Worlds Are Precious

Worlds Are Precious

A galaxy is composed of gas and dust and stars – billions upon billions of stars. And every star may be a sun to someone. In all the galaxies, there are perhaps as many planets as stars, ten billion million or much more.

In the face of such overpowering numbers, what is the likelihood that only one ordinary star, the Sun, is accompanied by an inhabited planet? Why should we, tucked away in some forgotten corner of the Cosmos, be so fortunate? To me, it seems far more likely that the universe is brimming over with life.

The humans interact with the planet. Photograph by Elena

But we humans do not yet know. We are just beginning our explorations. We are hard pressed to find even the cluster in which our Milky Way Galaxy is embedded, much less the Sun or the Earth.

The only planet we are sure is inhabited is a tiny speck or rock and metal, shining feebly by reflected sunlight, and at this distance utterly lost.

The only planet we are sure is inhabited is our Earth. Image: © Elena

Species that Does Science

There is no other species on Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by the far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules.

First rule: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless.

Second rule: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised.

We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be. The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true.

Alexandria was the place where the first important library in the world was located. Image: © Elena

Humans everywhere share he same goals when the context is large enough. And the study of the Cosmos provides the largest possible context. Present global culture is a kind of arrogant newcomer. It arrives on the planetary stage following four and a half billion years of other acts, and after looking about for a few thousand years declares itself in possession of eternal truths. But in a world that is changing as fast as ours, this is a prescription for disaster. No nation, no religion, no economic system, no body of knowledge, is likely to have all the answers for our survival. There must be many social systems that would work far better than any now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.

Only once before in our history was there the promise of a brilliant scientific civilisation. Beneficiary of the Ionian Awakening, it had its citadel at the Library of Alexandria, where 2,000 years ago the best minds of antiquity established the foundations for the systematic study of mathematics, physics, biology, astronomy, literature, geography and medicine.

We build on those foundations still. The Library was constructed and supported by the Ptolemeys, the Greek kings who inherited the Egyptian portion of the empire of Alexander the Great. From the time of its creation, in the third century B.C. until its destruction seven centuries later, it was the brain and heart of the ancient world.

Alexandria was the publishing capital of the planet. Of course, there were no printing presses then. Books were expensive; every one of them was copied by hand. The Library was the repository of the most accurate copies in the world. The art of critical editing was invented there. The Old Testament comes down to us mainly from the Greek translations made in the Alexandrian Library. The Ptolemys devoted much of their enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa, Persia, India, Israel and other parts of the world.

National Library of Quebec. Photo by Elena