Interstellar Visitors

I  love movies. For my birthday a few years ago, my thoughtful wife took me to an unusually nice theater to see Interstellar directed by Christopher Nolan. Many reviews have been written of the movie and, generally, the movie is highly rated. To me, however, it was one of the best experiences I have ever had watching a movie in a theater. The music, the visuals, and - above all else - the subject matter cut me to my core. It was excellent. The idea of interstellar travel is both exciting and formidable. Research tells us, however, that people will not travel to another star system before at least two centuries has passed so we have some time to kill.

Luckily, there are other things which can travel between the stars right now. First, however:

The distance between the stars is almost incomprehensible. Think of it with some analogies. If you were to shrink the distance between New York and Los Angeles down to a single inch, the distance between the Earth and the Sun would be about a half a mile. The Earth would be about the size of a tennis ball and the Sun would be about the height of a two-story house - a half mile apart. Now, if you shrink that distance between the Earth and the Sun down to one inch, the sun would be about one-fifth as thick as a piece of paper. At this scale, the next nearest star to the Sun would be more than four miles away.

This is why interstellar travel is so difficult. Even at the fastest speed we've had a vehicle ever travel (the Juno satellite at 25 miles per second), it would take nearly 32,000 years to travel to the nearest star to the Sun. Humanity just doesn't have the ability to realistically conduct interstellar travel. It will take at least two centuries to develop technology capable of getting us to another star. But, as it turns out, nature provides us with something of a foreshadowing gift.

On the 19th of October, 2017, astronomers in Hawaii observed a reddish asteroid traveling very rapidly through our Solar System. It was about 500 feet long but less than 100 feet in diameter. This long, thin rock was traveling too quickly to have come from our own solar system; it had to be from another star! Later research confirmed its alien birthplace. This made this rock - named Oumuamua - the first interstellar traveler we have ever observed in our own star system. It was traveling so rapidly that we won't be able to see it, even with the best telescopes, after only a few months.

I am given to heart-thrills of excitement when something piques my interest. The idea of standing in the sunshine on a Jurassic shoreline or seeing Saturn up close with my own eyes or any of a number of things fills me with a sense of longing, wonder, excitement, and understanding. Oumuamua is one of these things. Just thinking about the physical surface of this asteroid opens visions in my mind of distant stars, other worlds, and starts my mind racing with ideas. Is there anything more exciting than the unknown? From where did our interstellar friend come? What is its home like? Can we know it?

A single object awakens within me a vast and unknown world to which I can never travel. But the thought of it fills me with a feeling I cannot accurately describe. But I am in love with it.

"When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown, you must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for you to stand upon or you will be taught to fly.” (Dr. Patrick Overton)

It has been my experience that there is always something solid on which to stand in the darkness. Everything is comprehensible and we can understand and know all things if we take the time to learn to fly. We can even travel between the stars if only in our mind.

 

Welcome!

Welcome! My goal here is to share the knowledge and wisdom I have been freely given over the course of my life and to share more of it as it continues to come. I consider myself a unique conundrum in this thing; I have been blessed with a wide and deep ocean of knowledge and understanding but my ability to communicate it might be likened to a small country stream through which that ocean is trying to pass. If my self-judgment is accurate, this blog will hopefully serve as something of a water wheel turned by that stream. The resulting mechanical increase of my meager communicative skills will, with a little luck, prove to be a real blessing to you.

The idea for this blog came from an effort called "Light the World" by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Church is encouraging all those who would like to participate to participate by seeking to serve people in different ways throughout the month of December 2017; participants can share their efforts if they would like through the hashtag #LightTheWorld. The prompt for December 1st is from Matthew 10:8 which includes the phrase "freely ye have received, freely give". The only thing I could think of that has been consistently given freely to me pertains to intellectual matters. I, therefore, determined to share what I could in as free of a manner as I find myself able at this station in my life: a blog.

In my humble opinion, there is almost nothing I can share with you of greater value. The Buddha is given credit for saying, "there is no wealth like knowledge and no poverty like ignorance" (source unknown). I may still be decidedly lower middle class but I hope I can contribute some meager mite to your storehouse which you can invest and increase into something truly worthwhile for "an investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." (Benjamin Franklin in The Way to Wealth)