Is there life on Mars?

[gurdonark]

I love that David Bowie song, "Life on Mars". It recounts the many sadnesses and paradoxical facts of our odd, consumerist popular culture, and then intersperses in the refrain the key question, appropos of nothing, "is there life on Mars?".

But my own theory is that learning about outer space is our own personal tower of Babel to the Heavens, and perhaps this time the Creator will allow the tower to stand (although learning some cool new languages, as the folks did in the Babel myth, might be cool).

I feel a shiver of ecstasy whenever they have figured out that yet another gas giant is "out there". Yes! This is what I signed up for! This is how I spent my childhood--reading novels to prepare for this. In my old age, we may have "seen" or "heard" the first habitable planet. In your great great grandchildren's era, we might have been in contact with someone who lives on one.

It's a 60s sci fi childhood, materialist, limited-imagination fantasy. But my own fantasy is that we someday realize we must create a place with less war, less resources inequity, less discord, and less environmental waste. We must create this world because we all have better things to do. Six millenia have failed to convince humanity that religion or social order in and of itself a reason to stop slaughtering and starving one another.
The only divinity of which we really learn is the divinity of learning itself. Perhaps we must turn our focus again to the Heavens, but not necessarily to the search for God which prompted the tower of Babel to be built in the story. Perhaps we must search the Heavens for all that we must learn there--we must learn to look beyond God to find the things God has created, in God's name.

As I write this, the notion dissolves into fantasy, the telescope as some magic potion to stop a world in which bombs are dropped on apartment buildings filled with children in pursuit of a single terrorist, in which people barely older than children are induced by men to blow themselves up in buses filled with elderly non-combatants. In my fantasy, when the telegram comes to the UN of impending genocide in Rwanda, people put a stop to it, because we have to learn all we can about the universe.

I don't believe that my fantasy will come true. But I desperately long to live long enough to see the stars open. I watch the news, lately, and I wonder, "is there life on Mars?".

Comments

[lonestarslp.livejournal.com]

There very likely is some sort of life on Mars; here is a Time article on life in extreme conditions

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I hope there is life on Mars, literally, as well.
We would learn so much, even from the simplest form.

[amatrixangel.livejournal.com]

from the article:

..have long assumed that liquid water is a minimum requirement for existence

Yes, it's a good article. I was watching a tv progam recently where they found microbes living deep within the earth existing solely by eating sulphur - no sunlight and zero water. Then they theorised that life on earth, instead of starting in hot pools on the surface, may have began deep down and the little critters or whatever they are slowly came up to the surface and then started from there.

Also theories about meteorites carrying microscopic life with them and hitting the earth (and a few other planets including Mars - or even a bit of Mars breaking off and hitting earth in the early days and life coming here from there). Something which is probably happening all through the universe all the time.

[espvivisection.livejournal.com]

Perhaps we must search the Heavens for all that we must learn there--we must learn to look beyond God to find the things God has created, in God's name.

Nice to know other SETI-loving science-fictionalists share this dream, too.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

and when we have found the first extra terrestrial life, what a new time will begin....

[marstokyo.livejournal.com]

Ahem!!! I beg your PARDON!!!! there most certainly IS.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Wonderful. Bob Hope could not have had better timing. There is indeed life on Mars.

[amatrixangel.livejournal.com]

It's interesting you should bring up about the wars and stuff along with contacting other civilisations. I would like to think (hope rather) that by that time we would have our act together.

If not, little green people might be in big trouble - or conversely, so might we. Sadly, if we can't stop trying to control, subvert and bomb other countries in our so-called 'national interest', I can't quite frankly see why we wouldn't continue this destructive pattern towards others, if we had the power and technology (say now) to reach these other planets where life of any form is.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Ever since the 30s, sci fi has always had that split of plot--side a being "we can't master the technological focus until we stop fighting each other" an side b being "we will be who we are now forever".

I'd have to think that other sentient life would have similar ecological imperatives to ours,
which need to similarly be overcome if we are to be more than warring ants. But I'd also have to think that despite the risk of hostile "others", the "need to know" factor would be too great to resist.

[amatrixangel.livejournal.com]

the "need to know" factor would be too great to resist.

Yes, well said and so true :)

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

the_outsider posted an article about an asteroid on a collision-course with Earth. Did you see that article? My pat response to almost anything related to space is that...it's so freakin' scary!!! Everything so big, so hot, so cold. And us so small, tiny, miniscule, insignificant. I can't hack it. Really. I took astronomy courses in high school and college and was fascinated, but the terror has been slowly building. Eeeek! Yet I'm taken with the beauty and mystery of it all...but still the fear! Who posted a comment about the only two motivating factors being fear and love? At first, I wasn't so sure, but I'm coming around to that point of view. Astronomy/space has somehow sealed the deal for me. How strange...That said, I've had crushes on two astronomy profs!

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I saw that asteroid thing; I must admit, I thought it exciting, like a typical boy who has read too muc sci fi. I certainly cannot deny the power of fear and love--they certainly impel us to do lots of things we don't do otherwise. Astronomy profs crushes are noble crushes--imagine what it would be to live in a university town with someone who star gazes, raising children for whom calculus is second nature, and who set out to make science fantasies into reality.....

astronomy profs and their dreaminess

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

Yes! I hope my kids are born rife with innate knowledge of calculus, Latin, and a general fondness for epigraphy! Ha. Where that will come from, I have no idea. Perhaps the heavens...

Re: astronomy profs and their dreaminess

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

God is in His Heaven, directing the asteroids, charting epigraphy (whatever that is) and I am hopeful that He has allotted you and D. the math genes that will be necessary to the task.

There should be an ancient Chinese curse, shouldn't there? "May you bear sons and daughters who speak a technical language you don't understand".

[laruth.livejournal.com]

In my fantasy, when the telegram comes to the UN of impending genocide in Rwanda, people put a stop to it, because we have to learn all we can about the universe.

I don't believe that my fantasy will come true. But I desperately long to live long enough to see the stars open. I watch the news, lately, and I wonder, "is there life on Mars?".

I wonder too. I listen and watch the news and I feel great sadness at the human condition. There are so many things to do and explore in our universe, yet we are bogged down by power and religious struggles.