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“Sing it loud and sing it clear!”
It’s Pluto Day! And aside from the science, which is pretty clearly amazing, we on this blog turn to the politics — where the question is this:
“Do you feel ennobled by this accomplishment?”
You, as a taxpayer, citizen, or even just as a resident of the United States have contributed to our obtaining the photos — and the incredible amounts of other data, some of the choicest photographic examples of which are due to be released as early as about a half hour from the time this is published — that you see here. It costs tax money, after all — and as various states’ revenue policy choices have shown, all tax money is to some degree related to all other tax money. So even if you just bought a chalupa in Mission Viejo, you contributed a little bit to this.
So this is a good day to ask: was it worth it? If you’re ever going to answer “yes,” today would probably be the day, and so a “no” answer today is especially meaningful.
Two sorts of people might be expected to say “no.”
The first are anti-tax right-wing libertarians, who think that if this is worth doing at all it is worth doing solely privately rather than by forcibly seizing people’s assets. (Note: I’m trying to use their framing here, which in this case isn’t mine.) Excluded from this group are Heinlein-inspired right-wing libertarian “space survivalists,” who think that there is only one way for humanity to survive and it is out into the void — and they want to ensure that they and their progeny (genetic or ideological) will be able to get out there.
The second are left-wing populists, nominally the opposite of the group above, whose either suspect that the whole thing is a fake — please, don’t, not here, and if you must then use your own name so that you can be more effectively ridiculed — or that the resources expended on this project could have been used more effectively to keep people alive. The latter view was best and most succinctly expressed, in my view, by the influential musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron in his song “Whitey on the Moon,” which corrosively and incisively questions the priorities of sending Neil Armstrong to dance on the moon while his sister’s face and arm are swelling due to the effect of rat bites.
Here, it you haven’t seen it, you gotta. It’s short and sweet — and bitter.
The answer to Scott-Heron — and I don’t claim it’s a sufficient answer, but just that it’s one that doesn’t depend on the question of whether the technological advances that may filter down to the poor are worthwhile — is that it is ennobling. We’re happier to be in a world that shows us such wonders. As such, it is fair for society to pay for it collectively — much as it paid for the research that enabled the internet, for municipal fireworks shows, for parades, for the eradication of diseases spread by rat bites, for public housing, for symphony orchestras, and for paying the likes of Gil Scott-Heron to sing at public events.
It makes us feel better as human beings. And the nicest thing about this sort of discovery is that the benefits are more or less equal to all. Anyone can appreciate what we see here — a few in the profession more than others, to be sure, but anyone can feel a sense of awe different in kind from that we see at the 1052nd fireworks show of our life.
This is different. This is a stepping stone to something else — something we may not be able to imagine. Something as unexpected as finding a heart on Pluto that, when it is filmed to show its component materials, turns out not to be a single object, but an ice-cream cone shaped lobe on the left and some scattered sea of blue free of the dark red of nitrogen surrounding it, red that spread to the junior partner in the double planet, where not enough solar heat reaches its north pole to smoke it out into space, as it does elsewhere on the body of Charon. So what we found three billion miles away is both a heart and a broken heart. In some ways, isn’t that perfect?
And the “whale” that we first saw a week ago — its made of nitrogen of some sort, we suspect — is now tentatively named Cthulhu! Do you feel ennobled? I do, for reasons that I can’t even fully explain. That may be how I know that the feeling is real.
Here’s to Pluto, to Charon, to those other moons out in the Styx. Give in to the feeling of nobility, while you can. And patiently wait for more.
Colorful — but false! But do note the effects of second-hand smoke on Charon’s pole.)
And … an update: 7:30 p.m., July 14.
This is as good as we have for now. And it’s really good. (Look, another bull’s-eye — this time to the left of the heart!) But what’s especially cool is comparing today’s image to the best we ever got from the (surely worthy) Hubble craft:
That would make one hell of a pair of sunglasses, wouldn’t it?
*Pluto is the planet of Nuclear Energy. Plutonium. In our opinon, Pluto is still a planet although many astrophysicists think it is just a over grown asteroid. Chiron is an asteroid as is Vesta and several others. Too bad we couldn’t land a space vehicle on Pluto as we did on Titan…..the seventh moon of Saturn. Too bad they won’t say what they found on Titan……very interesting stuff.
*Pluto was found in 1930 and Pluto takes 248 to circle our Sun.
Open thread?
Hat-tip to Gericault and Paula, the horrendous record of our worse-than-no-DA DA makes the Washington Post. You know, a WHOLE LOT of you should have come out and voted for Greg Diamond last year. We are a national laughing stock.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/07/13/the-jaw-dropping-policeprosecutor-scandal-in-orange-county-calif/
And let’s see, who-all backed this crook (not morons but people who shoulda known better?) Lou Correa. Frank Barbaro. Miguel Pulido. The list goes on forever….
And happy Bastille Day, everybody – let’s tear it down! (I know, it’s a cautionary / reactionary song, but still Rush’s best tune…)
My intention was to make this an open thread for discussion of all matters Plutonic — “it’s like methaaaaaane on your wedding day” – and Plutoid, if people want to get astrophysical, physical (“let me hear your planetary body talk.”)
But we can do whatever you want here — whether Pluto, Goofy, or Lady or Tramp — although the previous Weekend Open Thread has not yet expired.
And hey — the list doesn’t go on forever! It stops not much over 200,000!
If I’d come in while in the middle of all this, I might have been bumped off. Sort of surprising that I lost…..
Tom Daly, Jose Solorio….
Believe it or not, I started sing/chanting “a rat done bit my sister Nell with whitey on Plu-to” last night.
The science is amazing, especially to us non-scientists. The investment? if were up to me, I probably would not have done it. Still, it’s been done with phoney, printed up Bush/Obama Bucks and as investments go it’s a helluva a lot better return than anything we’ve got out of the War on Terror, the War on Iraq, the War on Afghanistan, the War on Drugs, the War on Diarrhea, etc., etc, ad nauseam, ad infinitum.
Helluva show, though. And the War on Diarrhea hasn’t been so bad.
As for your singing GSH — of course I believe it. You had a cultured upbringing.
No, my Dad had an Up With People record.
Oh jeez, another day lost to that earworm farm.
Actually, the soprano isn’t bad. And it starts out like it might be a bluegrass number. And then…
I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry to hear that. It’s brave of you to talk about it in public.
*Greece will not sell its antiquities to Angela Merkel. They will leave the European Union and reinstitute the drachma…….and get foreign support from a variety of other countries including China and Brazil.
Yeah, but will the Brit-thieves give back the Elgin Marbles?
No, Athens is too polluted.
They steal for the good of the world, you know.
Hasn’t that horse already left the barn? Or did Finland or someone vote “no” on the deal while I wasn’t paying attention?
*Helen…is that you? Achilles and Hector are still waiting to meet in the UCF final. “Give me a fine Trojan Horse and I will give you a good 5 cent cigar!”
This is cool.
http://earthsky.org/space/space-artist-depicted-pluto-36-years-ago
*Another sad tale of America: Jack Wu! Jack was our pal….what happened?