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PASADENA,
\n California — It sounded like science fiction — NASA scientists used
\n a space probe to chase down a speeding comet 83 million miles away and
\n slammed it into the frozen ball of dirty ice and debris in a mission
\n to learn how the solar system was formed.<\/p>\n
The unmanned probe of the Deep Impact mission collided with Tempel 1, a
\n pickle-shaped comet half the size of Manhattan, late Sunday as thousands
\n of people across the country fixed their eyes to the southwestern sky for
\n a glimpse.<\/p>\n
The impact at 10:52 p.m. PDT was cause for celebration not only to scientists
\nat NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, but also for the more than 10,000
\npeople camped out at Hawaii’s Waikiki Beach to watch it on a giant movie screen.<\/p>\n
"It’s almost like one of those science fiction movies," said Steve
\nLin, a
\nHonolulu physician.<\/p>\n
from Wired News<\/a><\/p>\n It’s more like the hundreds and hundreds of Amazing<\/a> science-fiction The idea that scientists would be blasting into the On yet another level, the foray into comet excavation The fact that the solar sail experiment apparently Meanwhile, the hope behind the comet experiment seems In this we find ourselves, however uncomfortably, in It is not hard for us to imagine some far more ancient Given the immense age of the universe, and the billions Why would a superior species even care about our benighted Although it may be morally offensive to consider that So count us among those who hold that the idea of "intelligent Still, we always wanted to be an asteroid miner…..<\/p>\n latest from Space.com <\/a><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PASADENA, California — It sounded like science fiction — NASA scientists used a space probe to chase down a speeding comet 83 million miles away and slammed it into the frozen ball of dirty ice and debris in a mission … Continue reading
\n stories and grafted twofer novels (each novel had its own cover,
\n which was the back of the other; when you finished the first one you
\n would turn the whole thing over and
\n upside down, and start the other) the Dowbrigade read as a kid. Only,
\n in most of those stories the blasting and mining took place in the asteroid
\n belt, as a kind of logical extension of the quest for natural resources
\n which has been eating up the earth since the dawn of the industrial revolution.<\/p>\n
\n core or a comet to see what it was made of is almost as fantastic as
\n the idea of solar sails pushing spacecraft to speeds in excess of those
\n achievable with internal combustion rockets, and with no need for fuel.
\n As someone who spent much of his adolescence wondering which of these
\n marvels we would see in our lifetime, we rated those two in the slim
\n to none category. We were convinced we would see humanoid robots and
\n flying cars first. So much for our powers of prognostication.<\/p>\n
\n before asteroid mining is promisingly symbolic. It signifies the triumph
\n of pure science (the comet experiment) over commercial exploitation of
\n outer space (asteroid mining). Of course, in the future there is space
\n for both, but it is nice to see what we consider the correct ordering
\n of priorities on the part of the government for a change.<\/p>\n
\n failed and the comet cannonball gambit succeeded may be testimony to
\n the soundness of the underlying science or the difficulty of
\n a successful effort in space by anything short of a major post-industrial
\n national government. The days of the Wright Brothers in their bicycle
\n shop are gone forever.<\/p>\n
\n to be not only the hope of catching a glimpse at the infancy of the universe,
\n but a tantalizing clue to nothing less than the origin
\n of life on earth<\/a>.
\n For decades scientists and science fiction writers have hypothesized
\n that the frozen cores of the incandescent comets could be ice chests
\n for the propagation and delivery of the prototypical molecules and amino
\n acids imprinted with molecular blueprints for the development of organic
\n life.<\/p>\n
\n the camp of advocates of "intelligent design" to explain the seemingly
\n unique flowering of life on this planet, although rather than attributing
\n the grad design to a Supreme Being. Despite recent advances in origin-of-life
\n research, creating complex amino acids in the laboratory from the ingredients
\n present in the popular primordial soup hypothesis, and developing promising
\n theories on how the first enclosing membranes could have formed, creating
\n conditions necessary for the evolution of cells, the appearance of DNA
\n or similar information carrying structures remains a mystery.<\/p>\n
\n and advanced, but decidedly mortal, intelligent life in some other part
\n of the universe seeded the galaxy with comets containing the basic building
\n blocks of life, knowing that most of them would wander endlessly through
\n the vast interstellar spaces, but that some would inevitably crash into
\n planets with the necessary chemical and climatologic conditions to support
\n the development of life.<\/p>\n
\n of stars in our galaxy alone, it is more difficult for us to believe
\n that we are alone in the universe than to believe in the existence of
\n a species of intelligence as far above ours as we are to a mongoose.
\n As the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke wrote, "Any sufficiently
\n advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." It seems eminently
\n reasonable to the Dowbrigade, among numerous others, the the magic of
\n life on this planet was the direct result of indirect extraterrestrial
\n intervention.<\/p>\n
\n backwater of a planet? Maybe they were lonely, and seeded the stars so
\n that they would have somebody to talk to in a few hundred million years. Maybe
\n they belong to some weird religion that believes that life is sacred
\n and spreading it through the universe is the highest calling a being
\n can aspire to. Maybe they were bored and just wanted to see what would
\n happen.<\/p>\n
\n we may be some ET High School science project gone awry, it would explain
\n a lot. Whether the miraculous unfolding of life on this planet is the
\n work of a divine architect or of some alien artisan may have profound
\n theological implications, but do probably not matter much on a practical
\n level. Both scenarios allow for short-sighted humans to destroy their
\n starter-planet before they spread any further, and commit specieal suicide
\n fast or slow, hot or cold, pick your poison. They also both have built-in
\n provisions for outside interventions, either from a disappointed and
\n vengeful God ready to wipe the slate clean again, or from an E.T. clean-up
\n squad, sent around to sterilize the unsuccessful experiments before they
\n are allowed to spread and infect larger swaths of the spaceways.<\/p>\n
\n design" should be included in the scholastic curriculum – but without
\n any prejudicial mention of who or what that intelligence might be. And
\n please, no bullshit about the earth being 3,000 years old. Only
\n theories which sync with the fossil record need apply. Those who hold
\n that the entire evolutionary sequence is the happenstance result of arbitrary
\n factors, a sort of evolutionary million monkeys at a million typewriters
\n concept, are the dreamers, godless communists probably, adrift on the
\n sea of science with nary a moral compass between them to navigate their
\n way out of the essential paradox of science; the more problems it solves,
\n the more problems it creates.<\/p>\n