Feb 2001
Bert Speelpenning
We gazed up at the night sky thousands of years ago and saw life everywhere: the hunter Orion and his dogs - facing the bull and chased by the scorpion. But we've grown up and don't see life there anymore, we see things instead. When away from the city we still trace the constellations to our children, passing on the quaint old names of Bear and Dog and Crab and Lion. We explain to them that the stars on Orion's belt are neither close nor in a straight line but only look that way from earth.
Three centuries ago we aimed our telescope at Jupiter, and saw a thing, the Great Red Spot. What a marvelously unfanciful name, reflecting our conviction that this time we were merely accurately describing what's out there, without making anything up. Surely all sober scientists could agree that it was red, that it was a spot, and that it was big. It was there night after night, year after year, and still is - three hundred years later. But we've grown up some more, and now say that the Spot is a storm, a vortex, a cyclone so fierce that it puts hurricane Andrew and Hugo to shame, so vast that two earths fit inside, and raging unabated continuously since at least the 17th Century. If it didn't already have a name, we would never call it Spot, we would likely call it Andrew - Great Red Andrew.
Fed by the energy of the sun, Great Red Andrew consists of smaller particles in continual flow and flux and exchange, maintaining his shape only in the aggregate, and his position only approximately. Snapshots of Andrew show him moving about, changing shape and color, but you can see it is still Andrew, and he hasn't aged much.
If Andrew thought he was alive, we could readily forgive him for thinking so. By our standards he is not, but why would Andrew care. Our own notions of life involve reproduction, but one immortal could afford to dispense with reproduction. Who of us is to say he isn't immortal? All who first saw him are dead - Andrew has outlived them all. His life may not look much like ours, and his concerns likely differ. Andrew might never miss that he wasn’t able to reproduce, never think he was alone. Yet with his food supply assured, and his immediate survival not in doubt, would he be bored? Would he be glad to be alive? I rather imagine Andrew likes being Andrew - waking in the Jovian morning, stretching out languidly and then going for a spin.