A large asteroid or comet 11-81 km in diameter struck the Earth roughly 66 million years ago, forming the Chicxulub Crater which now lies buried underneath the yucatan peninsula.

It is a widely accepted theory that this event led to the mass extinction of 75% of plant and animal species. it did not take long for mammals and birds to greatly diversify in the absence of the dinosaurs that had dominated previously. They came to occupy almost every available niche (both marine and terrestrial), and some grew very large, attaining sizes not seen in most of today's terrestrial mammals.

Resonant Ground

2.6 million years ago a radio signal was sent from the Andromeda galaxy. At the end of its journey across the vast emptiness of intergalactic space it found its way by almost unbelievable coincidence to a boombox cassette recorder that I had picked up at a garage sale.

The first part of the message was a pattern of unintelligible of noises, perhaps a conveyance of extraterrestrial knowledge and cultural values. I pressed record immediately but the tape deck was empty. Fortunately I had some blank tapes nearby and was able to record the latter portion of the transmission. It contained a piece of music similar to late 1980’s italo-disco, but spacier: space disco.

B. Francis