I once met a physics student at a cosmology school (I'll call him Max) who believed until his late twenties that you could only see the stars with a telescope. Max had grown up in New York City, where the twilight of artificially lit nights dissolved the firmament. When he discovered the "permanent presence of the sublime," as poet Ralph Waldo Emerson described it in his 1836 essay "Nature," patiently waiting for a clear, dark night, he was mesmerized.
What do we lose when our connection to our cosmic environment is severed?
The night sky is humanity's one and only global common space, shared by all of us, across civilizations and millennia. Yet today the majority of us live in cities, where increasing light pollution obscures our view of the stars. Worse still, a new kind of threat is fast approaching: Thousands of low-Earth orbit satellites have been launched over the past five years to establish a global Internet connection, appearing as fast-moving dots in the starry sky. According to current trends, by 2030 there will be more artificial satellites than real stars, and no part of the planet will be spared: the star-spangled messengers pushed aside by instant messaging.
Losing the stars would disconnect us from our past and perhaps threaten our future. Over the millennia, the sight of the sky has subtly and silently guided the steps of humanity: it influenced religion and spirituality, inspired great works of art, made possible navigation on the open sea, which the Polynesian masters achieved thousands of years before Western sailors - and without the aid of a map or instrument. Astronomy is indeed the midwife of science: it is the study of the movement of the celestial bodies that ushered in the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century, and consequently the advanced technology on which our lives depend today - on electronic devices that depend are from electromagnetism to aircraft that depend on aerodynamics. It also led to sociology and experimental psychology, when Swiss astronomer Adolph Hirsch realized in 1864 that clocking the passage of stars above the sky to the exacting standards of his compatriots as a watchmaker required an understanding of his own reaction time. It even paved the way for artificial intelligence by first demonstrating the power of data-based predictions with the discovery of the asteroid Ceres in 1802 - not to mention the names and order of the days of the week (a legacy of astrology!), the star-based rating system we use everywhere online, and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
The story continues
There are indications that our headlong awe has been there from the very beginning. For example, prehistorically decorated caves in the Dordogne, France, preferentially face the rising and setting sun during solstices. The Pleiades, a stunning cluster of blue stars near Taurus, are universally described as 'seven sisters' (or seven wives), despite only six being visible to the naked eye throughout history. The myth of how the missing Pleiad came to be lost, pursued by a mighty hunter, is eerily similar among the ancient Greeks and Australian First People - two cultures that have been out of contact since Sapiens reached Australia 50,000 years ago. But 100,000 years ago the seventh sister would have been easily visible to our ancestors. The identical myths may therefore have a common origin, dating back to before man left his cradle.
Read more: The latest image from the Webb telescope reveals the birth of very young starsFrom the moment Homo Sapiens left the plains of Africa, paying close attention to the stars and the phases of the moon helped our ancestors predict food availability, stalk prey during the full moon, and travel long distances. When Earth's climate underwent a period of rapid fluctuations 45,000 years ago, the smallest advantage in locating resources and shelter would have made the difference between survival and extinction - the ultimate price paid by our less starry cousins, the Neanderthals. Cooperation and knowledge exchange between groups were likely key to our ancestors' ability to adapt to changing circumstances. And it was by the compass of the stars and the calendar of the moon phases that they knew where and when to meet.
We know for certain that the lunar cycle has governed the calendars - and therefore the economy - since Akkadian times, more than 5,000 years ago, and that the moon's phase was followed as a sign of their fertility cycle, with women not only being the first astronomers, but probably also the first mathematicians. The rise of Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, and its retinue of stars led the Egyptians to invent the 24-hour timekeeping system that is still used today. Even in our technological age, distant galaxies are needed to keep atomic clocks in sync with Earth's slower rotation. GPS would be woefully inaccurate without corrections due to Einstein's theory of general relativity, which was first tested in 1919 by observing the shift in the position of stars during a total solar eclipse. Deep down we are still guided by the stars.
Just as the stars helped Sapiens overcome the climate challenges that doomed Neanderthals so long ago, they can again show us the way forward today as we face the combined deadly dangers of anthropogenic climate change and biodiversity loss. The "overview effect" describes the feeling of awe and humility that grips astronauts when they see our gleaming blue marble floating in the darkness of space. By looking up at night and gazing at the distant, inaccessible suns scattered in the infinite, inhospitable darkness, we can all experience a "reverse overview effect": the realization that our shared cosmic home is irreplaceable, and the urge to to become better stewards of his, and our, destiny.
Contact us at [email protected].
