E.T. Life
NASA Science News for Jan. 26, 2011
Evidence is mounting that Saturn's moon Enceladus harbors a bubbly subterranean ocean where conditions might be friendly to life.
Wow. Think how interesting this could be. Here we are on Earth, being largely deluded about being the only life in the universe, let alone our solar system, & yet there may be life on a moon of one of our local planets.
Imagine spending your entire life on a body where the sun doesn't rise & set each day, but where the sun is a distant speck in the constant night sky, & where the dominant astronomical feature is a giant bluish planet with fancy rings on it (which you would likely see mostly edge-on & so wouldn't completely understand the nature of). You would orbit this bluish planet, & you wouldn't know what it was like to be so close to heat & light like Earth is. You likely wouldn't understand the whole planet concept; you wouldn't realize that you were orbiting the planet which, in turn, is orbiting this bright speck in the sky. A solar eclipse is what you would call 'night'. The unenlightened on your 'planet' would assume that the giant thing looming constantly in the sky was orbiting you, & not the other way around. I can't imagine the theories of physics they'd come up with to explain it. Ptolemy's epicycles would have nothing on the genius of denial that would create that model.
I realize that any life which may exist in this subterranean ocean on a freezing moon is most likely a form of bacteria, & is not building a civilization and theorizing about science, & physics and theology, but to take the science fiction writer's approach, life is life & where it's possible, let's make the most unlikely assumptions.
Evidence is mounting that Saturn's moon Enceladus harbors a bubbly subterranean ocean where conditions might be friendly to life.
Wow. Think how interesting this could be. Here we are on Earth, being largely deluded about being the only life in the universe, let alone our solar system, & yet there may be life on a moon of one of our local planets.
Imagine spending your entire life on a body where the sun doesn't rise & set each day, but where the sun is a distant speck in the constant night sky, & where the dominant astronomical feature is a giant bluish planet with fancy rings on it (which you would likely see mostly edge-on & so wouldn't completely understand the nature of). You would orbit this bluish planet, & you wouldn't know what it was like to be so close to heat & light like Earth is. You likely wouldn't understand the whole planet concept; you wouldn't realize that you were orbiting the planet which, in turn, is orbiting this bright speck in the sky. A solar eclipse is what you would call 'night'. The unenlightened on your 'planet' would assume that the giant thing looming constantly in the sky was orbiting you, & not the other way around. I can't imagine the theories of physics they'd come up with to explain it. Ptolemy's epicycles would have nothing on the genius of denial that would create that model.
I realize that any life which may exist in this subterranean ocean on a freezing moon is most likely a form of bacteria, & is not building a civilization and theorizing about science, & physics and theology, but to take the science fiction writer's approach, life is life & where it's possible, let's make the most unlikely assumptions.
Comments
Post a Comment