Looking up into space, or down into the Ether?
Troy M. Morris, Director of Operations
3 minute read
Most people share in the imagery of many movies and stories by staring off into space. Whether the “space” around them is the endless nighttime setting of stars, or the watching of clouds coasting across a blue sky, all can recall a time spent in any of these pastimes observing “space”. In this human-centered experience, our society takes these views from our own perspective, which is why we often talk about outer space as “up there” or looking “up” into space. But is that all?
The first challenge to this accepted notion of perspective came to me sitting on a beach outside my eventual alma mater, seeing a gorgeous sky more full with stars than what could be seen from my light-polluted hometown. It was from there on that beach of Lake Superior, where on other days I was taking SCUBA courses in that freezing beauty, that my view was unobstructed enough to wonder. That clear view of the sky gave me that same perspective into outer space, and all the cosmos, colors, and wonders it presents. And due to my dives under the surface of that dark, ebbing water, I knew what it was like to look down beneath the waves. Which drew my thinking, from above, to the horizon, to below; and finally realizing, WOW!
Just as the time beneath waves warped my perspectives of “up and down”, the travel of man to the moon had warped my perspectives of “here and there.” Those accepted notions smashed together like waves colliding over rocks, creating the new current of thought. We look down into space as much as we look up or out. Earth is the shore from which we peer down into millions of years of expansion, energy, and explosions that are a tide pool, of which we are just dipping into the surface.
This perspective builds with a growing understanding of orbital dynamics, which is gaining all the time for me while developing a space technology company. The basics of it, as explained and understood by my last-physics-class-was-in-high-school brain, is that when free of the gravity well that is our planet, an object moves with relative freedom from out of Earth, to out of the asteroid belt, to out of the solar system. This means to me, that exploring out of our Earth environment is like exploring out of our shores: scary, dangerous, full of risks, but possible with preparation and technology.
Now here, while the more experienced are screaming with how wrong I’ve simplified an entire expanse of study, is the point. Historically humanity has explored not the unknown, but the barely understood. By expanding our understanding, at times by widening our perspective, society gains the ability to explore the previously unknown. Therefore, combining the collective understanding across disciplines - with an expanding understanding of how to approach them - opens the areas of thought, study, or exploration. All of these are needed, desperately. As thought, study, and exploration are integral to each other, an advancement in any of these areas is progress in all of them. It is with this wide statement that we return to the narrow-focused title of this column.
As much as modern humanity understands space, the past eons of humanity have wondered about it. With how far we’ve come in philosophical distance, but how far we still have to go in physical distance, humanity must and will continue the thought. Ancient societies since the Greeks declared “ether” as the energy outside our astronomical perspective, modern science considers “dark matter” as the material between the visible systems around us. These are not too dissimilar in perspective. From where we are standing, isn’t it more important to consider an outrageous alternative than to only accept the standing perspective?
Recommended column to read next: Water Bears IN SPACE