On Friday I posted about satellite images of typhoon Haiyan bearing down mercilessly on the Phillipines.  I called this post “The Destroyer of Worlds,” because it was very clear even then what we would see.  And now we can see it.

The reports, the videos, and the images are beginning to come in and it is as expected or maybe worse than expected, because you can never truly foresee something this bad.  There are over ten thousand dead, whole towns destroyed.  And there are countless families destroyed.  The New York Times today quoted Robert S. Ziegler, the director general of the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños, Philippines, who said that he was worried that he was very concerned that the damage reports were coming from Tacloban, the capital of the province of Leyte, which is 360 miles from Manilla, but not from the many fishing communities that line the coast.

“The coastal areas can be quite vulnerable — in many cases, you have fishing communities right up to the shoreline, and they can be wiped out” by a powerful storm surge of the sort that hit Tacloban, he said. “The disturbing reports are the lack of reports, and the areas that are cut off could be quite severely hit.”

Nothing really can be said that truly captures what we are now seeing.  Even the images only touch a raw nerve and then are gone.  But the people remain, the desperation remains.  We begin with a beautiful view from space.  But as soon as we come closer down the stark reality captures us and we begin to imagine.  Finally, zoom down to the human level and it becomes very personal.

Figure 1 – Image from 1842 showing Mozart’s widow, Constanze Weber, lower left two years before her death.  From the Wikimedia Commons and in the public domain.

I was doing some mindless searching of the web today at lunch and I met someone that I never expected to encounter.  This person was Constanze  nee Weber (1762-1842), the wife of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 – 1791).  Wait a minute, you say, how is this possible?  Well take a look at Figure 1 which shows  Constanze Mozart at age 78 years two years before her death.  She is in the front left and dressed in black.  Bavarian composer Max Keller is seated center front, and to his left is his wife Josefa. From left to right in rear: family cook, Philip Lattner (Keller’s brother in law), and Keller’s daughters Luise and Josefa. The print is a 19th century copy of the original daguerreotype photograph taken October 1840, at Keller’s home.  This image was discovered in 2004 in the Altötting state archive in 2004.  So amazing, right? You’ve got to love the way Lattner leans forward, the expression on Keller’s face, and the touching way that Josefa leans against Luise.

We have spoken a lot about this, but the words “I met” still ring very true.  Somehow seeing someone’s photograph is meeting them, somehow you feel closer to them than with a painted portrait, no matter how finely done.  They become kindred in a way – fellow occupants of modern times.  You cannot help but stare into their faces in a way that doesn’t work with a painting.  It’s not after all, an artists conception, it is a real instant lived.  You create a little story in your mind.  In this case the story is of the first encounter with some new fangled gadget – maybe the first time you saw a digital camera – or maybe the first time you saw a Polaroid Instamatic (if you ever did).  You can relate to the moment captured. The party on the lawn stops and everyone gathers round as the magician photographer does his sorcery.  And finally, and in a way that once more contrasts ever so deeply with the experience of a painting, you feel a twinge of remorse that this person or persons passed away.  You met them, knew them, and shared a moment with them.  Perhaps there is truth to the view that the camera captures your soul.

Figure 1 – Pacific Typhoon Haiyan approaching the Phillipines on Nov. 6, 2013, Image Credit:
NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team, in the public domain.

As I am writing Typhoon Haiyan is barreling down on the central and southern Phillipines.  Robotic eyes from spacing are watching the whole story unfold, and despite the natural beauty of these space images, we are, unfortunately, certain to see much worse in the days to come as scenes of the human tragedy unfold.

Haiyan has achieved status as a Category 5 hurricane.  According to Brian McNoldy, a Senior Research Associate at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science in Miami, Fla.,”Haiyan has achieved tropical cyclone perfection. It is now estimated at 165kts (190mph), with an 8.0 on the Dvorak scale… the highest possible value.” Haiyan is approximately 500 mi in diameter.  Some believe it to be the most powerful typhoon ever recorded.  The image shown in Figure 1 was taken from the MODIS instrument aboard NASA’s Aqua satellite on Nov. 7, 2013 at 04:25 UTC.

NASA has many robotic eyes trained on Haiyan.  These are the ever watchful sentinels of Earth. They study wind, temperature, and pressure.  The trouble with robotic eyes, at least for now, is their intrinsic lack of soul.  They do not feel or empathize. Still save many lives will be saved by virtue of the warnings that they provide and by the knowledge base that they build.  Looking at images like this, simultaneously so beautiful and so terrible, I cannot help but recall the words of  J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) and of all the world’s mythologies that his phrase evokes.