There's been some hubbub about seven Earth-like planets being discovered nearby (read: 40 lightyears away). Having just finished the Life, the Universe and Everything Symposium--and being a Mormon--this is really interesting to me.
The LTUE conference is geared towards aficionados and writers of science fiction and fantasy. The name, of course, comes from the late Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so it shouldn't be a surprise that a lot of the panels were geared toward the "science" part of "science fiction." I attended panels about time travel, evolutionary diversity, dinosaurs, and the theory of relativity, to name a few.
So alien life, alien worlds, and basically the idea of being in the stars has always been appealing to me. Sure, I love Earth. All my stuff's here. But there's something magical and yearnful (that's not a word, but it ought to be) in the stars. My pining for the extraterrestrial definitely comes from a steady diet of science fiction as a kid. I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation with my mom, to say nothing of the aforementioned forays onto Anne McCaffery's Pern. Though I liked Woody more than Buzz in Toy Story, space has always been a cool thing in my mind. I took a science fiction class in high school and college, and I've dabbled in a bunch of sci-fi nerdoms throughout the years. While I'm not a proficient in the genre, I'm past merely being "familiar" with it and its tropes.
This is why the news about exoplanets has me excited. I mean, 40 lightyears is a huge distance (Google puts it at 2.351e+14 miles away. Since light travels over 5.8 trillion miles in a year, that's a really long ways away), so it's not like there's any exoplanetary exploration going on in my lifetime, your lifetime, or the lifetime of basically anyone alive right now. Nevertheless, it's exciting to think that there's something out there that matches up with what we know can support life.*
But I think there's something almost religious about discoveries like this. A tweet I saw (but can't find) said a bit about how much he hoped sentient life would be found elsewhere so that people would stop claiming this world is so special. I'm paraphrasing roughly, but the gist of it was that the idea of the uniqueness of Earth as being proof of God's involvement and love seemed to be the tweeter's point.
One interesting bit of Mormonism is that we aren't challenged by the idea that we aren't the only sentient life in the universe. It's part of our doctrine that there are countless worlds--and countless souls--out there. Finding more life means finding more brothers and sisters, so far as Mormon theology goes. As I've mentioned before, I don't think that there's a limit of what special is: I disagree with Syndrome and think that everyone being special is another way of saying everyone is special. The same thought goes along with the idea of being one out of many, yet still unique. I don't think that life on this Earth is what makes Earth special, but the kind of life we're willing to make whilst on it.
At an LTUE seven years ago, I attended a panel about Mormons and fantasy, in which the panelists (all Mormon...the conference is in Utah Valley, where the Mormon saturation is in the 80 or 90 percentile, so that shouldn't come as a surprise) opined on why it is that Mormonism and sci-fi/fantasy get along so well. They pointed out interesting statistics (which are dated, but still enlightening), including the fact that more genre fiction is sold in Utah, per capita, than elsewhere. They also said that SF/F doesn't sell well in the Bible belt, calling it a "wasteland" for book sales. There's obviously a connection to the possibilities implied through Mormonism and what is explored in "the genre of ideas".
So while it may be alien to think about the possibilities of other life in the universe for some, it's a comforting thought. I may not be the best Mormon--or the best sci-fi/fantasy fan--but I do like it when my wheelhouses make a nifty Venn diagram.
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* Obviously, there can be other types of life--and, more importantly, other types of sentient life--out there in the vastness of the universe. It's not impossible that there are other variations, other physiognomies, and more out there. In fact, I'd bet that there are. But our best hope of finding anything out in the vastness of the cosmos that looks like what we would recognize as life would derive out of finding a world that is as similar to ours--complete with liquid water--as possible.
The LTUE conference is geared towards aficionados and writers of science fiction and fantasy. The name, of course, comes from the late Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so it shouldn't be a surprise that a lot of the panels were geared toward the "science" part of "science fiction." I attended panels about time travel, evolutionary diversity, dinosaurs, and the theory of relativity, to name a few.
So alien life, alien worlds, and basically the idea of being in the stars has always been appealing to me. Sure, I love Earth. All my stuff's here. But there's something magical and yearnful (that's not a word, but it ought to be) in the stars. My pining for the extraterrestrial definitely comes from a steady diet of science fiction as a kid. I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation with my mom, to say nothing of the aforementioned forays onto Anne McCaffery's Pern. Though I liked Woody more than Buzz in Toy Story, space has always been a cool thing in my mind. I took a science fiction class in high school and college, and I've dabbled in a bunch of sci-fi nerdoms throughout the years. While I'm not a proficient in the genre, I'm past merely being "familiar" with it and its tropes.
This is why the news about exoplanets has me excited. I mean, 40 lightyears is a huge distance (Google puts it at 2.351e+14 miles away. Since light travels over 5.8 trillion miles in a year, that's a really long ways away), so it's not like there's any exoplanetary exploration going on in my lifetime, your lifetime, or the lifetime of basically anyone alive right now. Nevertheless, it's exciting to think that there's something out there that matches up with what we know can support life.*
But I think there's something almost religious about discoveries like this. A tweet I saw (but can't find) said a bit about how much he hoped sentient life would be found elsewhere so that people would stop claiming this world is so special. I'm paraphrasing roughly, but the gist of it was that the idea of the uniqueness of Earth as being proof of God's involvement and love seemed to be the tweeter's point.
One interesting bit of Mormonism is that we aren't challenged by the idea that we aren't the only sentient life in the universe. It's part of our doctrine that there are countless worlds--and countless souls--out there. Finding more life means finding more brothers and sisters, so far as Mormon theology goes. As I've mentioned before, I don't think that there's a limit of what special is: I disagree with Syndrome and think that everyone being special is another way of saying everyone is special. The same thought goes along with the idea of being one out of many, yet still unique. I don't think that life on this Earth is what makes Earth special, but the kind of life we're willing to make whilst on it.
At an LTUE seven years ago, I attended a panel about Mormons and fantasy, in which the panelists (all Mormon...the conference is in Utah Valley, where the Mormon saturation is in the 80 or 90 percentile, so that shouldn't come as a surprise) opined on why it is that Mormonism and sci-fi/fantasy get along so well. They pointed out interesting statistics (which are dated, but still enlightening), including the fact that more genre fiction is sold in Utah, per capita, than elsewhere. They also said that SF/F doesn't sell well in the Bible belt, calling it a "wasteland" for book sales. There's obviously a connection to the possibilities implied through Mormonism and what is explored in "the genre of ideas".
So while it may be alien to think about the possibilities of other life in the universe for some, it's a comforting thought. I may not be the best Mormon--or the best sci-fi/fantasy fan--but I do like it when my wheelhouses make a nifty Venn diagram.
---
* Obviously, there can be other types of life--and, more importantly, other types of sentient life--out there in the vastness of the universe. It's not impossible that there are other variations, other physiognomies, and more out there. In fact, I'd bet that there are. But our best hope of finding anything out in the vastness of the cosmos that looks like what we would recognize as life would derive out of finding a world that is as similar to ours--complete with liquid water--as possible.