On a ledge over a church door in Jerusalem stands a simple cedarwood ladder. It's been there for perhaps three centuries. Since nobody remembers who put it there, nobody knows who is authorized to remove it. If anyone would try, there'd be immediate trouble with whomever would feel slighted — and there are plenty of candidates. This is the Immovable Ladder, and it is a fitting symbol for the deeply-entrenched divisions within Christianity, and within that church building itself.
The most sacred place on Earth
Those religious divides matter here more than anywhere else because this is the most significant church in the world. For Christians of any denomination this is the most sacred place on Earth. This is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and according to tradition, it contains both Golgotha (or Calvary in Latin; both mean "skull"), the place where Jesus died on the cross. Just a few feet further is the tomb (a.k.a. sepulcher) where his body was laid to rest and where according to the faithful he was resurrected three days later.
Yet despite its supreme religious importance, there is no single authority managing this holiest of church buildings. The care over the sprawling, multi-level complex is divided between various denominations.
The church's history goes back to the fourth century, when Roman emperor Constantine, newly converted to Christianity, sent his mother Helena to Jerusalem to locate places and things associated with the life and death of Jesus. This is the spot where she found the True Cross, a sign that this must have been Golgotha. The place of Jesus' burial was identified nearby. Constantine razed the pagan temple built here by his predecessor Hadrian, and a church on this spot, the first commissioned by a Roman emperor, was consecrated in the year 335.
In continuous use for 1700 years
The church has survived earthquakes, fires, invasions, and demolition by decree. It has been in continuous use for nearly 1700 years, even if the building standing there today is mostly a renovation and reconstruction dating to Crusader times. Over the centuries, various Christian traditions latched on to the church. Ownership became a constant source of dispute.
In 1852, the Ottoman Sultan decreed that the church was to be managed by the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Apostolic churches and apportioned parts of the building to each denomination. Over time, smaller parts of the building came under the authority of three smaller Orthodox denominations: the Coptic, Syriac, and Ethiopian churches.
- Most of the building is under control of the Greek Orthodox church (in blue on the map). They manage the Katholikon (which is slightly ironic), the North Transept, the Seven Arches of the Virgin, a small Orthodox monastery, and various chapels, among other bits.
- The Latins (a.k.a. Roman Catholics, in purple) manage the Franciscan Monastery on the north side (which includes the Chapel of the Apparition and the Chapel of Mary Magdalene), the Grotto of the Invention of the Cross, a small area north of the Parvis, and a tiny space between the Katholikon and the Rotunda.
- The Armenians (in yellow) manage the Chapel of St. Helena, the Chapel of St. James, and the Armenian Gallery next to the Rotunda.
- The Copts (in red) have the care of various chapels near the Rotunda, including a small annex to the Edicule (i.e., the Holy Sepulcher) itself.
- The Ethiopian monastery is spread out on the roof, and the Ethiopians also manage an area called Deir al-Sultan, the Chapel of the Four Living Creatures, and the Chapel of St. Michael (all in orange).
- The Syriac church has the smallest part (in green): the Chapel of St. Nicodemus. But at least it's very close to the Sepulcher.
The Ottoman edict is the basis for the status quo, which is scrupulously maintained. A complex set of rules determines how the church is managed — such as who is allowed where and when, who cleans and repairs which parts of the building, and which areas are held in common (by the Greeks, Latins, and Armenians but not by the other three).
- The Rotunda is common territory, as is a chapel to the north.
- The Parvis (i.e. the courtyard at the entrance) is also common, as is an adjacent part of the church that contains the Stone of Unction (where according to tradition, Jesus' body was prepared for burial).
But some of the rules are disputed, and conflicts occasionally erupt. Two examples:
- The Copts have a long-standing claim over part of the roof, which is occupied by Ethiopian monks. To maintain their claim, Coptic monks take turns to sit on a chair on the roof. But on a particularly hot day in 2002, when a Coptic monk moved the chair a few inches into the shade, the Ethiopians interpreted that move as a violation of the status quo. The ensuing fight sent 11 monks to the hospital.
- And in 2008, Greek and Armenian monks got into a violent argument over the procedure of a religious procession. The brawl was caught on camera and pasted all over the news.
Can't we all just get along?
In recent years, however, the churches seem to be getting along a little bit better, although partly out of necessity. Significant parts of the building are in extreme need of repair. In 2017, the three main denominations (Catholic, Greek, and Armenian) agreed to fix the Edicule, which was in danger of collapsing. And in 2019, the three churches signed an agreement to renovate parts of the church's infrastructure (floor, foundations, and sewage pipes) and even to share ownership of any archaeological artifacts that might turn up during the work. However, the agreement excludes the three other denominations, which under the status quo have no say in the management of shared spaces.
Which brings us back to the Immovable Ladder. Despite its nickname, it has proven to be very movable indeed. It was stolen twice in the 20th century. Both times, it was soon recovered by the police and returned to its original position. In 2009, it was moved again, this time with the agreement of all relevant denominations, in order to accommodate scaffolding for renovations.
Upon completion of the works, it was again put back. And there it will remain until, as Pope Paul VI suggested in 1964, the divisions between the various Christian denominations are resolved. Or until Christ returns — whichever happens first.
Meanwhile, the keys to the church building itself will remain where they have been for centuries: in the possession of the Joudeh and Nuseibeh families, who by virtue of their Muslim faith are accepted by all Christian denominations as neutral guardians of the entrance to the church.
Strange Maps #1081
Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.
Meet ANITA. ANITA stands for "Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna." It seeks out cosmic rays from space as while hanging from a balloon suspended over Antarctica. In the last two years, though, it has twice detected cosmic rays coming from a direction no one expected: inside the earth. According to the Standard Model (SM) of physics, this shouldn't be possible.
ANITA, foreground, and its balloon, background(NASA)
And guess what? ANITA’s not alone
In September, a paper was submitted for peer review by astrophysicists at Penn State led by Derek Fox. "I was like, 'Well this model doesn't make much sense,'" Fox tells Live Science, "but the [ANITA] result is very intriguing, so I started checking up on it. I started talking to my office neighbor [and paper co-author] Steinn Sigurdsson about whether maybe we could gin up some more plausible explanations than the papers that have been published to date." Lacking any, they looked for other similar events and found three. They'd been detected by a surface-based Antarctic neutrino detector called, sensibly enough, IceCube. And when the data from ANITA and IceCube when combined, the Penn State scientists started getting excited. They calculate that whatever kind of particle is flying up and away from Earth has a less than 1-in-3.5 million chance of being any of the particles predicted by the Standard Model. Obviously, this has physicists scratching their heads trying to figure out what on earth is going on.
IceCube
How cosmic rays are supposed to behave
First of all, of course, cosmic rays are supposed to come from out there somewhere, not here. The earth is bombarded with them all the time. The suspicion is that the newly detected particles are cosmic rays slamming into the earth on one side and somehow making it out the other.
Cosmic rays, though, are high-energy particles with relatively wide cross-sections that lead to their demise by causing them to crash into matter inside the Earth. They're "mainly (89%) protons — nuclei of hydrogen, the lightest and most common element in the universe — but they also include nuclei of helium (10%) and heavier nuclei (1%), all the way up to uranium particles," according to CERN. Low-energy neutrinos, on the other hand, can pass through the earth's rocky mass, but they're not involved with cosmic rays.
Both ANITA and IceCube track neutrinos indirectly by detecting their remains, if you will. They detect the particles neutrinos produce when they decay post-collision. Since neutrinos can't get through the earth, though, something else is producing these particles. But what?
Artist rendition of cosmic rays
(koya979/Shutterstock)
They could be a new kind of particle…
One candidate put forward as responsible for the event is the elusive "sterile neutrino," first hinted at by evidence captured in the mid 1990s at the Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector (LSND) at Los Alamos. The data was interpreted as suggesting a weird kind of high-speed neutrino that simply passes through matter without any interaction. No one else was able to reproduce the result, and the idea fell out of favor. Until this last spring, that is, when MiniBooNE at Chicago's FermiLab captured new signs that it might exist. The sterile neutrino would break the Standard Model if confirmed, which is one of the things that make MiniBoonE's data exciting. "That would be huge," says Duke physicist Kate Scholberg, who wasn't involved with the research, "…that would require new particles ... and an all-new analytical framework."
Others have suggested that it could be a product of dark matter. Cool as either of these ideas would be, perhaps the strongest reason for the detected upward cosmic rays is even more thrilling.
…or they could be long-sought supersymetrical particles
According to the Standard Model, every particle has a symmetrical partner, but the particles we know about don't match up. To resolve this apparent imbalance, a class of thus-far-hidden "supersymmetrical" particles has been proposed. It was hoped that the Large Hadron Collider could detect these mysterious — and so far just theoretical — particles, but no. Since 2012, when the last known particle predicted the Standard Model, the Higgs-Boson, was detected, nothing new's been found.
Until, maybe, now.
What the Penn paper proposes
The Penn State paper suggests these South Pole upward cosmic rays could be our first sign of supersymmetricals, specifically the partner of the Standard Model's tau leptons. With a a couple of "S"es added to signify supersymmetry, they'd be stau sleptons.
Others agree that they could be the first actual evidence of supersymmetry. Los Alamos physicist Bill Louis tells LiveScience, "I think it's very compelling," though he adds that the pinpointing of a stau slepton is "a bit of a stretch."
Fox admits he certainly can't be sure, but that, "From my perspective, I go trawling around trying to discover new things about the universe, I come upon some really bizarre phenomenon, and then with my colleagues, we do a little literature search to see if anybody has ever thought that this might happen. And then if we find papers in the literature, including one from 14 years ago that predict something just like this phenomenon, then that gets really high weight from me." And, guess what, he did find a prediction from 2003 of stau sleptons showing up just like this.
Rarely, if ever, do we stop to think about how remarkable certain everyday comforts are: to flick an electric switch and have light inundate a dark room; to turn on a faucet and have drinking water; to take a hot shower; to live in a home that is cool in hot days and warm in cool days; to step into a metal box and move wherever we want; to go to a store and buy food; to talk to someone across the world; to dump dirty clothes into a machine and have it wash it all. The list is endless.
Now, go back 150 years to 1871. Life was completely different. Energy was scarce; animals pulled plows and carriages; steam engines were beginning to flourish; technology was very primitive compared to today; medicine had yet to understand disease and sterilization. There were no telephones. Cars and airplanes were not invented yet. Light bulbs were still a laboratory curiosity. People drank crude oil as medicine. The first gasoline-fueled combustion engine car was still five years away, invented by Carl Benz, in Germany. The world population was about 900 million.
The pros and cons of technological progress
But look at us now! Fossil fuels transformed the world. Technology transformed the world. Life expectancy in the U.S. went from 39.4 years to 78.8 years. The world population grew to 7.8 billion, and well over 200,000 cars are built per day.
It's an amazing story of success for our species. And of catastrophic environmental devastation.
Even if technological innovation has its roots in basic research, the driver for the transition from the lab to the marketplace is money. Growth is measured by sales, and sales generate profit. In the past 150 years, the gross domestic product per capita in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada (known collectively as Western Offshoots) grew from $4,647 to $53,757 (corrected for inflation and measured in international 2011 prices).
What feeds these fat pockets? Fossil fuels, deforestation, mining, the depletion of the oceans, industrialized agriculture. The obvious truth is becoming clearer to a growing number of people: we live on a finite planet, with finite resources, and with a finite capability of cleaning the mess we make. The time of treating the oceans and the rivers as giant sewage dumps, the atmosphere as an endless sponge for noxious fumes, and the forests as inconvenient obstacles to be removed for expansive cattle grazing and agriculture is over.
I'm glad to be alive to witness our reinvention.
The essential question, then, is what can be done? Is it possible to maintain the current growth rate based on a profoundly different worldview, one where the fuel that feeds growth is not unchecked environmental destruction but a symbiotic relationship between our species and the planet we inhabit? Can the economy adapt to a new worldview before we inflict even more irreversible damage to the planet?
The first point to keep in mind is that we are not separate from the environmental devastation we perpetrate. If the environment goes, we go. We need clean air, clean water, and clean energy to survive. The more of us there are, the more urgent this obvious fact becomes. The inventiveness and resourcefulness that we have traditionally applied to industrial and warfare innovation must now be applied to our own survival on this planet. We need to reinvent how we relate to the world. We must move from the plundering mindset that sucked our prosperity from the bowels of the Earth to one that collects the energy that the skies serve us.
A revolution of the mind
This change in mindset represents a reversal from an aggressive relation to the environment — the metallic machines that dig holes to suck fossil fuels from the underground — to one that embraces what is already here: the sun, the wind, and the carbon-fixing capabilities of forestlands across the world.
Last week, President Biden convened 40 world leaders to discuss our collective energy future. The current administration clearly represents the new mindset. We must change the way we think about economic profit being averse to renewable energy. The old worldview, based on the past 150 years of the industrial growth motto — that is, let's consume the bowels of the Earth to get rich — is dead. It's unviable. It's unsustainable. It's self-destructive. It's immoral.
The changes to come will be as world-changing as the ones that exploded during the early 20th century with rampant industrialization: An economy based on the passive extraction of renewable energy from the skies; vast reforestation programs for carbon fixing; a complete overhaul of the auto industry toward electric and hydrogen-cell vehicles; a retraining of the workforce to adapt to the growing automation of production and to the need for versatility in the marketplace due to the new jobs of the digital age; a redesign of school curricula to retell the story of our relation to the environment to raise awareness among younger generations; and an emergent new ethics of life that embraces the planet and all living creatures we share it with as partners and not targets.
A decade or so ago, these views would be dismissed as utopic or at least naïve. But not anymore. The new worldview is taking root, and foolish is the country that won't embrace it quickly. I'm glad to be alive to witness our reinvention.
