ORIGINS:
FOURTEEN BILLION YEARS OF COSMIC EVOLUTION,
“Worlds Unnumbered, Planets Beyond the Solar System” by Neil
deGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith,pp.204-205 (W.W. Norton &
Co., NY, London:2004)
“Nearly
five centuries ago, Nicolaus Copernicus resurrected a hypothesis that
the ancient Greek astronomer Aristarchus had first suggested. Far
from occupying the center of the cosmos, said Copernicus,Earth
belongs to the family of planets that orbit the Sun...
“If
the Sun has a planetary family, so too might other stars, with their
planets equally capable of giving life to creatures of all possible
forms. Expressing this view in a manner that affronted papal
authority brought Giordano Bruno to his death at the stake in
1600.Today, a tourist can pick his way through the crowds at the
outdoor cafes in Rome's Campo di Fiori to reach Bruno's statue at its
center, then pause for a moment to reflect on the power of ideas (if
not the power of those who hold them) to triumph over those who would
suppress them...
“Nevertheless,
the verdict on extraterrestrial life in the solar system show enough
likelihood of proving negative that supple minds now usually look
beyond our cosmic neighborhood, to the vast array of possible worlds
that orbit stars other than our Sun.”
