On a Wing and a Prayer

This is the “Sombrero Galaxy.” It lies 50 million light years away from us in the Virgo cluster and contains an estimated 800 billion suns.

Someone named it after a Mexican hat, an act so incongruous as to border on blasphemy, to my way of thinking. Why not follow that by drawing Kilroy on a Torah scroll? Let him hang over the very name of God with his nose dangling between the Heh and the Vav.

I prefer the simple dignity of the Messier designation – M104. Whisper it, if you must say it aloud, then let an astronomer/priest write it on vellum and slip it reverently into a wooden map drawer in some secret location.

I showed my oldest daughter this picture recently, and we talked about the idea of 50 million light years. I say we talked about it, but that's not exactly true. You can't talk about something that is completely beyond your understanding. I can't comprehend the size of Texas. What am I going to say about a light year?

“There are something like 800 billion suns in this galaxy,” I said. “And there are billions of galaxies like this in our universe.”

We sat in stupefied silence, shaking our heads.

“Do you think there’s intelligent life out there?” she asked.

“I do. Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“I DON’T know. But I THINK so. The Universe is unimaginably large. The math alone suggests the possibility of millions of civilizations. Of course, we’re pretty cut off by the limitations imposed by the speed of light.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, by the time we see or hear anything from distant star systems, the light or the radio waves are already millions of years old in some cases. There’s a lot going on out there, but we can’t see it or hear it.”

She seemed very disappointed, so I told her about Voyager.

In 1977 NASA launched two identical Voyager spacecraft. Their mission was to travel straight through our solar system, radioing information back along the way, and then move beyond Pluto and out into deep space. Radio signals and information will continue to be received from Voyager One and Two until their systems fail sometime around 2020.

After that they will continue to travel in silence for what we might as well call forever. The SETI institute estimates that it will take Voyager 750 million years just to reach the nearest star system.

But the Voyager spacecraft carry something more than scientific instruments. They each carry a golden disc designed by a group of scientists led by Dr. Carl Sagan, then professor of astronomy and space sciences at Cornell University.

Each disc contains a delightful collection of sounds and images from our planet, as well as some mathematical symbols and keys to help an intelligent species understand it.

The odds against any intelligent being ever finding one of these discs are, literally, astronomical. You’d have a better chance of finding a contact lens in the Pacific Ocean.

And yet, Dr. Sagan and others spent the time, effort, and money needed to create these golden discs. Why would they do that? Dr. Sagan said, “The launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.”

Indeed. I say it took great faith, hope, and love to launch golden discs into the Cosmos on a wing and a prayer. The possibility of finding intelligent life was worth the effort, whatever the odds.

I call it an act of pure worship.

When the end you seek is so wonderful, so unthinkably good, and so compelling that you will throw yourself against time, space, and even reality for the slightest chance of finding it, you have found worship.

And this is exactly why I bow my head in prayer every day of my life.

© Copyright 2005 Preacher. Last update: 7/17/2005; 8:23:06 PM. Links