Landing Elsewhere

For those who follow such things, the next-generation Mars rover, Curiosity, has landed successfully on Mars.  It touched down early this morning after some remarkable robotic manoeuvring at 1:32 AM, ET.  The rover is designed to search for evidence of water, fossil and microbial life on another planet, specifically Mars, as a way of finding out how we got here and survived on Earth, by examining how the process works someplace else.  The reason NASA is doing this is summed up in the name of the craft:  Curiosity.

It seems that by our essential nature, humans are curious about things.  After the first of us heaved up out of the swamp, one blob (likely named Stevie) decided he wanted to see what was behind that twig over there and slithered his pseudopodia in the general direction of “over there”.  Upon reaching “over there” called out to his buddies and said “Lookit that!  More twigs!, Wooohoo!”  Gord and Maureen slithered over, gasping in the “air” and said “Shit, that’s cool.  I wonder if there’s more over there”

Ever since, we’ve been looking over the next hill, or up the next tree to find something to eat, to get out of the rain, or someplace comfy to do some Old-Tyme reproduction, which is also an essential human nature.  We have of course evolved a bit since Gord, Stevie and Maureen on the edge of a swamp.  

You can see elemental curiosity in simple creatures.  Put a new bubbling deep-sea diver toy in a tank of goldfish and just about every fish will glide over to check it out.  It’s new, it doesn’t taste like food, it makes funny noises and it doesn’t seem to want to eat me, so it must be OK. Then, they ignore it for the rest of their lives.  But there are always one or two fish that seem to like to play with it, dodging in and out of the bubbles, bumping into it for hours on end to provoke some kind of hopeful reaction from an inert $2 aquarium bubbler named Made In China.  There isn’t a lot of scientific rigour involved in their testing, as they are fish after all, but the elemental curiosity is fully present.

Mathematically, using the science of Big Numbers, we’re not alone in what we know of the Universe, as the probability of other planets sustaining human-type life is high enough to be plausible, but still quite small.  Until they show up on our doorstep, clutching Altarian Pobble-Beads wanting to buy all the “I Love Lucy” DVD’s we’ve got around, we will never know.  Parenthetically, the scene with Ethel and Lucy at the Candy Factory is considered high religious art with certain alien life forms.  This is no weirder than France considering Jerry Lewis to be as talented, inventive or funny as Jacque Tati and Charlie Chaplin.

Which brings us back to our essential curiosity and Curiosity on Mars.  What is over that rock?  Are there fossils of a Martian Stevie, Gord and Maureen who slithered a bit too far away from the swamp and fell to their death over a two kilometre cliff, a plaintive “Oh Shit!” faintly echoing across the verdant Martian canyon? 

If there is some kind of evidence and we find it, then the second stage or curiosity will kick in:  What do we do about it?  Can we eat it?  Does it want to eat us?  Can we get in out of the rain under it?  Can we mate near it in relative comfort, safety and shelter?  Woohooo!

Curiosity has merely taken one of our elemental human traits, mechanized it and sent it on ahead of the rest of us.