“Welcome to jupiter,” a voice said over the radio at Nasa’s JPL, with scientists cheering, clapping and hugging each other.
The burn time was within one second of the predicted time, putting it in exactly the orbit it needed.
“You’re the best team ever! We just did the hardest thing Nasa has ever done,” shouted, principle investigator of the Juno mission, Scott Bolton.
“Oh, heavens! Starry Sky!” AA cried out.
Cheng Xin knew that she was referring to Van Gogh’s painting. True, the universe really did look like the painting. The painting in her memory was almost a perfect copy of the two-dimensional Solar System before her eyes. Giant planets filled space, the areas of the planets seeming to exceed even the gaps between them. But the immensity of the planets did not give them any sense of substantiality. Rather, they looked like whirlpools in space-time. In the universe, every part of space flowed, churned, trembled between madness and horror like fiery flames that emitted only frost. The Sun and the planets and all substance and existence seemed to be only hallucinations produced by the turbulence of space-time.
Cheng Xin now recalled the strange feeling she had experienced each time she had looked at Van Gogh’s painting. Everything else in the painting - the trees that seemed to be on fire, and the village and mountains at night - showed perspective and depth, but the starry sky above had no three-dimensionality at all, like a painting hanging in space.
Because the starry night was two-dimensional.
How could Van Gogh have painted such a thing in 1889? Did he, having suffered a second breakdown, truly leap across five centuries and see the sight before them using only his spirit and delirious consciousness? Or, maybe it was the opposite: He had seen the future, and the sight of this Last Judgment had caused his breakdown and eventual suicide.
Death’s End (p. 529), Cixin Liu
The ultimate art gallery, the wonders and magic of space
Me: I feel optimistic about life as a concept and about humanity and our place in the cosmos. Yes, the universe is vast and indifferent but that fact doesn’t have to be inherently terrifying and doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything out there that means us harm. There’s reason for hope.
Liu Cixin:
Films watched in 2015.
Film 184: Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950)
Nota: 8.5/10
“What you’re trying to say is you don’t want me to love you.”
Hey Miss ………….