Opinion: In the big, dumb age of Trump, thank god for outer space

When NASA announced the discovery of TRAPPIST-1 yesterday, I felt like running down the street, swinging a wicker basket full of flares and singing show tunes about aliens.

At least three of the seven new planets NASA discovered are the right temperature to sustain life. They’re rocky and could have oceans. They’re about the same size as Earth. One’s bright orange, one’s pea green, and three are, err, Earth color. They’re close to each other. They’re about as dark as Earth at sunset, but warmed with infrared energy. Sounds quite fabulous!

These planets could be home to aliens. Greetings beloved siblings! I dream that one day we will be long-distance pen pals, exchanging letters across 235 trillion miles. Will this ever even be possible, or is this the kind of dreamy garbage that makes actual scientists very annoyed? Probably the latter!

But this discovery affords us the same bliss all beginnings do. As with children and new loves, the new Earth-like planets of TRAPPIST-1 are uncorrupted by too much information. They allow us to imagine a version with no mistakes. This baby will save us; this lover will be perfect; these planets will be Earth, except without war, fear or cruelty.

It’s been a rough few months here in America, one of Earth’s most influential countries. America’s electoral college recently selected a human who either doesn’t understand or doesn’t believe in science to be the country’s new president. This president has promised to slash America’s environmental protections and has surrounded himself with people who tell him that putting poison in the water and smoke in the air is a cool and normal thing to do. This new president’s climate position so far appears to be: “Let’s get rich and kill our progeny.”

In times of uncertainty, many reach toward the heavens. In November, I began reaching beyond them, toward space. I started finding myself talking into the night with friends about life on other planets and feeling something like a dull hope.

There were many years when I didn’t care about space. When I was 10, an astronaut — a distant relative’s friend — came to a family wedding. I spoke to him quickly, with little of the other children’s curiosity. In my early twenties, I thought NASA funding was excessive; there were so many problems here on Earth, and so many humans that could use the help. But I gradually warmed to our galaxy in the most basic of ways: I stared watching Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Cosmos” series while cleaning my house. A few years after that, I read a gorgeous article in the Atlantic called “Why Saturn Is the Best Planet” and began stalking Saturn on the Internet. Last year, I began sitting outside my house late at night and looking at the moon. I fell in love at first sight with the TRAPPIST-1 animation; seven different circles, half-illuminated by a small sun.

Learning about a new space discovery is like listening to music. A composer hears a song and is able to distinguish each individual note. An ordinary listener can’t distinguish individual notes, but emerges with an impression of the song. I can’t discern each of the planets’ qualities as a scientist would, and yet I won’t soon forget them.

Carl Sagan wrote in “Cosmos,” “Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us. There is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.” The discoveries of these new planets stir us at an important time on Earth, when those bubbles of pure joy burst infrequently and when very little feels magical to a great many of us.

If there’s anything purer than hope, I haven’t yet come across it. TRAPPIST-1 allows us to hope that even if human decisions lead to the extinction of our species here on Earth, what we’ve done may not be final or irredeemable. Other planets like ours could have inhabitants like us; they might still see more life, more invention, more cooperation, more wisdom, more peace. We can hope that something like our human experiment might survive. That it could be perfect.

Melissa Batchelor Warnke is a contributing writer to Opinion. Follow her @velvetmelvis on Twitter.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook