A Wider View
There’s a lot of catastrophe in our lives today. We fear: fear for the loss of freedom, fear for a future of financial disruption, fear for our fellow humans thrust into inhumane conditions. And we fear that our world will never be the place we thought it was, or could be. There is no easy way out, no election “tomorrow” to change leadership (maybe the British Parliament has it right after all). We are, as truckers say, in “for the long haul”. By the narrowest of margins our electoral fate was decided, and now, we must “pay the piper”.
Perhaps we need to take a wider view of our universe. And what better place to do that from, then the James Webb Space Telescope, orbiting a central location (called L2), literally a million miles away between the earth and the sun. The Webb is much more than just the telescope like we had in the backyard as kids. It can measure all sorts of wavelengths beyond the “visual range”, and see far into the universe.
K2-18b
One of its targets is an “exo-planet” (a planet not orbiting our sun) called K2-18b. It’s about six times bigger than earth and it orbits a smaller red sun 124 light years away (the 700 trillion miles – now that’s a “wider view”). And the Webb Space Telescope can not only find K2-18b, but it can measure the infra-red radiation of the red sunlight passing through its atmosphere.
We know that our oceans are filled with small living organisms like plankton. There are the basic building block of the food chain, smaller living things (and giant whales) eat the plankton, bigger living things eat the smaller things: we can all now sing “The Circle of Life” from the Lion King. And that plankton gives off two gases into the atmosphere: dimethyl sulphide (DMS) and dimethyl disulphide (DMDS). (For those of us who slept through biology class – hang on for just another paragraph!!!).
When the infra-red light of K2-18b’s sun passes through its atmosphere, it reveals the presence of DMS and DMDS. The Webb Telescope can detect that light. What all that might mean, is there is a planet, 700 trillion miles away, that has the presence of biological life as we know it.
Certainty
At least, that’s what some scientists think. Others aren’t absolutely sure. And, they are doing exactly what scientists should do: raising questions, developing other possibilities, and looking for more evidence. Is it possible that an atmosphere might have DMS and DMDS without the plankton producing the gases? And, after 124 years of travel (remember, 124 light years means that the spectrum Webb is seeing actually left K2-18b in 1901 on our calendar), are we certain what we are seeing?
The scientists making the claim of life are hedging their bets as well. They are only 99.7% sure they’re right. For “scientific certainty” they need to reach 99.99999% (five decimal points) certain. That will require at least two more years of data.
So what?
We have a lot of work to do here on earth. And it seems, that in our era, that work is becoming much harder. For many of us, the basic building blocks of our government and our rights, are suddenly called into question. We wonder how we can help our fellow citizens, and our fellow humans. We no longer feel our democracy is inevitable. It is, and always was, a work in progress, and one that needs fierce defending. And if defending our ideals isn’t enough incentive, here’s another reason.
There might be life on a planet “far, far, away”, called K2-18b. It might just be plankton, but where there’s plankton, there might be more. And if we can find life on one planet in the universe, it’s likely out of the millions of planets “out there”, there’s more life to find. Don’t we want to know, don’t we want to “…boldly go where no one has gone before”? And if not us, shouldn’t we want our children or grandchildren to have such an opportunity? Remember, in 1901, when the infra-red light left K2-18b, the Wright Brothers were just bicycle mechanics with an “interest” in gliders. The Wright Flyer was still two years in the future.
Stand on our Shoulders
Who can say how far our children can go, in the next 124 years? Sure, we might not be able to “see” how interstellar space travel could work. But my twenty-one year old grandfather in 1901, didn’t see how air travel would work, or even that his own son would make a living working in an electronic medium called television. We need to give our children a chance to change even more than “just the world”.
But to do all that, we need to get our own house in order. If not for freedom, if not for the Constitution, if not for our “American dream”, then for our children. We need to fix our problems so they can stand on our shoulders, and look even farther than the Webb Space Telescope can see.
It’s up to us.
