{"id":8219,"date":"2011-07-01T06:42:56","date_gmt":"2011-07-01T10:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=8219"},"modified":"2016-10-21T06:21:19","modified_gmt":"2016-10-21T10:21:19","slug":"spacestruck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/spacestruck\/","title":{"rendered":"Spacestruck"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name=\"top\"><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"intrinsic-container intrinsic-container-16x9\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Bhuq9rNO_FQ?list=PLA5Z0m2JKyVJUgkMG08WP8KsAvLrjfkjP\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: &#8220;The Voyager Interstellar Record,&#8221; a YouTube playlist of\u00a0 all the sounds on the so-called &#8220;golden record&#8221; sent into space with the two Voyager interstellar spacecraft. For more information, see <a href=\"#note\">the note below<\/a>.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From <a title=\"whiskey river: Walker Percy, on the cosmic strangeness of *you*\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2011\/06\/why-is-it-that-of-all-billions-and.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>whiskey river<\/em><\/a> (italicized portion):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"font-variant: small-caps;\">Lost in the Cosmos:<br \/>\nThe Last Self-Help Book<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">or<\/p>\n<p>The Strange Case of the Self, your Self, the Ghost which Haunts the Cosmos<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">or<\/p>\n<p>How can you survive in the Cosmos about which you know more and more while knowing less and less about yourself, this despite 10,000 self-help books, 100,000 psychotherapists, and 100 million fundamentalist Christians<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">or<\/p>\n<p><em>Why is it that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos &#8212; novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes &#8212; you are beyond doubt the strangest?<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">or<\/p>\n<p>Why is it possible to learn more in ten minutes about the Crab Nebula in Taurus, which is 6,000 light-years away, than you presently know about yourself, even though you&#8217;ve been stuck with yourself all your life<\/p>\n<p><em>[etc.]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Walker Percy, from <em>Lost in the Cosmos<\/em> [<a title=\"Google Books: 'Lost in the Cosmos,' by Walker Percy\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=tWZQPAoh3ZQC&amp;pg=PA1#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<a title=\"whiskey river: 'II,' by Diane Ackerman\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2011\/06\/ii.html\" target=\"_blank\">and<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>II<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Our voice trembles<br \/>\nwith its own electric,<br \/>\nwe who mood like iguanas<br \/>\nwe who breathe sleep<br \/>\nfor a third of our lives,<br \/>\nwe who heat food<br \/>\nto the steaminess of fresh prey,<br \/>\nthen feast with such baroque<br \/>\ngood manners it grows cold.<\/p>\n<p>In mind gardens<br \/>\nand on real verandas<br \/>\nwe are listening,<br \/>\nrapt among the persian lilacs<br \/>\nand the crickets,<br \/>\nwhile radio telescopes<br \/>\nroll their heads, as if in anguish.<\/p>\n<p>With our scurrying minds<br \/>\nand our lidless will<br \/>\nand our lank, floppy bodies<br \/>\nand our galloping yens<br \/>\nand our deep, cosmic loneliness<br \/>\nand our starboard hearts<br \/>\nwhere love careens,<br \/>\nwe are listening,<br \/>\nthe small bipeds<br \/>\nwith the giant dreams.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Diane Ackerman, from &#8220;We Are Listening,&#8221; in <em>Jaguar of Sweet Laughter<\/em> [<a title=\"Handout for a university course in Astronomy (Spring, 2010)\" href=\"http:\/\/homepages.spa.umn.edu\/~larry\/CLASS\/NOTHING\/READINGS\/NothingLit10.pdf\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Not from <em>whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>We Are Listening<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As our metal eyes wake<br \/>\nto absolute night,<br \/>\nwhere whispers fly<br \/>\nfrom the beginning of time,<br \/>\nwe cup our ears to the heavens.<br \/>\nWe are listening<\/p>\n<p>on the volcanic lips of Flagstaff<br \/>\nand in the fields beyond Boston,<br \/>\nlike a great array that blooms<br \/>\nlike coral from the desert floor,<br \/>\non highwire webs patrolled<br \/>\nby computer spiders in Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n<p>We are listening for a sound<br \/>\nbeyond us, beyond sound,<\/p>\n<p>searching for a lighthouse<br \/>\nin the breakwaters of our uncertainty,<br \/>\nan electronic murmur,<br \/>\na bright, fragile\u00a0<em>I am<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Small as tree frogs<br \/>\nstaking out one end<br \/>\nof an endless swamp,<br \/>\nwe are listening<br \/>\nthrough the longest night<br \/>\nwe imagine, which dawns<br \/>\nbetween the life and times of stars.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Diane Ackerman, <em>Poetry Magazine<\/em>, January 1988 [<a title=\"Poetry Magazine: January, 1988 (p. 346) - 'We Are Listening,' by Diane Ackerman\" href=\"http:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poetrymagazine\/browse\/151\/3#20601473\" target=\"_blank\"><em>source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote>[In 1957, one Air Force officer] speculated that one day soon aerospace physicians would be talking about a condition &#8220;known as the deadly rapture of space.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He was right, though NASA preferred the less flowery term &#8220;space euphoria.&#8221;&#8230; The psychologists were nervous because the first two [Soviet] spacewalkers had expressed not only an odd euphoria but a worrisome disinclination to go back inside the capsule&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Four minutes into NASA&#8217;s first spacewalk, Gemini IV astronaut Ed White gushed that he felt &#8220;like a million dollars.&#8221; He struggled to find the words for it. &#8220;I&#8217;ve&#8230; it&#8217;s just tremendous.&#8221; There are moments when the mission transcript reads like the transcript of a 1970s encounter group. Here are White and his commander, James McDivitt, a couple of Air Force guys, after it&#8217;s over:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">WHITE: That was the most natural feeling, Jim.<br \/>\nMcDIVITT:&#8230; You looked like you were in your mother&#8217;s womb.<\/p>\n<p>NASA&#8217;s concern was not that their astronaut was euphoric, but that euphoria might have overtaken good sense. During White&#8217;s twenty minutes of bliss, Mission Control repeatedly tries to break in. Finally the capsule communicator, Gus Grissom, gets through to McDivitt.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">GRISSOM: Gemini 4, get back in!<br \/>\nMcDIVITT: They want you to come back in now.<br \/>\nWHITE: Back in?<br \/>\nMcDIVITT: Back in.<br \/>\nGRISSOM: Roger, we&#8217;ve been trying to talk to you for awhile here.<br \/>\nWHITE: Aw, Cape, let me just [take] a few pictures.<br \/>\nMcDIVITT: No, back in. Come on.<br \/>\nWHITE:&#8230;Listen, you could almost not drag me in, but I&#8217;m coming.<\/p>\n<p>But he wasn&#8217;t. Two more minutes passed. McDivitt starts to plead.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">McDIVITT: Just come on in&#8230;<br \/>\nWHITE: Actually, I&#8217;m trying to get a better picture.<br \/>\nMcDIVITT: No, come on in.<br \/>\nWHITE: I&#8217;m trying to get a picture of the spacecraft now.<br \/>\nMcDIVITT: Ed, come on in here!<\/p>\n<p>Another minute passes before White makes a move toward the hatch, saying, &#8220;This is the saddest moment of my life.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Mary Roach, <a title=\"Mary Roach: 'Packing for Mars'\" href=\"http:\/\/www.maryroach.net\/packing-for-mars.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Packing for Mars<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n<p><a name=\"note\"><\/a>___________________<\/p>\n<p><strong>About the video:<\/strong> Te Voyager missions will reach another star system in an estimated 40,000 years. (By then, the star system in question will have been swamped with radio, television, and other broadcasts of ours for almost that long &#8212; perhaps rendering the physical artifacts superfluous.)<\/p>\n<p>In order to extract the contents of the Golden Record for themselves, of course, a hypothetical alien civilization would need to know what to do with the disk in the first place. For this reason, its surface is helpfully imprinted with schematic, non-verbal <em>instructions<\/em>. They look like this:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/goldenrecord_front.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full\" style=\"width: 100%;\" title=\"NASA's 'Golden Record'\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/goldenrecord_front_sm.jpg?ssl=1\" alt=\"NASA's 'Golden Record'\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the NASA diagram explaining what all that stuff means &#8212; what the aliens could presumably figure out for themselves, without needing a &#8220;how to read these instructions&#8221; meta-manual (click for a slightly larger version):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/golden_record_diagram.jpg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"NASA diagram of &quot;how to play the Golden Record&quot; instructions\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/golden_record_diagram_sm.jpg?resize=500%2C383&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"383\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I like to think that either of the two Voyager spacecraft might simply come down in the Planet X equivalent of the African plains, bonking some unschooled, loinclothed alien in the head like an annoying golden Frisbee &#8212; sending him on a trek to throw the offending object into a sea of liquid methane: <a title=\"Wikipedia, on 'The Gods Must Be Crazy'\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Gods_Must_Be_Crazy\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Gods Must Be Crazy<\/em><\/a> (Intergalactic Edition).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">[<a href=\"#top\">back to top<\/a>]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Video: &#8220;The Voyager Interstellar Record,&#8221; a YouTube playlist of\u00a0 all the sounds on the so-called &#8220;golden record&#8221; sent into space with the two Voyager interstellar spacecraft. For more information, see the note below.] From whiskey river (italicized portion): Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book or The Strange Case of the Self, your Self, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,95,13],"tags":[1438,1494,1907,2439,2440,2441],"class_list":{"0":"post-8219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-science-medicine","9":"category-05_media","10":"tag-diane-ackerman","11":"tag-nasa","12":"tag-mary-roach","13":"tag-golden-record","14":"tag-voyager-missions","15":"tag-walker-percy","16":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-28z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8219"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18498,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8219\/revisions\/18498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}