A huge THANK YOU to the most fabulous RaverLady, on CafeMom, for allowing me to re-post her transcription of The Cosmic Story, here on my blog. Awesomeness at its finest, dear readers! I know it's long for a blog post, but the awe factor is well worth the time....
The following is a summary of the presentation given by Carolyn Porco at the 2006 Beyond Belief conference. The theme of the conference was, "If not God, then what?" Carolyn, the chief researcher in charge of studying Saturn, was asked to share some of what she experiences staring eternity and immensity in the face every day, and how it informs her human need for meaning.
The Cosmic Story
Jules Verne said, "Reality provides us with facts so romantic, that imagination itself could add nothing to them."
This is the Hubble Deep Field, one of the deepest images ever constructed of our universe, and it is peering, not only 13 billion light years into space, but also 13 billion years back in time. These are the structures that were formed a mere 800 million years after the big bang. There are no local stars in this image, so everything we are seeing here is a galaxy.
The galaxies are gravitationally entwined in a vast ballet which is transpiring in time scales of hundreds of millions of years.
This is known as the Sombrero Galaxy, 28 million light years from earth.
This is a barred galaxy.
This is a whirlpool galaxy. The reddish areas are star-forming regions. Matter and gasses from space pass into these regions and as they rotate they are compressed, and pop out on the other side as blue stars.
This is two galaxies merging.
So, it is obvious, just from looking out into the universe, that there is a vast uncountable number of galaxies, of which ours is only one.
Closer to home, this is a star-forming region inside our own galaxy, located in the Orion Nebula.
So everywhere we look in the universe, creation is taking place, through the intricate dance of elemental particles. This is what happens when bits of stuff, so tiny that we are galactic in comparison, coalesce and merge and dance together.
Everywhere we look, we find exactly what is going on here around us. There is nothing extraordinary about this particular place where we happen to be.
This is a red dwarf star, and with the star itself masked out you can see that this star also has a disc. This is about the size of our solar system. Debris discs around stars are common.
Here is a very recent Hubble image, and the tiny dot in the lower left is a planet. This is the first time we have actually been able to see a planet in orbit around another sun besides our own.
So, beginning with Copernicus, and continuing through our own human efforts of restless pursuit of truth, we have learned that there is nothing central about our place in the cosmos. The universe is happening all around us and is operating on its own, with no apparent need of guidance.
This removes one of the pillars holding up the idea that there must be a god in charge.
But, what about life? Isn't there something so unique and special about life, that "God" must have done it?
This is why the study of our own solar system has focused especially on the search for life, or "habitable zones" with conditions where life could arise - specifically long-lived liquid water environments that have simple organic materials in them, and excess warmth.
Which brings us to Saturn.
This is a picture of Saturn taken looking directly at the plane of the rings. Since they are, proportionately, thinner than a razor blade, when directly aligned with the plane of the rings they seem to disappear.
We know that the processes which go on in Saturn's rings are very similar to the processes which go on in the spiral galaxies, and in the debris discs we find around other stars.
The tiny bump on the ring at the far right is Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus.
Here's a closer look. It is a very unusual moon, unlike all the other icy satellites around Saturn. It has very few craters, and that means that the surface is young. Clearly it has had a very complex geological history.
Currently, the attention on Enceladus is focused on the southern polar region, characterized by these blue fractures which completely encircle the pole. This is a color-enhanced view. Eceladus is completely white, because it is water ice, except for these cracks, where we find simple organic materials. The team also found that the warmest place on Enceladus is the south pole, and the heat is concentrated along the fractures.
As if that wasn't enough, close pass-bys have discovered that issuing forth from these fractures are jets of fine icy particles extending kilometers above the surface.
These plumes may be geysers that are issuing forth from subterranean chambers of liquid water close to the surface.
If that is the case, then, we have liquid water, we have simple organic materials, we have excess warmth. It may be an environment that is suitable for living organisms. Because of the geysers, it may be possible to use an orbital probe in a future mission to Enceladus to analyze the plumes for organic and living material. These recent discoveries have made it seem more likely than ever that non-earthbound life can exist.
If, then, it is found that there is life in this place, it will mean that Genesis has occurred not once, but twice, just in this solar system. And because the conditions we observe here in our solar system are not unique, but are common throughout the cosmos, it is possible to see that life my have arisen independently a staggering number of times in the 13.6 billion year history of the universe, arising as part of natural processes which require no intelligence.
This removes another pillar under the need for a creator God.
So what about, now (Caryolyn goes on to say) this issue of Death.
The God concept brings with it a guarantee of immortality, and that is why people find it so attractive. People are afraid of death. And the approach to death that we take in our culture is a colossal failure. We don't talk about it, we don't teach people how to anticipate it, how to feel about it...and people are afraid to die.
Is there anything in the cosmic story, as told here, that can comfort people who wish to live forever?
People, as they are constituted now, are not going to live forever. That is just the simple truth of it. But, there may be another way to look at death and immortality that can be taught. It may be possilbe to learn to regard death as a natural event, part of the natural order, and perhaps even as a wondrous state. It is a transition that takes place against and within the beautiful pageantry and magesty of The Cosmic Story we see around us in the universe.
That is something that can be taught to be a comforting thought. And, after all, we know exactly what it is like to be dead. It is exactly like the state we inhabited before we were born. And there is nothing in that to be afraid of.
And, we can offer hope - of sorts - for an everlasting existence. Our mortal bodies, of course, will perish, but the collection of individual pieces of matter and particles within us, we have learned, are ancient. After we die, they will go on, and go back into the cosmos. In one form or another, whether they live on as matter, or get converted to energy, they will last forever. It may be that we can, and we should, teach people to find comfort in that thought, the way children are taught to find comfort in the God concept.
In a discussion of the "emotional dividends" of religion, we may be able to see this as an emotional dividends of the science story. We can find comfort knowing that someday, everyone who has ever lived on this planet will someday adorn the heavens, looking very much like the nebulae that are created when a sun-like star sheds its outer layers.
So, perhaps one day, we will all look like this:
An event like this will happen to our sun a few billion years from now. All life on the earth will perish, and all of the molecules that were us will be caught up in the stellar explosion, so we may end up as an amazing jewel of the night sky, like this. Or like this:
It is actually an enchanting and intriguing notion, that in examining these nebula throughout the universe, we may be looking at the elements - the carbon, the oxygen, the nitrogen and hydrogen - that once were recycled through the organisms of an extraterrestrial civilization that lived on a planet that orbited the star. That may be our destiny one day too.
So, perhaps we can replace the God concept - the idea that God is the explanation for all things natural - and in fact, we have already done this to a great degree. It's just a matter of developing a socially appealing way to get the word out to everyone.
Which brings us to religion, and whether anything having to do with scientific inquiry - whether it's the practice of science or the fruits of science - could ever offer the social embrace that religious organizations do.
It's intriguing to consider that many people in religious groups may not really believe everything as preached, but they remain part of the organization nonetheless. It may be that people are attracted to religion because we are social animals, and we like to belong to groups. The reasons for religious fellowship are primarily social, and people might actually be on the fence, or wondering, about the specifics of the various teachings.
So here's a possibly crazy idea - perhaps a "dangerous idea" - to bring the findings of science and the story of the universe science has to tell, we should let the success of the religious formula guide us. We could discuss adopting the things that religions do well. We could replace the social organizations of religions with something else.
Religions do so many good things...like accumulating billions of dollars to aid the victims of Katrina, for example. So, why do the organizations that do this have to be religious?
And, we can teach our children from a very young age the story of the universe, in all its incredible richness and beauty. It is already so much more glorious and awesome, and even comforting, than anything offered by any scripture or "god" concept.
We may not be able to sway the adults from these ideas, but we can influence the next generation in the gradual illumination of the mind.
And, finally, we can celebrate! We have a great many reasons for jubilation. That we actually can know what we know is so empowering and uplifting. It's a beautiful thing, and it's worth celebrating. How about instituting a national holiday to celebrate all the knowledge that humankind has accumulated about the universe, evolution and so on. We could have a holiday called The Day of Great Awakening.
We have already had many moments that deserve such recognition and celebration.
This picture, taken on December 29, 1968, was the first time we ever saw earth as a whole planet from space. It was taken by the astronauts of Apollo 8, and had an enormous impact on society, and understanding our place in the cosmos and our planetary home.
Then, of course, this is the "Pale Blue Dot" photo, taken when the Voyager 1 spacecraft was far above the plane of the solar system out beyond the orbit of Neptune, about which Carl Sagan spoke so eloquently:
"It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. "
More recently, the trajectory of Cassini [the Saturn probe Carolyn is in charge of] carried it deep into the planet's shadow. From there, shielded from direct sunlight, they were able to point the cameras back in the direction of the sun. Because of the unique vantage point, Cassini's cameras captured views never before seen by humans - a total eclipse of the sun from the other side of Saturn.
This view, for example, shows Saturn's fifth ring, which is usually invisible:
This ring was actually formed from the plumes being ejected into space from Enceladus. It is a wild thought indeed to think that if there are microbes present, they are being shot out into space and frozen in these tiny particles, and are orbiting Saturn in this ring.
As if this spectable weren't dazzling enough, we can spot, across a billion miles of interplanetary space, our own planet Earth, nestled in the arms of Saturn.
That is our home.
It may be a long time before we see anything this moving again. But, it seems like there is nothing that has a greater power to alter and correct our perception of ourselves, and our place in the cosmos, than the sight of our own tiny little world from across the depths of space. In the end, this ever-widening view of earth, against the immensity of space, is perhaps the greatest legacy of all our interplanetary travels, and of all our scientific inquiry.
* * * *
If you would like to see Carolyn give this presentation herself, you can check out the video:
Beyond Belief - If not God, then what?
Please jump ahead in the video straight to 1:23:10 when Carolyn begins her presentation.
