Weather Modification

Exerpt from
R E A D I N G S I N S C I E N C E A N D R E L I G I O N
Arthur C. Clarke's 'Credo'
People have debated the problems of existence for thousands of years—and that is precisely why we
should be skeptical of the answers. One of the great lessons of modern science is that millennia are only
moments. It is not likely that ultimate questions will be settled in such short periods of time.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE

W h o can for-
get Jacob Bronowski, in his superb televi-
sion series. The Ascent of Man, standing
among the ashes of his relatives at the
Auschwitz crematorium and reminding
us: "This is now men behave when they
believe they have absolute knowledge."
This is how they are still behaving—in
Ireland, in Lebanon, in Iran—and at this
very moment, alas, in my own Sri Lanka.
Yet, if absolute knowledge is unattainable,
someday most of the great truths may be
established—if not widi absolute certainty, then beyond all reasonable
doubt. Do not be impatient; diere is plenty of dme.
How much time, we are only now beginning to appreciate. In a
famous essay, "Time Without End," Freeman Dyson speculated that
a high-technology cosmic intelligence might even be able to make
itself, quite literally, immortal.
So let me end with the final chapter, "The Long Twilight," from
my Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible.
Whether Freeman Dyson's vision (some would say nightmare) of eter-
nity is true or not, one thing seems certain. Our galaxy is now in the
brief springtime of its life—a springtime made glorious by such bril-
liant blue-white stars as Vega and Sirius, and, on a more humble scale,
our own Sun. Not until all these have flamed through their incandes-
cent youth, in a few fleeting billions of years, will the real history of
the universe begin.
It will be a history illuminated only by the reds and infrarcds of
dully glowing stars that would be almost invisible to our eyes; yet the
somber hues of that all-but-eternal universe may be full of color and
beauty to whatever strange beings have adapted to it. They will know
that before them lie, not the millions of years in which we measure
eras of geology, nor the billions of years which span die past lives of
the stars, but years to be counted literally in trillions.
They will have time enough, in those endless aeons, to attempt all
things, and to gather all knowledge. They will be like gods, because no
gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed the powers they will
command. But for all dial, they may envy us, basking in the bright
afterglow of Creation; for we knew the universe when it was young.

LJ
SKEPTICAL INQUIRER September/October 2001