July 2008 Archives
Dear readership,
As far as I know, I have never used this website as a political platform. I have weakly festered under the steely gaze of a particularly anti-science American administration without uttering much of a peep, but this, however, I cannot let stand.
The Arecibo telescope is the world's largest radio telescope and currently the source of all the data processed and used by various (and already much-maligned) SETI projects, particularly SETI@home. Currently, it's facing massive budget cuts that will effectively end its ability to continue the search for life beyond Earth. The decision to ensure full funding currently rests upon votes in Congress on Senate Bill S.2862 and House Resolution H.R. 3737. These bills, understandably ignored in the midst of pressing social issues and an upcoming election, desperately need more support.
Arecibo is, for all intents and purposes, our eyes and ears to the cosmos. The data it provides is enormously important in all kinds of astronomical science, and to the search for intelligent life in the Universe, which in my opinion is the most significant and noble of the scientific quests, and has far-reaching ramifications for all of humanity. To give up on Arecibo because of benign funding issues is to swaddle our entire race in a cloak of anthropomorphic narcissism, to cease to care if there is anyone else out there, to be so content in our self-serving and destructive worldview as to stop looking for other answers. This is such a huge issue that should never be in the half-assed hands of the U.S. Congress. It's insane.
Please spend ten minutes visiting the SETI@Home site, printing out a letter, and posting it. It's a ridiculously mild expenditure of your time considering the issue at hand. This isn't even politics! It's the HUMAN RACE and our place in the COSMOS we are talking about.
Without the error-correcting machinery of science, we are lost to our subjectivity, to our chauvinism, to our longing to be central to the purpose of the universe. One of science's alleged crimes is revealing that our favorite, most reassuring stories about our place in the universe and how we came to be are delusional.
-- Carl Sagan
More information about SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence):
Earlier this year, I attended a "Star Party" at the MacDonald Observatory in Fort Davis, a venerable institution perched on a hill in the far west Texas desert. The skies out there are, understandably, crushingly big and so teeming with stars that the astronomers guiding the public stargazing events need to aim high-powered laser pointers at the sky in order for anyone to tell one star from another. On the evening of my attendance, our guide was giddy with the news that the International Space Station, formerly an invisible blip in the night sky, had recently been expanded to the point that it might now be visible from Earth. His calculations showed it scheduled for a fly-by that evening, so he ushered a group of us outside to the parking lot and commanded us to look at the horizon. Suddenly, a point of light slightly larger than a star emerged from the night.
There it was.
It shot across the sky in a graceful arc, growing larger as it flew directly above us. No one said a word. It seemed incomprehensible that men and women were up there, in that tiny point of light, swallowing beads of floating water and conducting esoteric experiments. I felt inexplicably proud of this achievement, glad to be implicated in it by virtue of my membership in the human race. Despite the thrill, however, it was humbling: here was a minute dot of light, speeding across the sky as it encircled the Earth. From their vantage point, the astronauts aboard the ISS saw dozens of sunsets a day, saw the world in all its complexity as a blur of browns and blues, felt safe and massive in their technological warren; but from Earth we could see them as they really were, one blip among millions, a hunk of metal shining among massively powerful stars and the vastness of space.
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On an unrelated note, now would perhaps be an appropriate time to announce the soft launch of a new project, Space Canon. I will be reading every important science fiction book ever written and blogging about the process, and it might take years. Any other heads are welcome to follow along in my journey, provide suggestions, and make comments like "After reading Neuromancer, I too think the Wachowski brothers should be sued for plagiarism!"