posted on Dec, 3 2017 @ 07:10 AM
----Part II-----
Maybe I was foolish, but back in 1972/3 or 1979 when the Pioneer and Voyager probes left the confines of Earth I guess thought it would just be a few
weeks before the wonders of the Universe were unlocked. I think many of us felt that way. I never would have dreamed nearly an entire lifetime would
pass and we still wouldn't know even all the solar system's secrets, let alone the secrets of the Universe.
The Pioneer probes were shut down decades ago, and though they continue on their lonely mission they will only serve others (maybe), not us humans
here on Earth. Voyager(s) still report back from time to time, but in just over 3 years they too will fall silent forever. Some say Voyager has left
the "Solar System", but this is in fact not correct. They have passed the Terminal Shock, and they've exited the Heliopause, but they haven't left
just yet. And, we'll be waiting a long time for that to happen, a very, very, long time. In fact, it will take another 30,000 years for Voyager to
exit our "solar system". This represents not just a lifetime, but generations of lifetimes, 3,000 of them if the average lifespan of a human is 100
years (again, maybe).
When ET finally finds the Pioneer and Voyager craft they will be relics of a distant past. When he digs through the technological refuse pile to find
the CD player to play the golden platters encoded with the information from Earth aboard Voyager, when he hears the child's voice say "Greetings,
from the children of planet Earth", human kind itself may be a distant memory, a relic of the past.
As we look both backward and forward in our lives we see the relative nature of time. Our dreams are expansive, as the authors like Asimov and others
have shown, but we are constrained by time. And even with all those magnificent technological advances since Pioneer and Voyager left Earth, mankind
has still not even managed to journey to our next nearest 'planet', Mars. The stars? Will we even live that long, will mankind even exist?
I look up at the stars and wonder...
Time...relativity and ET.
I wonder.