“And space may produce new worlds” (Paradise Lost 1.650), Milton’s Satan says to the fallen angels in Hell. He is describing a rumor of a new planet, in fact an entirely new cosmos, created in the wake of his Fall. For Satan, the new world is an inspiration for his plan to seek vengeance through the ruin of humanity. In Paradise Lost as a whole, it is the first of many allusions to the transformation of the cosmos wrought by the discoveries of Galileo. This is one of the earliest uses of “space” (OED n. 8) in the astronomical sense, and its appearance is a measure of the fundamental challenges posed by astronomical discovery to artists and thinkers of the seventeenth century. How does the existence of a new world change things for the people who live on our world?

The question of how artists, philosophers, and other thinkers will respond to the discovery of a new planet was opened again in 2016 with the the announcement of research by Konstantin Batygin and Michael E. Brown of Caltech University of the likely existence of a giant planet at the outer reaches of the sphere of space dominated by the sun, aka the solar system. In a paper in the February 2016 issue of Astronomical Journal, Batygin and Brown argue that the perturbations in the orbits of several Kuiper Belt Objects may be explained by the gravitational effect of an as yet unobserved planet with a mass ten times that of the Earth. Previously known for kicking Pluto out of the planet club, Brown hopes that the new Planet Nine will be discovered within five years with Subaru, an 8-meter telescope in Hawaii.

In spite of some skepticism, Batygin and Brown’s announcement was met with excitement. On Twitter, #Planet9 was used to collect articles, information and jokes. NPR ran a poll to name the new planet: should it be Janus, Proserpina, Vulcan, or BlackStar (in honor of David Bowie, of course)? Randall Munroe’s brilliant xkcd captures both the excitement and the nostalgia prompted by the discovery:

Randall Munroe, “Possible Undiscovered Planets,” xkcd.com

Munroe suggests that discovery is also loss: whether confirmed or not, Planet Nine signifies that, in this solar system at least, space can no longer produce new worlds. Even this comic’s gentle jibes at the astronomer’s methods remind us of limitations as well as possibilities. For all of the remarkable discoveries of modern astronomy, including thousands of extra-solar planets, the only perspective from which the universe can be viewed is our own; the cosmos is measured by our own subjectivity.

New astronomical discoveries of the seventeenth century also prompted artistic responses. Galileo’s telescopic observations, which may very well lie behind the line from Paradise Lost quoted above, did produce new worlds—two moons orbiting Jupiter—and prompted poets, philosophers, and theologians to rewrite the place of humanity in the cosmos. Perhaps the most famous response is from John Donne’s poem The First Anniversary (1611) where the poet laments the change threatened by astronomical discovery.

Donne’s verse anticipates Munroe’s satire, though in a hyperbolic mode. Munroe’s panel laughs at the limitations imposed by the self and takes the egoism of the modern individual as a given. Donne posits that the new philosophy will produce a monstrous individual unmoored from all social and religious ties. These new worlds create selfishness in those who observe thembecause they undermine the hierarchy that held the world and its people in their places.

But this fearful and negative response to the discovery of new worlds was not the only possible artistic response during the seventeenth century. For another poet, Lady Hester Pulter (1605-1678), the discovery of new worlds inspired new poetic possibilities. In This was Written 1648 When I Lay in With my Son45, astronomical contemplation is an escape from the physical and emotional pain of a difficult pregnancy. The poet’s body, “sad, sick, and lame,” is confined to bed, but her mind undertakes a celestial voyage through a solar system populated by Galileo’s new worlds. Not tied to an earthly perspective as Donne is, Pulter’s thoughts are free to visit each of the planets in turn. She recognizes the Moon as “another world” and imagines what the Earth would look like from that vantage point:

Pulter’s imaginary voyage opens up new perspectives that provide consolation to her while she suffers a physical confinement. Pulter represents poetically a sight that was not possible visually until the first manned mission to the moon, 320 years later.

NASA

It might be quite a while before Dr. Brown and his colleagues discover telescopic evidence for Planet Nine, but its possibility is the culmination of a process well under way. Pulter imagined what it would be like to look at the Earth from the Moon and the Apollo astronauts later photographed it. In 2013 the Cassini spacecraft captured an image of the Earth from beyond the rings of Saturn.

NASA

Don’t see us? There we are:

NASA

In this image the Earth appears as what Donne described as an “atomi” and Milton as “that punctual spot” (Paradise Lost 8.23). What does it mean to see the Earth from outside like this? In this respect also, Hester Pulter anticipated the sublime visions only recently confirmed by astronomers and their telescopes: