Beginning "I am sick of hearing people say that the Space Age is "over" because we haven't sent humans back to the Moon. Seriously? That's your complaint? ...," Annalee Newitz begins a rant at io9 on the incredible technology we now have in space and the incredible amount of knowledge we've gained. And, indeed, we knew so little about space even a century ago that we had no concrete knowledge of the size of the universe, the amount of planets, suns, and galaxies in the universe, what in detail composed them, that there might be dark matter and dark energy, or how most of it worked. A century ago Einstein's writings on special relativity and the quantum, which are now fundamental to physics and chemistry, had only recently been published and were barely understood; his theory of general relativity was still a year away. Humans had few large telescopes, had no large rockets, and had never sent anything into space nor had any realistic plans to do so. We now have a space station -- we've had space stations for several decades now. Oh how things have changed.So Newitz's article is an enjoyable rant and right. No, we are not going today to other star systems. Really? Do you think that is going to happen? This is the space age for the foreseeable future.
Newitz's rant, BTW, seems to borrow heavily in tone from Louis C.K., and he is damn funny (Newitz not so much, though that's not her point), so you should watch this:
No comments:
Post a Comment