"I think we could be in the rather frustrating position of having indirect evidence of life... but not being absolutely certain and not having any prospect of becoming absolutely certain in the foreseeable future." - Barrie Jones
My sister's eldest child was about four, I think. I was babysitting for the evening, and had already tucked his little brother in bed for the night. Curled up on the sofa with the four-year-old, I slowly turned the pages of a children's book about the universe, as he studied the pictures intently. He wanted to know all about the planets. Why were some bigger than others? Why were they different colors? Why didn't they have air we could breathe? But it was when I told him that those bright stars in our sky were really other suns, very, very far away, and that some of them had planets of their own, that the discussion got tough.
"Could we walk to that star?" he asked, pointing at a corner of the illustration.
"No, it's too far away."
"Could we see all those other planets?"
"No, there are too many. It would take a HUGE amount of time." ("Huge" was his favorite word then. Anything too large to describe or fully comprehend was considered huge.)
"Even in my whole life?"
"Even in your whole life."
He didn't like that answer, and his little face darkened. It wasn't fair. He wanted to see all those places, learn about them. (Of course, so did I.) I tried mollifying him by invoking his parents' strong religious doctrines.
"Isn't it wonderful, that God is so great, he can create a universe big enough that we could never explore it all?"
He didn't buy it. I couldn't blame him: neither did I.
Posted at April 1, 2004 12:26 PM in Science & Tech , Wonderings