, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. There are a lot of unreinforced masonry structures in all those cities, mostly bricks that will come apart like kicked Legos. The high rises in those cities were built before all this was known about the monster offshore, so nobody really knows if they can withstand severe shaking of that magnitude. The quake and tsunami will happen someday, and the resulting devastation may require a recovery time measured in decades.
I've also explored other subjects, such as the chain of events leading to the Chernobyl disaster, what happens inside a hydrogen bomb when it is detonated, the structure of supercell thunderstorms and tornadoes, how a massive star can explode in a supernova, how a galaxy 34 billion light-years distant was discovered even though the visible universe should only be 13.8 billion light years across, and even how DNA and RNA do their thing deep inside our cells. I'll never understand the nuts and bolts of these things, but I have a general understanding. And that's good enough for now
When I look at this world and the universe, I feel awe at how big everything is, what we've discovered, and especially what we still have yet to discover. Perhaps when I've shuffled off this mortal coil, I'll be in a place where I can know and understand it all, and my curiosity will finally be sated.
But then again...maybe not!
