Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
By Sally Morem
But wait, it gets worse. The priest has determined, through careful
dating methods and study of star charts, that the light of that brilliant
supernova reached Earth in the eastern sky 3,000 years earlier—over
Bethlehem.
It’s extremely unlikely that any planet could settle into a stable orbit
around two stars. The planet would be much more likely to lurch and
loop about it in strange patterns with a good chance of being flung by
centrifugal force into interstellar space. In order for life to have a
chance to evolve, the planet in question must settle into a nice, regular
orbit in the “water zone” around a star—that distance from the star in
which liquid water can form on a planet and remain in the liquid state
during most of the year. No star that can become a nova is capable of
fostering such a stable planet.
So, Clarke’s star clearly could not have been a nova. But, in his story,
he did hint at the possibility that the Phoenix Nebula was caused by a
supernova. But the class of stars that are capable of going supernova
are saddled with their own set of troublesome instabilities. A very
massive star will build up a large amount of heavy elements during its
lifetime of fusion reactions. Our own Sun is far too small to do this. At
a certain point, the heavy elements bear down on the core, creating
immense pressures, relieved finally by a massive explosion. In a few
seconds, the supernova puts out more energy than a galaxy of stars.
Sometimes the star is completely destroyed. It’s a good thing that none
have occurred near our own Solar System or we wouldn’t be here to
talk about it. The heavy radiation from such an explosion, even from a
distance of many light years, would have destroyed all life on Earth.
Why can’t such a star harbor life-bearing planets? Because it wouldn’t
be around long enough. Even though larger stars contain much more
fuel than Sun-like stars, they undergo fusion at such prodigious rates
that they burn themselves out in a few hundreds of millions of year,
hardly enough time for microscopic life to form, let alone intelligent life.
Clarke’s brave aliens could never have come into being in such a star
system.
Stellar evolution was not so nearly well understood in the Fifties when
Clarke wrote “The Star.” But this error in stellar physics only
reinforces our earlier view that “The Star” is not so much a
commentary on real life than it is a metaphor for dealing with a very
difficult concept.
So, just for the sake of argument, let’s go along with Clarke’s thought
experiment. Let’s find out what he was up to. Let’s assume that the
Christmas Story as described in the Bible and in “The Star” is an
accurate account of real events. And, let’s also assume Einstein got it
right.
If we take Einstein at his word, space and time are really one thing—
spacetime. In other words, we can’t just think of a certain location in
space or a certain length of time; we must think in terms of events.
Location + Duration = Event. He also insisted that the Theory of
Relativity doesn’t mean that everything is relative, but that every event
is subject to that Absolute of Absolutes: The Speed of Light.
I may be belaboring the obvious when I point out that “The Star”
describes a carefully orchestrated celestial event. Light travels at a
finite speed. (186,000 miles per second: It’s not just a good idea; it’s the
law.) In Clarke’s story, it takes 3,000 years for light to travel from point
A (the exploding star) to point B (the Middle East in 4 BC). In order for
the light of the exploding star to get to Earth at the correct time, in the
correct spot in the sky—in other words, in order for the correct event to
occur—the star must explode 3,000 years in advance of the events in
Bethlehem. But, according to Einstein, causes and effects cannot race
ahead of the lightwave front within our universe. The events at the star
and at Bethlehem can have no conceivable connection with each other
until the lightwave front hits Earth.
The only way cause and effect can be linked across a 3,000-light-year
gap before the events occur is for an outside force to intervene. A force
not restricted by the speed of light. Like a complex military operation
in which separate tactical maneuvers must be synchronized exactly in
order to achieve the overall strategic goal, the events in the Christmas
Story must be planned and executed to the letter. And—this is a key
point—this must include the planned destruction of the alien
civilization.
We sense that that true meaning of our lives lies in knowing that our
freely made choices and acts are causes that create demonstrable effects
in the universe. These effects may be small, but they’re there. And, we
believe that if we never existed, the universe would be a slightly
different place. But this sense of meaning must—by definition—be
missing from a Scripted Universe.
This is precisely what Olaf Stapledon was driving at when he crafted his
own story, envisioning what such a universe and such a god might be
like. In “Star Maker,” we see a creator at work through the eyes of the
narrator, a human swept up by forces he cannot comprehend so that he,
and other finite beings like him from other planets, may observe the rise
and fall of great galactic civilizations, the shaping of the universe itself,
and its ultimate destruction. And in a blazing vision, he realizes that the
Star Maker makes many such universes, both before and after
fashioning ours, and does so precisely in the manner of an artist—a bit
more symmetry here, a bit more complexity there.
“I was indeed confronted by the Star Maker, but the Star Maker was now
revealed as more than the creative and therefore finite spirit. He now
appeared as the eternal and perfect spirit which comprises all things and
all times, and contemplates timelessly the infinitely diverse host which it
comprises. The illumination which flooded in on me and struck me down
to blind worship was a glimmer, so it seemed to me, of the eternal spirit’s
all-penetrating experience.
“It was with anguish and horror, and yet with acquiescence, even with
praise, that I felt or seemed to feel something of the eternal spirit’s temper
as it apprehended in one intuitive and timeless vision all our lives. Here
was no pity, no proffer of salvation, no kindly aid. Or here were all pity
and all love, but mastered by a frosty ecstasy. Our broken lives, our loves,
our follies, our betrayals, our forlorn and gallant defences, were one and
all calmly anatomized, assessed, and placed. True, they were one and all
lived through with complete understanding, with insight and full
sympathy, even with passion. But sympathy was not ultimate in the temper
of the eternal spirit; contemplation was. Love was not absolute,
contemplation was. And though there was love, there was also hate
comprised within the spirit’s temper, for there was cruel delight in the
contemplation of every horror, and glee in the downfall of the virtuous.
All passion, it seemed, were comprised within the spirit’s temper, but
mastered, icily gripped within the cold, clear, crystal ecstasy of
contemplation.”
Sources