Fortress Party 2017, like so many of its predecessors, was held on a snowy day.
There are no good pictures of the Cosmos room, because it was pitch black. We set up a black walls and ceilings, put some mattresses on floor, and bought a mini planetarium projector. The magic came from the narration by Neil deGrasse Tyson which boomed over speakers as guests lied back and watched the stars and star dust circle above their heads.
Even if you don't have a planetarium, this is worth a listen in a dark room. If you are more of a visual learner, the transcript is copied below. (Or at least about 80% of it.)
Appendix: Cosmos Transcript
The cosmos is all there is, or ever was, or ever will be. It contains infinite multitudes, and multiplicitous infinities. It is the alpha and the omega, the kappa and the delta, the Sigma Nu and the Evans Scholars.
Hello. I’m Neil Degrasse Tyson, and we’re about to begin a journey that will take us from the infinitesimal to the infinite, from the dawn of time to the distant future. We’ll start here, lost and confused in a labyrinth of blankets in a suburban home on planet Earth, and journey into the unknown.
Come with me.
Together, we'll explore galaxies and suns and worlds. We’ll surf the gravity waves of space-time, we’ll finger knit cosmic strings, we’ll create macrame with interstellar beads. We’ll explore the planets of stars that never die, discover atoms as massive as suns and universes smaller than atoms. We’ll find ourselves in holes darker than death or night, and in sugar bowls of stardust on shelves higher than Babel. I hope you’re wearing layers, because the temperature will really fluctuate.
To make this journey, we'll need imagination. But imagination alone is not enough because the reality of nature is far more wondrous than anything we can imagine. Don’t believe me? Try this: Close your eyes, and imagine a tardigrade, six of its eight legs locomoting rhythmically as it searches the substrate for food. Imagine as it happens across a large patch of algae. It begins feeding, easily piercing cells with the sharp stylets around its mouth, then using its muscular pharynx to suck the nutrients into its intestine. Can you picture it? Sated, it now has the energy to fulfill its biological imperative to reproduce. Imagine as it shuffles onward toward a nearby female. She too is rotund, but softer. She has recently molted, and deposited her eggs onto her shed cuticle. She retreats to the algae to begin a hard-earned feast. Now back to our male tardigrade, stumbling lazily over to the eggs. Imagine him as he positions himself just above the shed cuticle. Picture him as he begins coating the eggs with sperm expelled from its single gonad. The eggs are now fertilized, and will hatch a new generation in fourteen days. Our tardigrade is now ready to begin the cycle anew. Imagine as he shuffles back to the algae to feed. Now, imagine it’s white.
Did you picture it? Were they wearing hats? Tardigrades wear small hats. If you weren’t picturing hats, you weren’t picturing tardigrades.
If we're going to be venturing out into the farthest reaches of the cosmos, we need to know our cosmic address, and Earth is the first line of that address. In the real estate market that is the known universe, we’ve invested in a very good neighborhood indeed.
Our own planet exists in “the Goldilocks zone,” not too cold, not too hot, just right to create the conditions necessary for our particular variety of life. Of course, this came at a great cost to the three bears who were here before: Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, and Ursa Mama. We have dislodged them from their rightful place in the cosmos. We must be forever vigilant, watching the night sky to prepare for their inevitable return to extract their terrible revenge.
Our nearest neighbor, the Moon, has no sky, no ocean, no life... just the scars of cosmic impacts, a scattered collection of abandoned lunar rovers and flags, and a mysterious monolith, built by beings unknown for mysterious and inscrutable purpose. Some theologians warn against looking directly at it for out of misguided, primitive superstition. Clear eyed scientists, however, have reason to believe that licking it may unlock truths of the universe.
Now, let’s move to the heart of our neighborhood: The sun.
Our star powers the wind and the waves and all the life on the surface of our world. It holds all the worlds of the solar system in its gravitational embrace, having captured us in a forced dance that began some five billion years ago. The sun has been leading this dance for the entirety of our planet’s existence. When will we break the cycle, and take control of our own gravitational destiny? 2017 has been a year of tumultuous reckoning. The power is ours. How shall we wield it?
The sun’s nearest hostage is Mercury. Small, diminutive, and sun-baked. What can hope to exist in such a desolate place, save for the ashes of Mercury’s incinerated dreams? It coulda been a contender. It coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what it is, let’s face it.
Next, we come to cloud-covered Venus, where runaway greenhouse effect has turned it into a kind of hell.
Mars a world with as much land as Earth itself, but without our precious, oxygen-rich atmosphere. The residents there are at the mercy and whims of Governor Vilos Cohaagen, who keeps a tight control over the oxygen that is supplied to its captive population. Want to help the native population of mutants and outcasts? Get your ass to Mars.
A belt of rocky asteroids circles the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It’s not a great place to live, but housing is somewhat reasonable, and it’s walkable.
With its four giant moons and dozens of smaller ones, Jupiter is like its own little solar system, but good luck getting into its private little club. Jupiter wields its influence like a club, swatting away anyone it deems unworthy. It has more mass than all the other planets combined, a fact that it never misses a chance to mention. If you ask me, Jupiter’s best days are behind it, forever going on about past glories. Get over it.
Jupiter's Great Red Spot a hurricane three times the size of planet Earth. It's been raging for centuries. The FEMA response has thus far been found wanting by some in partisan circles, but it’s still early days.
The crown jewel of our solar system is Saturn, ringed by freeways of countless orbiting and slowly tumbling snowballs. Every snowball, a little moon.
Uranus and Neptune, the outermost planets, unknown to the ancients and only discovered after the invention of the telescope. Uranus. Uranus-Uranus-Uranus. Yes, I know what it sounds like. Grow up.
Beyond the outermost planet -- That’s right. I said Neptune is the outermost planet. “But what about Pluto?” you whine. It’s not a planet. There are specific criteria that defines the term planet. Pluto doesn’t meet them. Pluto never met them. It’s not a planet. Get over it.
I’ll begin again.
Beyond the outermost planet, there's a swarm of tens of thousands of frozen worlds. And Pluto is one them. So is Charon. Where’s the outrage over Charon not being a planet? Where’s the outrage??
Moving further, we encounter Voyager 1, hurtling into the unknown. Of all our spacecraft, this is the one that's traveled farthest from home. She bears a message to a billion years from now, something of who we were, how we felt, and the music we made. A Brandenburg Concerto, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the original cast recording of Godspell, Rush’s third album, an early demo of the song that would eventually become ‘Funkytown.’ Who knows who might eventually receive this interstellar gift? I hope it’s a culture that appreciates kickass mix-tapes. Might we someday receive such a package from extraterrestrial beings? What might their music sound like? Or perhaps they’ll have sent us an assortment of flavors and scents? Wouldn’t that be wild?
The deeper waters of this vast cosmic ocean and their numberless worlds lie ahead. On one such world, rain may be the chemical composition of Gatorade. On another, lettuce may be the dominant form of intelligent life. Still another planet may appear to be exactly like our own Earth, except Nixon never resigned, the US prevailed in Vietnam, and lawn darts are still legal, widespread, and FUN.
From way out here, the Sun may look like just another star. But it’s not. It’s our star, brilliant, gleaming, and bright. And it still exerts its gravitational hold on a trillion frozen comets, leftovers from the formation of the solar system nearly five billion years ago. This web of frozen rock and ice is called the Oort Cloud.
No one has ever seen it before, nor could they, because it’s simply something that came from the deranged and unhealthy mind of Debbie Oort, of Sterling, Virginia. We dated, briefly, in grad school, and it wasn’t serious, but she still sends me emails about her ideas. It’s not gonna happen, Debbie. Move on.
This enormous cloud of comets encloses the solar system, which is the second line of our cosmic address.
We've only been able to detect the planets of other stars for a few decades, but we already know that planets are so plentiful that they outnumber the stars. There must be at least a hundred of them, perhaps 150 or more!
Almost all of them will be very different from Earth, and hostile to life as we know it. They might be home to their own civilizations. Klingons, Skrulls, Hottentots… any one of them might mount an invasion to end us all.
But what do we know about life? We've met only one kind so far. Earthlife.
Your eyes have now adjusted, and we’re able to see some of the fainter objects in the night sky.
Look there, and marvel at the thin, white ribbon that is the Milky Way. The smooth nougat is visible to the naked eye on a clear night, but the creamy caramel can only be seen by the technological eye of our most sensitive scientific instruments.
Clear in the sky from the northern hemisphere is “Orion’s belt.” It’s a misnomer, however, as Orion’s “belt” isn’t a belt at all. It’s actually three stars.
Next, we see the Pleiades, a star cluster first identified by Gregor Pleiade, noted astronomer and inventor of pleated pants.
Look to the east, and you may spot Bellerophon, the greatest hero of the Greeks until the rise of Heracles. You may also see some stars and constellations!
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