Telescope

 

After dinner the conversation turns to the telescope. It is very amazing, it is utterly amazing, and other awestruck vocabulary is shared in short sharp sentences. Obviously only the Americans could afford such a telescope. We acknowledge that the President of the United States of America is in a position to take some of the credit for this sudden new exposure to universes plural that are billions of years old. Or rather, billions of years ago. Surely it is time to abandon going to Mars, which everyone knows isn’t going to work, and spend the money on more telescopes. After all, what else are we ever going to do other than enjoy the view? The rest of the money can be spent making the Earth habitable. It shows there must be life somewhere else in the universe, is a statement enthusiastically expressed. An apple is quartered and offered around. Yes, is the reply, it seems perfectly obvious there is life elsewhere. Though those on Earth continue to think of life as like life on Earth. We search for Goldilocks planets with water that can sustain life as we know it, which is very anthropocentric of us. Not that there’s anything wrong with anthropocentrism. After all, where else do we start? Humanity is a living breathing hypothesis of existence, together with everything else moving on Earth. Only thing is, couldn’t life be more than our own experience of it? Life forms are abundant here so why not everywhere else? Then, of course, we have consciousness. What if the universe is conscious? It has to be more than what we observe with a telescope. This course of discussion is difficult to sustain in the short term, though it is recognised that our consciousness knows past, present, and future. This is why we can look at stars billions of years ago, knowing we are in the present looking at images in the past. If we are the President, we can not only express wonder in short sharp sentences, we say things like we can see possibilities no one has ever seen before. It is hard to discern what is scripted from what is spontaneous in presidential staged events. For example he says, we can go places no one has ever gone before. To which it could be asked of the President, why? The edge of the universe is a lot further than the North Pole. Mars is a safe distance from a black hole. Conversation hesitates to reject these dreams, starry-eyed literally though they be. True, there is no question, telescopes that humble Hubble could explain the nature of the universes plural where we are fortunate to find ourselves here and now. For which reason, conjectures begin to ramble in a charming fashion that will occupy the scientists of the future. Soon it will be time for washing-up, or watching anime movies, or retiring to bed with a good book, our thoughts already many billions of years away from exoplanets.