"... such a sky, I imagined, could be seen only on high, dry plateaus like that of Atacama in Chile (where some of the world’s most powerful telescopes are). It was this celestial splendor that suddenly made me realize how little time, how little life, I had left. My sense of the heavens’ beauty, of eternity, was inseparably mixed for me with a sense of transience — and death. I told my friends Kate and Allen, 'I would like to see such a sky again when I am dying.' 'We’ll wheel you outside,' they said."
Writes Oliver Sacks, who is dying.
I almost certainly will not see my polonium (84th) birthday, nor would I want any polonium around, with its intense, murderous radioactivity. But then, at the other end of my table — my periodic table — I have a beautifully machined piece of beryllium (element 4) to remind me of my childhood, and of how long ago my soon-to-end life began.
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Alas, Sacks won't be with us much longer. A great writer whose humanity is on every page. I highly recommend his On The Move.
Milton also wrote: Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity.
I don't know whether there's intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, but, in any event, there's not much of it. Our atoms are arranged in such a way that we can appreciate the beauty of a sunset and comprehend pi, r squared. That doesn't happen very often in the universe. Add to that we get to live in a country where you can pass eighty years without too much pain or difficulty, and one worries more about overeatng than where one's next meal will come from.......I don't think there's anything special about the ephemeral collection of atoms that I call myself, and I doubt that God will endow their transience with immortality. Fair enough. I have already been granted a bountiful hand, and there is every reason to thank God and my lucky stars for my unlikely existence.
How sad that people growing up in urban environments cannot share in this transcendental experience.
It may explain the insular, strangled, parochial philosophies of the urban intellectual. And, today, are there any other?
The earth also had feathered attack raptors 150 million years ago. They were the vultures of the days of big dinosaurs, living and dead. The same stars watched over them as they preyed on the rest of the creatures.
I dare the space exploration sophists of evolution looking for life accidentally somewhere in space to find that world.
traditionalguy, given how long there has been life on earth and how short there has been civilization, they are far more likely to find that world than this. It's inconceivable that there aren't millions of inhabited worlds out there and probably one or two in an advanced state similar or more advanced than ours. Still, even among the inhabited worlds, we're looking for a needle in a haystack. I doubt we'll ever find it, though I don't doubt it is there.
Tucson Arizona is a "dark city" because of the Kitt Peak Observatory where you can reserve the big amateur telescope for a night. It is 16 inches. A friend and I reserved it one night, which takes about a year in advance reservation (moonless nights are best) and when we were all set, it snowed ! Some day I might do it again. Anyway, Tucson is a wonderful place for amateur telescopes. You can put it in your driveway.
What a great writer! And what a life well-lived.
As I read about his quest for "few more good months" I couldn't help but think about the arrogance of Barack Obama saying that if you're terminal, or even if you're just too old, maybe you should get the painkiller and just die. Sacks intends to stretch out his life as long as possible. Good for him.
The most interesting thing about Oliver Sacks, aside from his writing, is that he is an example of a classic melanoma syndrome. That is a question on many old exams. A man with a glass eye and an enlarged liver.
"I almost certainly will not see my polonium (84th) birthday...I have a beautifully machined piece of beryllium (element 4) to remind me of my childhood"
Interesting metaphor.
I'm neodymium, going on promethium.
"Anyway, Tucson is a wonderful place for amateur telescopes. You can put it in your driveway."
Not really. I mean kudos for Tucson to make an effort to keep Kitt Peak usable, but if you live in Tucson proper, it's pretty much the same less than 19 mag/sec^2 you get in other cities. I have a 15" telescope in Madison. My closest dark site is 2 hours away.
The night sky far from city lights is breathtaking, and the Southern Hemisphere sky is considerably more impressive than the Northern sky. Perhaps if more people made the effort to witness it, we could get people to turn off their damn insecurity lights.
It's funny. Although I've never been high in the Andes, I was in the high western American lands in 1960, away from light and air pollution, and saw skies not much different from what Oliver describes, but it isn't those night skies that I remember. I remember seeing the Milky Way from an island off the coast of Maine on clear nights, and I saw almost the same clarity in the sky above West Hartford, Conn., in the '50's, just a little distance from the houses. Those experiences persuaded me that God exists. I still believe in God, although I can't remember seeing the Milky Way in 50 years. Oliver will be welcomed to a glory beyond any he has hoped to experience in his pre-polonium years. I'm grateful for what he's shared with us.
" if you live in Tucson proper, it's pretty much the same less than 19 mag/sec^2 you get in other cities."
No, I've had a house in Tucson since 2005 and have used my telescope many times. It's a dark city meaning street lights are not common and the night-time speed limits are lower because the streets are dark. It is nothing like California cities where I live most of the time.
OK, Michael K, it's better. That doesn't make it good (I have done naked eye observing in Tucson).
What telescope do you have?
Celestron 8 inch with a latitude attachment to make the autorotation work easier.
I haven't been using it for about a year. I need to get back to Tucson. I showed my wife's mother Saturn's rings and Saturn's Great Red Spot. I took a local class on astronomy here and we did a field trip to San Diego county where we used a 16 inch telescope and my daughter, who was 15, got to see the sombrero galaxy.
I have never more understood my place in the universe than during a night surface transit on a submarine. At the top of the sail (conning tower) there are no lights except our running lights.
Literally stars from horizon to horizon.
Reading this man's story reminds me of part of a warriors prayer "let me die a good death." It seems as if he's lived a good life and is dying a good death.
@Michael K, a nit perhaps, but the Great Red Spot is on Jupiter.
From the linked NY Times piece:
"I have tended since early boyhood to deal with loss — losing people dear to me — by turning to the nonhuman. When I was sent away to a boarding school as a child of 6, at the outset of the Second World War, numbers became my friends; when I returned to London at 10, the elements and the periodic table became my companions. Times of stress throughout my life have led me to turn, or return, to the physical sciences, a world where there is no life, but also no death."
Terribly sad on one level, yet he did reach out to other humans through the very act of writing all his books, and now his death thoughts.
There is nothing quite like seeing the night sky from the deck of a ship far from land or on the top of a mountain where no lives.
@Michael K - yes M104 is a good one. I'm kind of a weirdo amongst my observing friends. Most are into galaxies, which I like, but my favorite objects are open clusters. Each one is unique.
Most of my astronomy buddies are setup with 25" Dobs (one has a 30") but I don't have the room to store one quite that large. Someday I hope; I'm looking for a place to build a personal observatory.
Sacks has a wonderful memoir, "Uncle Tungsten," in which he recalls the freedom in his childhood to explore and experiment with chemistry. And contrasts it with the cramped, structured, regulated educational experiences of today's children.
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"@Michael K, a nit perhaps, but the Great Red Spot is on Jupiter."
Whoops ! What did I write ? Oh Oh, It was supposed to be Jupiter.
I think it is diminishing, too.
"The Great Red Spot" has really declined in recent years. When I was a kid it was prominent, as it had been for centuries, but it has become "The Pale Brown Spot" in recent decades, and is now a challenging observation. Climate change comes to Jupiter.
Have you done any observing of shadow transits by the Jovian moons, MK? They're fun. They happen all the time. Double transits are common and several times a year you'll get a triple transit. I don't know if quadruple transits happen.
I need to go back to astronomy and thank you for reminding me.
Mourning Dr. Sacks, while appreciating his enjoyment of his remaining time.
Thinking Good Thoughts for both you and Mr. Meade.
"My sense of the heavens’ beauty, of eternity, was inseparably mixed for me with a sense of transience — and death."
A night under a really dark sky, with the galaxy wheeled overhead, is sublime. I know exactly what Sacks is feeling.
tim maguire wrote:
"It's inconceivable that there aren't millions of inhabited worlds out there and probably one or two in an advanced state similar or more advanced than ours."
Oh, it is quite conceivable. We have not found so much as a microbe that did not originate within the very thin, unique, biosphere of the Earth. This is it, Tim. There is nothing else. The stars may as well be nothing more than little sparks of light in the sky.
[among other things]
At the end of his life, he's said that at the end of any given day (given that any given day might mark the end of any individual/individual's life), there are life's memories, some alive and some leftovers.
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FTR, unlike (I think! but I am totally willing to be pilloried for being wrong about that!!!) so many Althouse commenters, I've been an Oliver Sacks reader since the 1980s.
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So many have come so later to reading stuff which, at such an earlier age and certainly an earlier time, I'd already read.
So it goes, babies. So it goes.
Here's the thing, Althouse. I exactly and precisely remember who introduced me to Oliver Sacks and when that person so did [did so]. I read that book*--so recently then first published--which was handed to me, in a single sitting, that first time**.
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*The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
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**In the late-mid, or early-late '80s--it's not to or for me to define those times (being so much younger than the 1/2 generation before me, for example, Althouse).
I'd name a time and year if I thought that sort of thing would matter, but, obviously, I do not.
Honestly, all of you 1/2 gens: Did you actually think we couldn't, didn't see or understand? Silly, silly. Then, I mean.
Now, well. So much more could we say. We were, and are, the first edge of paying for the bullshit you spread.
There always was stuff that is (like it is), then and now.
You guys have been both the editors and the killing of editors, IMO.
Also, Althouse and Meade, do you and yours think that the 1/2 gens away from your kids actually don't, can't see or understand, either?
How nonsensical, if you folks won't get it.
Terry, we've hardly looked. I'm going by the numbers.
"Oh, it is quite conceivable. We have not found so much as a microbe that did not originate within the very thin, unique, biosphere of the Earth. This is it, Tim. There is nothing else."
You can't be serious.
"Terry, we've hardly looked. Terry, we've hardly looked. I'm going by the numbers."
Right. The only experiments we've done are a few very modest attempts on Mars. To say that we now know we are the only life in the universe is beyond laughable.
"The earth also had feathered attack raptors 150 million years ago. They were the vultures of the days of big dinosaurs, living and dead. The same stars watched over them as they preyed on the rest of the creatures.
"I dare the space exploration sophists of evolution looking for life accidentally somewhere in space to find that world."
What dies this mean?
"We have not found so much as a microbe that did not originate within the very thin, unique, biosphere of the Earth. This is it, Tim. There is nothing else. The stars may as well be nothing more than little sparks of light in the sky."
This is like saying you've sailed out three miles from shore and turned around without reaching another land mass and asserting there are no other lands than the one from which you set sail.
Accidental astronomy: I was on a cruise ship in the Florida straits when comet hyakutake suddenly bloomed from a small fuzzy dot to a vast green tail stretching halfway across the sky with an emerald head winking out at us.
Showing up at the midnight buffet in my pajamas, trying to persuade everyone I'd met on the cruise to go up on deck Right Now! And see this amazing sight while it was there is also a great memory.
"The earth also had feathered attack raptors 150 million years ago. They were the vultures of the days of big dinosaurs, living and dead. The same stars watched over them as they preyed on the rest of the creatures."
While there were, of course, stars in Earth's sky 150 mya, they were not the same stars that are in our sky today.
"I dare the space exploration sophists of evolution looking for life accidentally somewhere in space to find that world."
Per Cookie, WTF are you trying to say?
My father was a machinist... for much of my childhood, a self-employed machinist, always looking for gigs, better gigs... one of the gigs he considered was machining parts from beryllium. He researched it for a little while and discovered that machining the substance was so problematic-- its dust causes cancer-- that he opted not to. Dr. Sacks may think that hunk of beryllium is benign, but I wouldn't want it in my house.
>I almost certainly will not see my polonium (84th) birthday, nor would I want any polonium around, with its intense, murderous radioactivity. But then, at the other end of my table — my periodic table — I have a beautifully machined piece of beryllium (element 4) to remind me of my childhood, and of how long ago my soon-to-end life began.
Sacks is in his 83rd year which is bismuth. Surely he knows that bismuth marks an important periodic change: every element after bismuth is unstable, i.e., radioactive.
I don't remember when I first read "Uncle Tungsten." It seems like a long time ago now. I'm smack in the middle of my cesium year which is very reactive. Things will eventually settle down.
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