All Things Bright & Beautiful
We have been reading Hail Mary, By Andy Weir, ahead of the movie launch for our book club. I must say it is a fantastic book for discussion: Andy Weir’s astrophages and their taumoeba are microscopic thrillers playing out on the scale of the universe. His hypothesis is solid, the design and procreation for his microscopic protagonists is brilliant. There are so many concepts he introduces – all slowly but surely. The pacing in the book is truly amazing.
Small Wonder
I suppose for beings such as us, who believe in free will, thump our chests on all the great things we can accomplish etc; finding microscopic life is the surest way to humble us.
https://nourishncherish.org/2020/03/23/fascinating-hidden-worlds/
During the course of the discussions, one of the many things that stood out is how it is we found out about microscopic life. The microscopic world is a marvelous one. Revealed to us 350 years ago by the talented man Antony von LLeuwenhoek. He is often hailed as the Father of Microbiology.
Read also: Fascinating Hidden Worlds
How did we discover how mitochondria works, how genetics works, and how life can be protected with all its worlds within us? The fact that we contain multitudes has always been fascinating – we have more than 100 trillion microbes in our guts while our Milky Way only presumably contains 100-400 million stars.
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Big Wonder
Speaking of the universe and the many million stars, the book’s premise is that the astronaut from Earth encounters, befriends and teams up with an alien from Planet Erid. An earthling and an Eridian putting their heads together to solve a problem that is crippling the universe.
There have been many theories on why we have never encountered alien life before. I remember reading in one of Carl Sagan’s books that the reason may be temporal – meaning there is a progression to advancement in intelligence levels. The intelligence levels at which human beings find themselves, may well be a blip in the universe. We are already quickly evolving past the phase when we were so excited by beaming our rays into the universe, that we may not be excited about finding someone else in our range of intelligence any longer.
Now considering the different levels of life: microscopic life, multi-celled organisms, animal and plant life enough to sustain ecosystems, evolved intelligent creatures such as humans, advanced intelligence creatures – way past the levels of humans, we can see why finding life on the same scales of intelligence and tool usage is truly a daunting task. Either, civilizations evolved past it, died down, or never got there at all.
Given this, it is a big wonder that the book tries a premise of intelligent alien life. I suppose the possibility will always remain an exciting one.
In any case, reading Hail Mary is an interesting exercise in imagination. I am excited to see what the movie does with Rocky the Eridian and how they visualize astrophages & taumoeba.
I remember singing the hymn ‘All Things Bright & Beautiful’ in school. It is an uplifting hymn with truly beautiful imagery of purple headed mountains and tall trees in the greenwood. Life on Earth is beautiful. Life could be just as beautiful elsewhere. The possibility is exciting.
Have you read Hail Mary, and what are you looking forward to in the movie?
Nourish-n-Cherish 