OGT DAILY - Day Forty - NEW WORLDS

Astrophysicists at the University of Liege announced the discovery of seven earth size planets circling a not so distant star called Trappist-1e, in the Milky Way.    Because of their size and proximity to this star they speculate that their atmospheres may be warm enough to sustain life, with substances similar to water.

NASA has designed several posters to pique interest in this discovery and the possibility that space travel could be arranged to explore them as they are only 39 light years away in the constellation of Aquarius.

If this weren't all true it would seem like science fiction.   I am uncertain whether this is a good or a bad thing.    At a time when our own leaders seem bent on continuing the rapid decline of our own atmosphere - a miracle appears in the constellation of Aquarius, no less, to offer its hopes.    Like some Ray Bradbury story we're all going to hop shuttles engineered by Elon Musk to take us to our new paradise while we let the coal fires and the factories smolder and belch and the epic floods wash away our dwellings.

Is this a distraction from the good fight to save our environment or a futuristic joke?  

Seven is a number associated with mysticism and mythology: the seven wonders of the world and days of the week. seven seals, seven colors in the rainbow and the diatonic scale.   Seven is the country calling code for Russia.   Andrew Jackson was the seventh president and he supported both slavery and Indian removal echoes of our new world order.  Now I'm getting weird with the numerology.   But seven is also my lucky number.   It is for Cancer and Pisces - my birthday is Saturday.  I'm also the seventh child in my family.  

So what does it all mean?   I do not know, but it is cool to think about those worlds out there and the possibility of another place where there might be snowfall and clouds as I am missing those things.   Usually for my birthday there is white on the ground and chill in the air, not blue skies and sun, tulips unfurling and birds returning from down south.  

So here's to imagining those new worlds as NASA seems to want us to do, but I'm still hoping we can get back to saving this one for a while longer.



https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/feb/22/thrilling-discovery-of-seven-earth-sized-planets-discovered-orbiting-trappist-1-star