Introduction to translation
How did you feel when it was announced a few months ago that a telescope was launched to take pictures of celestial bodies up to 13.5 billion years old?
Or when they say that the sun is so huge that it can carry a million earths and more inside it?
Or when you know that the sun cycles every 22 years?
What if you were an astronomer studying the sun, wouldn't that mean that all you would study in your career was two solar cycles at most?
The universe, and our attempts to understand it, give us a very strange perspective of time and space, and in this article Marina Korin, a journalist from "The Atlantic", enters deeply into this world, and gives us various impressions of its inhabitants who are scientists.
Translation text
من بين جميع الأقمار الموجودة في النظام الشمسي، يُعَدُّ تيتان، القمر الأكبر لكوكب زحل، أكثرها إدهاشا واستثنائية. يُحيط تيتان غلاف جوي سميك وضبابي، وتُمطِر سماؤه بلطف غاز الميثان السائل الذي يتجه إلى أسفل بفعل جزء بسيط من الجاذبية التي نشعر بها على سطح الأرض، فتتشكَّل الأنهار والبحيرات والبحار الصغيرة على سطحه من غاز الميثان. أما تحت أرضه المُتجمِدة المُكوَّنة من جليد صلب بقدر صلابة الصخور، يتدفق محيط كامل من المياه العادية السائلة المكونة من الهيدروجين والأكسجين "H2O".
The strangest - and perhaps best - part of this story is the possibility that Titan could be a habitable environment for life on its surface.
NASA is currently working on a mission called Dragonfly that would travel to the distant moon Titan to search for possible signs of alien life, past or present.
A helicopter will be launched to survey the hazy skies of Titan, study the nature of its chemical environment, and check whether the conditions are right for the emergence of microbes.
The hypothetical life forms on Titan could be more like the terrestrial species we know, or they could be completely different from what we are used to seeing, and they could depend on methane compounds for their survival in the same way that we depend on oxygen.
NASA's planned Dragonfly rotating lander approaches a Titan exploration site, in an illustration in 2019. (Reuters)
The planetary science community is desperate to have a robot capable of traveling there and exploring what's going on on Titan's surface.
No spacecraft has landed on its surface since 2005, and that landing was the furthest a robot could ever travel.
However, that mission did not last long, as soon as the probe landed on the surface of Titan and began to take samples from the atmosphere and send them to Earth, until it ran out of energy only three hours after its landing.
This was a quick glimpse of Titan, whose landscapes scientists long to see and enjoy.
And soon, experts and technologists will actually start testing some of the Dragonfly spacecraft's equipment.
And if the mission launches on its scheduled date (2026), it is supposed to get there in 2034.
Of course, this may be a long time for you, but this is the case with everything related to space, the solar system (not to mention the galaxy and the rest of the universe) is very large, and it can take many years to go around it.
For example, when NASA announced the "Dragon Fly" mission a few years ago, I imagined myself in the future while still working as a space journalist covering the successes of space missions.
By the time the spacecraft lands on the surface of Titan, I will be forty-four years old, and this calculation allows feelings such as surprise and discomfort to creep into my heart.
Whenever I sat wondering about what might result from space events in the future, I felt alienated or “existential confusion”, especially with those events related to the distant future.
Take, for example, Comet Halley, a celestial body that orbits the sun (and becomes visible from Earth about every 75 years).
I had not yet been born the last time the comet appeared in the night sky in 1986, leaving behind a feeling of happiness that filled the souls of the onlookers.
It is assumed that the next time he appears will be in 2061, but I do not know if I will live until I am 71 years of age to witness it then.
(Shutterstock)
Meditating on these events is enough to imprint on your feelings a feeling similar to motion sickness, as if you are driving the "Space Mountain" vehicle in Disney, and this feeling that flows to us is the result of what we can call the deep meditation process of the universe.
It is true that such a process may raise concerns and depression in our souls, but it remains a way to reflect and think.
Commenting on this, Alice Gorman, an archaeologist at Flinders University in Australia whose studies focus on space exploration, says: “It is true that you can imagine the end point at which the spacecraft will be declared successful, but all the details that occurred during those intervening years remain hazy.” And mysterious. So you can let yourself imagine these details in any way you want."
Let's take a little trip into the future, how old will you be when a small helicopter flies in the metanantian sky on an alien world, or when a familiar comet reappears in our sky?
And what exactly does it make you feel to think of all that?
To understand why the future of space makes me feel this way, I decided to reach out to a few astronomers who tend to see time differently, think of distances in light years, and are obsessed with the starlight that took billions of years to reach Earth.
It is strange that what we may feel as a large time gap such as 11 years, for example, is no more than a simple time glimpse for astronomers, led by Heidi Hamill, an astronomer at the Association of Universities for Astronomy Research, as she and her colleagues pointed out at a meeting It was recently held about future space telescopes that the first observatory of this group of telescopes could be launched within only 12 years, and that the entire group might be ready in only 22 years, and the strange thing was that it did not appear in its tone any kind of sarcasm.
تُدرك هاميل بالطبع كيف يمكن لعقدين من الزمن أن يُحدثا الكثير من التغييرات على المستوى البشري، وما حدث معها هو أقرب مثال على ذلك، فقد أمضتْ هذا الوقت الطويل في العمل على تلسكوب جيمس ويب الفضائي قبل إطلاقه أخيرا في عام 2021 لاستكشاف خبايا الكون بتفاصيل غير مسبوقة. صرفت هاميل ربيع عمرها في هذا المشروع، وهذا ما توضحه الصورة التي تُفصِح عنها في محاضراتها العلمية في بداية المشروع وهي تحمل ابنها الأصغر بين ذراعيها، بينما أصبح الآن طالب دراسات عليا يتجاوزها في الطول.
قبل العمل على تلسكوب جيمس ويب، خاضت هاميل غمار تجربة المشاركة في مهمات "فوياجر" (Voyager)، وهي جولة ناسا الكبرى لفحص الكواكب التي تقع خارج نظامنا الشمسي. عندما حلَّقت المركبة الفضائية "فوياجر 2" فوق كوكب نبتون عام 1989، كانت هاميل موجودة في مختبر الدفع النفاث التابع لناسا (وهو أحد مراكز البحوث والتنمية المُمولة من طرف الحكومة الفيدرالية للولايات المتحدة الأميركية ووكالة ناسا). لكن في الوقت الذي شهد بداية المشروع، كانت لا تزال المدرسة الابتدائية، وعن ذلك تقول: "إن التفكير في هؤلاء الأطفال الذين سيقيسون يوما ما شريط حياتهم بالإنجازات الكبرى في مجال رحلات الفضاء هو أمر مؤثر للغاية وعصي حتى على إدراكي".
تاريخ موجز للشعور بالصغر
Humans have long tried to describe our experiences with the universe in words that give meaning and purpose to the stars.
The idea of deep contemplation of the universe has been documented particularly in the past half century when space exploration has really taken off.
The astronauts reported the strong feelings they experienced as soon as they saw the Earth from there, and how they felt a sense of awe at seeing the fragility of our planet amid this comprehensive cosmic loss that sweeps us away, and this reinforced their feeling of the strength of the bond that binds them with their fellow human beings.
The image of the "pale blue dot" is capable of giving us a sense of the fragility of our planet, its small size, and its insignificance, as it is destabilized like a wandering atom in this universe.
(Reuters)
As for the famous “Pale Blue Dot” image published by NASA, in which the Earth appears as a suspended spot in the dark, it is an image that is able to evoke in the soul of anyone whose eyes fall on it a feeling of the fragility of our planet, its small size, and its insignificance as it declines. destabilized as a wandering atom in this universe.
At the time an unmanned spacecraft first flew to the surface of Mars, people were strangely overcome with a sense of pride, but that quickly changed to sadness once the spacecraft ran out of power and slid off an abyss or plunged into another planet to its final death.
Adding another dimension - the passage of time - to our contemplation of space creates a uniquely strange feeling in us.
It is true that space and time are, of course, closely related as shown by Einstein's theories of relativity, but when we try to apply these concepts in the context of our ordinary lives, we tend to reduce them, meaning that you are suddenly comparing your life to forces operating on a completely different scale.
At this time, you are not only contemplating a beautiful picture that occurred before your eyes of the cosmic slopes of the Carina Nebula in a place you will never be able to go, but suddenly before you minute details that clarify the mystery of the future that haunts your chest about which you do not know how to cope with it or fit in with it its details.
In the same vein, says David Grinspoon, an astrobiologist at the Institute for Planetary Sciences: "In a way, you will find that it is terrifying and makes you sleepy."
Grinspoon will be in his 70s when the NASA spacecraft he's working on blasts off to Venus in 2029. "You've got some feelings creeping up on you, and you're being whispered to you that you're much younger than the dates tell you," he says. calendars".
However, the idea of continuing to work on the project years from now still excites him.
Similar to astronomer Heidi Hamill, Greenspoon has also participated in the Voyager missions.
And every time the machines succeeded in achieving their desired goals, the team of scientists responsible for these missions held a meeting to discuss these historical events.
"These meetings were like high school reunions, but the difference was that we got together every time to talk about a different planet," says Grinspoon.
As the mission moved from Jupiter to Saturn, and then to Uranus and Neptune, people involved in these missions felt that their years were also flying by with these missions.
Mental time travel
(Shutterstock)
Space forces us to imagine ourselves in a future state, a cognitive process psychologists call “mental time travel.” This process helps us imagine and mentally simulate scenarios in the future, says Dean Buonomano, a neuroscientist and researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. California, which studies how our brains process time.
Mental travel through time is not limited to the field of space, but many human efforts take many years or decades to bear fruit, such as bringing about social change, or even just building new subway lines.
"This ability to plan for the future in the long term for decades and even centuries to come is a uniquely human ability," Buonomano says.
However, no other form of mental time travel can lead to such vertigo or existential turmoil as meditation in the mysteries of space and exploration of its unknowns.
And if we reflect on our human future, we will find no field that can bind us to our most vulnerable, fragile, and most essential qualities as much as space does.
"When you think about the emotional aspects of this field, most space experts tend to be very emotional," says Naomi Roe-Gurney, an astronomer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who studies Uranus and Neptune.
(The results of recent missions to these planets, for example, will not come before 2040 or even later.)
أما روهان نايدو، عالم الفلك في معهد ماساتشوستس للتكنولوجيا، الذي يستعين بتلسكوب جيمس ويب لكشف النقاب عن سمات المجرات المبكرة، فيُفضِّل الاستمتاع باللحظة الحالية بدلا من أن يرنو بقلق إلى المستقبل وما سيحمله من اختراعات جديدة بعدما يترصد التلسكوب ويب الفناء أو يعفو عليه الزمن. ومع ذلك، ما زال ينبعث في نفسه شعور بالحماس تجاه مستقبل الفضاء بقوله: "كيف لا يمكن لذلك كله ألا يُثير في نفسك التفاؤل ونحن منذ مئة عام فقط كنا بالكاد نعلم بوجود مجرات أخرى غير مجرتنا في الفضاء!".
إذا ما تأملنا في مستقبلنا البشري، فلن نجد مجالا يمكن أن يربطنا بأكثر صفاتنا ضعفا وهشاشة وأشدها جوهرية بقدر ما يفعل الفضاء. (شترستوك)
Thinking about the Dragonfly mission, and the year 2034 when it will land on Titan, makes me think about all the things that haven't happened yet in my life, and what my future will look like by the time I'm 44.
When I think about it, mixed feelings of optimism, dread, and nostalgia for my future self well up inside me.
It may be strange to feel nostalgic about a future that hasn't happened yet, but that's exactly what space has to offer.
This phenomenon, which causes us to look to the future with a glimpse of nostalgia, has previously been referred to by psychologists as anticipatory nostalgia.
Ironically, humans are able to plan the launch of a spacecraft to land on one of the distant moons in a given year, and they are somewhat confident that their plan will be successful despite the challenges faced by spaceflight, while none of them can predict the course of his life with the same accuracy. predicted for spaceflight.
When I talked to some astronomers about my nostalgic feeling, many of them understood exactly what I was feeling, but they didn't feel the same way.
To explain this, Lisa Missiri, an anthropologist at Yale University, who wrote previously about the method adopted by planetary scientists to make the universe meaningful to the general public, says that space does not make her feel happy. Except as a result of our attempt to transform a vast cosmic domain into a human domain.
In order to find an end to our turmoil over this gap, everyone eventually resorts to a way to make sense of these vague or incomprehensible time scales.
Ann Druyan, an American author and producer who specializes in producing documentaries on cosmology and scientific literature, is perhaps best equipped to talk about deep meditation on the cosmos.
Although not an astronomer, Dorian helped create The Golden Record (the name given to the message aboard Voyager 1 and 2, which is a cylindrical shape of gold-plated copper), a time capsule for humanity. It hurtles away from Earth carried by two Voyager probes, and includes pictures of people, audio clips about weather and wildlife, greetings in dozens of languages, and music, all aimed at any civilization that might be in space.
The Golden Record: the time capsule carried on the two Voyager probes for any civilization that could be in space (networking sites)
The golden record also includes the brain waves of Dorian herself after she underwent a brain scan during her time in love with Carl Sagan (the famous American astronomer who played an important role in promoting the search for intelligent creatures outside the globe), and he was Dorian's collaborator on this project (and later married her). ).
Druian was 28 when the Voyager missions began, now 73, and has described her participation in the mission as akin to telling eternity (that we were once here before we were wiped out).
"I think it actually liberated me from my fear of death," Dorian says of the experience. "My death now feels like the completion or closure of this event that was so pivotal in my life."
Deep cosmic meditation can be an exercise in lifting our spirits and confirming that there are colossal wonders waiting to be witnessed two years or even 20 years from now, and it is also a reminder of all the beauty of the universe that we will not live to see.
How much Dorian wished that Sagan, who died in 1996, would be present now to witness a mission like "Dragon Fly", as he was one of the first scientists to hypothesize that Titan contains bodies of liquid methane on its surface that might qualify it to be an environment conducive to embracing life on its surface, So Sagan urged NASA to launch flights there.
Dorian concludes, "I don't even know if I'll be here until 2034, but what I do know is that until 2034, 2534, and 3034, the two Voyager probes will still be moving."
Like Dorian, I also don't know what direction our lives will take or what I'll be preoccupied with when the Dragonfly lands on Titan, but I can at least imagine what will happen. .
And later that night, after I've finished writing, I'll go out to Arnaud into the night sky looking for those familiar bright flashes of stars and planets and wonder: "Where have all those years gone?"
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Translated by: Somaya Zaher
This report is translated from The Atlantic and does not necessarily reflect Meydan's website.