by David D. Horowitz.
“The atmosphere of Titan is largely nitrogen…”
I bite into my snack, a honeycrisp apple fresh from a local QFC market, as I begin to absorb the information in the Wikipedia entry for “Titan,” Saturn’s biggest moon and the only moon anywhere known to have a dense atmosphere. How could I not be fascinated by the science news today: NASA is launching a “Dragonfly” mission to explore Titan. I continue reading:
“The climate—including wind and rain—creates surface features similar to those of Earth, such as dunes, rivers, lakes, seas (probably of liquid methane and ethane), and deltas, and is dominated by seasonal weather patterns as on Earth.”
So, indeed, Titan contains methane and ethane, as does Earth. And water? Possibly not, but Titan seems to have lakes, if not H2O. Yes, proportionally, Earth’s elements vary greatly from those in “the heavens,” but the basic elements—such as hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, oxygen—are remarkably similar. I have only to reflect on this apple to feel connected to existence beyond Earth—to “the heavens,” if you will.
And, yet, of course Earth teems with “life.” And while there might be life on Titan and almost certainly elsewhere in the universe, it seems rare enough that Earth feels unusual—not necessarily unique, but not like most heavenly bodies.
Yes, life, heartbeat. Rhythm. Pattern. Pulse. Earth’s chemistry links us to the universe, but our music is rather distinctive: heartbeat, pulse. The heavens, then, can be revealed through a honeycrisp apple and the rhythm of my pulse. Indeed, the entire universe—or universes—might embody a rhythm, a pattern, a “pulse” of perpetual expansion and contraction and explosion (“Big Bang”). I recall the opening lines of William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence”:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
Blake’s quatrain is excellent—as is the apple. And though Dragonfly might not find poetry or apples on Titan, its exploration might bear new poetic fruit. With ball point pen ready I await the first photographs.