One Shot (No Cosmic Replays)

The moral consequence Moynihan draws from bookending the cosmos (Hubble, Lemaître, Penzias–Wilson 1964). While the universe was assumed infinite, extinction could be treated as a "local affair" — de Sales's renewal, Fourier's transmigrating souls, Millikan's "there will always be, somewhere, an 'earth'," Koestler on H-bomb tests driving interest in life on other stars. Eternity functioned as insurance against ruining Earth. The CMB removes it: "we have one shot, and one shot only"; "the same hands will never twice build the golden cities of this world" (Eiseley). Pairs with entrenchment/path dependency — what is decided in our "now" is locked in for the whole remaining future. Antikythera's Diffusion post cites the essay under exactly this heading.