Well, Isn’t That Spatial

A Humanities major walks into the Jet Propulsion Lab… It sounds like the set-up to a joke, but it’s actually an intro into a great article on the government-funded, humble, and deeply inspired people looking for signs of intelligent life somewhere out there (while the rest of us look for it some place down here). And the searchers are getting closer. The always excellent Dave Eggers with a Heartwarming Work of Stargazing Genius in WaPo (Gift Article): The Searchers. “In all likelihood, in the next 25 years, we’ll find evidence of life on another planet. I’m willing to say this because I’m not a scientist and I don’t work in media relations for NASA. But all evidence points to us getting closer, every year, to identifying moons in our solar system, or exoplanets beyond it, that can sustain life. And if we don’t find conditions for life on the moons near us, we’ll find it on exoplanets — that is, planets outside our solar system. Within the next few decades, we’ll likely find an exoplanet that has an atmosphere, that has water, that has carbon and methane and oxygen. Or some combination of those things.” A few decades into the tech revolution we may have forgotten that science is a passion, it’s a hope, science is an art. Ironically, science, known as the opposite study from humanities is actually the study of our humanity. And in the case of the scientists we meet in this article, it’s also the study of our humility. It turns out that some of the smartest people in the world are pretty down to earth about their achievements, and about their broader place in the world. Here’s how one of the researchers described what it would be like to find signs of life on another planet. “I mean, on a day-to-day basis, I think our work is so in the fine details and not in the big picture that we don’t usually ask ourselves this. But personally, I would find that incredibly inspiring, finding life on another planet. I like feeling small. I like going into Yosemite with the mountains and feeling part of an inconsequential piece, but part of this bigger whole. So, to me, I think finding life elsewhere would only expand that sense, but in a very positive and I think a hopeful way. It also lessens the pressure on you to get everything right because you’re not so special.”