Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft
iman January 27th, 2010
Rapid technological leaps forward in the last 10 years mean mankind is closer than ever before to knowing whether extra-terrestrial life exists in our galaxy, one of Britain’s leading scientists said on Tuesday.
It’s been a fascinating week in the world of astronomy. The article continues:
“Now we know that most of the stars, like the sun, are likely to have planetary systems around them and we have every reason to suspect that many of them have planets that are rather like our earth,” Rees told Reuters in an interview.
He said great strides in space search techniques over the last decade had removed one of the big obstacles in finding other worlds, and possibly even complex life forms, in our Milky Way galaxy of more than a 100 billion stars.
“Indeed, we live in very exciting times,” he said.
What rings in the mind of Baha’is are the prophetic utterances of Baha’u'llah from well over a century ago, which not only assure us that many stars have planets, but that they all do:
The learned men, that have fixed at several thousand years the life of this earth, have failed, throughout the long period of their observation, to consider either the number or the age of the other planets. Consider, moreover, the manifold divergencies that have resulted from the theories propounded by these men. Know thou that every fixed star hath its own planets, and every planet its own creatures, whose number no man can compute.
(Baha’u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u'llah)
It is indeed exciting to observe how the path of scientific discovery re-enforces the Baha’i writings. Next, perhaps scientists will find an Earth-like planet, or discover creatures on these planets, or even change our perception of the word “creatures”? I wait for that day, with eager anticipation.
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- General Interest , News & Current Affairs
- Comments(5)
I’ve always wondered how one is to understand the quote you cited from Baha’u'llah.
The first part he must be referring to the learned men of his time and place, as we know that they were completely wrong. The Unversie is 13.6 billion years old and the Earth is around 4 billion years old. And those men of learning didnt have the scientific method or any evidence to back up their claims hence the manifold divergencies that have resulted. I don’t know how we should understand the last part, because fixed star is a very old world term (Greek) referring to actual stars as appose to planets (known as wondering stars back then). But the difficulty is that we know that some observable fixed stars don’t have planets and some do. Perhaps we have to look from a deep time perspective and say that they once had planets or may do in the future? I don’t know. So far it seems that life is improbable on many of the planets in our own solar system. Perhaps the definition of creatures could include rocks and gas which I think is very profound as it would resonate with the idea that everything is alive and indeed that would make it very hard to compute.
That every planet has its creatures would in our own solar system indeed require a broadening of the term ‘creature’, or so it appears. I wonder what the arabic word is that Baha’ullah used. In any case, the image evoked is that the universe is very much alive and we are not the only freaks of nature with a mind on a lonely planet
That every star has planets seems to me a remarkable statement for the nineteenth century. As mentioned, that is something that is starting to be observed only very recently. I wonder what the understanding was among astronomists in the nineteenth century. Anyone care to investigate that?
Given current technologies have placed the planet most similar to Earth as six times larger, we still have a long way to finding planets as small as Mercury or even dwarf planets such as Pluto or Ceres. We haven’t even conclusively found all the dwarf planets in our own Solar System.
With intention of respect to the above respondents, I must confess I chuckle when I see one trying to define, confine, or in any way appraise the dimensions of the INFINITE universe, or any its INFINITE matter. In my present, though limited, explorations of Bahá’u’lláh’ writings, I find messages that exhibit Universal themes-beyond reason, laws or limits of any one people, place, time, religion… planet……His passages shift awareness to the truth of existence, which is grounding as much as abounding, “changeless Faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future.”
While I cannot offer all the answers, here is some food for thought:
“Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.”
-Carol Sagan
“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods. The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination…I maintain that cosmic religiousness is the strongest and most noble driving force of scientific research.”
- Albert Einstein
“The earth has its inhabitants, the water and the air contain many living beings and all the elements have their nature spirits, then how is it possible to conceive that these stupendous stellar bodies are not inhabited? Verily, they are peopled, but let it be known that the dwellers accord with the elements of their respective spheres. These living beings do not have states of consciousness like unto those who live on the surface of this globe: the power of adaptation and environment moulds their bodies and states of consciousness, just as our bodies and minds are suited to our planet.
(Abdu’l-Baha, Divine Philosophy, p. 113)”
I find that the above quotation aptly sums up how vast the universe is and just how infinite the possibilities of life are, over and above “life” as we “know” it.