{"id":4213,"date":"2023-09-19T00:57:59","date_gmt":"2023-09-19T04:57:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/a-planetary-scientists-love-letter-to-life-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2023-09-19T00:57:59","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T04:57:59","slug":"a-planetary-scientists-love-letter-to-life-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/a-planetary-scientists-love-letter-to-life-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"A Planetary Scientist\u2019s Love Letter to Life \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

\n

\"Mars<\/a><\/p>\n

In ten billion years, the Sun will run out of hydrogen and burn out, swallowing the inner planets of our Solar System into the abyss of its collapse as the outer planets drift farther and farther. In time, the cosmos itself will run out of energy and none will be left to succor life \u2014 the fact of it or the possibility of it \u2014 as the universe goes one expanding into the austere emptiness of pure spacetime. So will end the short line of life in the ledger of eternity. In the meantime, we are here on our improbable planet, living our improbable lives \u2014 perishable triumphs against the immense cosmic odds of nonexistence<\/a>, haunted by our earthly existential loneliness<\/a> nested into our cosmic loneliness<\/a>. Is it any wonder that, since we first looked up at the night sky, we have been yearning to find what Whitman called \u201cbeings who walk other spheres,\u201d searching for life on other worlds that tells us something about how to live on this one, something about the deepest meaning of life itself? <\/p>\n

Planetary scientist Sarah Stewart Johnson<\/strong> takes up these questions in The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>) \u2014 a sweeping civilizational memoir of our longing for cosmic companionship and the particular pull of the red planet on our imagination, rendered by our science into an affirmation of Ray Bradbury\u2019s Mars-fomented insistence<\/a> that it is part of our nature \u201cto start with romance and build to a reality,\u201d living proof of Richard Feynman\u2019s passionate conviction that \u201cnature has the greatest imagination of all.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\"mars1\"