Jun 092013
The other night, Curiosity was working late.
You walk around on the surface of a planet, and it is pitch dark. Suddenly, you spot a light on the horizon. It’s steady; it’s artificial. You conclude that it’s a sign of civilization.
And indeed it is. What you see is an artificial light… but it belongs not to a living creature but to a robotic explorer. One that was created by a civilization a couple of hundred million kilometers away. A civilization that only invented electric lighting just over two centuries earlier.
I find it eerily beautiful to see an artificial light bathing the rocky surface of an alien planet.