Fragility

Earthrise from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

For the second time in two years, I was hospitalized with a life threatening leg infection. I'm home now, but an enforced idleness of several days gives one time (and motivation) for Deep Thought. Upon discharge, I was told to expect to be back within a year or so unless I take active steps to prevent such a thing. It seems my body's immune system is irreparably compromised from my 20 plus year long losing struggle against diabetes. My sole defense against bacterial infection is my skin, and I am vulnerable to the smallest crack in that very thin layer of protection. The culprit this time around was an insignificant cut on one of my toes, so minor that I (incorrectly) assumed a simple band-aid would suffice.

(Be patient, this will get around to astronomy before I'm done.)

So now I walk around with an acute awareness of how fragile my safety is. It is quite literally "skin deep"! I must carry with me a tube of prescription strength antibiotic cream to apply ASAP to any cut, scrape, or puncture anywhere on my body, or else it's back to the hospital.

So I gave a lot of thought to just how fragile my health is, and how easily the apple cart could be upset, so to speak. Such thoughts were doubly a propos in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. For the health of our planet is equally vulnerable.

Earthrise from Japanese Kayuga space probe

We're learning from the armada of orbiters, landers, and rovers on and about Mars that that planet was "once upon a time" warm, wet, and quite possibly green, with an atmosphere approaching Terrestrial density blanketing its surface. Mars's northern hemisphere was almost entirely covered with an ocean containing enough water to fill our Atlantic. Rivers ran freely. We see even today their channels, flood plains, dendritic networks, and ancient deltas. Yes... "once upon a time", but long, long gone.

What happened? The atmosphere is what happened. It seems that the lack of a sufficiently powerful magnetic field laid the Martian surface naked to the full fury of billions of years of solar radiation, which little by little stripped the defenseless planet of its protective layer of air, causing most of its water to break down into its component atoms, which then flew merrily off into interplanetary space. (Hmm.. I just had a thought. I wonder how much of that water ended up here on Earth? Does my bottle of Fiji Water contain a bit o' the Red Planet?)

Did a rich and flourishing Martian ecosystem perish billions of years ago because it was stripped of that all too vulnerable protective screen? Just how knife-edged is the narrow path along which life progresses?

And what about us?

The original "Earthrise" photo, taken from Apollo 8

We are dumping carbon dioxide into our atmosphere at a rate that natural corrective processes are incapable of keeping up with. Equilibrium has not only been shattered, it has been stomped on, kicked into a corner, and beaten senseless. That, along with the other filth we pour into the air, threatens the very continued existence of Humanity, unless we come to our senses TODAY.

Take a good look at the Earthrise photos I've attached to this posting. Every time I see such an image, I can't help but marvel, not only at the heartbreaking beauty of our home world, but at its fragility. It's like a soap bubble suspended in space, perilously easy to pop.

Perhaps this coronavirus pandemic is a blessing in disguise. (A very good disguise, I must say.) In addition to our air becoming (temporarily, I fear) much cleaner, and our species' carbon footprint much reduced, it has exposed how fragile and unsustainable our economy is, and how radical income inequality is eating away at the foundations of our society. Even in "good" times, the poor and marginalized suffer disproportionately from hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and climate change in general, but in times of severe continental (indeed global) stress such as now, the result is inconvenience for the wealthy and catastrophe for the not so well off. Also, those who thought themselves safely ensconced in the Middle Class are finding they were only a paycheck or two away from financial ruin.

Fragility, fragility, fragility. Not just for our planet, but also for each and every one of us. (Forgive my digressions. I warned you, I had a lot of time on my hands.)

We have before us two alternatives, We can either use this calamity as a chance to reexamine the fundamentals of our economic and societal structures and rebuild so as to eliminate our ecologically destructive industrial habits, income inequality, and the lack of adequate healthcare and social safety net, or... we can emerge with a thoughtless resumption of our planet-destroying economy, and millions of families reduced to poverty and/or crushing lifelong debt from which they will have no hope of ever getting out from under.

Now, while the economy is basically shut down and the entire country is essentially under house arrest is the time to make the perilous knife's edge that we stand on abundantly clear to all. But this opportunity is fleeting. Once the economy starts up again, people will (understandably) be grateful for whatever crumbs are tossed in their direction.

The Earth and Moon, hanging in the Void