OPINION

EDITORIAL: Welcome, visitor

Just out for a summer look-about

It's funny how self-centered mankind can be. Not egocentric, necessarily, just self-absorbed. The way the American post office offers "forever" stamps. As if anything man could make might last forever. Nothing lasts forever except the Earth and sky. It slips away. And all our money won't another minute buy.

For how many millennia have objects bounced around in our solar system, including those not of this solar system? This month, the newspapers reported that there's a mystery object coming to town from deep space--and it's only the "second interstellar visitor" to reach this solar system. More accurate would be to say it's only the second visitor since written records have been kept. This solar system has been around longer than the Hubble Space Telescope. Or even hieroglyphics.

Once again, however, we've buried the lede: There's a visitor a-coming!

About two weeks ago, astronomers spotted this comet/object/flaming rock heading toward our neighborhood. If the math is right--and it better be--it'll fly by Mars next month, then be on its long way again. They call it C2019 Q4--may we call you Q4?--and it's only the second object that homo Faber can definitely say came from beyond our sun's reach and gravity. The first one being that strange cigar-shaped thing man dubbed Oumuamua in 2017. A few of the more gullible types claimed that Oumuamua--Hawaiian for "scout"--could have been a spaceship, but ET never called home that we know of. No signals came from the first one, and nobody on Earth is detecting signals from the new one.

("The new one." Ha.)

But the whole story is fascinating. Every story about space is fascinating.

Researchers at the European Southern Observatory have put most of their other projects on hold while Q4 is in sight. They are as mesmerized looking at it as we are reading about it. "It's so exciting," Dr. Olivier Hainaut, one of the astronomers with the ESO, told Business Insider. "We're basically looking away from all of our other projects right now." Some of us have even postponed fantasy football business to watch it. Our visitor is exciting enough for a body to consider a trip to another dark and mysterious world, the attic, to see if the telescope up there is still up and usable.

Mankind does have an infuriating habit of looking for the practical applications in such discoveries, instead of just letting them be. Wouldn't it be great just to sit back and look at the sky, marvel at it, absorb it‚ like the characters in the old Bloom County comic strip? Or, for our older readers, Snoopy? Instead, scientists are prattling on about how to use Q4.

Maybe we could ride it. If we got a long enough warning on its ETA, we could use it for interstellar travel. All we'd have to do is learn how to land on a bullet streaking through the sky. And survive a few millenniums whilst sitting on it. That's no step for a stepper.

Maybe the thing's got life on it already. If so, it could be ferrying life-forms all around, like a space Uber. Which would mean other life exists in the neighborhood. And that'd be a discovery along the lines of gravity, penicillin and the forward pass.

Unfortunately, our scientists and our poets rarely mix. Which is why our visitor gets a name more like a phone number: C2019 Q4. Is that a name or a Card Catalogue number? (Kids: don't ask.)

Maybe one day mankind really will be able to land something on a bullet, and have it come back to us again. All the better to show us pictures of the trip. Like any other tourist. Some of us can't wait.

Until then, we'll just have to settle for the telescope in the attic. And we'll keep the old CB handy, too, in case ET uses shortwave band.

Editorial on 09/18/2019

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