 |
|
Musing on Sydney's news
| 3 September 2003 Mars-turbating Just as a change of pace from the tedium of social and political observation, I thought I'd explore the realm of science (sadly underfunded in Australia, these days, by the way ... ahem). No, I won't be exploring the reason why our office carpets have been generating enough static electricity to have prevented the major blackout in the city yesterday. Instead I'd like to talk about a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event of great magnitude and profundity ... in an infinitesimal kind of way. |
 |
On 27 August 2003, the planet Mars reached a distance of 55 million kilometres from Earth. That's the closest it's been in about 60,000 years. That's right, I was only just out of high school at the time. Because Mars has a highly elliptical orbit around the sun, it can be as far as approximately 388 million kilometres away from us. A bit like ex partners. They come, they go, they come, they go.
At around 8pm (Sydney time) last Wednesday night, astronomer Fred Watson told us that this was The Big Moment.
So I raced out of my flat and, in my rush, didn't turn the corridor lights on and ended up thumping my left breast into the stairwell bannister.
Alas, I now have heavy, weird green veins over my left feminine protuberance, but it's a small price to pay in the quest of scientific discovery. Not long ago I read about a construction worker in California who fell onto a 45cm drill that went right through his head and came out the other side (and he is still remarkably intact and able to tell the tale). So a few weird alien-looking veins aren't too bad, I guess.
But I digress. Once outside, I looked aimlessly around the night sky for outstanding shining objects. No, that's the street lamp. No, that's a plane. No, that's the neighbour's window ... hmmm, I didn't know that was physically possible! Then I saw a small, pinkish light to the left. Could this be the Red Planet?
Then I heard some people talking outside. You know the type, young pot-smoking deadbeat types like I used to be. They were talking about Mars and pointed to it - to the right. I turned and ... drum roll ... there it was! (I have no idea what the other pinkish star was).
Mars was truly impressive.
It was easily the largest body in the sky, apart from the moon and the planes that brush my rooftops every few minutes or so. Twinkling and bright, I couldn't help thinking about extraterrestrial life and that Mars Attacks! movie where those villainous, bulb-headed Martians said "dap dap dap" as they blasted their way around our fair planet.
Given that scientists have found microbes that can live in conditions hotter than boiling water or saltier than McDonald's fries, I think we can expect to one day find alien microbes on one of our space missions. However, finding creatures which are only smarter than the average religious fundamentalist isn't the stuff of science fiction. It would be more exciting to find intelligent life.
Imagine. One day we might find out that the universe doesn't actually revolve around us! While Copernicus proved that wasn't actually the case, deep down I think most of us still doubt him. Cosmic dramas are constantly being played out, involving unimaginable forces and distances. Yet we obsess over Pauline Hanson's gaoling, The Block, the ordination of women and gays, football, our hair and skin, renovating our little nests, and buying penis-substitute cars.
In fact, we have more interest in the life forms breeding under our fridge than those with which we share in the vast cosmos. Actually, did I mention that sometimes these really ginormous mosquito-looking things fly in my window? Never mind.
So anyway ... there it was ... Mars. Comparatively close. I could see it there.
It was big.
It was brighter than I expected. And kinda pink, as befitting The Red Planet.
A once a lifetime experience.
This was a really, really significant moment in astronomical history ... but, to be honest, I didn't really know what to do with it. After a while I wandered back inside, feeling guilty for turning my back on this precious and rare occurrence.
Once inside, I saw the couple who live upstairs looking through the window of the stairwell (whose bannister had viciously attacked my boob 15 minutes earlier) at Mars's big moment.
So we enthused about it for a while (Mars, not my sore boob) and I assured them that the planet looked far more impressive when you were outdoors and that the window they were looking through reduced the splendour of the moment. They seemed skeptical so we chatted about other things, and after a while I returned to my flat, again plagued by that gnawing guilty feeling.
I really should be out there, savouring the moment.
Of course I could have just stayed outside and stared at this little sphere in the sky. But for how long? After all, the moon - and Centrepoint Tower for that matter - look a whole lot more impressive and I can see them any old time.
Last night I was walking along in the pleasant spring evening with one of my plethora of ex-partners and I pointed Mars out to him, since it had hardly run away in the few days that had elapsed since The Big Moment. He looked at it for a second or two and said, "Yeah, it is pretty bright" and changed the subject.
It's funny how we take the sky for granted. Not even the realisation that we can see objects that are squillions of miles away keeps us interested. Nor do we get excited by the fact that as we look into the night sky, we're visually time-travelling. So much of what we see "out there" is really the light generated by stars that expired millions of years ago.
Nothing much seems to fill us with wonder; the time-space continuum, the mysteries of quantum mechanics, atomic physics, and the fact that we are, in the context of things, hurtling through the mind-boggling vastness of space on a relatively tiny rock at unimaginable speed.
We zoom around the sun as the sun zooms around in the Milky Way as the Milky Way zooms around who-knows-what ... yes, right now it's happening! But do we care? It won't pay the rent or - to return to the realms of the astronomical - our mortgages.
In ancient times a huge level of of significance would have been placed on Mars's unusual prominence in the night skies - a major spiritual event with all manner of consequences. Perhaps the planet's approach means that the influence of Mars, the god of war, is at its greatest?
That might explain the utter insanity of world politics at the moment. Maybe it brings drought. Or flood. Or global warming? Or a virgin birth? But in today's enlightened society, we know there are far more important things in life to focus on.
Hey, didja hear about the huge ruckus in the USA about a photo of Britney Spears and Madonna pashing off? Now that's what I call news!
This site and all material on it is copyright © Grea Korting 2003