Showing posts with label discovery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label discovery. Show all posts

Rising Above the Haze





I feel like there’s something special about the view of the sky at higher altitudes… maybe it’s from being physically nearer to the clouds, or perhaps it’s something in the air pressure; probably it’s a combination of both. Or perhaps it’s just my own placebo fooling my senses because I feel so powerfully that I am at finally where I belong. There are times when the sky looks so strikingly indistinguishable from the most beautiful painting, just placed there in all its glory so high above us, particularly at those fleeting times when the sunlight hits the clouds from just that right angle to unleash those gorgeously glowing vanilla skies.

Whatever the case, I find it so incredibly interesting that there is so much grandeur in this world all around us, particularly in the sky so high above us because we rarely get the chance to view it from any other angle than we have here at ground level. We’re so utterly confined to the planet’s surface, not necessarily any less beautiful in its own right but so much less identifiable simply because we are so bounded by the surface, by the relentless tug of gravity rooting us to it. But when we get those exceedingly rare opportunities to free ourselves from these chains and actually bring ourselves up above the haze of the surface world we spend so much of a majority of our time viewing it all from, and look upon the same familiar world yet from such an unfamiliar vantage point, there is so much more beauty laid bare we are otherwise entirely ignorant of.

Consider a simple airplane trip, for example. As the plane begins to roll down the runway it’s not so different from any typical car ride. You feel the wheels rumbling over the imperfections of the pavement, and the shuddering of the vehicle as those vibrations rumble through its body. But something amazing happens as the plane reaches that critical speed and the upward lift of air acting on the craft’s body almost seems to cause the oh-so-familiar ground to just casually drop away just as much as it seems like the plane is actually being lifted up from it all.

And then gradually the influence of humanity upon the planet grows less and less apparent, even as the networks of straight lines and right angles so absent from the natural structure of things bare themselves so glaringly to you. The awesome immensity of the planet is further revealed to you as you climb higher and higher and still there is no end in sight. What a truly gigantic landscape we are all a part of!

As you approach the cloud line which was once so high above, so utterly and completely out of your reach and comprehension, you start to notice what I have found to be one of the most striking observations I have ever witnessed—that the blanket of clouds, for the most part, is so much like another surface, as if occupying its own sphere encircling the planet. This was never apparent to me looking up from the ground. But gazing down from the window of an airplane I find myself captivated by this; somehow it’s incredibly beautiful that this should be the case.

And you realize how relatively insignificant we each are, individually for sure but even as a whole. There are no actual boundaries; unless you’re looking at a fabricated map you could not possibly tell that some arbitrary invisible line separates one state, or one country, from the next. You see how pockets of civilization tend to be tightly packed, especially around significant landmarks, almost as if huddling together against the incredibly vast expanses of unsettled wilderness still surrounding so much of our prized civilization.

Even the cities themselves don’t have actual boundaries. There is no protective bubble enclosing a city and declaring it as such. If not for the signs on the roadside, or the data from your GPS, you would not truly know that you have entered or exited some decided “city limit.” No, they are simply collections of structures and grids placed upon the Earth’s surface, utterly at the mercy of all of nature’s influences just as everything else is. They have no privileged rights, no advantage over any other point on the globe except for the most carefully positioned among them. You’re just surrounded by structures and a certain density of other people.

At some height the roads and highways vanish into obscurity, as do entire cities at sufficient elevation. From high enough above the surface you cannot even see evidence of the presence of our own race, except maybe for the grid work of landscaping so blatantly obvious because of all the straight lines and right angles. But then your aircraft starts to descend upon its destination, ever so gradually, and you are left to observe the reverse of all of these thought processes as this privileged vantage point is taken back from you, and your suddenly-heavy feet are returned to within the haze of Earth’s solid surface so that the glory of it all can tower over you so tantalizingly once more.

Posted by Unknown | at 11:25 PM | 0 comments

My Proposal for NASA




With the recent success and popularity of NASA’s Curiosity rover’s landing on Mars on August 6, 2012, I feel like this is a good time to put forth an argument for the advocation of NASA’s potential and usefulness. Because NASA inspires; not only does it inspire, but there are so many so-called “trickle-down” technologies which are in existence because of the direct result of NASA research and ingenuity. Among these are advances in artificial limb technologies, improved radial tires, video enhancing and analysis systems for both law-enforcement and military applications, firefighting equipment for more light-weight breathing apparatuses, radio communications, what is now called “memory foam”, enriched baby food, water purification systems, and of course some of the most obvious technological benefits such as satellite communications and GPS, many of which are so widely used and relied upon today in our world that it’s hard to imagine them not having been developed in the first place.

I understand that one of the biggest (and most reasonable) concerns over space travel is, to put simply, cost. Among many things, certainly of great particular concern, especially these days, is the cost of the fuel. Not only is it wildly expensive (a single Shuttle launch reportedly cost about 1.1 billion dollars), but the fuel could presumably be used elsewhere. And that's fair enough, for sure; I don't think anyone could argue the validity of that concern. However, I strongly believe that the cost is justified.

So because of the admittedly immense cost of space travel endeavors as they are today, and of my sympathy with the associated concerns, I'd like to propose a gesture not totally unlike the "moments of silence" which have long been observed to pay tribute to various tragedies.

The Space Shuttle reportedly consumed three and a half million pounds of fuel per launch. This is definitely a lot of fuel… staggering, in a way, to think that this is for a single launch. However, in one day in the United States there is an estimated two and a half billion pounds of gasoline consumed. Simplifying the math will lead you to a ratio between the two, which shows that a single Shuttle launch is equivalent to just barely over two minutes of U.S. gasoline consumption:

       2,500,000,000,000 lbs / 1440 minutes   =   1,736,111.111 lbs/minute (fuel consumed per minute)
       3,500,000 lbs / 1,736,111.111 lbs/minute   =   2.016 minutes, or 121 seconds

So I propose that on some appointed day, probably on the day of a launch, to maximize the symbolism, every American operating a gasoline-consuming vehicle pulls over and shuts off said vehicle (safely, of course) and observes a moment of admiration for a mere two minutes and one second. Those measly 121 seconds represented the entire cost of fuel for the launch. Once two minutes and one second have passed, everyone will resume their day with a profound sensation of accomplishment resting in their hearts, warming their souls, renewing their faith in the power of human potential. Because in that brief period of time the entire fuel consumption of the launch was not being guzzled away by the citizens of the entire nation. In a vague sort of way it’s almost as if we paid for it entirely.

And I realize that this is ridiculously absurd. But I like the idea behind it, the gesture itself, the implications of what two minutes of us not aimlessly driving ourselves around can amount to. Of course the cumulative effort and cooperation of every single American is pretty much as far-fetched a thing to hope for as can be imagined, not to mention the fact that no money would actually be "saved" by this gesture; most people are still going to resume their drive and use up the same amount of fuel they would have anyway. Also, the Shuttle is now phased out of use completely, so the analogy is somewhat weakened by that. But the numbers could easily be manipulated to account for whatever newer vehicle is used, once they get developed. It won’t likely be too much different, although they will hopefully be more efficient and less demanding.

Speaking of collective effort, I have another proposal, one I am much more serious about. I believe it to be much more practical and, granted, probably at least as much more controversial. If every American adult was made to pay a sort of "NASA tax" of ten dollars each year, this would amount to about 2.5 billion dollars (estimates of the adult population of the United States is about 250 million). For perspective, the estimated cost of the Voyager program, perhaps the most important of any non-human mission so far, was about one billion dollars. Many have been cheaper, and some will definitely be more expensive. Of course the Apollo and Shuttle programs were exceedingly expensive. But space exploration involving human astronauts will always be much more expensive than robotic alternatives, and I think both should be pursued simultaneously and cooperatively. For more perspective, the 2012 budget for NASA is 17.8 billion dollars, slightly less than half of one percent of the national budget. This direct contribution from the public would increase the budget by about 14%, nudging the total over twenty billion—higher than it’s been, adjusted for inflation, since 1969, the year we first landed on the moon.

Also worth noting, the entire cost of the brand new (and so far wildly successful) Curiosity rover’s mission to Mars is said to be approximately 2.5 billion dollars—precisely the amount this action would revenue each year.

What is ten dollars to any one person, really? Certainly for any "average" American this is a measly amount of money--though I would not want to advocate any dismissal of the value of money when the issue might actually be quite serious. But how often does one of us go out to eat and spend close to, or more than, ten dollars? Or buy six sodas over time, or one movie ticket, or one CD or DVD, or 1/6 of an XBox game? I could lose ten dollars out of a hole in my pocket and it would have no lasting effect, if I even noticed it missing at all, and I’m not rich by any reasonable measure. Of course there must be exceptions to this generalization… I don't doubt there are people and families that are in legitimate need of absolutely any ten dollars they can get. In these cases, for situations truly this severe, I would not press the issue personally. Assuming this policy was ever actually adopted, I imagine it would take at least some effort of will for most people to come to terms with the justifications of the mandatory "NASA tax." But I would hope that in most cases it would not be much of a struggle, ideally none at all. Maybe most people would actually grow to appreciate the investment. And, of course, using the word “tax” in advocating this idea is probably going to stir some resentment, but I don’t know of a better way to execute such a plan if it could ever actually be adopted as a whole. I mean, we pay taxes every day, on virtually everything that we ever purchase, whether it’s a measly candy bar or a new TV or a car. Taxes are necessary for our economy’s continued growth, budget and success. The simple term should not infuriate, it should inspire dreams for what such small percentages of our earnings can initiate and progress with the help of our direct influence. This is a beautiful opportunity.

Even if a quarter of all American adults--62,500,000 people--truly cannot afford to contribute or just outright refuse to participate because they can't find the necessary minute shred of compassion within their blackened hearts, somehow legally filtered out of the “taxation”, then the same 2.5 billion dollars could be accumulated from $13.33 per person. Not so much of a change; or, if kept at $10 per, then the sum would still be a respectable 1.88 billion dollars and it would still benefit enormously.

Or this could be implemented as one dollar a month, or fifty cents biweekly, automatically taken out of your paycheck (whichever applies). We could even go less extreme and have each American adult invest one dollar at the end of the year. Just one dollar from each of 250 million people makes quite a sum even still (250 million dollars). Even one pitiful penny from each of us will supply them with 2.5 million dollars at the end of a year. Or we could add to the nation-wide tax revenue even a fraction of a percent, say one tenth of one percent, to all taxable purchases. I don’t know what that would amount to, but surely it would be an appreciable amount over the course of a year. If your area’s tax rate is, say, 8.75 percent, it would simply become 8.85 percent, and would hardly even be noticeable. There are any numbers of variations for such a policy to be implemented, any wide range of possible contributions, investments, from the people of such a promising nation to put forth. Each of them would provide such a benefit to NASA, or even another yet-to-be-established space program. I am somewhat surprised and disappointed that something like this hasn't already been adapted, but to be fair, the funding received by NASA from the government already is pretty much a portion of the taxes already being collected by the general public, and even this much gets its own share of controversy.

So one could argue that we are all already paying taxes, and, well, where do you think the money going to NASA already is coming from? But the point is, the money is there, in each of our possessions. I’m trying to suggest that we appreciate that NASA is an investment of government spending, not a “special case”, and deserves more than whatever they decide to allocate each year from the collection of public taxes alone. NASA would still be given what the federal budget deems worthy, valuable of course in its own right, but and then some, as an extra contribution from the general public who so deeply wallow in the returns of this investment aggregated over all the years it’s been utilized.

One could also argue why NASA? Why not an organization ready to clean up the atmosphere, or the oceans, or the forests, or the roads, or the education system, or whichever one of countless organizations with countless goals in mind? These are all also admirable goals, and very important, for sure. I do not mean to demean the value of any other charity or organization. Indeed, I would encourage donations wherever they can be given! Nothing is stopping anyone from contributing to any of these; anyone with extra generosity can invest to their heart’s content. I am simply advocating the addition of a small amount of money, to be carefully determined, into the tax system specifically for the nation's space exploration budget, and specifically for NASA, and not at the mercy of yearly budget cuts and not factored into what the government decides to fund of its own accord. I think this should be an independent contribution on top of what is deemed worthy of NASA’s federal budget. I argue that the investment into NASA exceeds virtually all other possibilities of organizations and charities of similar “scope”/”endeavors”. I argue that this extra contribution is in all of our best interests. Because in this age, in the twenty-first century, it seems obvious that the benefits of discoveries and advancements are mostly all going to be showered down from the frontiers of engineering and scientific innovations, and we need to keep that off-world frontier burgeoning, because that is the realm from which so much of what we cannot even anticipate is in all likelihood going to come from and work to make this world a better place for all its inhabitants.

With so large a population any amount of contribution, matched by all, so miniscule in each individual case, amounts to incredible quantities. And, especially in this case, with incredible quantities comes incredible discoveries. Another option for NASA’s benefit is for them to host some sort of annual Kickstarter-like fundraiser. This way the contributions would not be mandatory, and would not be defined by a standard, but could be absolutely anything a contributor might be willing to put forth… and, like most Kickstarters make use of, enticing rewards could be offered to stimulate the generosity. With a high enough investment perhaps one could even be rewarded a tour of a NASA facility, or the witnessing of a launch, or even a trip into orbit around the planet!

I just think that the implications of what is out there to be found and studied, the knowledge to gain, the unexplored worlds to really see for the first time, and the potential for our expansion and survival, are paramount in importance. The Earth's atmosphere is pretty much represented by the simple coat of lacquer on a standard globe. That's it, all which separates us here on the surface from everything out there ready to explore and discover... the frontiers of our thoughts are out there just out of our reach! Ready to be stumbled upon, ready to expand our knowledge of the universe and of ourselves and of this lonely planet we inhabit so fruitfully. And the effect on our culture is perhaps most impactful of all… because after we first went mankind to the moon, after we first saw photos of the entire sphere of Earth, so small and fragile suspended up there in the utterly black sky, the entire world was forever changed. We saw the implementation of so many new laws and organizations with renewed effort to clean up the planet, more efficiently manage our resources, and interact with each other not as a world divided by colorfully painted borders on the surface of a globe, but as one continuous, commonly inhabited and shared borderless planet. Because you can’t actually tell where one nation ends and the other begins, it’s completely arbitrary and meaningless when viewed upon at a distance great enough to actually observe large portions of the surface of the Earth with a single sweeping glance. There are no borders. And we finally saw this in its entirety when those first photos from sufficient distance were published. We began to truly understand that we are all one, we are all together, we are all striving to survive and make the best for ourselves on this enormous, bountiful world. But we need help to keep on advancing and improving the quality of life the world over… and it seems like NASA is one of, if not the prime candidates to continue to advance this frontier of discovery and innovation to continue this trend we’ve been so privileged to be a part of.

So let’s put forth a way in which we can not only keep those discoveries coming, but we can actually feel like we have been a part of their fruition by direct contributions, whether mandatory (but hopefully appreciable) or by generous voluntary contributions alone. As incredible and profoundly impactful as those fleetingly brief years were during the Apollo era, who can even imagine what newer insights and discoveries and cultural overcomings are idly awaiting our efforts to uncover? We need to go and find them. We need to keep dreaming about tomorrow and ever-expanding the frontiers of our thoughts and desires, and I can’t think of a better way to achieve this than to let the NASA organization keep doing its thing, of course managed and controlled for the best of all interests. It is absolutely incredible what they have managed to provide for the world so far in their fifty-year-plus history to date.

As Neil deGrasse Tyson so beautifully puts it, “We went to the moon, and we discovered Earth. I claim we discovered Earth for the first time.”

And you cannot put a price on that.

Posted by Unknown | at 6:58 PM | 3 comments

Defining Our Past And Shaping Our Future



 




The world seems to be advancing technologically so rapidly that even some of the devices which were at the pinnacle of consumer luxury a couple decades ago are now some of the most rudimentary and perhaps sometimes not even recognizable by the younger generations. I myself am relatively young at 24, and yet I've had the opportunity to witness the incredible advancements of quite a few branches of technology in my time so far. There must have been a time when record players, to give a simple example, were such amazing devices, and then cassette players became so much smaller and portable, and then CDs offered so much more space and quality, and then the digital era offered even better quality and eliminated the frustrations of skips and scratches and misplacing and limited storage. I remember listening to cassette tapes as a kid, and buying my very first CDs as a young teenager, and then buying my very first mp3 player a few years later, and being so utterly fascinated at every step along the way.

The first mp3 player I ever bought, sometime around 2004, seemed so wildly incredible at the time. For the hefty price of $70 or so I could fit 40-some songs on a 128 megabyte device, which was more than twice what I had grown so accustomed to fitting on a mix CD. And on top of that there was no concern over tracks skipping on a jog, or ever having to buy new blank CDs when I wanted to make a new mix. This was the most profound appreciation of mine at the time; I didn't need piles of mix CDs anymore. I didn't need to toss a disc every time I wanted even one single new song to be included on the current mix. The digital contents could simply be updated. And now, for the same price or less, you can easily get 8 gigabytes of space or more and the capacity for thousands upon thousands of songs and any combination of separate playlists. The sum of the contents of dozens and dozens of mix CDs can be enjoyed by a few touches on a handheld digital media player with sufficient size.

Similarly, video media has gone from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray (not even considering all of the varieties of digital file types able to be shared online) with the quality and cost improving all along the way. Of course, when a new format and new devices to play them with are developed, across all medias, the prices start higher, but they quickly decline and before long a device vastly more powerful than the one you purchased several years before is even cheaper. Today I could buy an mp3 player with 16 times the storage capacity than that first one I ever purchased for a mere ten dollars. And you would probably face difficulty in even finding a place that will take your old VHS tapes or even DVDs from you for a fraction of what you paid for them back in the day. Their demand has almost entirely vanished, for good reason, in the wake of so much vast improvement.

This digital age has certainly disrupted things, and not only in the music and video industries. The high technologies of even a few decades ago not only lose their popular use and their monetary value, but you can hardly even give them away sometimes. They just become so utterly outdated by the perpetual advancement of newer devices and ideas, and eventually only the vintage or nostalgia-seeking collectors see any use whatsoever in their ownership. But they will always serve as healthy reminders of how far we've come, and tantalizing hints at where we're still going.

Not too long ago I bought a shiny new printer. And the other day I needed to scan a document so that I could attach it to an email. And so I did; I put the paper on the tray, pressed the scan button, and selected its destination. And it struck me right then, considering for the first time this option that was now available to me to send it directly into a folder on my PC, how absolutely incredible technology is. This was all done wirelessly--the printer has no tangible link with my computer. And yet, when I place a piece of paper onto its tray and command it to scan it for me, suddenly an exact digitized replica of it exists as parts of the 1s and 0s navigable within the depths of my computer. And I can send this data to anyone else on the planet if I wanted to, and they could have it, see it, even print it out for themselves, and no physical link was ever made between us. It's like exactly how magic would be if magic were a real thing, but this is real and we can understand it and we can manipulate it to our will.

Arthur C. Clarke said that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I think this holds some deep insights, considering so much of what we have at our disposal in today's world that would probably send a person from a thousand years ago screaming away in terror and condemning us as demons. Who could have thought, at the time, that we'd be able to almost effortlessly communicate with people anywhere else on the planet without even any physical link? Or even see them on video monitors? Or fly across the oceans? Or film movies? Or cover so much of the planet with artificial light? Or find the answers to so many questions with just a few keystrokes into an online search engine? Sometimes I wonder if the entire concept of magic has really been all along just the inexorable progression of our thoughts and understandings of the world transformed into the fanciful dreams of what we wish we had the power to do.

And then the day comes when we do have that power. Have you noticed how so many things are becoming more and more automated and touch-free?  Oftentimes doors will open for you as you approach, lights will turn themselves on as you enter a room, toilets will flush for you as you leave, faucets and soap dispensers and hand dryers will dispense for you as you place your hands under them, and devices will even operate by spoken command and turn themselves off after an idle period. Increasingly often you don’t even have to touch a doorknob, or a light switch, or a toilet or faucet handle, or a paper towel dispenser (or even a paper towel). You can walk into a bathroom, use the facilities (well, a guy, at least), wash and dry your hands, and leave, all without ever touching anything.

You don't even have to touch your hard-earned cash anymore. I handle cash less and less often even as I continue to make more money and purchase more things. I rarely have more than twenty dollars in hard cash in my wallet; more often than not I have none at all. It strikes me sometimes that this is a really incredible thing, this ability to accumulate and spend money without ever actually touching the tangible pieces of paper and cotton and linen we’re so used to thinking of it as.

Like most, I imagine, I work a job and have funds automatically deposited to a bank account with every paycheck. I never actually see it. I don’t bring a check to a bank, and my wallet doesn’t grow fat with bills. The money just shows up as if a fundamental part of my being. So long as I utilize only that amount of money, debit purchases are like the simple returns on that labor, to be acquired at will. Each time it deposits it’s like I just became worth that many more dollars, and it’s almost as if I can just walk into places and visit websites and help myself to my desires, as if my presence holds an intrinsic worth only requiring verification by a small piece of plastic and a few numbers. With the simple swipe of a card I can walk out with a cart full of food, or appliances, or video games, or any combination of things I wish to own, or even have them delivered to me. And that little piece of plastic, that card which represents my monetary worth, doesn’t change. It remains safely in my wallet and yet represents so much of what is laid before me to enjoy. I only have to go out and acquire it. Sometimes it feels like I’m not actually purchasing something, I’m just going and grabbing a thing that I want and it’s now mine and later I go and perform some tasks that I enjoy doing and the cycle repeats and the world is just mine to appreciate as I please.

Social media has become a truly massive force in the world. In a few seconds you can create a profile on any of several major websites, add some  pictures and some interests and some history, and continuously present yourself to the world through public postings. Some reports say that as much as 25% of all Internet page views are on social media sites alone. You've probably heard some of the generic complaints such as "people used to actually know their neighbors" and yet today's society has been shaped so that you can know any number of people all over the world. Of course there is some concern over still maintaining actual physical relationships with people, but sometimes it seems as if the simple new wave of potential is making it seem like so much of the physical is gone. Such a phenomenon has never been known before, so it's no surprise that the controversies abound. I don't believe this is the case; I still see people hanging out outside with each other all the time. I still spend as much time as I can get with my dear friends around town. I still cherish face-to-face communication more than any other, and I can only assume that this is generally the case universally. It's just that we have so many more opportunities now. If not for social media I would have lost the majority of the connections I've been able to maintain despite the major moves I, and others, have made. Never before has a person from, say, the U.S. been able to randomly become acquainted with a person from, say, Australia, and share thoughts and feelings with each other without ever having actually been closer to each other than a few thousand miles. A healthy mix of digital and physical communication is arguably more valuable than any other combination has ever been. You can even share your physical relationships with your digital ones, and vice versa. You can connect with more people around the planet than you can likely even comprehend. Thus cultural hurdles are so much more easily avoided. The world seems like a much more fitting, opportunistic, shared place when people have social access to others around the globe. I don't see how that's a bad thing if you look past the minor issues.

If you're curious about something, you can find almost anything to your heart's desire with a brief Google search. The amount of information available to us just sort of "floating" around on the internet (also in textbooks and the like) is truly staggering. A person can get at least a basic understanding of such topics that took the prodigious minds of Newton, Darwin, Bohr, Einstein, and the like an entire lifetime to puzzle out…using nothing but a keyboard and a few keystrokes, and/or some page turning, and some reading. As a certain telescope manufacturer, Meade, proclaims on their website, with even a cheap telescope and the knowledge of how to find certain celestial objects one "will see more objects in one night than Galileo saw in a lifetime."

For so much of history a person's skill set has been almost exclusively utilized for monetary gain. That was how you made your living. But today, with this tremendous advent of social connectivity through the internet most of all, people are willing to share their expertise on a subject, with their own precious time and resources, for no other gain than the near-selfless enjoyment of doing just that. Of course, some gain fame and fortunes still, but so many remain virtually anonymous despite their thorough investigations into insightful questions or the development of popular apps or wiki articles or software or independent music or film or artwork or writing or general advice or practically anything one could desire to seek out. There seems to be a profound movement in the use of spare time and skills for the betterment of the general public even if this means that the contributor does not receive specific recognition. Perhaps such people just simply treasure the enjoyment of doing something worthwhile even if it's not relevant to their personal career. I find this incredibly beautiful.

And there are always still people out there making discoveries, even at this very moment, and our descendents will, in turn, be able to seek out and understand their contributions in the same way (probably even more efficiently) that we are entitled today. You don't have to be an employed astrophysicist, or personally know  someone who is, to share in the current times of such a field. Each generation has the advantage over the previous of having access to the accumulation of all of recorded history in their grasp, and today more than ever (and tomorrow even more so) this unimaginably deep well of knowledge, this collection of our incessant desire to understand the deepest workings of the world around us, can only continue to provide us with more understanding, which in turn leads to more probing questions, which in turn leads to more insightful answers, which in turn leads to more understanding, which in turn leads to more probing questions…

The world is certainly changing, shaping, progressing ever-onward. We have at our disposal things that were probably never even dreamed about in the wildest fantasies of our distant ancestors… feats that they may have never even imagined the grandest wizard could perform. The boundaries of our knowledge are, at every new moment, always pushing the frontiers of our thoughts in new directions. The most fantastic, magical ideas in the minds of those living today could very well be the simple play-things of the children of a few generations to come. This all just makes me so prideful to be here—part of humanity. I look forward to every other new advancement, every improvement on our quality of life, for as long as I can enjoy them. The best is yet to come. It's going to be so fascinating.


Posted by Unknown | at 12:28 AM | 13 comments

The Tangled World Lines of History








Needless to say, we have come a long way in the history of our species. We have evolved far beyond the mundane meanderings of our ape ancestors. We have formed fellowships among each other and the foundations of knowledge-bases so fundamental in the development of an ever-progressive species and so complex in their intertwining influences that there is perhaps no other course which could have brought us even close to the pinnacle of human achievement that we inhabit and enjoy today. The tangled mesh of world lines we have carved into space-time is truly incredible: we've travelled across and around the planet; over unforgiving landmasses by our own rugged feet; over unpredictably disastrous oceans by  the confidence of unproven ships and navigation skills; also over it, by the wings of mechanical creations countless swore would never prove to be fruitful endeavors; and even far above it, by the rocket thrusts of engines so powerful they consume the fuel equivalent of thousands of automobiles per second.

Sometimes I wonder, as I go about my daily routine, how many coincidences must have taken place to allow for such an incredibly diverse and productive world to exist all around us? And then I wonder was anything ever really a coincidence after all, or merely the inevitable consequence of an emerging superior intelligence given our specific circumstances, or even simply divine planning? No matter which way, coincidence or circumstance or prophecy, a lot has taken place during our (relatively) long history, and the interweaving threads of influence, no matter which way you look at them, paint a powerfully profound, thought-provoking picture about where we've been thus far, where we're all located at this very moment, and where we've any possibility to end up in the foreseeable and distant futures.

There is a wonderfully beautiful passage from one of my most cherished books of all time, Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, in which after describing how much escape velocity an object needs to be freed from (and to safely enter into) each of the gravity wells of Earth and Mars, he stresses the “tremendous force” required to shift such an “enormous inertia” and then goes on to say:

            “History too has an inertia. In the four dimensions of space-time, particles (or events) have directionality; mathematicians, trying to show this, draw what they call "world lines" on graphs. In human affairs, individual world lines form a thick tangle, curling out of the darkness of prehistory and stretching through time: a cable the size of Earth itself, spiraling round the sun on a long curved course. The cable of tangled world lines is history. Seeing where it has been it is clear where it is going--it is a matter of simple extrapolation. For what kind of D n [change (Delta) in velocity] would it take to escape history, to escape an inertia that powerful, and carve a new course?

            The hardest part is leaving Earth behind.”

I am so moved by this analogy—that the relentless flow of time, and the history that comes of it, are like an enormous, thick tangle of vines hurling around the Sun (which itself hurls around the galaxy, which is paving its own massive course through the Universe), of which every single individual human affair and the intertwining of every single life as it interacts with every other in every possible way is but an individual line among billions, and the entire mess is carving a deeper and deeper, ever-more complex course as it plows along. And to alter this course which is so ancient, so engraved in our long history and into our daily lives, requires a force not so much unlike that required to propel a spacecraft into the depths of space. This "force" may be exceedingly difficult to quantify, being an analogy, but the fundamental idea is there: how much cooperation, unification, overlapping of ideals and goals between nations, is needed before we as a species are ready and willing to carve this course away from everything we've ever known and strike out on a purpose unlike anything we've ever had the capacity to achieve before?

It is often said that history is doomed to repeat itself. The more pessimistic among us will point out catastrophic disasters, both natural and man-made, that they believe are inevitable consequences on a long enough time scale. Oppression, war, asteroid impacts, segregation, global warming and other environmental damages, and general abuse and cruelty are some of the more deeply troubling examples. But also inherent in such a repetition of history are the social and intellectual triumphs, no less significant in their influence on the course of history. Even if we have waged countless wars on our fellow humans over time, in no way admirable, then it follows that we have also stumbled upon countless discoveries and quality-of-life enhancing advancements over the same time span. It might be that it really comes down to which extreme holds the most impactful influence on our species as a whole. Which course has managed to carve out the deeper path?

Picturing the actual world lines that would be present on some sort of visual all-encompassing map, there would be a handful of lines among the billions upon billions that have ever had the chance to spread their influence which branch out from the rest…a very, very rare few. These are those individuals lucky enough to have ever risen above the blanketing atmosphere which encases all but the tiniest, most unimaginably miniscule fraction of the entire vast history of our species. These wildly fortunate people, however few they may be, have all experienced the luxury of gazing upon the Earth in all of its magnificent, distant glory: they have gazed upon the entirety of our planet as no other group of human beings in all of history has ever had the opportunity, and most of whom all along the way have perhaps never imagined was a feat even possible.

The overwhelming majority of these world lines would, of course, begin at their origin, and then rise up and circle in and among the rest, never actually leaving the planet’s orbit, and would hardly even appear to have risen at all. Pull back even a fraction of one light year from the planet and all of the intercontinental flights, and even the sum of all suborbital flights such as those to the International Space Station, would seem like the playful curiosities of a child first identifying with the tools with which he can shape the sand at his feet on the beach. On any scale grander than the surface and atmosphere of the Earth, we've hardly moved at all.

But in that tiny, microscopic minority of history resides so much of our crowning achievements as a technological civilization: Twenty-four of these lines, lines so faint they would barely even be discernable out of the glare of the countless rest of them, would veer off from the rest to encircle the Moon. And twelve of these would actually touch it and create a physical bond between the two worlds.

Twelve people, out of all the billions and billions and billions who have ever lived, have ever stepped onto another world. And as epic and as glorious as this is, even they did not free themselves from our deep gravity well. They did not leave Earth behind. In the grand scheme of it all, the Moon is really as entrenched in the deep well of Earth’s course as the rest of us humans. It really was “one small step for man,” despite its incredible “giant leap for mankind.”

I can’t help but take this idea further in my mind. I imagine that this course that we are carving, year after year, revolution after revolution, gets just a little bit deeper each time. Not a literal gravity well of course, this time, but a metaphorical one—a gravity well of habit, of motivation and, perhaps most importantly, of willpower. We might just grow so accustomed to waging wars and battling politics that the crowning achievements will gradually falter. It will get more and more difficult to gather the excitement and the incentive to explore like we had in so much abundance during the Apollo era. If things hadn’t changed so drastically, there is no doubt that we (humans, not machines) could have been on Mars by now. We could have escaped the gravity well, and truly left Earth behind.

And even yet we still can.

You would only have to travel a portion of the way to Mars to be able to look out the window of your spacecraft and see both the Earth and the Moon in their eternal majestic dance around each other, raw and unfiltered and perfect. At such a distance, and with but a single outstretched palm, you could eclipse the entirety of human history, every single life that has ever flourished, every single thought that has ever inspired, every single emotion that has ever connected, every single action that has ever influenced, every single river that was ever crossed. All of it would fit within your grasp, as if you could crush it with a single motion or sweep it away onto a greater path.

I hope one of the astronauts of Apollo 8 had the thought to do this when they became the first humans to orbit the Moon. At that time, of course, they had became the most distant humans to have ever looked back upon our cradle of civilization. Since that day we have not further branched our world lines in any substantial way, although we went back several times afterward. We strengthened them, these oh-so-fragile lines, but have not furthered them since. There are still only twelve world lines on the map which enter another gravity well., and even so it's a gravity well within a gravity well. We have not yet left Earth behind.

But some day we will. Some day we will be on Mars, or on Europa, or on Titan, or even at Alpha Centauri, and our influence will be spread so much farther. Each time we travel a significant distance out into the cosmos the explorers will be able to, in essence, cradle human history in their palm with a mere outstretched hand. They will have travelled so far away from this tangled mess of human history that has never before branched away to such distant places that with just a glance they will be able to gaze upon the sight which holds everything that we have ever experienced. And the next more-distant travelers will be able to do the same thing, and the next…

The off-world permanent human settlements that Robinson was really hinting at would finally be freed of this immense well that our tangle of world lines has been carving through space-time all these years from our lone position here on Earth. Humanity would no longer be utterly at the mercy of any number of global catastrophes that might befall us: be it global warming, nuclear war, a massive solar flare, man-made disaster, or an Armageddon-scale meteor strike (or any other number of extinction-bringers). Humanity is utterly exposed in this one lonely location in space. The odds may be minute, but it’s not unfeasible. These brave explorers, however—they could start fresh and establish new territories, new pursuits, and build off the vast examples of successes and failures that are evidenced in our long, troubled history. They could finally do it right this time, and provide our fragile species the means to further advance beyond the limited confines of a single, vulnerable world. History has so much to teach us. At the very least we could have the shot to form a more stable, independent and efficient foundation for those pursuits which are much better suited to be sought after in the absence of so much confusion and conflict on the ground.

And once there, basking in the glory of an utterly new and uninhabited world, the men and women who made the journey can look up and, to quote now Carl Sagan from his excellent book Pale Blue Dot:

            “They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way.”

We will, at long last, truly be branching out from this thick cable of tangled world lines of history to begin to encompass all that is out there for us to grasp, and to explore, and to understand, and to inhabit. We will be that much further along in our efforts to fully realize our unique potential. There will always be problems here on Earth, and those problems will always be best dealt with here at home. Maybe even helped along by some discoveries made out there where the persistence of turmoil does not hinder so much. And there will always be curiosities beyond our limited grasp here, out in the vast frontiers of space, and those curiosities will always be best sought after in the starlit blackness. The best is yet to come, with all things considered, and all things pursued. And it will be marvelous beyond our current comprehension, and far beyond the hope of meaningful words.

Posted by Unknown | at 5:42 PM | 0 comments

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