Thanks to LORRI, an imager on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, we now have a baseline for parallax measurements that is wider than the diameter of Earth or the diameter of our orbit.* It’s like separating your two eyes by four billion miles before holding up your index finger at arm’s length and alternatively winking your eyes to see the apparent movement against a more distant, and ostensibly unmoving background. Previously, astronomers could use parallax movements to determine trigonometrically the distance to about 700 stars, that is, through triangulation. The new baseline should add accuracy to distance measurements of those 700 stars and to the distance measurements of other nearby stars.
Practice: Alternatively wink while holding that index finger at arm’s length. Then do the same for an object across the room. Try it outside with a more distant object, say a tree. As you keep lengthening the “triangle’s height,” you’ll have more difficulty noticing the apparent movement of the object in view. To see that movement, you’ll need to widen your eyes, which, unfortunately you can’t do. There’s a limit imposed by the width of your eyes.
Imagine the consequences of increasing the parallax baseline for human perspectives. Distant cultures could be more accurately seen; even closer cultures could be more accurately observed, their precise social distance from the home culture identified for better understanding. Of course, the problem lies in how to widen the baseline.
Travel is one mechanism. The baseline widens by exposure to other cultures in situ. Another mechanism is reading. Exposure to what people of other cultures and perspectives write not only in books but also in newspapers helps in measuring the distance between one and another’s culture. And of course, there are the other forms of communication: Music, art, drama including films, and speeches. But just as NASA had to go to great lengths to establish that new astronomical parallax baseline, so anyone who wishes to expand the baseline for perspectives must also “go to great lengths.”
It’s easy to live with approximate distances to other cultures. One needs only to use what the two eyes fixed in the head and the optic centers of the brain provide for a baseline. But in relying on such a limited baseline has led people to misunderstandings and even to war.* It might be wise to introduce parallax as a fundamental principle of education, first as a lesson in triangulation for objects and second as a lesson in triangulation of cultural differences.
Unfortunately, convincing people with a narrow baseline that widening it might enhance their existence is, for the most part, just a pipe dream. “Hey, I have two eyes in my head, and I can see just fine with them where they are. Don’t go tellin’ me to start movin’ my eyes apart.”
* http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/new-horizons-parallax-measurements-proxima-centauri-wolf-359-08533.html
**Two of the oldest academic pursuits are the study geography, and, since Euclid, the study of geometry. Both are rooted in geo, “Earth” (Gaia). It’s unfortunate that for the sake of peace there isn’t more emphasis placed on geography in schools around the planet. It’s the ignorance of others’ cultures and their relative locations and environments that often leads to conflict or petty hatred.
Practice: Alternatively wink while holding that index finger at arm’s length. Then do the same for an object across the room. Try it outside with a more distant object, say a tree. As you keep lengthening the “triangle’s height,” you’ll have more difficulty noticing the apparent movement of the object in view. To see that movement, you’ll need to widen your eyes, which, unfortunately you can’t do. There’s a limit imposed by the width of your eyes.
Imagine the consequences of increasing the parallax baseline for human perspectives. Distant cultures could be more accurately seen; even closer cultures could be more accurately observed, their precise social distance from the home culture identified for better understanding. Of course, the problem lies in how to widen the baseline.
Travel is one mechanism. The baseline widens by exposure to other cultures in situ. Another mechanism is reading. Exposure to what people of other cultures and perspectives write not only in books but also in newspapers helps in measuring the distance between one and another’s culture. And of course, there are the other forms of communication: Music, art, drama including films, and speeches. But just as NASA had to go to great lengths to establish that new astronomical parallax baseline, so anyone who wishes to expand the baseline for perspectives must also “go to great lengths.”
It’s easy to live with approximate distances to other cultures. One needs only to use what the two eyes fixed in the head and the optic centers of the brain provide for a baseline. But in relying on such a limited baseline has led people to misunderstandings and even to war.* It might be wise to introduce parallax as a fundamental principle of education, first as a lesson in triangulation for objects and second as a lesson in triangulation of cultural differences.
Unfortunately, convincing people with a narrow baseline that widening it might enhance their existence is, for the most part, just a pipe dream. “Hey, I have two eyes in my head, and I can see just fine with them where they are. Don’t go tellin’ me to start movin’ my eyes apart.”
* http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/new-horizons-parallax-measurements-proxima-centauri-wolf-359-08533.html
**Two of the oldest academic pursuits are the study geography, and, since Euclid, the study of geometry. Both are rooted in geo, “Earth” (Gaia). It’s unfortunate that for the sake of peace there isn’t more emphasis placed on geography in schools around the planet. It’s the ignorance of others’ cultures and their relative locations and environments that often leads to conflict or petty hatred.
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