John Edward Friends

The Lagoon nebula, courtesy of NASA

In elementary school nearly 30 years ago, I learned that there were 9 planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus (the subject of many jokes), Neptune and Pluto. A few years down the road many more planets were discovered light years away, far outside of the solar system, and Pluto got demoted to “dwarf planet” status as part of the Kuiper belt as it joined the ranks of the other dwarf planet, Eris.

Now we’re told that there might be a new planet on the outer edge of the solar system, Tyche. And it’s a big one – 4 times the mass of Jupiter. Of course I say “might be” because it will be another 2 years before this giant mass can be confirmed and classified by the International Astronomical Union.

There really is a lot of stuff out there. Planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, comets, stars. Galaxies, space junk… the list goes on and on. Much was put into motion when the Hubble Telescope was put into orbit. Of course it needed to be fitted with a “contact lense” to fix its vision. But now there’s the WISE telescope in orbit above the earth. WISE for Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (who comes up with these names?). Put simply, it sees the universe through different eyes than its cousin Hubble.

I have always compared outer space to inner space. The idea that a white blood cell knows to attack foreign objects within the body without what we would call “consciousness” and the idea that 50 trillion cells in the human body act in unison to form a single sentient being amazes me. It makes me think of my favorite book, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. I imagine sometimes that we are but a single cell in the vast, collective consciousness of the universe that is beyond comprehension.

Anyway, kudos to John Matese and Daniel Whitmire, the two professors from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette who made this wonderful discovery.