Member-only story
The Best Ideas Are Useless For The Worst Ears
Astronauts, politicians and the rest of us.
Humbling Stars
More than one astronaut has expressed their awe at observing planet Earth from space. No matter where you go, anywhere else in the solar system would kill you before you can so much as litter the place. Our planet is the one spot we know we can live in. The Milky Way has about 200 billion stars. As of now, even if we could be certain that each of them has a habitable planet similar to ours, we still couldn’t get there in time. The observable universe has about 200 sextillion (or 200 billion trillion) stars. Only 5% of the universe is observable. Still, Earth is all we have now, a tiny planet with a breathable atmosphere and gravity we can bear. No other place, as far we know, can sustain life.
How Many Times Can You Kill Yourself?
During the Cold War, more than one politician speculated about how many times their country could destroy the planet. It was a graphic way to describe their atomic power. It was an even more graphic way to describe human stupidity: even hypothetically, as long as you cannot rebuild a planet, you cannot destroy it more than once. There is no ctrl+z, no undo button; I don’t like to expect much from people, but surely even a politician can get that through their thick skulls.