I just got back from taking the dogs for their nightly walk. I love this time of year - clear, crisp and stark. The clouds that had been heavy in the sky were clearing out, leaving sky black and starry. In the east, the Pleiades are half way up in the sky and Jupiter low on the horizon. It was one of those nights that makes you imagine anything is possible out there.
The movie we played back earlier this evening (see my previous post) had gotten my own childlike sense of wonder going. So I spent some time simply staring up at the sky. Just like I did as a little kid, I found myself looking up and wondering - was something looking back?
In the year or two - or ten - we have made so many science breakthroughs. Biology, astronomy, physics, and so many other fields have seen rapid advances. We are on the verge of discovering life somewhere out there and I believe we are in for some really big science surprises.
But the I think biggest thing - something pretty much unacknowledged - is that we are probably on the verge of developing star travel. Several groups have sprung up, with names like the 100 Year Starship Program and American Antigravity, just to name a few. If any of these trees bear any fruit, we are probably at the very humble beginnings of our journey to the stars.
I believe that our destiny is among the stars. Yet, I also believe that we need to be good neighbors when we go - and current events suggest to me that at the moment, we would probably be anything but. If we do begin to travel out there in a fleet of starships armed with phasers and photon torpedoes, I suspect the neighbors wouldn't let us get very far. Likely we would be in for a very rude, catastrophic surprise.
So as our technology advances, my own view is that it is imperative that our level of civilization advance, too. Our collective souls need to catch up to our technology before we become the barbarians at our neighbors' gates. And in the process we need to maintain that childlike sense of wonder, the same sense I had tonight as I stared up into the stars of a cool fall night.
