A book from the 17th century that predicted extraterrestrial life’s existence on Saturn and Jupiter has just been unearthed in England. Hence, the book is expected to fetch a high price at auction.
Things were easier to do when people lived in the dark ages. The human race knew its place in the cosmos and smacked in the middle of everything. It was encompassed by the Sun, the Moon, and six other planets in orbit around it, and eventually, some enormous star-studded dome that held everything together like a giant snow globe.
After that, the scientific revolution took place, and as a result, everything became a complete mess. The position of the Earth as the center of the Solar System had been usurped by the Sun, and to make matters worse, some people had begun to suggest that there is a possibility that the cosmos is truly far larger than our relatively small collection of planets suggests.
[Read: Harvard’s Top Astronomer Believes Aliens Tried to Contact Us in 2017]
The Sun usurped the Earth’s place as the center of the Solar System. Suddenly, the Earth was no longer the central focus of creation; rather, it was just one pebble among an endless assortment of rocks.
That in itself is somewhat of an intriguing mystery. If you believe in God – and given that this is Europe in the 1600s, it is quite likely that you do – then you need to ask yourself: What would be the point?
That was the beginning of the book that Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch mathematician, physicist, and astronomer who was the often-forgotten second half of a space probe that perished on Saturn in 2017, wrote in 1698. He questioned God’s motives by asking why he would make other planets “just to be looked” upon from Earth.
He reasoned that they had to serve some function and concluded that that goal had to be to maintain life in some form or another.
On July 5, the first edition book, which Spencer has referred to as “really…an out-of-this-world treasure,” will be auctioned at Hansons Library Auction in Staffordshire, United Kingdom. However, suppose you seem interested in making an offer on it. In that case, you should start saving as soon as possible because its recommended price is 2,000 to 3,000 pounds, around $2,500 to $3,750.
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