Monday evening I and a friend attended Dr. Stephen Hawking’s public lecture in Pasadena, Why We Should Go Into Space. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen one of Dr. Hawking’s lectures, nor the only time I’ve seen him in person; his frequent visits to Caltech and my past inability to escape that campus’ gravity well and/or event horizon meant that like many other former Caltech undergrads I’ve seen him around campus, and also, when his assistant came to the computer department to get email set up for him, I was the person to activate the account for at least one of his visits.
It’s humbling to see the lengths he must go to in order to communicate, regardless of the import or impact of his ideas.
Of course he’s a scientific genius, and he has a lovely, gently dry sense of humor that tends to sneak up on the unwary.
It’s also very neat to know that the new Pasadena Convention Center was packed to capacity for a scientific lecture. That says something fundamental about the community.
It also says something fundamental about science and public science communication that, both in his presentation and in the other presenters remarks bracketing his talk, there were many, many references to Star Trek. “To boldly go where no one has gone before” has become so embedded in the psyche of everyone who works and dreams of humanity’s future in space. Gene Roddenberry’s hopeful vision of our future, the idealism that embodies, the wonder of exploration, and the depiction that just about everyone can make some kind of a useful contribution to that effort… these concepts capture the imagination of science geeks and science fans and everyday people in ways that are difficult to describe, and difficult to quantify, but it provides a shared philosophical vocabulary shorthand that we all collectively speak.
Yes, we’d like a moon base. Yes, we’d like a Mars base. Yes, we’d like a base on Europa.
Meanwhile, I will never, ever tire of seeing successful shuttle launches; I send good thoughts to the astronauts and ground crew of Discovery as it launches tonight.
Yes, we’re going to make remarkable progress figuring out if earth-like planets are common or rare in our galaxy. Go Kepler, go!
(Side note: if I say “Class M” instead of “earth-like”, how many of you understand what I mean? That’s a fictional classification… see what I mean about how deeply embedded Star Trek terminology is in our cultural vocabulary?)
Yes, we’re going to start making progress figuring out if simple life is common or rare on earth-like planets.
And yes, someday, if we don’t blow ourselves up or squander the resources of this precious, precious home of ours beyond its ability to support us and our efforts in explorations and analysis, we will figure out if intelligent life is common or rare on earth-like planets that support simple life.
And we might, just might, figure out if the behavior of intelligent life on habitable worlds toward an unfortunate path leading to its own destruction is common or rare.
I’m with Dr. Hawking on much of this; I hypothesize that earth-like worlds are not uncommon, and that the development of simple life is not rare, and that the development of intelligent life is not common.
I would like to believe that, in general, intelligent life does not commonly destroy itself or squander the resources of the worlds which supported its growth.
And I would like to believe that we can intelligently utilize the resources of our little planet without destroying ourselves or its ability to provide hospitality for us and for the diversity of life which surrounds us here.
And apparently, a whole conference center full of people in Pasadena feel the same way, and are also passing that feeling, that inspiration, along… in their workplaces, in their activism, in their passions, in their blogs and dinner table conversations.
I guess this little post is my contribution to the collective human hive-mind of the internet for today…. yes to hope, yes to discovery, yes to exploration, yes to idealism, yes to science being approachable and open and inspiring, and yes to public discourse on science being celebrated.