A “Filipino Monkey” nearly triggered a war between the US and Iran last January 6 — a war that could have the potential to transform Earth into a Planet of the Apes.

Navy Times, the US Navy journal, has reported that a heckling radio ham known as the “Filipino Monkey,” who has spent years pestering ships in the Persian Gulf, is being blamed for sparking a major diplomatic row after American warships almost attacked Iranian patrol boats.

US warships nearly came within seconds of firing at the Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz after hearing threats that the boats were attacking and were about to explode.

Senior US navy officials have admitted that the source of the threats, picked up in international waters, was a mystery.

But now the Navy Times has claimed that the threats, which were broadcast last week by the Pentagon, apparently came from an infamous radio prankster who could in all probability be a Filipino or a group of Filipinos working in that part of the Middle East.

Otherwise, sailors who have claimed hearing the pestering voice on the airwaves would not have dubbed it “Filipino Monkey.”

Indeed, the Pentagon video clip broadcast last week in CNN did carry the threatening voice of what sounded like a Filipino, based from the intonation.

The Navy Times said the “Filipino Monkey,” who could be more than one person, listens to ship-to-ship radio traffic and then interrupts, usually with abusive insults.

Rick Hoffman, a retired captain, told the paper: “For 25 years, there’s been this mythical guy out there who, hour after hour, shouts obscenities and threats. He used to go all night long. The guy is crazy. Could it have been a spurious transmission? Absolutely.”

Hoffman said the renegade talker repeatedly harassed ships in the Gulf in the late 1980s.

The Navy Times, which serves the Navy community, said U.S. sailors in the Persian Gulf have heard the prankster — possibly more than one person — transmitting “insults and jabbering vile epithets” on unencrypted frequencies.

“Navy women — a helicopter pilot hailing a tanker, for example — who are overheard on the radio are said to suffer particularly degrading treatment,” the newspaper said. “Several Navy ship drivers interviewed by Navy Times are raising the possibility that the Monkey, or an imitator, was indeed featured in that video.”

Filipino Monkey is a name used by mariners around the globe for someone who uses his radio for unnecessary or inappropriate transmissions.

It also is sometimes used by the prankster himself. Two Navy officers said they have personally been aboard ships elsewhere in the world when all of a sudden they’ve heard someone from another vessel come on the radio and say, “Filipino Monkey, Filipino Monkey” over and over again in a singsong voice.

Last week, the Iranians and the US issued different video versions of what took place.

On the Pentagon’s version, a strange voice, in English, can be heard saying “I am coming to you. You will explode in a few minutes.” The voice sounds different from one heard earlier in the recording and there is no background noise that would usually be picked up from a speedboat radio.

In the Iranian version, there is no hint of aggressive behaviour.

The Pentagon said it recorded the film and the sound separately and then edited them together to give a “better idea of what is happening.”

But Commander Lydia Robertson, a navy spokeswoman, admitted: “We don’t know for sure where they (the threats) came from. It could have been a shore station.”

The US lodged a formal complaint with Iran over the incident. President George Bush even warned Tehran of “serious consequences” unless it stopped such aggression.

During the 20-minute incident, five Iranian patrol boats swarmed around three US warships and came within 200 meters, putting the ships on alert.

The US navy said its gunners came within seconds of firing on the speedboats.

Oh well, the Filipino Monkey must still be laughing non-stop up to now, having fooled even the mighty navy of the world’s only superpower. That’s very Filipino. Laughter even at the expense of others, or even if it brings trouble to others, is still something worth laughing about to Filipinos. It’s the balm for all the ills of Philippine society.

But why they call that Filipino prankster “monkey” is another issue altogether. Ah, those racist Western mariners!

(Photo caption: This image released by the US Navy on Jan. 8, 2008 and shot Jan. 6 from the bridge of the destroyer USS Hopper, shows a small blue boat, alleged to be Iranian, purportedly racing near the wake of U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf.

What a violent universe we live in!

It turns out that the invisible rogue black holes swirling around our very own galaxy, the Milky Way, and eating everything in their path are not the only villains in the universe. What I wrote last Thursday, Jan. 10, turned out to be just the 10-seconder teaser of an epic horror documentary on the universe.

Expounding more on the latest astronomical findings, Vanderbilt University astronomer Kelly Holley-Bockelmann said scientists have discovered an approaching gas cloud with a mass 1 million times that of the sun – and it’s heading right to our Milky Way galaxy at hyper-speed – 150 miles per second!

When the humongous gas cloud hits our galaxy, expect the Fireworks of all fireworks. It will “really light up the neighborhood,” says astronomer Jay Lockman at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in West Virginia. The collision will cause the formation of news stars, he adds.

But, hey, don’t lock yourself in the closet just yet! The galactic danger is still 47 quadrillion miles away. Moreover, the gas cloud will hit a part of the Milky Way far from Earth and the biggest collision will be 40 million years in the future. In short, it’s too far to affect even the grandchild of the grandchild of the grandchild of the grandchild of your own grandchild!

The giant cloud has been known for more than 40 years, but only now have scientists realized how fast it’s moving. So fast, Lockman said, that “we can see it sort of plowing up a wave of galactic material in front of it.”

During their annual meeting this week, US astronomers also revealed other forms of cosmic brutalities.

They unveiled a giant map of mysterious dark matter in a supercluster of clashing galaxies. The gravitational force between the clashing galaxies can cause “slow strangulation,” in which crucial gas is gradually removed from the victim galaxy.

Then there’s the process the astronomers called as “stripping” which is a more violent process. Here the larger galaxy rips gas from the smaller one.

Another phenomenon is called “harassment,” which is a quick fly-by encounter, said astronomer Meghan Gray of the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.

Aside from the thugs and villains roaming around the universe – the macroscopic equivalent of the terrorists plaguing our world – the astronomers also revealed other eye-popping discoveries:

• Photos of “blue blobs” that astronomers figure are orphaned baby stars. They’re called orphans because they were “born in the middle of nowhere” instead of within gas clouds, said Catholic University of America astronomer Duilia F. de Mello.

• A strange quadruplet of four hugging stars, which may eventually help astronomers understand better how stars form.

• A young star surrounded by dust, that may eventually become a planet. It’s nicknamed “the moth,” because the interaction of star and dust are shaped like one.

• A spiral galaxy with two pairs of arms spinning in opposite directions, like a double pinwheel. It defies what astronomers believe should happen. It is akin to one of those spinning-armed flamingo lawn ornaments, said astronomer Gene Byrd of the University of Alabama.

• The equivalent of post-menopausal stars giving unlikely birth to new planets. Most planets form soon after a sun, but astronomers found two older stars, one at least 400 million years old, with new planets.

“Intellectually and spiritually, it’s awe-inspiring,” said J. Craig Wheeler, president of the astronomy association. “It’s a great universe.”

As astronomers continue to unravel more and more of the mysteries of the Universe, I feel luckier every day that I spend life on Earth, regardless of the many challenges and conflicts and difficulties all around me. And we should all be. We’re alive to marvel at the spectacle of the Universe, while others who aren’t with us anymore cannot do so.

If only for this fact, we should all strive harder to keep ourselves healthy, so that we may witness more of the wonders of the universe in our lifetime.

(Photo caption: Hubble Space Telescope image of colliding galaxies in the constellation of Canis Major.)

We should all go down on our knees, and thank the Almighty, “Oh, thank you, dear Lord, we’re not in the path of those planet-chomping invisible rogue black holes.”

Yesterday, Jan. 9, US astronomers announced that hundreds of invisible rogue black holes may be roaming around our Milky Way galaxy – our own neighborhood in the Universe — waiting to engulf stars and planets that cross their path.

The astronomers believe these “intermediate mass” black holes are invisible except in rare circumstances and have been spawned by mergers of black holes within globular clusters — swarms of stars held together by their mutual gravity.

Lest they caused global panic, the astronomers hastened to add that these black holes are unlikely to pose a threat to Earth, although they may engulf nebulae, stars and planets that stray into their paths.

“These rogue black holes are extremely unlikely to do any damage to us in the lifetime of the universe,” said Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

“Their danger zone, the Schwarzschild radius, (or gravitational radius) is really tiny, only a few hundred kilometers. There are far more dangerous things in our neighbourhood.”

She didn’t elaborate what other “dangerous things” await planet Earth. Whew! They must be too scary to reveal.

Anyway, Holley-Bockelmann and her colleagues at the University of Michigan and Penn State University simulated what would happen if intermediate mass black holes combined with stellar-sized black holes, which are plentiful in globular clusters.

Using sophisticated computer modeling, they calculated that these mergers would generate hundreds of mid-size black holes, and that the force of their combinations would catapult them out of the globular cluster at speeds of up to 4,000 kilometers per second.

That would leave these black holes, each weighing several times the mass of the sun, to careen around interstellar space, unattached to any stellar system, at high speeds. Hence the term rogue.

Bockelmann presented her findings Wednesday at the 211th American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas.

Indeed, we can consider ourselves the luckiest creations of the Universe. We live in a self-sustaining world (at least for now) in a part of the universe quite far from where all sorts of riotous actions are taking place. Despite all the conflicts, all the sadness, all the miseries all around us – we still have I-Pods, cellphones, laptops, music, movies, caring families, and true friends to share our lives with. Aren’t we so lucky?

(Photo caption: This Spitzer Space Telescope image released in 2006 shows the galactic center of The Milky Way galaxy. AFP/NASA-HO/File)