by The night sky full of stars at Geosite Isik Mountain Karagol campsite at Kizilcahamam district in Ankara, Turkey on October 14, 2023. Credit – Ahmet Okur-Anadolu/Getty Images
me I met a physics graduate student at cosmology school (I’ll call him Max) who, until his late 20s, believed you could only see the stars with a telescope. Max had grown up in New York City, where artificially lit nights dissolved form. When he discovered the “permanence of the sublime,” as the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson described it in his 1836 essay “Nature,” waiting patiently on a clear, dark night, he was mesmerized.
What do we lose when our connection to our cosmic environment is severed?
The night sky is humanity’s only global commonality, shared by all of us across civilizations and millennia. But, today most of us live in cities, where increased light pollution affects our view of the stars. Worse yet, a new type of threat is rapidly growing: thousands of low-earth orbit satellites have been launched in the past five years to deliver global internet connectivity, and they appear as a fast-moving dot across the starry sky. According to current trends, by 2030, artificial satellites will outnumber real stars, and no corner of the planet will be spared: the star messengers will be superseded by instant messages.
To lose the stars is to banish ourselves from the past and perhaps threaten our future. Over thousands of years, the sight of heaven has subtly and silently guided the steps of mankind: It has influenced religion and spirituality, inspired great works of art, enabled navigation in the open seas, accomplished by Polynesian masters thousands of years before Western sailors – and without the aid of any chart or tool. In fact, astronomy is the midwife of science: it is the study of the motion of celestial bodies that ushered in the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century, and thus the high technology on which our lives depend today – from electronic devices that rely on electromagnetism and airplanes that rely on aerodynamics. It also led to sociology and experimental psychology, when the Swiss astronomer Adolph Hirsch realized in 1864 that it was necessary to understand his own response time in order to clock the movement of the stars above the exacting standards of his fellow clockmakers. He even paved the way to artificial intelligence by demonstrating the power of data-based prediction, first with the discovery of the asteroid Ceres in 1802 — not to mention the names and order of the days of the week (a legacy of astrology!), the star-rating system established that we use everywhere online, and the walk in Hollywood.
There are hints that our surprise has been with us from the beginning. For example, prehistoric decorated caves in Dordogne, France are favorably oriented towards sunrise and sunset at solstices. The Pleiades, a magnificent cluster of blue stars near Taurus, universally described as “seven sisters” (or seven women), despite the fact that only six have been visible to the naked eye for all of recorded history. The myth of how the missing Pleiade was lost, and pursued by a powerful hunter, is rarely similar among the Ancient Greeks and the First People of Australia – two cultures that had no contact since Sapiens reached Australia 50 miles a year ago. But 100 thousand years ago, the seventh sister would have been easily seen by our ancestors. So the same myths may have a common origin, stretching back to before humans left their cradles.
Read more: Latest Webb Telescope Image Shows the Birth of Very Young Stars
From the moment Homo Sapiens walked off the plains of Africa, paying close attention to the stars and the phases of the Moon, our ancestors helped predict food availability, stalk prey at the full moon, and travel long distances. When the Earth’s climate went through a period of rapid swings 45,000 years ago, the smallest advantage of finding resources and shelter would have been the difference between survival and extinction – the ultimate price paid by our lesser cousins. intelligent with the stars, the Neanderthals. Cooperation and exchange of information between bands was probably key to our ancestors’ ability to adapt to changing conditions. And it was by the compass of the stars, and by the calendar of the phases of the Moon, that they knew where and when to meet.
We know for sure that the lunar cycle has governed calendars—and thus, the economy—since Akkadian times, over 5,000 years ago, and women tracked the phase of the moon as a sign of their fertility cycle. , not only the first astronomers, but probably the first mathematicians, too. Because of the rising of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, and its retina of stars, the Egyptians created the 24-hour time system that is still used today. Even in our technological age, distant galaxies are needed to keep atomic clocks in sync with Earth’s slowing rotation. GPS would be hopelessly inaccurate without corrections due to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which was first tested in 1919 by observing the change in the position of the stars during a total eclipse. Deep down, we are still led by the stars.
Just as the stars helped Sapiens overcome the climatic challenges that threatened the Neanderthals so long ago, today they can once again show us the path forward, as we face the combined mortal dangers of anthropogenic climate change and the loss of biodiversity. The “overview effect” describes the awe and humiliation that confronts astronauts when they see our shiny blue marble floating in the blackness of space. By looking up into the night and contemplating the remote, unreachable suns scattered in the infinite, unfathomable darkness, we can all experience a “reverse overview effect”: Realizing that our shared Cosmic home is irreplaceable, and the We demand to be better stewards of his, and our, destiny.
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