A metal plate the size of a standard sheet of printer paper hurtles through space as you read this, engraved with the thoughts of American poet Ada Lemon:
“Bow under the ink night sky
As the black expands, we point
“For the planets we know”
In fact, this gray palette is headed toward a world that has plagued humanity’s dreams since the dawn of astronomy: Jupiter, the sunset-like gas giant in our solar system. It’s attached to a spacecraft called Europa Clipper, NASA’s silvery, winged solar probe designed to study the intricacies of a Jovian moon that could have harbored life long ago, scientists calculate. This probe launched its mission on October 14; He’s out there somewhere out there now, on his way to Europe.
But the powerful painting — inscribed with much more than Lemon’s poignant words — also has a twin located on our planet. The replica resides at the Brand Library and Arts Center in Glendale, California, and the simple fact of its existence invites us to consider the strange gap between art and science, or the lack thereof.
“We / pin quick wishes to the stars. From the earth,
We read the sky as if it were an infallible book
Of the universe is a clear expert.
However, there are secrets under our skies:
Whale song, songbird song
“His call is in the branch of a tree shaken by the wind.”
Related to: The artist who sculpts the four-dimensional fabric of space and time
If you take this train of thought to the most extreme level, you might argue that the whole thing is a work of art, and that the entire subject of this story is moot. You could probably also say that everything is scientific in the literal sense of the word, which would lead to the same conclusion.
The way tiny vibrations in your home can make water ripple inside a Poland spring bottle is strangely fascinating when you focus on it, and the general reflective properties of mirrors are constantly exploited in art galleries, and the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, which is used to describe the curvature of complex shapes, in… Often indicated By mathematicians as “beautiful”. Even psychological concepts, such as the inexplicable qualia that come with new bodily experiences, can be considered “art.” What is essentially science or only art?
“We are creatures of constant dread,
Curious for beauty, for leaves and flowers,
In sadness and happiness, in the sun and the shade.”
Maybe there is a way to try to find the boundaries between the two subjects, and maybe it is a subjective way. In my view, art, at its foundational level, can be seen as a pursuit of aesthetics, while science, at its foundational level, can be seen as a pursuit of knowledge. However, of course, I feel there are intersections – I would say that both could easily be seen as the pursuit of truth. Philosophers, Artists and Scientists We’ve been arguing about these kinds of questions for decades, and we certainly won’t get to the bottom of them in this article.
However, what about the dichotomy between art and astronomy especially? It is interesting how the lines appear sharper.
Unlike botany, for example, astronomy is a subject in which we have to imagine our goals most of the time. Although we cannot see chlorophyll with our naked eyes, we can see the leaves it contains very easily; On the other hand, we can’t glimpse a black hole event horizon, a diamond-studded exoplanet, or a horsehead-shaped crack in a nebula, as they stand — at least, with our current technology. (Even Albert Einstein didn’t think we’d see gravitational waves rippling through the universe when two black holes collide, but we did in 2015. It’s no wonder astronomy and faith were much more closely connected during ancient times than they are today.)
Furthermore, pinpointing the edge of the universe may be a mystery we may never solve, and as humans, we cannot fully understand light-year distances – research has shown Until you appear Physicists’ brains work differently from non-physicists’ brains because physicists constantly have to think on unfathomable scales. Unlike many other scientific subjects such as mineralogy or clinical medicine, astronomy also has the potential to explain our existence in the largest terms.
However, astronomy attempts to articulate these ineffable concepts in somewhat the same way that art attempts to express the indescribable through images, sound, words, or any other medium – and in turn, both instill in us a deep and unsettling existential feeling, and we are haunted by it. . This feeling. Of course, there will always be arguments in different directions, but at its root, the analysis of space seems to arouse something in us that the analysis of other scientific topics does not.
Cosmic discoveries can provide comfort and anxiety, as well as a sense of loneliness mixed with a strange loneliness. I believe that art has the unique ability to imitate that, and often aims to imitate that.
For this reason, it is especially poignant when astronomy and art are intentionally combined together. Voyager Golden Records left the solar system in the summer of 1977 while carrying evidence that humanity occupies space in the universe, and carrying images of Olympic runners And someone Eat grapes In the supermarket, clips of a Peruvian wedding song and Louis Armstrong’s “Melancholy Blues” — and to this day, they make people passionate. Not only did these records go beyond the standard definition of space exploration, they also demonstrated that there was something special, even subtle, about humanity as a whole—something crucial enough to be brought into the void of the universe in which humanity contemplated itself. .
In addition to Lemon’s poem, the Europa Clipper plaque — made of a material called “tantalum” that can withstand the heavy amounts of radiation found near the spacecraft’s destination — bears an inscription of the Drake Equation. This equation, handwritten by the late astrophysicist and astrobiologist Frank Drake, is a mathematical formula for finding intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy. It’s a convenient reference, since Europe Clipper’s primary astrobiology mission is to figure out whether Europa shows signs of habitability. The spacecraft will not be looking for evidence of life, but rather for evidence that this world is suitable for hosting life (as we know it).
It also carries a sketch of Ron Greeley, who founded the field of planetary science and helped the Apollo astronauts reach the moon, and a silicon chip containing the names of 2.6 million Earthlings who had registered in order to somehow be transported beyond Earth. Even more striking is that an entire side of the painting is engraved with waveforms of the word “water” spoken in different languages.
“It is not darkness that unites us,
Not the cold distance of space, however
Offering water to every drop of rain
Every river, every pulse, every vein.
O second moon, we too are created
Of water, of vast and alluring seas.”
Sure, the Europa Clipper is important because, well, maybe it will allow aliens with the right tools and enough curiosity to find a trace of us in the Jovian system one day — but it’s also important in the short term. This rich body has already provided us with the “thing” on which to draw upon astronomy and art.
“We too are made of wonders and greatness
And ordinary love, for small invisible worlds,
Of the need to call out through the darkness.”
The trip to the Brand Library & Art Center was funded by the Getty Museum as part of the PST: Art and Science Collide event.
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