Skip to main content

Gods out there

An artist's impression of earth vs k2-18b - from here


Is there a planet out there somewhere with life on it? Our scientists have done pretty much research already and more is going on. As far as I know, the nearest planet that has the potential to sustain life is an exoplanet that our scientists have named K2-18b. It is a Hycean planet, which means there is possibly hydrogen and water-ocean on it. [Hycean is portmanteau of hydrogen and ocean.] Exoplanet means that it doesn’t belong to our Solar System though it is in the habitable zone, though it is 120 light-years away from our earth.

K2-18 is the sun of K2-18b. [I guess that’s quite a convenient way of naming things in science. Naming them Petre and Paul, for example, would have been as inconvenient as it is irrational.] K2-18 is dwarf star; that is, a relatively small star of low luminosity. “A cool star!” our new gen would say. However, the planet's size can be quite intimidating: 8.6 times as big as the earth.

NASA’s James Webb Telescope suggests the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide on K2-18b. This planet has the potential to possess hydrogen-rich atmosphere and water ocean-covered surface.

Whenever I hear about the possibility of life on another planet, my first thought is whether there will be as many gods and demons there too as our own planet has. A friend of mine accuses me of perversity because of this thought though I don’t know why thoughts about gods should be perverse in any way. Will the creatures on those planets be fighting with each other in the names of those gods too as we do here? Or will they be more intelligent? Really spiritual?

A few years ago, I read a novel about life on another planet where a Christian pastor from the earth reaches to sate the spiritual thirst of the creatures there: The Book of Strange New Things. Spirituality can be painful even on another planet!

I’m waiting for James Webb and other technology to teach me more – both about other planets and the divine beings there.

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanSeptember 13, 2023 at 12:41 PM

    Hari Om
    Where there is life there will be that eternal struggle called survival. Where that exists it follows there will be competition for resources. This builds to conflict and all living things face it. If they dey develop self awareness, then the curiosity of why will drive enquiry...and development of theories such as "an originator" from which all arose... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pradeep NairSeptember 13, 2023 at 8:49 PM

    To me, life on another planet is still a fantasy ... If there has to be one, it will have to be a form of life that is different from what we have here. So, everything else will also be different ...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalSeptember 13, 2023 at 9:00 PM

      Yes, I too believe that life on another planet will be quite different. I am pretty sure they will be more sensible than us :)

      Delete
  3. SGSeptember 13, 2023 at 11:41 PM

    These scientists should have consulted with Elon Musk before naming the planet. Elon named 3 of his kids - X Æ A-Xii, Exa Dark Sideræl, and Techno Mechanicus. HeHeHe

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anita SabatSeptember 14, 2023 at 12:48 AM

    They have found a fossil of a non-human-like creature in Mexico.
    Looks like aliens have been visiting Planet Earth from the past hundreds of years...
    The way science is advancing, we will know about the system in their planets in a couple of years!

    ReplyDelete
  5. magiceyeSeptember 15, 2023 at 6:32 PM

    More minds to conquer!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Pooja MahimkarSeptember 19, 2023 at 12:34 PM

    It would be a shame if we are alone in this universe, imagine we being just alone.

    ReplyDelete
  7. CareenaSeptember 22, 2023 at 11:51 AM

    I'm sure we'll find many similarities between our gods and thier gods!

    ReplyDelete
  8. indu chhibberFebruary 17, 2024 at 11:44 AM

    Why worry about life on other planets,we can't even live harmoniously on our own.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
39 comments
Read more

Bharata: The Ascetic King

Bharata is disillusioned yet again. His brother, Rama the ideal man, Maryada Purushottam , is making yet another grotesque demand. Sita Devi has to prove her purity now, years after the Agni Pariksha she arranged for herself long ago in Lanka itself. Now, when she has been living for years far away from Rama with her two sons Luva and Kusha in the paternal care of no less a saint than Valmiki himself! What has happened to Rama? Bharata sits on the bank of the Sarayu with tears welling up in his eyes. Give me an answer, Sarayu, he said. Sarayu accepted Bharata’s tears too. She was used to absorbing tears. How many times has Rama come and sat upon this very same bank and wept too? Life is sorrow, Sarayu muttered to Bharata. Even if you are royal descendants of divinity itself. Rama had brought the children Luva and Kusha to Ayodhya on the day of the Ashvamedha Yagna which he was conducting in order to reaffirm his sovereignty and legitimacy over his kingdom. He didn’t know they w...
30 comments
Read more

Liberated

Fiction - parable Vijay was familiar enough with soil and the stones it turns up to realise that he had struck something rare.   It was a tiny stone, a pitch black speck not larger than the tip of his little finger. It turned up from the intestine of the earth while Vijay was digging a pit for the biogas plant. Anand, the scientist from the village, got the stone analysed in his lab and assured, “It is a rare object.   A compound of carbonic acid and magnesium.” Anand and his fellow scientists believed that it must be a fragment of a meteoroid that hit the earth millions of years ago.   “Very rare indeed,” concluded the scientist. Now, it’s plain commonsense that something that’s very rare indeed must be very valuable too. All the more so if it came from the heavens. So Vijay got the village goldsmith to set it on a gold ring.   Vijay wore the ring proudly on his ring finger. Nobody, in the village, however bothered to pay any homage to Vijay’s...
47 comments
Read more

Empuraan – Review

Revenge is an ancient theme in human narratives. Give a moral rationale for the revenge and make the antagonist look monstrously evil, then you have the material for a good work of art. Add to that some spices from contemporary politics and the recipe is quite right for a hit movie. This is what you get in the Malayalam movie, Empuraan , which is running full houses now despite the trenchant opposition to it from the emergent Hindutva forces in the state. First of all, I fail to understand why so much brouhaha was hollered by the Hindutvans [let me coin that word for sheer convenience] who managed to get some 3 minutes censored from the 3-hour movie. The movie doesn’t make any explicit mention of any of the existing Hindutva political parties or other organisations. On the other hand, Allahu Akbar is shouted menacingly by Islamic terrorists, albeit towards the end. True, the movie begins with an implicit reference to what happened in Gujarat in 2002 after the Godhra train burnin...
10 comments
Read more

Empuraan and Ramayana

Maggie and I will be watching the Malayalam movie Empuraan tomorrow. The tickets are booked. The movie has created a lot of controversy in Kerala and the director has decided to impose no less than 17 censors on it himself. I want to watch it before the jingoistic scissors find its way to the movie. It is surprising that the people of Kerala took such exception to this movie when the same people had no problem with the utterly malicious and mendacious movie The Kerala Story (2023). [My post on that movie, which I didn’t watch, is here .] Empuraan is based partly on the Gujarat riots of 2002. The riots were real and the BJP’s role in it (Mr Modi’s, in fact) is well-known. So, Empuraan isn’t giving the audience any falsehood as The Kerala Story did. Moreover, The Kerala Story maligned the people of Kerala while Empuraan is about something that happened in the faraway Gujarat quite long ago. Why are the people of Kerala then upset with Empuraan ? Because it tells the truth, M...
13 comments
Read more