Looking Up

Looking Up

   Tomorrow night, the lineup in the sky will feature two red dots under the moon, one being Mars and the other being Antares.  Dots they are, at least to our eyes, but should Antares (add that name to your list of stars) be placed as close as Mars is from our planet (at 140 million miles away), we would be blinded, the star filling half of our sky and even worse, vaporizing all of our atmosphere and life with it's heat (Antares is hundreds of times larger than our sun but several thousands of degrees cooler, thus the orange color).

   This information all comes from the radio program, Star Date, which broadcasts regularly on public radio and aims to get its listeners to just look up, something it seems we rarely do.  But imagine the  curiosity of early civilizations, their sky stunningly dark and yet dazzling with stars.  Indeed, the Romans gave the name Mars for its god of war and the red blood so shed; the Greeks named the planet after the same god, named Ares...according to Star Date, the red Antares so closely resembled the planet's color that when they saw it arrive, they named it a rival, an anti-Ares, thus Antares.

   Back then, there were like more than a few astronomers who wondered if there was more "out there," why the skies changed so frequently, why certain stars always stayed in alignment.  Travel was difficult so southern skies rarely conflicted with reports of northern skies (if you travel southward to New Zealand or Australia, you'll spot the tiny Southern Cross but likely not the Big Dipper).  It would seem natural to think a celestial being was throwing down thunder bolts or ravaging the oceans, much as it would seem natural to think that all of the blue skies of day and the stars in the dark skies of night revolved around us, the only planet out there.  And perhaps it was only the farmers who would watch the moon changing, knowing when to harvest or when to plant on a double moon rising (the blue moon).  To discover a new planet, then a new solar system, then a new galaxy must have been shocking as our place in it all began getting smaller and smaller...now scientists say our universe isn't alone, merely a small part of a multi-verse.

   It all reminds me of the award-winning book, Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, in which the main character is asked to describe evolution from the view of a jellyfish;  as he speaks of cellular growth and amoebas, his description eventually stops at the current world of the jellyfish, their view that of other organisms and a watery universe all around.  And?, he is asked.  And what?, he says, for that is where it ends.  So now, he is told, go and describe the evolution of the human.  Back he goes to cells splitting and amoebas and reptiles and mammals until he reaches humans.  And?, he is asked.  And what?, he again replies, for that is where it ends.

   Even today, that is much of how we think.  We move along, almost childlike in our growth as a species of only several hundred thousand years.  Our evolution, our planet, our universe, our celestial being/s.  Like an Incan peasant or a feudal hunter, we may look up at the sky now and then, comment on what a beautiful day or night it is, then get along with life.  It is out "there," somewhere beyond our understanding.  Beautiful as it might be, we see it so often (do we?) that we almost assume that is simply how it is; here we are and there "it" is.  But a thousand years from now, civilizations might look upon our views as equally archaic as we view mythology...why didn't they look up, they might ask.  It was all right there...