(Intro changed for snark too subtle.)
You may have heard that a movie is being kept from the US market because discussions about Darwin and the origin of life are just too controversial.
But really -- if that's too controversial, why isn't the Hubble Telescope considered too controversial?
Could there ever be a controversy raised about the Hubble? I kind of see it as the same kind of argument. Let me explain.
Well, let me start with this, one of the Hubble Telescope's most famous series of images, that of globular clusters.
What makes these so significant is that they represent our best glance into the furthest reaches of space. You see, scientists have calculated that the universe as we know it is something like 13.7 billion years old.
Yes, that's 13,700,000,000 years old. And we found some of the first ones in the universe in the form of globular clusters of stars, that are nearly as old as the universe itself, also themselves billions of years old. These are numbers that we can't really fathom, but what might really break your mind is to consider that the light we perceive now from those globular clusters was actually emitted from those stars near the beginning of the universe's creation and has just been traveling through the vacuum of space since well before the creation of the earth or our solar system or our galaxy.
We live in the Milky Way galaxy, which is a flat, disc-shaped grouping of billions of stars. Our solar system is near the outer edge of the disc; essentially, we're in our galaxy's boondocks, which is why the Hubble telescope took an image of the more hip, happening inside of our galaxy. Each of the dots is a star, many much larger than our sun, and countless capable of sustaining a solar system just like ours.
The telescope has given us some of the views into the most beautiful but at the same time, horribly violent events that happen throughout the universe. It's one of the Universe's most profound ironies that the elements that comprise everything we know were created from supernovas, the violent explosions that ensue after a large star that has burned out collapses onto itself, creating so much energy in the process, that elements like Iron result before the explosion spreads out into space, sometimes resulting in amazing displays, like the Cygnus Loop Nebula, as seen here.
I'm sure many people here would agree that these photographs are profoundly beautiful, but can have an even more profound impact when you start to consider your place in the universe and how physically small we are and how ephemeral our place is. We live on a planet revolving around an average star in the sleepy suburbs of an average galaxy that we will never be able to see because it's considerably too far for us to travel outside of it and beam back a photo.
At the same time though, such a reminder may be an effective way of reminding us what an improbable course has brought us here and that maybe we should make the most out of what we have and not fear that which we don't understand. It's been our relentless quest for knowledge that has brought us so far -- just consider that our planet is four billion years old, but we managed to accomplish what no one or nothing else on the planet had ever done or dreamed possible, when we finally learned how to leave our own planet, only to realize how little we know.
Some would argue that we're no better off, and that our scientific endeavors have just raised more questions instead of providing the comfortable, easy answer that the Universe is about 6,000 years ago, and that we're at the center of it, and that everything else in the sky is just there for our decoration.
Some people are just far too uncomfortable dealing with questions about their own existence and mortality, that they fight tooth and nail to stop us from doing what we seem so well-equipped to do: to ask why.
It's probably already clear that the literal premise of this diary is really snark, but the overarching premise is not. So many people have spent the majority of their existence trying to stop others from asking why and to train future generations not to ask why.
That a movie about Darwin is considered too controversial to be shown in this country is evidence of that. It's been an inexorable march, albeit a slow painful one, toward discovery. And while that has sometimes proven to be our greatest liability, I would like to assert that it's also been our greatest asset. I'll leave you with a little more proof of that assertion.