Inspiring Images

Reflections on terra incognita

Two striking images caught my attention this past week—one depicting great depth and the other great distance. Both were beautiful, evoking the awe of exploration and filling me with wonder. They offered a welcome respite from the dispiriting contemporary concerns that often dominate the headlines.

While neither image is taken literally “through the fog,” both embody the spirit of this newsletter—reflections on our human desire to observe and make sense of ideas and objects that are often obscured, difficult to find, or not easily discernible.

The first image I saw was of the wreck of the U.S.S. Stewart sitting remarkably intact on the ocean floor off the coast of California, 3,500 feet below the surface. I learned that the naval destroyer had been commissioned in 1920 and spent most of her life in the Pacific, first patrolling the waters around China and later engaging in battle near Indonesia in the early days of World War II. 

In February 1942, during the Battle of Badung Strait, the Stewart was part of an Allied flotilla that was overwhelmed by the Japanese navy, which was superior at the time in night combat. Despite being heavily damaged, the Stewart remained afloat and managed to reach the port of Surabaya on the island of Java. However, with Japanese forces advancing, U.S. sailors scuttled her before evacuating. 

Later in the war, Allied pilots would remark on an eerie sight of what appeared to be a U.S. destroyer operating behind enemy lines and dubbed it “The Ghost Ship of the Pacific.” It turns out it was the U.S.S. Stewart, although now sailing under a different name, raised, repaired, and put back into service by the Japanese Imperial Navy. After the war, she was towed back to San Francisco and later sunk in 1946 up the northern California coast while serving as target practice.   

This past August, three autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) from the subsea search firm Ocean Infinity found her by using sonar and multibeam echosounder data to scan the ocean floor. When I saw the picture of the shadow the Stewart cast, I couldn’t help but think it looked like the old Monopoly battleship piece. It was always a personal favorite (although I remember once reading that one survey had the car racing ahead as the most popular).

The other image that caught my attention was taken a few years back, but it popped up in my social media feed a few days ago and seemed to be a relevant paring for the wreck of the Stewart. 

This one was taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which was launched in 2009 to produce a detailed 3-D map of the moon in advance of future trips (robotic and eventually human) to our closest celestial neighbor. 

I found one image the Orbiter took particularly remarkable, and it was helpfully annotated by NASA:

This is the site of the Apollo 11 landing. The Descent Stage that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left behind when they returned to Earth is still there and visible. So, too, is the TV camera they used and the Laser Ranging Retroreflector (LRRR), which the astronauts installed so scientists back on Earth could send out lasers and have them bounce back to measure distances. The Passive Seismic Experiment (PSE) also remains. NASA notes the first seismometer placed on the moon’s surface “detected lunar ‘moonquakes’ and provided information about the internal structure of the moon.” 

The picture shows lines between these outposts and the Little West Crater, where Neil Armstrong took an unscheduled stroll. Those tracks, NASA tells us, are the astronauts’ footprints, largely undisturbed after all these decades.

Because the moon doesn’t have an atmosphere, there isn’t any erosion. But scientists say that the micrometeorites that are constantly bombarding the moon’s service will eventually cause these footprints and the equipment to disappear. One estimate I read said it will take between 10 to 100 million years for the surface to regain its pre-human landscape. 

Reflecting on these images of harsh and distant destinations brought me a sense of calm and renewed hope for our world and our species. At our best, we are responsible explorers using science, technology, our creativity, and resources to seek new understandings. It is a journey across horizons spanning generations. 

These days, we often hear of drones being deployed for war, but here are two cases where humans sent out probes in search of knowledge rather than destruction. In a time when technology and images are frequently manipulated to sow division, these examples remind us of their power to inspire wonder and foster deeper insights.

We live in an era of great egotism and hubris, but we can see a reason for humility in these pictures. Even though we have created remarkable technology that allows us to peer into the depths and the heavens, these distant places are not ones where we can easily travel. We must cherish our precious and fragile Earth. 

For all the mapping we have done, our understanding of life and the universe is like those early 15th-century maps of the continents: largely terra incognita.