While on vacation in the Canadian wilderness a few months ago, I got to thinking. Now, although I’m a physics professor and thus get paid for thinking throughout most of the year, I have to admit that little good has ever come from my vacation musings. But this time I came up with a use for the moon.
Before you can properly appreciate the great worth of my idea, you’ve got to have a bit of background. Chances are, if you were brought up on Earth, at some time a science teacher told you that one day the sun is going to blow up and destroy our planet. But do you remember where you were when you heard this news? Probably not, right? Because unlike, for instance, the breakup of the Beatles or the day you passed your driver’s test, it didn’t really matter to you. I have, of course, gathered some data to support this assumption: in a poll of seven parents watching our kids’ Little League game, I learned that 1) most didn’t quite remember for sure that Earth is doomed but didn’t doubt they had been taught it at some point, and 2) they certainly could not recall where they were when first exposed to this truth. They did point out that the key factor leading to their indifference to the toasted Earth problem was that it lies millions, possibly gazillions, of years in the future and by that time maybe there won’t be people, or they’ll be off in spaceships, or whatever. . . .
Well, that’s just not okay with me. I mean, come on. We’re talking about Earth, our ancestral home, with billions of years of history etched into its surface and probably some of the finest beaches in the cosmos. Just because by the time it’s toast we’ll all be flitting about the universe, we’re supposed to believe that we’ll have no interest in this old fleabag of a planet?
