Romney: Grounded in the Galaxy?
However, as an astrophysicist, one of the most intriguing claims of the Mormon religion cannot help but be an astronomical one. It is that after an observant life on planet earth ends, good Mormons can achieve semi-divine status, each ruling a new planet somewhere in the Universe.
In this regard, Mitt Romney can take solace from the discoveries of the Kepler satellite, which has revealed a plethora of new planets surrounding other nearby stars, over 2000 so far. The data suggests that perhaps every star may house a solar system, many of them with exotic properties hitherto thought to be at best unlikely, based on ideas about how our own Solar System formed. So there may be 100 billion solar systems in our galaxy alone, more than enough to assign a planet for each person alive on Earth at the present time.
Of course of the 2000 planets so far detected, no Earth-sized planets in what is known as the “habitable zone”, where liquid water and an Earth-like atmosphere might exist, have yet been observed. Most are either uninhabitable giant gaseous orbs or smaller scorched rocky planets that, like Icarus, have moved too close to their suns. But, by the evidentiary standards of Mormon faith perhaps this is merely an inessential detail.
As a bishop of his church one might imagine that Mr Romney has bought into this doctrine, as well as the ones described earlier. If he does, all of this puts Mitt Romney in a position that is unique amongst all major previous presidential candidates. He cannot lose. Even if he does not win this election and with it the opportunity to govern the most powerful nation on Earth, he is guaranteed one day to rule over, not over merely an individual country, but an entire planet. One can only hope that in his case, it won’t be a gas giant.