John Keats' Headstone Reads "Writ in Water..." -- And The Forthcoming JPL Europa Clipper Mission Will Take Him Literally At His Word...

John Keats¹ had once penned a few lines. . . and then asked that one part in particular, be inscribed on his tombstone -- as he lay dying at 25, in 1820. So it reads "here lies one whose name is. . . writ, in water. . ." -- so true. All of our lives, it seems, are writ in water -- ethereal, beautiful, fragile and fleeting.

And so, the mission to search for water, on Europa, called Clipper -- will carry a tile with the wave form of human voices, in over 100 languages. . . saying the word "water".

We need not explain why the finding of that silvery liquid on out-worlds means. . . everything, in our search for life, like ours. Just know that Mr. Keats is. . . smiling, this evening. . . somewhere, out there. Here's the story, for a rain-soaked Friday:

. . .Made of the metal tantalum and about 7 by 11 inches (18 by 28 centimeters), the plate features graphic elements on both sides. The outward-facing panel features art that highlights Earth’s connection to Europa. Linguists collected recordings of the word “water” spoken in 103 languages, from families of languages around the world. The audio files were converted into waveforms (visual representations of sound waves) and etched into the plate. The waveforms radiate out from a symbol representing the American Sign Language sign for “water.”

To hear audio of the spoken languages and see the sign, go to: go.nasa.gov/MakeWaves.

In the spirit of the Voyager spacecraft’s Golden Record, which carries sounds and images to convey the richness and diversity of life on Earth, the layered message on Europa Clipper aims to spark the imagination and offer a unifying vision. . . .

Ada Limon's sublime poem appears on the reverse of this tile. Onward, smiling here in the steel and glass canyons. . . ever, smiling:



नमस्ते



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^{1. An earlier version of this post had mis-attributed the quote to William Butler Yeats. In was, in fact, John Keats, nearly a century earlier. The mistake was the author's alone. So it goes.}