The Deep Field photo taken by the space telescope Hubble has always fascinated me, since it really helps to put things in perspective. It takes one tiny fraction of our sky and produces a picture made out of, not stars, but galaxies. Thinking, that one galaxy can hold from millions to a trillion stars, that makes quite a lot of stars – in one tiny part of our sky. They also took a newer version of it, which is a most astounding thing to look: Hubble Ultra Deep Field. At the moment, it is thought, that the universe consists of around 100 billion galaxies.
What’s interesting is, that when one does a google search on hubble deep field, there are many results, that connects the deep field images with a single sentence: “We are not alone.” The incomprehensible number of possible stars with possible planets that could harbour life makes one assume there has to be life somewhere there. We are looking for our brothers and sisters when we look up to the sky.
Even if we have a planet full of people, soon more than it can sustain, we still feel lonely in the universe.
“We still feel lonely in the universe”. Indeed. No matter how far we can see and how many people there are (and might be) around us, the most important thing is how we connect to our neighbours. The issues namely is: every human being is connected to one another and if we do not see the value in it, then reaching to the skies is useless. While reaching to the skies, shouldn’t we be more concerned about our daily contacts? The people we meet in the metro stations, the people we meet in super markets, the people we come across over and over again. I feel human being is so busy with trying to connect something far away even though we should be more concerned what happens around us every day? In Finnish we say: “Ei pidä mennä merta edemmäksi kalaan” which can be translated: “You shouldn’t go fishing further to the ocean if there is a see or a lake near you”. So, let’s try to seize the day and get in contact with those with whom we can already connect with. That is already a huge thing to accomplish and I am sure that gives us strenght and means to connect with those who we cannot reach at the moment (if the day arrives).
Contrasting our neighbour to aliens is interesting, since I think it reveals one of the reasons we are interested in the skies – namely that we don’t have to worry about our neighbours and their problems. The “space longing” is a form of escapism and thus works extraordinarily well with the other form of escapism – movies. Star Trek for example is one of the most optimist scifi francises, and its doing extremely well these days.
I just stumbled in an article in YLE pages, which talk about future in the 60’s, the moon landings and skies in both theological and mundane references. It makes a good point in that space and sky is a place we humans have placed our hopes, myths, aspirations and fears through the years. We look at the sky and see a future without those pesky problems like famine, crime and all that. We dream of a better tomorrow, and usually it involves someone else, who comes to solve our problems. Thus we don’t have to do it ourselves…
But are space longing and neighbour loving mutually exclusive?