Election season is always a loud affair.

Political candidates debate at ear-splitting decibels.

Their surrogates and stand-ins join the chorus of noise, providing their backup vocal caterwauling to the din.

Political pundits join the racket from their perches in television newsrooms, political news columns and too many politically themed blogs to count. Protesters and counter-protesters, supporters and opponents, friends and frenemies shout each other down outside political rallies and coffee shops, grocery stores and local campaign offices, on social media and across street corners.

Humble lawns and cars join the fray via patriotically colored signs and bumper stickers posted for all to see.

On the last day of September, in the midst of all this racket, a spacecraft crashed into a remote comet.

Named for the Rosetta Stone, the code-breaking slab of rock credited with holding the key to understanding ancient Egypt, the spacecraft Rosetta traveled into space - with its passenger, the space probe Philae - to study the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, according to the European Space Agency website.

The ESA agency launched Rosetta and Philae in 2004. NASA announced Philae’s touchdown Aug. 6, 2014. The probe’s landing, unfortunately, started with a bounce and its exact fate was unclear. According to new reports, among the probe’s last signals was the message “it’s cold and dark.”

Rosetta, according to news reports, glimpsed Philae before crashing into 67P Friday. And Rosetta, whose relationship with Philae is portrayed on the ESA webpage for children as that of a brother and sister, dutifully sent an image home to researchers of the fate of her smaller sibling. Philae, described as about the size of a washing machine, was stuck in a dark crack on the surface and unable to recharge its solar batteries.

Rosetta soon crashed to the surface, too.

The craft’s fall prompted thoughts of the age-old philosophical conundrum paraphrased in the headline above: “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

Arguably, dedicated researchers at the ESA, NASA and other space-related agencies, by listening closely for the specific sound of Rosetta’s footfall, did.

Rosetta was the first spacecraft to orbit the center of a comet. Philae was the first space probe to land on a comet. The information and images - and subsequent knowledge the pair sent back to Earth - will continue to capture the imaginations of scientists and researchers far into our future.

Can the same be said for those who hold the political spotlight right now?

The philosophical question of the tree and the forest has been analyzed by some to point to the tricky relationship of observation and knowledge, or perception/understanding of said observation. Do we, as observers and perceivers need to closely listen for the understanding and knowledge promised by the fallen tree in the dense forest, the solitary spacecraft crashed to the comet’s surface or the partisan oratory spewed by political rivals?

Political rhetoric provides ample opportunities to practice studying the same relationship, too.

Rosetta and Philae are expected to remain on 67P for the next half-million years or so.

Perhaps by then much of this noise about Decision 2016 will have reached its end.

April Peterson

editorial assistant

East Penn Press

Salisbury Press