I've been imagining a fascinating experiment in human psychology.
Endurace type events have always been an obesession of mine. Long distance running. Cycling. Nordic Skiing. The idea of walking the entire coastline of Britain, waterproof clad, relishing the rain.
So, watching a cosmological Horizon on BBC4, a programme going boldly to the outer edges of my knowledge - about a five second jouney - I was inspired to imagine another such voyage.
A journey from here to the Andromeda galaxy, 2.25 million light years away. I'm making assumptions like no one has assumed before here; that perhaps the people at the British Interplanetary Society can come up with a working design that would get us there within, say, ten million years or so, that ayone would want to make such a journey, and that they could survive it.
Allocate those a variable, x,y and z. Matrix them, forget about them. It can be done. I want to put someone in a spaceship, alive and conscious the whole time, for ten million years. Face fixed forwards perhaps, contemplating the doppler shifted stars at insane velocities, Plato's cave in space.
Could you stand it, fed and watered, somehow entertained, for ten million years. If the sanest person on Earth started the journey, how far beyond the bounds of madness would they have reached after a mere ten years? Suicide could not be allowed to be an option, so restraint and feeding tubes may have to be employed. Would the brain evolve into a new lifeform in its own right? Would it discard the body, would the body discard the brain?
Would the endless dark of intergalactic space be enough to drive you mad without everything else.
If anyone could do it, I envy them. Life isn't long enough to take in these feats, and that makes me sad. I doubt I'll be around to confirm extraterrestrial intelligent life exists, and that makes me sad too.
Doctor Manhattan says it best. When we die, the Universe doesn't even notice.
Copyright Bloody Mulberry 26/09/2013
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