We Have Found Life on Mars?

The science journal, Nature, website reports in an article entitled, "Microbial stowaways to Mars identified," that the Mars rover Curiosity carried with it "Dozens of microbial species," which may contaminate samples that it collects.  This is not certain because scientists are not yet sure that the microbes can survive on Mars let alone the ride there through space.  The thing is that, according to investigators, they apparently did survive attempts to sterilize them before the rover left Earth.  The article states, "Planetary scientists worry that hitchhiking microbes could, in principle, contaminate Mars soil, or possibly taint rock samples collected as part of future missions — hence providing false signs of life on the red planet."

One has the feeling of, "Here we go again."  Virtually every time explorers or colonists here on Earth land on a new island or continent, they take with them other species that came along for the ride.  This includes infectious diseases that can wipe out indigenous populations.  So, perhaps we are at it again, assuming that the hostile environments we are crossing and discovering allow our microbial stowaways to survive the trip.  And wouldn't it be at least ironic if there wasn't any life on Mars until we put it there?  One reason we invest so much effort and resources to go to Mars is to discover new, alien life, but just maybe what we will discover is us.  At least, as the article points out, we will eventually discover whether or not life on Earth is hardy enough to survive interplanetary travel, and that in and of itself will be worth learning.

And if those microbes do survive the trip and are able to live on Mars, what we may be witnessing is the beginning of what could be the greatest engineering project in human history, the terraforming of Mars.  Eventually, we are going to leave Earth and learn to live in space, which means taking life on Earth with us to the stars.  This sounds like science fiction, but maybe the very beginnings of our migration into the universe are already happening.  Or not.  But the possibility is intriguing.

Impossible to Believe

In flipping through the channels one evening this past week, I landed briefly on a TV show about the Universe that included a sequence that alternated between shots of a beach and of the stars.  The commentator made the point that there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all of the beaches of Earth.  It has become a commonplace truism that we cannot imagine the greatness of the Universe nor can we really comprehend out utter smallness in it.

That being said, it is impossible to believe that Earth is the only planet on which life lives.  It is impossible to believe that we are the only intelligent species in all of that Great Expanse.  So great is the size of the Universe that we may never meet another intelligent species, but it wouldn't be wise to be on it.  And it is impossible to believe that the God of traditional thinking is real or could be the creator of the Universe.  The God of the Bible is inevitably too tiny because "he" is only as large as the imagination of ancient peoples who lived in a tiny, tiny Earth-centered little bitty universe hardly larger than Earth itself.  The Creator God of the Bible is a God of immense but imaginable power while the Creator God of the Universe necessarily stands outside of time, space, and all imagining.

A crucial task of theology today is to catch up with our modern knowledge of the reality of the Universe.  Astronomy and quantum physics are key sources of revelation about the nature of God the Beyond.  Biology, meanwhile, provides insights into the evolutionary ways of God the Beyond that bring us back to the Presence of God in our teeny tiny little lives.  In light of all of this, we have to recalibrate our understanding of the person of Christ and the meaning of Incarnation.  What exciting times we live in!  and scary.

Earth or earth?

I wish I could remember where I first read it, but I do recall reading many years ago an article dedicated to the proposition that we should always capitalize the word "Earth" unless we are specifically referring to dirt rather than the planet we live on.  Without the capitcal "E", the word suggests that the only place with dirt, the only planet in the universe is this one.  It obscures the reality that we live on what is just the tiniest of specks in a magnificent universe.  It is as if the Copernican Revolution never happened.  The failure to capitalize the "E" when referring to the Earth also forces us to make the word an exception to the rule that specific heavenly bodies are capitalized, especially the planets of our solar system.  We live on the Earth.  Amen.