Did you catch this? A human-sent satellite has been set in orbit around an incoming comet. This is scientifically important because these errant comets have been hanging around the outer edges of our solar system since Earth was formed, and therefore they have a lot of information about the earlier history of the galaxy within their odd confines. But my interest is in the feat itself: this is the most precise effort at ‘throwing’ ever attempted by any species. The satellite had to be thrown out of earth’s gravity, used Mars as a slingshot, and then, at a distance of more than 400 million kliks from the signalers on Earth, it had to be slowed down and aimed so precisely that it would go into slow orbit around the irregularly shaped comet moving toward the sun at 15 kliks a second - that’s 24,000 mph. That’s some accurate throwing. Throwing is not uniquely human - baboon and chimps do it - but humans have raised it to a fine art. Kubrick recognized this connection right in the opening scene of ‘2001, where the victorious ape throws his weapon - a femur - into the air and it becomes a space station. In order to become the hurler-in-chief, we needed two big changes in our bodies - our eyes needed to move around to the front so that we had binocular vision with parallax. And secondly we had to have hands - not paws or fins. No whale or dolphin - no matter how smart, and I have experienced both of their intelligences in their native habitat; no matter how articulated - is going to do anything like this, because their eyes are located on opposite sides of their head with separate visual fields, and their hands are reduced to fins. Our hands have created the structure of our language: nouns do verbs to objects - very much based around our handiness. Dolphin language, and whale songs, if ever we decipher them, will probably have a very different grammar, not so subject / object oriented. More about being, less about doing. Ours is, because of our hands. And because of our hands and 3-D vision, we can hurl and object out of the atmosphere not to hit, but to graze so precisely that the ‘spear’ goes into orbit around a tiny object nearly 300 million miles from Earth. We don’t have to go nearly so far - Gaza, Syria, Ukraine, Washington - to find examples of human stupidity, venality, and small-minded hatred. Amid all that news, let us celebrate the extension of our leg with the wheel, our eyes with the telescope and microscope, and our arms and hands with the tremendous precision, cooperation, and a united fellow feeling with humankind. We can congratulate ourselves - we may not be very good negotiators, but we are some wicked awesome throwers. -- Tom
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 15:20:23 +0000
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