The stars whisper, why the heck are we killing each other? Our borders are invisible from space
When Ronaldo Laishram was growing up in a village in Manipur, he would often spend nights looking at the stars.
Children have done this for thousands of years. Maybe even the first humans in Africa looked up at the night sky and wondered the same things we wonder today: What is this huge universe? Why am I here?
Today, Laishram is a scientist at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. He studies space using powerful telescopes. Recently, his team discovered a very old group of galaxies, about 12.6 billion years old. This kind of group is called a galaxy protocluster, which means it is like an early family of galaxies forming together.
Laishram named it after Loktak Lake, a famous and much-loved lake in Manipur.
After looking so far into space, he said something very powerful: Earth is very small, and still we are killing each other.
Many scientists and astronauts have felt the same thing.
When astronauts see Earth from space, they often say it changes how they think. From far away, Earth does not look like a place divided by countries, borders, religions or armies. It just looks like one small, beautiful planet.
Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell called this feeling “instant global consciousness.” That means suddenly understanding that all humans share one home.
In 1990, the spacecraft Voyager 1 took a famous photo of Earth from about 6.4 billion kilometres away. In that picture, Earth looked like a tiny dot. The scientist Carl Sagan called it the “Pale Blue Dot.”
That tiny dot is us. It is our home. Everyone we know, every city, every country, every war, every dream, every story has happened on that little dot.
From space, the borders people fight over cannot be seen. They are not written into the universe. They are human-made lines.
And so far, even after searching for life beyond Earth, we have not found another planet like ours. That means two important things.
First, life on Earth is incredibly special.
Second, if we destroy our world through war, hatred or carelessness, nobody from another planet is coming to fix it for us.
But there is another problem. Looking at the stars can make people feel wonder, humility and peace. Yet in many cities today, we can barely see the stars because of lights, pollution and crowded buildings.
So the question is: if children can no longer look up and feel amazed by the night sky, are we also losing one of the quiet beginnings of peace?
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
END OF ARTICLE
