What if

He and I tend to have these late-night conversations, wondering aloud about stars and the Universe, aliens and AI, robots and humans.

After looking through the telescope at binary stars and taking pictures of some rather lovely open clusters — which is in itself a miracle, since we’re in the middle of the city — we ended up talking about how lucky we are to have been born in a planet with a transparent atmosphere.

Well, it actually doesn’t seem like such an interesting and fascinating topic but bear with me for a second.

We can actually see space from where we are. We can see the stars and planets and the Sun and the Moon. Our whole concept of Astronomy was created based on observation and people wondering what those things in the night sky were. Hell, what that big, bright thing in the morning sky was.

Imagine for a second that we are a civilization in Venus, where the cloud covering is so dense that we can’t see anything beyond it. What’s more, that layer is so thick that the Sun itself cannot be seen: it’s just the whole sky going bright and then dark. In 2021 — considering the human species timeline — it would be hard to imagine Astronomy being what it is on Earth. We wouldn’t have rockets going to space, delivering a handful of astronauts every month or so to a Space Station. Maybe, by now, we would have some daredevil pilots who would consider going above that hazy layer on top of our heads just because. Just because they want to know. What’s out there, what’s beyond.

Can you imagine going above that layer and discovering the Sun? That immense ball of burning gas, shedding light on everything, your whole planet? Can you imagine just going slightly above the clouds and seeing the stars, tiny pinpricks of light scattered all around you, as far as the eye can see? And other spots, a little less twinkly, a little more colorful, the planets that are so close to you that you feel like you might just get to them if you try hard enough? Carl Sagan once said that Astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience, and I can’t imagine something so world-shattering as suddenly discovering that everything you thought there was was actually nothing at all.

Now come back to Earth and our civilization. We, who are so lucky to have a transparent atmosphere and only an occasional cloud covering. We, who know so much about space. Oh, those poor Venusian people, with their lack of knowledge about the vast and infinite Universe. We can only think that we are privileged in some way, in the grand scheme of things, to be able to see.

Imagine there might be some other civilization out there. Oh, how silly we might look to them! Those poor Earthlings! If only they didn’t have that thin veil over their heads preventing them from seeing the actual reality of the Universe! They think they know so much and, yet, they understand so little.

Can you imagine, one day, just because we want to know, going above that veil and discovering the Sun?