What will they think of next?
Growing up I would occasionally see a TV show called "What Will They Think of Next?" also known as "Science International." It was about advances in science and scientific ideas in medicine and technology that people were proposing. It was a program we would pick up from Canada; one of the advantages of growing up in a town 75 miles from the Canadian border was that the TV antennas picked up two stations (CTV and CBC) from that country.
I was reminded of that show recently with a story about a program to develop and send small robot probes to the nearest solar system, Alpha Centauri, 4.367 light years away. What is known so far is that Alpha Centauri has three suns and possibly has an Earth like planet orbiting one. This daring plan is proposed by a group of individuals and is estimated to cost $10 billion. It would take about 20 years to develop the equipment, another 20 years for the fleet of small probes to reach their destination and about four years to beam back their findings. I figure, if this all works as planned, I’ll be in my early 90s by the time the information is received back on Earth. I realize that’s a mighty big if.
It almost reads like a sci-fi story, but it’s a great example of how science and technology has changed and advanced. If everything proceeds, the fleet of probes would be the size of iPhones and would get a jump start through the use of a laser system on Earth that would accelerate the probes to a fifth of the speed of light, which travels at 186,000 miles per second. By comparison Voyager 1, launched on September 5, 1977, is the size of a small compact car, would take more than 70,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri. Even though it’s traveling relatively much slower in terms of interstellar speed (11 miles per second) it is humanity’s most distant space probe and has left our solar system behind. Voyager 1 has already sent back information about the outer planets of our solar system and is still beaming back data.
I realize some people might respond with "Who cares," or they’ll question why the money is being spent on such a project. First, I care and I have a lot of friends who also care about humanity learning about the universe beyond our relatively small portion of it. Second, these are private individuals who are deciding to use their own money to try and help peoplein the long term. Compared to stories where people have spent small fortunes on gold plated and jewel encrusted watches or large fortunes on building mansions, I think I prefer people using their riches on something that will help all of us learn about the cosmos.
Some might feel that the money could be used to help our world and I won’t deny that there are many problems facing us. For me, one of them is willful ignorance, a decision that we’ve learned enough or we don’t need to continue learning, which can be applied to more than just the galaxy. Count me among those that believe we can’t continue in that direction. We have educated ourselves on so much in the areas of science, medicine, society and culture, but we could learn so much more about the universe, our world and ourselves if we truly became committed to gaining that knowledge.
