Garbage In, Garbage In

I went for a walk today. While not the warmest of days, it seemed like the thing to do. The kids were off to school and my wife at work, so I decided to spend some time walking. Near my home is a trail which, although in the middle of the city, provides a peaceful way to spend a half an hour. As the trail moves farther into the woods, the noise of the city diminishes. Traffic noise lessens as the creaking of the trees in the wind increases. The water in the stream adds its gentle note to the music of nature and the calls of the Chick-a-dees and Grey Jays punctuate the morning. The tinkle of the new ice along the stream makes an interesting addition to the sounds of the woods around me. The weak sunlight filters through the bare limbs of the hardwoods and the needles of the evergreens.

All in all a beautiful morning for a walk. Then I see it. Winking in the sunlight like a diamond. As I walk closer I begin to see more clearly what it is. A foil potato chip bag partially covered by leaves. As I look around, I see a plastic bag caught in the branches of a tree. A coffee cup in the bushes. Cigarette butts in the weeds along the trail. Although I am far enough away from civilization to ignore it, I am not far enough removed to forget about my more unenlightened brethren. What is it about people that they cannot seem to go somewhere and not leave remnants of themselves behind?

Now it seems even when we travel off world we take the worst of ourselves along. Just the other day, the crew of the space shuttle lost a bag of tools while working outside the International Space Station. The bag, which was not tethered, just floated away… Now part of the estimated hundreds of millions of pieces of space trash in orbit. Pieces of garbage ranging from the size of paint chips to old satellites the size of trucks. So what do we do? Do we come up with a plan to clean up the junk floating in orbit? Nope. NASA has established a surveillance network to track the stuff in orbit so that it does not interfere with space operations.

Forget about SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) finding proof of other life in the galaxy. I think that the first sign of other worldly life we find will be their garbage floating in near Earth orbit. If we treat our own planet and near space like a garbage dump, why shouldn't they?