When I was in 8th grade I often attended a post shabbat service discussion group on Saturday afternoons. There was this one class I will never forget, as our Rabbi presented some very intriguing ideas. To this day I am a Sci-Fi fan, and this was true before starting 8th grade, so Rabbi’s ideas were of particular interest to me.
He started out by saying, “You do know that the stories of Adam and Eve and of Noah and his Ark are metaphors Right? They are factionalized accounts written to be more palatable to the average person.
So Adam and Eve are in Eden, which the biblical account tells us is a garden “paradise,” somewhere, which we assume is on Earth. We know that Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden after committing a great sin.
Here is what the Bible doesn’t tell us. 1st, Eden is not just a garden. Eden was a garden planet, existing in our solar system, roughly between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Scientists say that there is a “life zone,” (I think this is what scientists call it) in our solar system, which is basically those planets that are located within a distance from the sun. The life zone consists of those planets that are close enough to the sun to evolve and maintain life, and not so far from the sun as to make it too cold for life. Earth, Mars and Eden are within this life belt.
Adam and Eve are not just a couple of humans, but rather they represent all of humankind living in this time period.
Eden still exists today, but not in the form it was in when Adam and Eve lived there. Today it is called “the asteroid belt” and it contains between roughly 1.1 to 1.9 million objects larger that 1 kilometer in diameter, and millions on much smaller ones. This means that the asteroid belt consists of the remains of the planet Eden.
Adam and Eve (humankind) committed a grave error: they blew up their plane and had to flee (be expelled), so, the story goes, they left Eden.
The next habitable planet is Mars. They lived there for many thousands of years, until they caused the climate on Mars to change (sound familiar?) and become unable to sustain human life.
The story of Noah and his Ark is the fictionized account of humankinds flight from Mars to their new home on Earth. The biblical story talks about a great flood that covered the planet, but what really happened is that water disappeared.
So Noah and family and a zoo left Mars and travelled to Earth. Know what? The space craft that took us from Mars to Earth still orbits our planet. It is parked in orbit, like other satellites in the solar system, and when the pilots/scientists positioned it in it’s orbit, they did so calculating the best position for it’s gravitational pull to regulate the Earths spin on it’s axis as well as the ocean tides. Prior to out arrival, the Earth was a wild place, with violent storms. Parking a major magnetic force in orbit so precisely caused everything to calm down.”
I just turned 71 this past November, and very recently I watched Battlestar Galactica over again. The ending of that series is basically saying we traveled here to Earth from a solar system in another par of the galaxy some 150,000 years ago. This reminded me of Rabbi’s story, so I did a little research:
In June 2009, NASA launched a probe into the Moon to try to find water. They indeed did find some water, but they also found titanium. When the probe impacted the moon, the moon rang like a bell and his lasted for 24 hours. Like a hollow metal ball. In an earlier study of impacts on the moon, they discovered that no matter how large or how small of an asteroid that hits the surface, the resulting crater will never be greater than 140 feet deep. The larger the item that impacts the surface may result in a much wider crate, but no craters that they have studied thus far is deeper than 140 feet.
If we are able to probe deeper beneath the moons surface, what will find? If we can find a hatch, we might enter that way and find a whole world therein. A hydroponic operation, living quarters, and (probably dormant) technology.
Or, it might turn out to be just a big empty metal ball.
But this is all speculation. If humankind has survived two prior exodus scenarios, will we survive a third?
“This has happened before, and it will happen again.”
The Rabbi’s story could be true. If so, have we, are we, doing it again? It appears that we Nuked Eden. We may have screwed up the climate on Mars. And here? Climate change is a real thing, how can we reverse the changes?
I don’t think we can escape to another planet this time. The closest possibility is Proxima Centauri, about 4.2 light years away, in the Alpha Centauri system. With our present technology it would take at least 6,000 years to reach Proximal. Unless we can invent a “faster than light” technology. I’ve always believed that it you can think of a thing then you can build that thing.
Faster than light travel has been a major speculation in Science Fiction since day one. Battlestar Galactica ships had “FTL” drives. In Robert Heinlein’s novels, he called it “Lyle Drive” (named for the inventor). Star Wars gave us “hyperspace’ drive. Star Trek calls it “Warp Drive.” No matter what it is to be called, since we have thought about it, we can invent it.
I just hope it can happen before it’s too late. Or, maybe we can get moving on terraforming.
