More than ever, science is the future

The James Webb Space Telescope is packed up for shipment to its launch site in Kourou, French Guiana in an undated photograph at Northrop Grumman's Space Park in Redondo Beach, California. NA

The James Webb Space Telescope is well on its way into the darker regions of the cosmos. And since 1977, Voyager-1 and Voyager-2 have travelled billions of miles through the universe in search of new cosmic discoveries, perhaps even of intelligent life on other planets we do not know of yet. The Hubble Telescope has done its work. The many Apollo missions to the moon have been a major stepping stone to our attempts to understand the nature of cosmology, in fact to begin an earnest search for the origins of the universe.

With the Webb Telescope now moving out into the deeper spaces of the system, a couple of things stand out. In the first place, human ingenuity promises to come up with newer truths about Creation as we know it, now and in the times ahead. In the second, the Webb is on a journey into the past, its underlying objective being a study of what happened after the Big Bang. Briefly, it will study and observe the emergence of the earliest stars, the manner in which the process of the formation of the planets, of the solar system as we know it and of the solar systems we do not yet know of, got underway.

A fundamental, unambiguous truth emerges here, which is that science is the future. The human mind has advanced to a stage where it is possible, seeing that the human brain has anywhere between 100 billion and 86 billion neurons, to explore increasingly deeper recesses of the universe. The James Webb is, till this point of time, the height of human ingenuity. Once it begins to take photographs of the space bodies — stars, quasars, asteroids, meteorites — it travels through, propelled by their gravity and their energy, greater light will be shed on the dark matter which is so predominant in our studies of space science. Our understanding of the universe, formed as it was roughly 13.8 billion years ago, and of the planets in our circle of vision, taking shape 8.5 billion years ago, will take more solidified forms.

These and other reflections on science were the subject of discussion, over an evening of coffee, with Dr Kanan Purkayastha last week. A scientist whose interest has been in the environment and whose preoccupation with studies of philosophy in relation to science have defined his reflections on our world, he explains the reach of the human imagination in easy and yet profound terms. And so it was that at our discussion, science was the topic on the table. And not just science as it is making inroads into space but also science as it has been tackling the coronavirus pandemic around the globe. That science, both at ground level and up there in space, holds the future of the human race is a question we deliberated on. In these past nearly two years of the pandemic and now with the infiltration of Omicron, science has bravely and painstakingly remained engaged in tackling the malady. Politicians around the world have had a simple yet powerful message to convey: In handling the pandemic, listen to the science. That is the message.

Those who have ignored the message have not only put themselves in peril but have also paved the dark path to danger for others as well. Many have been the people we have known — and this too came up in our reflections last week — who cheerfully turned into coronavirus deniers, refused to take the vaccine and soon found their way to their graves. Perfectly sensible, educated men have been authoritarians in their families, compelling their spouses, children, siblings and even aged parents to stay away from vaccines. These men have since been buried in their graves; their families have struggled to avoid a similar fate.

Which leads one to the overwhelming conclusion: Ignorance can be beaten back by science and only science. Those who refuse to accept the validity of scientific discoveries in medicine and the ability of science to save life are condemned to a sad pursuit of life or a tragic passage to an untimely end. Bigotry has no place in science, in the urge to fathom the mysteries of life on Earth in increasingly deeper ways. There will be ages hence of people travelling in space and learning of the cosmos in ways unprecedented. In these times of discovery, we only inform ourselves that to comprehend the nature of the universe, we need to study the night sky. In those stars up there, with their light emitted across space, is the past on which the Creation story is based. The future, of course, is the responsibility of undertakings like the Voyager spacecraft.

And if enterprising men like Elon Musk have their way, human colonies and cities could be built on Mars. The finer details will need to be worked out. Nothing is impossible. With climate change ravaging Earth, with our planet getting heated up to previously unimagined temperatures, science will have two tasks before it — to restore the climate balance here on Earth inasmuch as it can and to develop the means whereby cosmological coordination between the planets will someday be possible. That coordination will not be the reality in our times, but we can look far ahead and contemplate the future.

In our studies of science, of acknowledging its all-encompassing power to reshape the destiny of the human race, there is the inevitable search for God. The power of religious belief mingles with the sheer force of science to advance the cause. Listen to Spinoza: "The mind of God is all the mentality that is scattered over space and time, the diffused consciousness that animates the world."