Rants Log-in | Search Rants | Account Info

DUST to DUST

I perceive Planet Earth as an infinitesimal speck of dust, floating in an infinite sea of other infinitesimal specks of dust.

Omar Khayyam, in his Rubaiyyat, put it thusly:


Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!

Based upon what is known about the movement of planets in this solar system, astronomists have calculated what must be a similar activity by the orbit of planets around other stars of the galaxy. Until the recent discovery of a gaggle of extra-solar planets by NASA’s Hubble space telescope, planets other than ours had been only a speculation. This discovery puts us a notch closer to being disabused of the notion that we are unique in this great expanse of immeasurable mystery.

Taking stock of ourselves within this context, should humble us with regard to the many assumptions we continually make, and the non-concrete ideas we form upon the foundation of our being alone in the cosmos. During the extremely short period of time we have inhabited this particular jot of dust (whether our calculations be in millions or farcical thousands of years), and in the even shorter length of time we have been capable of recording our existence, we have gone to great lengths to invent all manner of explanation in order to placate our natural inquisitiveness. Many of these inventions and suppositions have been the cause of great strife and mistrust among us Homo sapiens. Even after the very recent emergence of scientific measurement and result from this miasma of ignorance, we tend to cling dangerously to much of the myth and magic that sustained us along the road to reason and revelation.

So, now, Hubble begins to mess with the many assumptions we have developed with regard to our place in space; terrestrial geography; religion; politics; ethnicity; sex; reproduction and eternity. The one thing it hasn’t messed with—rather, vigorously supports—is the god of science. Here it was all the time, and many of us have missed it, in our belated withdrawal from the many opiates that cloud our reasoning. Here it was, constantly at our disposal, holding the key to all the mysteries. Its progress has been plodding, but true. In our impatience, we tend to dismiss its many revelations. Even after it was proved many times over that Copernicus was right, it took five hundred years for some to grant him belated absolution.

Upon this new day of extra-solar vision, let us extend our sight lines yet farther beyond the Milky Way—farther into the dust bowl of space, time, light—and enlightenment!