> There's so much out there, just waiting for us to get off our duffs and explore. We have much of the technology; if we could just stop spending trillions on machines of war and instead spend it on machines of exploration....
I agree with this 100%. But while we're moving outward, however slowly, don't forget Sagan's Caveat:
"Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand."
Absolutely, go see what's across the street. But make sure your house is clean and safe.
My reaction to Wanderers was also to consider our own planet. For all the curiosities out there yet to be discovered, Earth is flat-out stunning. I was watching segments from David Attenborough's Africa earlier and thinking that what we have already discovered is incredible, and (in general) we're already doing some excellent work in trying to wreck it.
> The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life.
I often reflect on this sentiment and have half-convinced myself that the current definition of 'life' we use in this sense to be far too limited to capture the infinite diversity of existence.
In other words, our explorations will never reveal any creature like us (or other known forms of life on Earth) because the life that develops in other environment will be uniquely suited and predicated on existing in that environment exclusively.
I would add to what Sagan said: the whole universe is alive in ways we have not yet even conceived or be capable of conceiving.
I agree with this 100%. But while we're moving outward, however slowly, don't forget Sagan's Caveat:
"Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand."
Absolutely, go see what's across the street. But make sure your house is clean and safe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot#Reflections_by_S...
Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g