Broca's Brain - Carl Sagan [111]
to its neighbor’s
pinprick-glow
slant millions
and millions
of watertight miles.
Only in the longest view
do they graze
like one herd
on a breathless tundra.
DIANE ACKERMAN,
The Planets (New York, Morrow, 1976)
ONE OF THE seven wonders of the ancient world was the Temple of Diana at Ephesus, in Asia Minor, an exquisite example of Greek monumental architecture. The Holy of Holies in this temple was a great black rock, probably metallic, that had fallen from the skies, a sign from the gods, perhaps an arrowhead shot from the crescent moon, the symbol of Diana the Huntress.
Not many centuries later—perhaps even at the same time—another great black rock, according to the belief of many, fell out of the sky onto the Arabian Peninsula. There, in pre-Islamic times, it was emplaced in a Meccan temple, the Kaaba, and offered something akin to worship. Then, in the seventh and eight centuries A.D., came the stunning success of Islam, founded by Muhammed, who lived out most of his days not far from this large dark stone, the presence of which might conceivably have influenced his choice of career. The earlier worship of the stone was incorporated into Islam, and today a principal focus of every pilgrimage to Mecca is that same stone—often called the Kaaba after the temple that enshrines it. (All religions have shamelessly coopted their predecessors—e.g., consider the Christian festival of Easter, where the ancient fertility rites of the spring equinox are today cunningly disguised as eggs and baby animals. Indeed the very name Easter is, according to some etymologies, a corruption of the name of the great Near Eastern Earth mother goddess, Astarte. The Diana of Ephesus is a later and Hellenized version of Astarte and Cybelle.)
In primitive times, a great boulder falling out of a clear blue sky must have provided onlookers with a memorable experience. But it had a greater importance: at the dawn of metallurgy, iron from the skies was, in many parts of the world, the purest available form of this metal. The military significance of iron swords and the agricultural significance of iron plowshares made metal from the sky a concern of practical men.
Rocks still fall from the skies; farmers still occasionally break their plows on them; museums still pay a bounty for them; and, very rarely, one falls through the eaves of a house, narrowly missing a family in its evening hypnogogic ritual before the television set. We call these objects meteorites. But naming them is not the same as understanding them. Where, in fact, do meteorites come from?
Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter are thousands of irregularly shaped, tumbling little worlds called asteroids or planetoids. “Asteroid” is not a good term for them because they are not like stars. “Planetoid” is much better because they are like planets, only smaller, but “asteroid” is the more widely used term by far. Ceres, the first asteroid to be found, was discovered* telescopically on January 1, 1801—an auspicious finding on the first day of the nineteenth century—by G. Piazzi, an Italian monk. Ceres is about 1,000 kilometers in diameter and is by far the largest asteroid. (By comparison, the diameter of the Moon is 3,464 kilometers.) Since then, more than two thousand asteroids have been discovered. Asteroids are given a number indicating their order of discovery. But following Piazzi’s lead, a great effort was also made to give them names—female names, preferably from Greek mythology. However, two thousand asteroids is a great many, and the nomenclature becomes a little ragged toward the end. We find 1 Ceres, 2 Pallas, 3 Juno, 4 Vesta, 16 Psyche, 22 Kalliope, 34 Circe, 55 Pandora, 80 Sappho, 232 Russia, 324 Bamberga, 433 Eros, 710 Gertrud, 739 Mandeville, 747 Winchester, 904 Rockefelleria, 916 America, 1121 Natasha, 1224 Fantasia, 1279 Uganda, 1556 Icarus, 1620 Geographos, 1685 Toro, and 694 Ekard (Drake [University] spelled backwards). 1984 Orwell is, unfortunately, a lost opportunity.
Many asteroids have orbits that are highly elliptical or stretched-out,