‘Star Trek’ Meme Reminds Us To Be Thankful For Earth Itself
Facebook has been rife with “Star Trek” Thanksgiving memes for the last week or more which in and of itself is puzzling. “Star Trek” is hardly the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about when commemorating the first harvest feast shared by this country’s Pilgrim colonists and local Native Americans.
But it’s reasonable to assert that “Star Trek” and Thanksgiving are at least tangentially linked since the latter is a celebration of home and hearth whereas “Star Trek” is a celebration of humankind’s exploration of the cosmos. Certainly, this time of year represents an ideal time of year to be thankful for home and shelter.
As for “Star Trek”?
The Facebook meme’s link to “Star Trek” reminds us that we should also celebrate our home planet during this time of thanksgiving. With each passing observation, extrasolar planet hunters using both ground- and space-based telescopes are teaching us that earthlike analogs are very few and far between.Despite wishful thinking among members of the astrobiology community, the mere idea that this quadrant of the galaxy is rife with Earth 2.0s is frankly naïve. In Trekkian terms, we would have to dig deep in the U.S.S.’ Enterprise’s celestial map room to find anything remotely like our own planet within a day’s warp factor from here. Our existence here in this solar system; the third planet from our metal-rich, G-dwarf star is the end product of such happenstance, that serendipity can hardly describe it.
The hard truth is that even our most distant progeny will unlikely be capable of switching solar systems in the same way we hopscotch across continents. More likely as the clock starts its loud ticking on our planet’s threatened biosphere, we will be forced to remedy the situation via some sort of geoengineering (which warrants caution and skepticism).
The successful launch of NASA’S DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, the first long-overdue step in learning how to divert a potentially civilization-ending asteroidal Earth-impactor, is a move in the right direction.
DART will impact the known 530-ft diameter asteroid Dimorphos and slightly change its motion, says NASA. Although Dimorphos is not a threat to Earth, the idea is to demonstrate that a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a target asteroid and intentionally collide with it and deflect it via kinetic impact.
To ensure humanity’s survival, we certainly need to permanently expand offworld, to the Moon, Mars, even to habitable artificial platforms in space. But once humans leave this planet for good, we will no longer be earthlings. And it’s inevitable that we will lose a portion of our humanity since our society and civilization and very essence is so much a part of terra firma here.
Once we permanently leave Earth, we leave behind our home; the very thing that is the source of our greatest strengths. The lesson here is that we need to protect the planet from threats of both our own making as well as threats from stealthy near-Earth impactors. The latter is arguably more difficult.
Even so, it’s possible to lessen threats from comets or asteroids using both ground and space-based observations as well as DART-like robotic redirection spacecraft.
Above all, Earth is our ultimate home. Humanity needs to thank its lucky stars (pun intended) that we are here to talk about sunsets and long evening walks.
Who needs an Earth 2.0 when, to paraphrase the late John Candy in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” you have the genuine article right here?
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