Post by neiru2012 on Aug 12, 2007 15:12:15 GMT -5
WARNING: This is an essay I wrote because I couldn't stop thinking about Sunshine. I warn you now it is long and full of spiritual musings, but I had to get it off my chest somehow and didn't know where else to post it. Here goes...
"TO TOUCH A GOD"
This should come as a surprise to no one, but I've always been fascinated by celestial bodies. Although the moon holds a special place of reverence for me, the sun I have put more thought into from a purely physical, spatial perspective. It has been worshipped by countless cultures as the source of life, and indeed powers the entire solar system. But what is the sun?
The sun is a star. I often chastise others for quoting the mystical saying "sun, moon, and stars" as redundant, yet I still stupidly answer the question "what is the closest star to Earth?" with "Alpha Centauri." So let me reiterate... the sun IS a STAR... the local star, closest to Earth... an average of 92.9 million miles away. It's surface temperature is 9,932F... the core? 27,000,000F. Its mass is that of 333,000 Earths, 750 times the mass of all the solar system's planets combined, and its gravity strong enough to keep objects 3.7 billion miles away (Pluto) in its orbit. Massive as it is, it regularly shoots gigantic pillars of flame from its surface, and is known for ejecting billions of tons of plasma into space. But what do all these fancy numbers mean??
As we all know, light is really @$%ing fast. It can travel around the Earth 7 times in a single second, but it takes 8 minutes (and ~20 seconds) for light from the sun to reach Earth. Translation: the sun is really @$%ing far away!! And yet we still see it, an object 92.9 million miles away, in the sky, clear as day (pun intended). Even with the layers of clouds and thick atmosphere blocking off most of its rays, we can't bear to look at it directly without suffering eye damage. And what if you go higher? I've watched the sun set from the tallest mountain in the world (Mauna Kea, measured from the base) at well over 13,000 feet. It was above cloud level and the air was very thin. And let me tell you... you think the sun is bright normally??... you know NOTHING!! The sunlight up there is surreal. Accidentally glancing the sun for a fraction of a second will make you recoil as if lasers have seared into your retinas and shot out the back of your head. >.< Mercury is the closest planet to the sun. If you somehow managed to land on it, your entire sky would be ON FIRE!! XD And nevermind that we can see the sun, we can also FEEL its HEAT... from 92.9 million miles away.
How mighty are stars! Go outside at night and you will see hundreds of stars trillions of times farther still visible to the naked eye. They are living gods, sustainers of life, and yet they too are born... and will one day die. Some go out in a spectacular supernova, the force of which not only obliterates the immediate planetary system, but strips the atmosphere off planets in surrounding neighborhoods. Some implode into black holes, a distortion in spacetime so absolute not even light can escape. Still others gradually fade away... This is the setting for the movie Sunshine, and unless you want to read complete SPOILERS I would suggest stopping now. In the movie, the sun is dying and Earth is frozen in a solar winter!
OK, that's not entirely true. "The plot does not revolve around the sun dying in the normal sense: this is not due for around five billion years based on our understanding of nuclear fusion. It has instead been 'infected' with a 'Q-ball' - a supersymmetric nucleus, left over from the big bang - that is disrupting the normal matter. This is a theoretical particle that scientists at CERN are currently trying to confirm, and was one of the many contributions of the science advisor. The film's bomb is meant to blast the Q-ball to its constituent parts which will then naturally decay, allowing the sun to return to normal." Except none of that was ever explained in the movie. ^.^;;
Anyway, a few years ago, a ship called Icarus I was dispatched to detonate the bomb inside the sun and trigger the re/birth of a new star, but the ship was mysteriously lost. Now a second ship, the Icarus II, is sent with a bomb consisting of Earth's last viable resources to complete that same mission. The funny thing is, they actually expect to make it back home alive. Needless to say, that doesn't happen.
They start out with 8 crew members, a thriving oxygen garden, and a functioning computer. Along the way their oxygen garden burns up. They know they're going to suffocate, but at least they want to live long enough to complete the mission. Problem: There is only enough oxygen to potentially keep 4 (out of 8) crew members alive long enough to complete the mission. No Problem: They soon lose 3, a 4th kills himself, and there is now a crazed sunburned psychopath killing the ones that are left (2 more down!). So far so good, except that the psychopath also crashed the computers and now the only way to complete the mission is to manually pilot the bomb into the sun. Problem: The only guy that knows how to operate the bomb is currently trapped in the airlock.
Solution: He puts on a spacesuit, ties himself to the ship, drills a hole into the cabin, and opens the airlock into space so the vacuum can suck out the last remaining air from the ship - thereby blasting off the door that was trapping him. Now, in the giant clumsy spacesuit, he carefully makes it over to the ship's computer and manually detaches the bomb. He has a limited amount of time to actually get inside the bomb before it jets into the sun, as he's hurrying to the bomb... he trips and falls down. (Tripping in giant clumsy spacesuit = not fun) Nevermind lack of oxygen, nevermind solar flames, dysfunctional computer, entrapment, and crazed homicidal maniacs - he made it through all that!! It is something as simple and silly as tripping that can foil an epic mission and doom an entire solar system. AARRGHH!! >.<
But no, he fights the hopelessness and eventually gets back up. Except now time is running out and there is no way to get to the bomb besides a risky free-float across open space hoping he can grab onto something if he manages to impact with the runaway bomb. He does. Now he braves the spacetime distortion of the sun's gravity and must manually activate the bomb as they are falling into the sun. THE SUN. A @%$ STAR!! An impossible, impassable, most awe-inspiring frontier! "Landing" on (/getting annihilated by) even the local sun blows visiting a distant planet utterly out of the water! There are few cooler ways to die than getting fried by a star. (Note to self: die in star in future lifetime.)
More awesome still, is dying by manually piloting a bomb into the heart of a star in order to save an entire solar system!! Even if everyone was alive, the oxygen reserves were fine, and it was pretty certain we'd make it back to our home planet intact... but someone still had to stay behind and manually pilot the bomb, I would volunteer in a heartbeat!! Hell, even if it didn't need to be manually piloted, I'd insist!! To land on the surface of a god! That is what he did. And he touched it... the new sun. *_* The most beautiful death to ever grace the screen! The first/last man on the old sun, the first man on the new sun. Saving a solar system. What an incredible honor. I could probably retire from reincarnation right there and then because it just doesn't get any better than that! (Unless you're trying to reverse a supermassive black hole from devouring your galaxy or something) And if someone I knew got to do that, I'd be like "Dude, you're awesome, I am so marrying you in our next lifetime."
The mindset of self-sacrifice and complete surrender to a higher purpose is an impressive force in its own right. Even if I knew I was going to die, willingly determined to die to carry out a mission, I would still probably be stuck in that airlock thinking "I need to get to the computer! But I also need the ship's air to stay alive and operate the computer! Then once I get inside the bomb... THEN I am ready to die!! W00T!!" But no, not him. He blew all the stops. Breathing, the air, it didn't matter anymore. All semblance of caution and reason was discarded. He simply acted without hesitation and by any means necessary. And it worked!
Funny how life works out. Researching his role for Sunshine turned Cillian Murphy atheist from agnostic, yet it proved an intense source of spiritual inspiration for me. The movie itself is meant to be a conflict between science and religion. If it were to happen to us, would we use our knowledge to try to save ourselves? The sun has given humanity life, would they return the favor? Or would we see it as the will of God and wait quietly to die?
I do not see spirituality and science as in conflict at all, or indeed separate. Atheism's primary conflict is not with spirit but with monotheistic dogma. They believe humans created the gods, and for all intents and purposes are gods. Humans should not undermine their achievements, and have faith in themselves to direct their own destinies. They should not rely on a "higher power" to dictate ethics and accountability, nor blame that "higher power" for their actions. On all these points, I essentially agree... but that's another topic altogether.
The character Cillian plays, the physicist Capa whose research created the bomb, is supposed to be an atheist. All the nightmares he's had of plummeting headlong into the sun are coming true. When he surrenders himself to death he does not do so with my dreams of glory, bragging rights for all eternity, and a treasured memory across infinite lifetimes. As far as he's concerned, this is the end and he will face it alone. It makes his self-sacrifice that much more meaningful, more beautiful, and more spiritual to me.
In many ways, this is how some gods were born in the olden days. In many ways, Capa gave birth to the sun. It would be named after him and his memory worshipped through it. An atheist giving birth to a god, touching it, and becoming it. The world comes full circle. We are all stardust. Just as the ship's psychologist spent his days alone in the observation room staring at the sun, so to me watching this movie alone in an empty theater is a religious experience (I almost feel just as sunburned, too). It will probably revolutionize how I view stars which, in my cosmology, are one of three basic building blocks of the universe.
Mighty are the stars!
"TO TOUCH A GOD"
This should come as a surprise to no one, but I've always been fascinated by celestial bodies. Although the moon holds a special place of reverence for me, the sun I have put more thought into from a purely physical, spatial perspective. It has been worshipped by countless cultures as the source of life, and indeed powers the entire solar system. But what is the sun?
The sun is a star. I often chastise others for quoting the mystical saying "sun, moon, and stars" as redundant, yet I still stupidly answer the question "what is the closest star to Earth?" with "Alpha Centauri." So let me reiterate... the sun IS a STAR... the local star, closest to Earth... an average of 92.9 million miles away. It's surface temperature is 9,932F... the core? 27,000,000F. Its mass is that of 333,000 Earths, 750 times the mass of all the solar system's planets combined, and its gravity strong enough to keep objects 3.7 billion miles away (Pluto) in its orbit. Massive as it is, it regularly shoots gigantic pillars of flame from its surface, and is known for ejecting billions of tons of plasma into space. But what do all these fancy numbers mean??
As we all know, light is really @$%ing fast. It can travel around the Earth 7 times in a single second, but it takes 8 minutes (and ~20 seconds) for light from the sun to reach Earth. Translation: the sun is really @$%ing far away!! And yet we still see it, an object 92.9 million miles away, in the sky, clear as day (pun intended). Even with the layers of clouds and thick atmosphere blocking off most of its rays, we can't bear to look at it directly without suffering eye damage. And what if you go higher? I've watched the sun set from the tallest mountain in the world (Mauna Kea, measured from the base) at well over 13,000 feet. It was above cloud level and the air was very thin. And let me tell you... you think the sun is bright normally??... you know NOTHING!! The sunlight up there is surreal. Accidentally glancing the sun for a fraction of a second will make you recoil as if lasers have seared into your retinas and shot out the back of your head. >.< Mercury is the closest planet to the sun. If you somehow managed to land on it, your entire sky would be ON FIRE!! XD And nevermind that we can see the sun, we can also FEEL its HEAT... from 92.9 million miles away.
How mighty are stars! Go outside at night and you will see hundreds of stars trillions of times farther still visible to the naked eye. They are living gods, sustainers of life, and yet they too are born... and will one day die. Some go out in a spectacular supernova, the force of which not only obliterates the immediate planetary system, but strips the atmosphere off planets in surrounding neighborhoods. Some implode into black holes, a distortion in spacetime so absolute not even light can escape. Still others gradually fade away... This is the setting for the movie Sunshine, and unless you want to read complete SPOILERS I would suggest stopping now. In the movie, the sun is dying and Earth is frozen in a solar winter!
OK, that's not entirely true. "The plot does not revolve around the sun dying in the normal sense: this is not due for around five billion years based on our understanding of nuclear fusion. It has instead been 'infected' with a 'Q-ball' - a supersymmetric nucleus, left over from the big bang - that is disrupting the normal matter. This is a theoretical particle that scientists at CERN are currently trying to confirm, and was one of the many contributions of the science advisor. The film's bomb is meant to blast the Q-ball to its constituent parts which will then naturally decay, allowing the sun to return to normal." Except none of that was ever explained in the movie. ^.^;;
Anyway, a few years ago, a ship called Icarus I was dispatched to detonate the bomb inside the sun and trigger the re/birth of a new star, but the ship was mysteriously lost. Now a second ship, the Icarus II, is sent with a bomb consisting of Earth's last viable resources to complete that same mission. The funny thing is, they actually expect to make it back home alive. Needless to say, that doesn't happen.
They start out with 8 crew members, a thriving oxygen garden, and a functioning computer. Along the way their oxygen garden burns up. They know they're going to suffocate, but at least they want to live long enough to complete the mission. Problem: There is only enough oxygen to potentially keep 4 (out of 8) crew members alive long enough to complete the mission. No Problem: They soon lose 3, a 4th kills himself, and there is now a crazed sunburned psychopath killing the ones that are left (2 more down!). So far so good, except that the psychopath also crashed the computers and now the only way to complete the mission is to manually pilot the bomb into the sun. Problem: The only guy that knows how to operate the bomb is currently trapped in the airlock.
Solution: He puts on a spacesuit, ties himself to the ship, drills a hole into the cabin, and opens the airlock into space so the vacuum can suck out the last remaining air from the ship - thereby blasting off the door that was trapping him. Now, in the giant clumsy spacesuit, he carefully makes it over to the ship's computer and manually detaches the bomb. He has a limited amount of time to actually get inside the bomb before it jets into the sun, as he's hurrying to the bomb... he trips and falls down. (Tripping in giant clumsy spacesuit = not fun) Nevermind lack of oxygen, nevermind solar flames, dysfunctional computer, entrapment, and crazed homicidal maniacs - he made it through all that!! It is something as simple and silly as tripping that can foil an epic mission and doom an entire solar system. AARRGHH!! >.<
But no, he fights the hopelessness and eventually gets back up. Except now time is running out and there is no way to get to the bomb besides a risky free-float across open space hoping he can grab onto something if he manages to impact with the runaway bomb. He does. Now he braves the spacetime distortion of the sun's gravity and must manually activate the bomb as they are falling into the sun. THE SUN. A @%$ STAR!! An impossible, impassable, most awe-inspiring frontier! "Landing" on (/getting annihilated by) even the local sun blows visiting a distant planet utterly out of the water! There are few cooler ways to die than getting fried by a star. (Note to self: die in star in future lifetime.)
More awesome still, is dying by manually piloting a bomb into the heart of a star in order to save an entire solar system!! Even if everyone was alive, the oxygen reserves were fine, and it was pretty certain we'd make it back to our home planet intact... but someone still had to stay behind and manually pilot the bomb, I would volunteer in a heartbeat!! Hell, even if it didn't need to be manually piloted, I'd insist!! To land on the surface of a god! That is what he did. And he touched it... the new sun. *_* The most beautiful death to ever grace the screen! The first/last man on the old sun, the first man on the new sun. Saving a solar system. What an incredible honor. I could probably retire from reincarnation right there and then because it just doesn't get any better than that! (Unless you're trying to reverse a supermassive black hole from devouring your galaxy or something) And if someone I knew got to do that, I'd be like "Dude, you're awesome, I am so marrying you in our next lifetime."
The mindset of self-sacrifice and complete surrender to a higher purpose is an impressive force in its own right. Even if I knew I was going to die, willingly determined to die to carry out a mission, I would still probably be stuck in that airlock thinking "I need to get to the computer! But I also need the ship's air to stay alive and operate the computer! Then once I get inside the bomb... THEN I am ready to die!! W00T!!" But no, not him. He blew all the stops. Breathing, the air, it didn't matter anymore. All semblance of caution and reason was discarded. He simply acted without hesitation and by any means necessary. And it worked!
Funny how life works out. Researching his role for Sunshine turned Cillian Murphy atheist from agnostic, yet it proved an intense source of spiritual inspiration for me. The movie itself is meant to be a conflict between science and religion. If it were to happen to us, would we use our knowledge to try to save ourselves? The sun has given humanity life, would they return the favor? Or would we see it as the will of God and wait quietly to die?
I do not see spirituality and science as in conflict at all, or indeed separate. Atheism's primary conflict is not with spirit but with monotheistic dogma. They believe humans created the gods, and for all intents and purposes are gods. Humans should not undermine their achievements, and have faith in themselves to direct their own destinies. They should not rely on a "higher power" to dictate ethics and accountability, nor blame that "higher power" for their actions. On all these points, I essentially agree... but that's another topic altogether.
The character Cillian plays, the physicist Capa whose research created the bomb, is supposed to be an atheist. All the nightmares he's had of plummeting headlong into the sun are coming true. When he surrenders himself to death he does not do so with my dreams of glory, bragging rights for all eternity, and a treasured memory across infinite lifetimes. As far as he's concerned, this is the end and he will face it alone. It makes his self-sacrifice that much more meaningful, more beautiful, and more spiritual to me.
In many ways, this is how some gods were born in the olden days. In many ways, Capa gave birth to the sun. It would be named after him and his memory worshipped through it. An atheist giving birth to a god, touching it, and becoming it. The world comes full circle. We are all stardust. Just as the ship's psychologist spent his days alone in the observation room staring at the sun, so to me watching this movie alone in an empty theater is a religious experience (I almost feel just as sunburned, too). It will probably revolutionize how I view stars which, in my cosmology, are one of three basic building blocks of the universe.
Mighty are the stars!
You have some interesting thoughts, Neiru.
Science and religion don't have to be two separate things 
. 
