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The light lives longer than the one whose hand lit it in the dark
When she first saw this picture of photographer Karina Pilugina, she remembered the words of space science popularizer Karl Sagan that astrophysics teaches humility no worse than religion. So everything teaches something, doesn't it? But war teaches us... but I don't know what it teaches us, and what teaching opportunities war has in general.
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It would seem that space and its exploration are about the greatness of the mind, because to understand it, to break away from the Earth, to take off and land on another planet, it takes a great deal of intellectual effort. And a focus on discoveries, it would seem, should make the world as a whole more peaceful, more cohesive. However, a few things about space undermine the youthful idea of extraterrestrial worlds as a shared human dream and bring back to Earth — one that already exists and which, as the same Sagan said, is our only home.
Many space programs came about thanks to captured and pardoned Nazi scientists. The man who built the Saturn V rocket that sent humans to the moon was in charge of the production of a ballistic missile in a concentration camp by the hands of enslaved people. Specifically, this first step to the moon — sorry for the pun — relies on one foot a few thousand people killed a few decades earlier. I wonder if Karl Sagan, a descendant of the Jews from Galicia who left Europe before the war of Dumas, knew about it. You can't know that much, but you can't. Everyone knows everything, everyone knows how to close their eyes.
Science, thought in our youth, teaches us to be a citizen of the world, and over the years we realized that science itself created everything that is used in wars. So I'm growing up and confused between the realization of the scarcity of the Earth against the vastness of space and the realization that when you are attacked on Earth, you have to meet the enemy alone. Some dream of colonizing Mars at the same time as mercilessly playing to humans who could destroy Earth.
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These are not the first times when terrible wars are going on or about to start, and humanity is still thinking about other planets, so everything is fine with ours.
Geographer Volodymyr Gerinovich published a book about Mars in Winnipeg in 1914. The author believes in life on Mars and starts with a simple:“The position of Mars to the Earth is fundamental; once it is closer to it, and sometimes farther away.”.
Hence the answer to why one day Mars is a bright star in the sky, not a pale speck left by the tip of a needle dipped in paint.
Mars is smaller than Earth. “Because of this, the burden of Mars is less than the burden of the Earth.”What about the moral burden? Not a word about it.
The satellites Phobos and Deimos are terribly small. A lunar night like ours, according to the geographer, you will not see on Mars. So what is not a reason not to leave the Earth?
Centuries ago, the author believed that the Martians already had to abandon controversy and surrender to science. And today, a century later, we already know what science can do.
Why have they not come to us yet, the author asks himself in the year of the First World War. Because, perhaps, “Every body of heaven is closed to itself, and will not let anyone out of its own work from its surface.”
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Humanity has managed to send spacecraft beyond the solar system - Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. That is, not humanity, but a certain group of people passionate about their business.
Peace-loving “Voyagers”, who were lucky enough to leave the borders of our solar system, were sent on a long journey in 1977 — just at a time when repression against dissidents in Ukraine was continuing, and after the fictitious trial of Levko Lukyanenko — the man who would later write the Act of Proclamation of Ukrainian Independence — soviets The government will send him back to the camps. Now the two Voyagers are 25 billion kilometers away from us. I hope this is a safe distance.
At the same time, the copper plate on the ship carries a greeting in 55 languages of the world. Perhaps the translation is not very accurate, but it sounds like this: may everything be very well; we have come with peace to those who are our friends; hello to our friends from the front, we in this world send you our good wishes; see you next time; hello you, whoever you are, we have good will to you, and we carry peace through all outer space; welcome to us when you have time; God will give you peace; come to us if you have time; peace to you.
So much love and peace we seem to be able to send into uncharted space to someone we have no idea about yet.
If you are interested, then there is also a Ukrainian greeting: “We send greetings from our world, wish you happiness, health and many summers.” But my favorite sounds in Rajasthan: “Greetings to all. We're happy here, and you're happy there.” And then in Arabic: “Let time gather us.”
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The starry sky is my favorite landscape, confirming the fragility of the past and the timeliness of what comes to us later. The stars we see may no longer exist, and yet we still see their light.
I have come up with a beautiful encouraging thought from infinite limits: the light lives longer than the one whose hand lit it in the darkness.
Text: Vira Kuriko
Photo: Karina Pilugina
