Word’s out! Elon Musk wants to send people to Mars, and he has people interested.
Is it because they want to escape a hellish Earth for a paradisiacal Red Planet?
Now we know that when astronauts return from their Martian holiday, they’ll be just a little closer to not being who they were before they left Earth. Yes, it seems to be true, extended travel beyond the protection of our planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere will expose us to brain-damaging radiation. Such radiation apparently alters the brain’s ability to handle stress. That’s the finding of V. K. Parihar and others who experimented on Wistar rats:
"... the most logical conclusion to draw from these studies is that cosmic radiation exposure poses a real and potentially detrimental neurocognitive risk for prolonged deep space travel."*
Advice: Don’t go to Mars without some shielding, maybe something like Earth’s thick atmosphere and powerful magnetic field. Those who decide to go should keep Parihar’s study in mind: Even if Mars were Paradise, without the ability to handle stress, astronauts will soon find it to be Hell.
"Our data indicate an unexpected and unique susceptibility of the central nervous system to space radiation exposure, and argue that the underlying radiation sensitivity of delicate neuronal structure may well predispose astronauts to unintended mission-critical performance decrements and/or longer-term neurocognitive sequelae."*
Let’s couple that conclusion to the plan to image a planet whirling around our nearest star neighbor, Alpha Centauri. If the plan called Project Blue works, we’ll have a photograph of a planet on the scale of Voyager’s distant image of Earth, the one that shows our planet as a “pale blue dot.”** Taken at the request of the late Carl Sagan, that single-pixel Voyager image of Earth from a distance of billions of miles was much easier to take than a photo of a planet circling a sun trillions of miles away.
So, you might ask, “What’s the sense in that? From what I read, Project Blue will cost millions of dollars, and you know, now that we have the study by Parihar and others, even if we get a picture suitable for framing, we aren’t going to a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. If we did go, we would probably suffer irreversible neurocognitive impairment from interstellar radiation.”
The image of a distant world and the understanding that a voyage to Alpha Centauri—or even to Mars—is dangerous might underscore a point Sagan made about our home planet.
Sagan saw a lesson in the image of Earth as a little blue dot: “Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there: on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam… it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
Let’s face it. This is THE PLACE. The only place for humanity. We ain’t goin’ to Alpha Centauri. And although we might at great risk go to Mars, we might not get there with the same cognitive functioning we have on the little blue dot we currently occupy. Protected from debilitating radiation by our magnetic field and atmosphere, we have yet to find a better place for the neurons of both sinners and saints.
Neuroscience and space exploration raise two questions: Do you find it odd that this is the place where Heaven and Hell coexist like some superposed quanta? Does this little dot called Earth have to be a home of both saints and sinners?
Is it because they want to escape a hellish Earth for a paradisiacal Red Planet?
Now we know that when astronauts return from their Martian holiday, they’ll be just a little closer to not being who they were before they left Earth. Yes, it seems to be true, extended travel beyond the protection of our planet’s magnetic field and atmosphere will expose us to brain-damaging radiation. Such radiation apparently alters the brain’s ability to handle stress. That’s the finding of V. K. Parihar and others who experimented on Wistar rats:
"... the most logical conclusion to draw from these studies is that cosmic radiation exposure poses a real and potentially detrimental neurocognitive risk for prolonged deep space travel."*
Advice: Don’t go to Mars without some shielding, maybe something like Earth’s thick atmosphere and powerful magnetic field. Those who decide to go should keep Parihar’s study in mind: Even if Mars were Paradise, without the ability to handle stress, astronauts will soon find it to be Hell.
"Our data indicate an unexpected and unique susceptibility of the central nervous system to space radiation exposure, and argue that the underlying radiation sensitivity of delicate neuronal structure may well predispose astronauts to unintended mission-critical performance decrements and/or longer-term neurocognitive sequelae."*
Let’s couple that conclusion to the plan to image a planet whirling around our nearest star neighbor, Alpha Centauri. If the plan called Project Blue works, we’ll have a photograph of a planet on the scale of Voyager’s distant image of Earth, the one that shows our planet as a “pale blue dot.”** Taken at the request of the late Carl Sagan, that single-pixel Voyager image of Earth from a distance of billions of miles was much easier to take than a photo of a planet circling a sun trillions of miles away.
So, you might ask, “What’s the sense in that? From what I read, Project Blue will cost millions of dollars, and you know, now that we have the study by Parihar and others, even if we get a picture suitable for framing, we aren’t going to a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. If we did go, we would probably suffer irreversible neurocognitive impairment from interstellar radiation.”
The image of a distant world and the understanding that a voyage to Alpha Centauri—or even to Mars—is dangerous might underscore a point Sagan made about our home planet.
Sagan saw a lesson in the image of Earth as a little blue dot: “Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there: on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam… it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
Let’s face it. This is THE PLACE. The only place for humanity. We ain’t goin’ to Alpha Centauri. And although we might at great risk go to Mars, we might not get there with the same cognitive functioning we have on the little blue dot we currently occupy. Protected from debilitating radiation by our magnetic field and atmosphere, we have yet to find a better place for the neurons of both sinners and saints.
Neuroscience and space exploration raise two questions: Do you find it odd that this is the place where Heaven and Hell coexist like some superposed quanta? Does this little dot called Earth have to be a home of both saints and sinners?
- Parihar, V. K. et al. Cosmic radiation exposure and persistent cognitive dysfunction. Sci. Rep. 6, 34774; doi: 10.1038/srep34774 (2016).
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