Uranus, Pompeii and the endless search for truth
Two images of Uranus from the Voyager 2 spacecraft, c1980s -- one in true and one in false colour. NASA launched the unmanned Voyager 2 space probe in August 1977 to study the outer solar system. Credit: Getty Images/Heritage Images
In this past week of political hubbub and hullabaloo, I found myself thinking about Uranus and Pompeii. No, I’m not crazy. Though this doesn’t prove that either way. But bear with me.
Uranus, of course, is the seventh planet from the sun, 1.6 billion miles from Earth at their closest orbits. It was in the news because scientists are beginning to think they’ve been getting the planet wrong all these years. The one visit humanity has made to the ice giant was in 1986 when NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft took measurements and gathered statistics as it zipped past on a six-hour flyby.
Now a new study in the journal Nature Astronomy suggests that science’s take on Uranus was warped by the fact that the planet was experiencing a rare solar wind event as Voyager 2 passed it. The details — they have to do with what seemed like a unique protective magnetic field surrounding Uranus — don’t matter for our purposes here. What’s relevant is that scientists thought one thing based on data, and now with more data gathered by the Hubble and other telescopes, they’re thinking something else.
Hold that thought as we turn to Pompeii.
The ancient Roman city was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius back in 79 AD. Many victims were encased in ash, with their shapes, positioning and proximity prompting accounts of who they were. Another new study by a team of archaeologists and geneticists using DNA gathered from some of the bodies has upended a number of those assumptions.
One adult who was wearing a golden bracelet and holding a child was thought to be the mother of the child; the pair actually were a male and a biologically unrelated child. Two supposed sisters included at least one genetic male. And a group of four people, long considered to be two parents and their children, turned out to have no biological relationship to one another at all.
Besides casting aspersions on previously held beliefs, the discoveries led one member of the team, Harvard University genetics professor David Reich, to warn against making the same mistake again by making assumptions based solely on the DNA testing.
Uranus is a long way from home. Pompeii was a long time ago. But these distant places offer a lesson intensely relevant to our times.
Truth is a process.
That can be tough to grasp at a time when we have a zillion “facts” at our fingertips, summoned instantly with a tap on a screen. And sometimes, truth is known right away. But sometimes, it takes ages to uncover. That doesn’t mean that truth is a mirage. It simply means that we have not yet arrived at its hard certainty, if we ever can. Often, it means that the suppositions we employed to arrive at these truths were wrong, a reality that gave rise to one core truth: You best check your assumptions at the door.
History is littered with such “truths.” The world is flat. Earth is the center of the universe. Living beings can spontaneously generate from nonliving matter.
Examining and reexamining data and your thoughts about that data is a good thing. Because we surely know by now that first impressions often are wrong. Sometimes tragically wrong, with the number of people exonerated by DNA decades after a criminal conviction serving as one of the most glaring examples.
Patience and inquisitiveness are aids in finding truth. Impetuousness and certitude are obstacles. All of which is important to remember in our feverish political climate, which often leaves us mistaking our assumptions for truth or inventing truths that match our assumptions, like why people voted for whom and whether rhetoric really reflects reality.
Just as historians reassess presidencies years after they conclude, and statisticians reevaluate statistics to uncover what they really mean, and scientists study the same planets and the same corpses over and over to refine what they know, so should we take our time. The truth is worth it.
Columnist Michael Dobie’s opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a member of the Newsday editorial board.