We have left our mark on the face of the heavens

[steuard]

We live in a remarkable era. If you brought an ancient Greek astronomer to the present day and dropped him off in a field somewhere, he would be awestruck, and maybe terrified. (Heck, it probably wouldn't even need to be an astronomer: I think that most people were quite familiar with the night sky until recent times.)

The meteor shower was pretty much a bust: I was outside for a decent stretch and only saw two for sure, plus a couple more "maybes" that were too brief and dim for me to judge whether they came from the expected radiant point. (To be fair, from where I was in our backyard I was seeing far less than the full sky.)

But in the same time, I saw at least half a dozen satellites, ranging from "almost too dim to see" to "easily the brightest object in the sky". It's obviously been too long since I just lay back to watch the stars: those things are now a near-constant presence. So I really do wonder how that Greek time traveler would react to the modern sky: what would those swift-moving, variable brightness points of light mean to him? What would Plato make of it? What stories would Homer tell?

For that matter, I'm sure that there are still plenty of societies and communities today that have little knowledge of high technology, from isolated tribes to rural villages. What do *they* make of the satellites that now pass constantly over their heads? This is a recent phenomenon: its origin is easily within living memory, and it has only gradually become as frequent as it is today. What stories do those people tell? Do they know or guess that these are the work of human beings? Do they fear that the newly mobile stars are an omen of some approaching doom?

And what stories might we tell about ourselves, as we alter the face of the heavens so deeply without ever pausing to think what an astounding achievement that is?

Comments

[steuard.livejournal.com]

(I clearly get oddly philosophical when I'm up late at night.)

[beth_leonard]

And what stories might we tell about ourselves, as we alter the face of the heavens so deeply without ever pausing to think what an astounding achievement that is?

:-)

--Beth

[kirin]

Yeah, I only had a little while to stand outside on meteor shower night, and the only thing I saw for sure (other than a very distracting tree-height firefly roaming around) was a satellite.

I wonder about your fourth paragraph. I feel like you have to get pretty incredibly remote today to find people without at least enough passing contact with travelers to have a decent idea of what sorts of things mankind is up to. Like, a few pockets of (increasingly scarce) deep forest? Not sure what else. There are certainly other peoples (say, around the Mongolian steppes for example) that still lead very traditional lifestyles, but I think most know about the outside world. Plus, from most places you're likely to see planes which provide an intermediate point of reference. I'm guessing we're both speculating out of our asses without time to actually research the topic, though. ;)