On Wednesday night, a film called Another Earth was screened on a television channel. The story of the 2011 independent sci-fi film by Mike Cahill and Brit Marling began in the future, on the same day that an earth-like planet is discovered. Rhoda, a 17-year-old, is returning after a party to celebrate her acceptance at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She hears a radio jockey announce the discovery of a new planet as she is driving back home and looks out of her car to spot Earth II. Simultaneous with her first sighting of the planet, is a fatal accident. Rhodha’s car rams into another vehicle waiting at a traffic signal and kills the family of a promising music composer.
The rest of the film is a juggle of sci-fi and philosophical ideas that discuss the life, death, choices and consequences. The conflict that arises after Earth II is found to be a mirror planet where everything and everyone is a mirror image of the earth adds a unique dimension to the film’s trajectory. Rhoda, played by Brit Marling, also muses about the consequences of having “another you.” If we were to be introduced to ourselves, what would we like? What would we dislike? Would we judge; what would we judge? This film momentarily took the mind off from the dejection that came with the news of Hyderabad Central University PhD student Rohith Vemula’s suicide. On a morose note, one began imagining life on another earth.
In a 2003 essay published by NASA titled “The Search for Life in the Universe,” astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson reflects on the scientific and cultural implications of finding life in the cosmos. He says there are compelling arguments to suggest we are not alone. Tyson also says he is “consistently amazed by the film industry's lack of creativity. With a few notable exceptions such as life forms in The Blob (1958) and in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Hollywood aliens look remarkably humanoid.”
Amir Khan’s film PK, which also has a very humanoid alien, explored the idiosyncrasies of our existence from the viewpoint of someone who has literally dropped in from space. Safe to say that religion, a concept as far-reaching as it may be, might as well be a concoction unique to our planet? There is a possibility that all kinds of Gods that we look up to (literally and figuratively) are residents of planets that have absolutely no clue about religion, godliness and related things.
Comparing such religious-cultural ideas with the unknown is as speculative as it fantastic. The thoughts and questions raised by sci-fi films on alien life do seem far-fetched, but, with the discovery of planets like Kepler-186f, we might indeed be closer to proof of life elsewhere. In April 2014, astronomers discovered the first Earth-size planet orbiting in a "habitable zone." Most other planets discovered in the habitable zone - the range of distances from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet “ were too huge compared to earth, making scientific studies difficult. "Kepler-186f" is almost the same size as earth.
So, for starters, if another planet exists with life forms as intelligent (or dumb) as ours, it would be nice to know if they have still have coconut trees/plants. What joy, if these trees/plants still thrive on another planet! The benefit is that when we chop off all that we have, at least the rich can hop on a spaceship to reminisce the “good old times.” On earth, by then, perhaps the environmental rip off might have led to parties beside neon cut-outs of coconut trees/plants and simulated pool games.
It would be fun to see if the bizarre logic and terrible consequences that gain popular acceptance here can hold any water on another earth. If intelligence existed elsewhere, and if they too had the luxury and acumen of opinion-making, one would like to find if alien ideas and interpretations also conflict as drastically as they do here. Would a new planet (with its collective intelligence) at least come up with brilliant solutions to clearly define the semiotics of tolerance, intolerance, secularism and pseudo secularism?
It would also be most fascinating to compare an alien brain. Imagine this: if the human brain did not have the capacity to register an emotion at all, how different our lives would be. For example, imagine not being able to get angry. If all brain cells, nerves and genes that have anything to do with causing and expressing anger were to be somehow wiped out, how different would humans be? How would the absence of anger impact be on human civilization?
Bitter existential burdens of anger, hatred, and prejudice have deeply troubled us. We certainly hope residents of another earth do not have the evolutionary capacity to understand, identify or propagate these concepts. We hope that another earth does not have its residents boxed into watertight identities that determine their freedom. If there were life on another planet, one hopes that they don’t have“ and never will “ develop divisive ideas of caste and creed. At the least, one madly wishes that death on another planet is gentler, calmer and natural - with no place for suicides and murders.
