Exploring the cosmos: from here to infinity

Although more logical, if more humdrum, explanations have been propounded to explain why human beings first stood on their hind legs, it is a pleasing conjecture that then, as now, they were reaching for the stars.

However this may be, even the earliest human societies looked to the stars in their attempts to explain the origin and the nature of the universe. Almost all the natural phenomena that dominated their lives appeared to emanate from the heavens. The wind, rain and snows, the thunder and lightning and the storms that threatened their survival, the Sun which ripened the fruit they gathered or parched the Earth and laid it waste all these were clearly manifestations of inexplicable higher powers that were in turn benevolent and malicious. These powers appear to have given human beings one gift to compensate for their comparative lack of the instincts that guide other animals that hallmark of humanity, the gift of curiosity.

Generations of strivings have brought us much closer to an understanding of the origins and nature of the universe.

On 23 April last year it was announced that the NASA satellite COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) had confirmed the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe by discovering ripples in the radiation from the fireball of creation.

In developing the Big Bang theory, astronomers had to turn for help to particle physicists. Astronomers are mainly concerned with trying to understand the large-scale structure of the universe and are accustomed to thinking in terms of light years'; particle physicists, on the other hand, ore concerned with the structure of matter and the fundamental laws of nature at very small distances'. Thus the first fractions of a second of the birth of the universe have become the point of encounter of the infinitely great and the infinitesimally small.

This is a supreme example of the working method of the human mind, which in all spheres has a propensity to work from the particular to the universal.

The same principle can be seen at work in the adventure of space exploration. Satellites in their hundreds circle the globe, sending back data on everything from ocean currents and wove formations to crop prospects, deforestation, sources of fresh water and mineral deposits. For the very first time we have at our disposal o synoptic view of the world we inhabit.

But knowledge can be destructive as well as constructive; it can both serve and alienate humanity, protect nature as well as play havoc with it. It was long thought that space was exempt from these contradictions, that it was too vast to be in any way affected by human action. We ore now beginning to realize that this is not the case.

Since the launching of the first Sputnik in 1957, one new satellite, on average, has been launched every two or three days, the vast majority of them being communication satellites of one kind or another Quietly almost imperceptibly we have witnessed the dawning of the "Communication Age". At the same time, the first threats have begun to appear.

The most obvious threat comes from the vast amount of debris from spent satellites, the upper stages of rocket launchers and other sundry bric-à-brac of space exploration, it has been estimated that tens of thousands of objects small but capable of damaging a spacecraft are now in orbit around the Earth.

Equally serious is the threat to both optical and radio astronomy resulting from the ever-increasing amounts of light emanating from our big cities and radio interference from communication satellites and ground sources of all kinds.

Astronomers' growing calls for the preservation of "wilderness areas" in the radio spectrum and light restricted zones for the preservation of the night sky must be heeded if we are to probe further into the mysteries of space.

After gazing skywards for so long, humankind is now setting out to conquer space. Shall we be capable of learning from the mistakes we have made in our own little world, so that we can explore the infinities of space with serenity?

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