Finding Planets

Have you ever thought about whether the Earth will last long enough for the human race to invent space travel and be able to leave Earth to live elsewhere in the vast universe? That’s what we all hope, but will it ever happen? There are actually reasons that we should be focused on this. NASA should be focused on finding outer habitable worlds because if not, we will eventually, slowly die out to other things that we are causing. We are setting and making our doom.

One reason why NASA should be focused on finding more planets is global warming. Global warming is caused by pollution like smoke in the air, and waste in the water and inside the Earth. If we don’t stop polluting the Earth, we will soon reach uninhabitable conditions that we can’t get rid of. Because of this, we need to work together to stop global warming, or we need to be focused more on finding other planets to live on and  ways to leave Earth.

We will also soon run the Earth bare of its resources. A way we are doing this is by overproducing things that we don’t need, like plastic and glass. These are items that we can live without such a massive amount of. We don’t need that many plastic water bottles or bags when we have reusable ones. Also, some countries are better stocked up on resources than others. For example, the US doesn’t have enough oil, so it depends on the Middle East. Besides, we might want to be saving our resources for space crafts and carriers rather than a fake, ancient vase.

 One reason that I know that NASA isn’t focusing enough on finding new habitable planets is because they have only found 54 candidates/planets that might be able to support life. If we strengthen the amount of resources that we put into finding new planets, we could have ourselves a guaranteed 54 planets habitable for life. Plus, we cannot end the start of the search either because if we do, we might not be able to start again along with other reasons.

Now, there is a book that could also help. It is called Allegiant. In this book, the world practically ended because of a “Purity War” between the government and the people. It also says that they made cities such as Chicago into experiments. In those experiments, the people inside had no idea about the outside world because their memory was erased. We don’t know enough because we have never bothered to look. People were not able to leave the city because they were afraid of what was out there. They were also being surveyed by outside forces (the government). This might be happening to us, except the government wouldn’t be the ones watching, aliens or other beings would be.

We don’t have to be in this situation however. If we really do start to stop global warming, start to save resources, and start looking up, we might survive. “I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth.” states Stephen Hawkings. We can show intelligence though. In summary, I believe that NASA should be focusing more on finding new planets, and getting the human race there. If we start now, we could be out of this world before you can say “Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis!”

Injury with an extra friend

I’ve met a lot of my friends in a lot of different ways. I transferred schools, moved to new cities, and other bizarre reasons. This one, however, was one of the funniest and definitely the one that hurt the most.

When I was about seven years old, I was going to a school called Steele Montessori Academy. There, I had very long recesses and fun P.E. activities. We also played a lot of different games there at recess time. 

One day, a couple of my old friends and I were playing a game of tag. It was the middle of the game when another tall kid came up to us and asked if he could play. Us, not being monsters, said sure (Well actually, I said it, I was like the group speaker). He was soon discovered to be very, Very, Very slow. Now, by slow, I mean that his fast run was equivalent to my slow jogging. He was like a snail on two feet. He also had almost no turning ability. Whenever he was chasing us, we usually were just able to outrun him. But I decided to test something. The next time that he came after me, I started to run at the nearest pole. He didn’t seem to notice, I guess he was too focused on tagging me. Right when I was about to hit the pole, I swerved right. His eyes followed me, but unfortunately, his body didn’t. 

“OWWWWWW!!!” I heard him yell. I looked back and saw that, thankfully, he wasn’t hurt, but now he was mad.

Eventually, he got tired of getting tagged and, instead of quitting, decided to make a point. He was going to go after me, even though I was pretty sure that he was a little wary after the pole incident. When I realized what was happening, I hid under the staircase to the play structure and waited for him to realize where I was. After a few minutes, he spotted me and started running towards me. I knew that if I stayed under there, I was dead meat, a fish out of water, spiderman with no webs.

Before he got to me, I crawled out and started to run towards the strip of sidewalk that we used for racing. He did everything to try and catch me. He tried to corner me, straight up chase me, and even asked people to help him and gang up on me. 

“I’m good,” they usually said with a little laughter, “you can get him yourself.”

“I’ll catch you soon!” he yelled after me as I evaded him once again.

My friends AJ, Marley, and Nico all started laughing like hyenas when he couldn’t catch me.

After what seemed like an eternity, he finally had his chance to catch me. My back was on the wall that kept us from falling to the ground.

“What are you going to do now, John?!” he taunted as he slowly got closer to me.

I really didn’t want to get tagged by the ruler of slow people, my friends would never let me live it down. I also had a reputation to uphold as the kid with the smallest number of kids tagging me. Getting tagged by the slowest of the slow would not only ruin my reputation, it would also hurt my ego.

‘I’ve got nowhere to go,’ I thought to myself, ‘how will I get out of this one?’

Unfortunately, Mr. Slow and Mighty wouldn’t let me decide. He “charged me” at like, 4 mph. I still regret what I did next.

On a scale of one-ten, how dumb do you think it is to jump off of a ten-foot tall structure, onto small sharp slippery rocks at a forty-five degree angle that led to concrete-covered ground. I rate it eleven. So, of course, me being my dumb, young self, jumped.

I realized that I didn’t take a single moment to consider what I was about to do. So, I had to live with the consequences. After my daredevil jump, I landed on the ground with a loud THUMP! Luckily, I stopped myself before rolling onto the rocks. However, I was still in pretty bad shape.

When I finally opened my eyes, and was not focused on getting the ringing out of my ears, pain started to tear my right leg to shreds. After I looked at it, I was convinced that it wasn’t sprained or broken, but I had heard a muffled POP! upon impact with the ground. 

Even though my leg was injured, and my ears were ringing, and my head hurt, and my eyes felt half blind, I looked up after realizing that there was a shadow over me and saw a tall, curly-haired, random kid above me with his hand outstretched asking me, “Are you okay?”

Now, at this point, a few thoughts flooded my mind like, “NO! I just fell ten feet!” and a few other not very nice ones. But then I realized that he was doing this out of generosity.

“Not really.” I ended up saying.

“Can you stand up or do you need me to help you?” he asked.

“A little.” I responded.

After he helped me up, we exchanged names and I found out that his name was Vincent Gray. He had been racing with some tall, much older, fast-looking kids I didn’t know before he saw me jump. I still know him today, three years later.