What, There's Not Enough Space?
I may have been too immersed in the world of science recently...
I've just finished watching the first season of Babylon 5, a 5-season science fiction epic. Although the very first episode left me unwilling to watch any more, I pressed on, and astonishingly, every episode since has been much better. The concepts presented and the questions asked are fantastic, the characters are endearing, and the scriptwriters don't take themselves too seriously :-) The episode that sticks in my mind explored the idea of medical science vs. spirituality. An alien child will die unless he is operated on, but their religion forbids having their bodies cut open like food animals. The parents would rather their child died than have his soul lost, while the human doctor can't bear to let someone die when he knows he can save them. An astonishing amount of depth is shown to the issue, as every alien species has a different take on the situation... but I'll stop ranting here. The show is very good!
Meanwhile, I've also finished reading "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson, which runs through just about every area of science - from cosmology to genetics - in an informal and entertaining style. If you haven't read the book, you have no idea of the problems that science has caused to itself, or the whopping great holes in what we think is certain!
This evening I started watching the newest series of Doctor Who, and my mind is currently still cycling around the second episode, in which the Doctor takes Rose to the final days of Earth, to watch (from an observational space station) the planet explode as the sun expands to envelop it.
Linking to another book I read a year or three ago - "The Science of Discworld" by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen - I recalled the way it pointed out the rather obvious fact that the Earth is not a good place to live, long-term. This was reinforced in "A Short History of Nearly Everything". Sooner or later, the climate will change for the worst - ice ages, volcanoes, global warming. Or an asteroid will hit (Boom!). None of these things we have any protection against - in the case of an asteroid, it wouldn't be visible to the naked eye until a second or so before it hit. And really, barely anyone is using equipment to keep an eye out for them.
So... unless we're all okay with the fact that Earth will kill our entire species off at some point, why are we not trying harder to leave? Learn lessons from science fiction and plain science and get out of here! I want to know what steps anyone is taking in this direction. I'm not really sure where to start looking - "leaving the earth" doesn't give anything useful on Google. I'd like to see if there's anything I could do to help out. It'd be a shame if our history finished with 'and they almost made it'.
Oh, and speaking of science fiction: SERENITY! Go see it! ;-)
I've just finished watching the first season of Babylon 5, a 5-season science fiction epic. Although the very first episode left me unwilling to watch any more, I pressed on, and astonishingly, every episode since has been much better. The concepts presented and the questions asked are fantastic, the characters are endearing, and the scriptwriters don't take themselves too seriously :-) The episode that sticks in my mind explored the idea of medical science vs. spirituality. An alien child will die unless he is operated on, but their religion forbids having their bodies cut open like food animals. The parents would rather their child died than have his soul lost, while the human doctor can't bear to let someone die when he knows he can save them. An astonishing amount of depth is shown to the issue, as every alien species has a different take on the situation... but I'll stop ranting here. The show is very good!
Meanwhile, I've also finished reading "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson, which runs through just about every area of science - from cosmology to genetics - in an informal and entertaining style. If you haven't read the book, you have no idea of the problems that science has caused to itself, or the whopping great holes in what we think is certain!
This evening I started watching the newest series of Doctor Who, and my mind is currently still cycling around the second episode, in which the Doctor takes Rose to the final days of Earth, to watch (from an observational space station) the planet explode as the sun expands to envelop it.
Linking to another book I read a year or three ago - "The Science of Discworld" by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen - I recalled the way it pointed out the rather obvious fact that the Earth is not a good place to live, long-term. This was reinforced in "A Short History of Nearly Everything". Sooner or later, the climate will change for the worst - ice ages, volcanoes, global warming. Or an asteroid will hit (Boom!). None of these things we have any protection against - in the case of an asteroid, it wouldn't be visible to the naked eye until a second or so before it hit. And really, barely anyone is using equipment to keep an eye out for them.
So... unless we're all okay with the fact that Earth will kill our entire species off at some point, why are we not trying harder to leave? Learn lessons from science fiction and plain science and get out of here! I want to know what steps anyone is taking in this direction. I'm not really sure where to start looking - "leaving the earth" doesn't give anything useful on Google. I'd like to see if there's anything I could do to help out. It'd be a shame if our history finished with 'and they almost made it'.
Oh, and speaking of science fiction: SERENITY! Go see it! ;-)
posted by Draic at 10:04 pm
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