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New worlds instill awe of Earth
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I still remember vividly how, while a pupil, I was enthralled by a book on the American moon-landing mission.
Recently I have tried to order online similar books for my son, and to my dismay, there were no such titles. While reading “Dreams of Other Worlds: The Amazing Story of Unmanned Space Exploration” by Chris Impey and Holly Henry, I was referred to NASA’s website. I found it a rich source of information about successive Apollo missions, as well as other expeditions.
Published in 2013, this book tells of discoveries made by planetary probes and space missions over the past 40 years.
Yes, many of us Chinese would have regretted the loss of the beautiful moon peopled by Chang’e and Wu Gang (fabled characters on the moon) that gave way to a lunar land of desolation. But there are trade-offs. As our exploration continues, the outer solar system went from being frigid real estate to a place with the potential of harboring as many as a dozen habitable worlds.
Significantly, such explorations could deepen our understanding of our own planet, by helping us realize the singularly mysterious forces that conspire to create conditions favorable for life.
That life has been sustained by a tiny fraction of the light from the sun that reaches Earth after eight minutes of travel.
Lao Tzu (c 571-471 BC) once observed that the divine creates the living things but does not claim any credit for creation. “He can even be ruthless, treating the living things as ‘straw dogs’,” he observed.
The progress we made in space travel should in no way estrange us from that vision. As we celebrate the feats of human engineering, there is always the need to correctly identify our priorities in our short tenure on Earth.
In 2013, India became the first Asian country to launch an explorative mission on Mars, 250 million miles from the Earth. It is scheduled to reach the Martian orbit in mid-September this year (India Perspectives, November-December 2013).
A top scientist with China’s lunar probe mission recently said that China also has the capability to explore Mars (“China’s space program sets sights on Mars,” March 2, Shanghai Daily). But it is important to be reminded of our limitations. With technology we may ultimately push our vision of the origins of the universe to within an iota of the “Big Bang,” but there is, in theory, no possibility of pushing further.
Gaia hypothesis
As Chuang Tzu observed, “Your life has a limit but knowledge has none.” He cautioned: “If you use what is limited to pursue what has no limit, you will be in danger.”
Hence, the need to strictly contextualize our curiosity and explorations in terms of meaning and relevance.
The meaning of exploration of the “other worlds” would be suspect if it only leads to complacency, but fails to instill in us fear of the divine wrath against human excess.
Such understandings should strengthen, rather than vitiate, our sense of history and continuity, which used to be strong for Chinese. Thus, the progress we have made in space technology should be no extenuating circumstance for our folly in making “Beijing ‘barely suitable’ for life” (February 13, Shanghai Daily).
By comparison, I was more envious of Anaxagoras in around 500 BC, “standing on the rocky Ionian shore at night, with starlight glittering on dark water, gazing up into the sky and sensing the vastness of the celestial vault.”
For most of us urbanites, that celestial bliss has long been spoiled by dazzling artificial neon lights, ornamental floodlights, eerie LED panels, noise, crowds.
It is interesting if we examine our cutting-edge knowledge about space and compare it with the Hindu and Buddhist traditions.
In one myth the god Indra says, “I have spoken only of those worlds within this side, each with its own Indra and Brahma, and each with its evolving and dissolving worlds.”
Six years after the first human landing on the moon, the Viking landers touched down on Mars. They dashed hopes that Mars might be habitable. Nearly three decades later, another pair of machines bounced to a safe landing on their cushioning air bags. The rovers again galvanized global fascination for they suggested the possibility of a warmer and wetter Mars in the distant past.
A more important byproduct of Martian exploration is that in 1965, while developing life detecting experiments for the Mars landers, British scientist James Lovelock came up with the Gaia hypothesis — that the earth’s atmosphere must be a natural extension and a byproduct of Earth’s biota. As we know, we humans have mastered and are perfecting the feats that are destroying our own planet, and we appear addicted to our destructive lifestyle.
There might be worlds within worlds, but that supposed plurality in no way changes the fact that there is only one Earth.
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