Eden 2b: Prologue

Before I divulge this story that I have for you today, which deals with the discovery of life on the ?planet Eden 2b, let us first pick through this nest of riddles that our tale originates from. Many believe that the mysteries behind the story of the Seven Sisters chased into the night sky by a lustful hunter will no longer be necessary as we launch into this new age of intergalactic space travel. And this may be true for the majority astronauts taking orders from a commanding officer. But in our story, I have for you, we will learn in a very practical sense, that the future of space travel will be equally as concerned with the ancient stories that describe the stars, as they will be with the practical science to get there.? Ancient texts, such as the Rig Veda for example talk of space travel and it also discusses the Krttika, (the seven sisters), chased by Agni, the god of fire and tells the story of how the seven sisters escape the love struck hunter into the night sky.? The Greeks tell a version of this story.? In their version the daughters of the sea nymph Pleione and Atlas were pursued by Orion, the hunter, so Zeus turned them into stars and caste them into the sky to become the cluster we refer to as The Pleiades. The Seven sisters are also mentioned in the bible, the Koran and the Torah many times, and there’s always a similar reason. But how could this archaic story have anything to do with finding new life on distant planets one hundred years in the future?? ?Is there any reason to keep telling the oldest story ever told?

The answer is yes, there is a reason to hold on to our ancient stories, and I will get to that in the pages of this book, which concerns itself with the search for life on a distant planet.? But before that, I’d first mention that this ancient story didn’t begin during the time of the written word.? The Arapaho and the Sioux of North America describe the “Seven Sisters” as being chased into the night sky by a great bear who wanted to merry one of them.? Terrified of the bear the sisters fled up a mountain to the stars where the bear couldn’t catch them. He scratched and scratched at the earth, creating Devil’s Tower in the middle of North America leaving the sisters stranded in the sky forever. The Bantu of Africa have their version, as do the, Philipino, Japanese, Hawaiian’s and even the Irish tell a variation of the story; and in all of these adaptations there are always seven sisters who escape a hunter by being caste into the night sky and remain there visible throughout the world through the ages. ?But how can this old story possibly remain relevant in a future of intergalactic space travel?

On its face the story is a navigational tool; merchants, explorers and wanderers passed the story down through the ages, casting it around the globe because of its practical application. This is implied in the Greek word to “Plei” which means to sail. The Pleiades being sea nymphs meant for the Greeks navigating at sea, while for the Bedouin nomads crisscrossing the Saharan sands they were called “Ath-Thuraya” or abundant darlings signaling spring rain.? This story’s practical role in navigation is clear in all versions, whether it be the Odyssey, or the Koran.? Scientifically speaking, is there any way that these fabled stories continue to be relevant? ?Because I insist that this ancient myth will be applicable to our saga of deep space exploration.? There is a convincing reason that the story of the seven sisters wouldn’t just fall out of use and completely disappear once we actually start traveling towards the seven sisters??

The formal scientific name for the Pleiades is Messner 45. It’s an open star cluster of middle-aged stars?in the Constellation?Taurus. On average it is at a distance of 444?light-years away, making it among the nearest?star clusters?to Earth and the most obvious to the?naked eye?in the?night sky. ?This cluster formed a little more than one hundred million years ago and contains hundreds of stars.??The nebulae were once thought to be leftover material from their formation but are now considered likely to be an unrelated dust cloud in the?interstellar medium through which the stars are currently passing. ?The star Maia is a blue giant three and half times the size of our sun and is surround by the Maia Nebula, one of the brightest patches of reflection Nebulae in the Pleiades and oddly enough it follows the exact path of Eden 2, effectively hiding the star found in our story for another seventy years until it is finally discovered by the Eden Telescope in the late twenty first century.? But doesn’t discussing the scientific data render the stories shared over millennia seem nonsensical?? And this is the very point you see, the secret to space travel has never been about the hard data.? It has always been, and always will be about the stories or perhaps it may be more accurate to say it’s about their songs.

The oldest versions of this story are not told but they are sung.? As the Australian tradition goes, we speak from the mind, but we sing from somewhere much deeper and the deepest singers leave us the song lines that create the world. This is called our dreaming. According to one tribe it is the song of the seven Napalharri sisters, who were chased by a man named Jukurra-jukurra, a star in Orion’s belt that have had the most enduring song lines.? According to this tradition it is by learning the songs of the Napalharri that we may learn to sing our own songs into existence and thus travel the stars.