Written by Zhi Ning, Y1, Communication Studies with a Second Major in Governance and International Relations

This week, we will witness the “comet of the century” as it reaches its closest distance to Earth. Yet I remain struck by a humbling irony: here we are, inhabitants of a lonely blue speck, mesmerised by a beauty that could wipe our existence if it crashed through our atmosphere.

I ponder the chaos behind all that we regard as beauty. How did we come to be? And at what point do we cross the fragile line that separates beauty from tragedy?

Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS taken from Rabka-Zdrój on October 14th, 2024

To set some context, Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS (C/2023 A3) was named after the two observatories that discovered it last year, the Purple Mountain (Tsuchinshan) Observatory in China and an Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in South Africa. It is one of many long-period comets with orbits spanning tens of thousands of years. The last time it was visible from Earth, our species was still migrating out of Africa. However, from the 11th to the 22nd of October this year, it will grace our skies again after 80,000 years.

The Oort Cloud, from which the comet originated, is a hazy shell enveloping our solar system. It is filled with trillions of icy space debris the size of mountains. From that distance, our sun looks like just about any other star, only a little brighter. Delving into the origin of comets really put things into scale for me. Everything as we know it – our home, our world, the folly of our own self-importance – is but a puzzle piece in an infinite expanse of cosmic obscurity, where far more things remain unknown.

Comets trace back to the birth of our solar system billions of years ago. Likewise, our existence is not solely defined by our time on this earth, but by the very beginning of time itself.

In my Writing & Reasoning (SP0001) core module, the concept of big philosophy was introduced to me. Looking at the world through the lens of big philosophy asks us to consider how things intertwine in their broadest possible definitions. It has been argued that our sense of time on Earth has the intrinsic property of an arrow. To be precise, the cosmological arrow of time points away from the origins of the universe and in the direction of its accelerating expansion.

Everything started with the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago when our universe burst into existence from a singular speck. 4.54 billion years ago, our little blue planet formed, following an intricate web of other chance happenings. It was not until around 200,000 years ago that the first modern humans emerged. Today, our species remains a smudge in the vast traces of metaphysical history, a purely incidental outcome born from a cascading trail of cause and effect.

And what does that make of us?

This October, we will again marvel at the same comet our distant ancestors once did. No matter how much mankind has changed, the reminder that big philosophy offers remains true. To imagine a time before time existed, to imagine a possibility of our paradise lost, reminds us that our world is not as it is by miracle or design. Rather, our time here is as much fleeting as it is a privileged coincidence.