page_title: Common heritage of mankind
section_title: Controversies about the principle
hierarchical_section_title: Common heritage of mankind / Controversies about the principle
caption_attribution_description: English: Butterfly Emerges from Stellar Demise in Planetary Nebula NGC 6302 The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), a new camera aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, snapped this image of the planetary nebula, catalogued as NGC 6302, but more popularly called the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula. WFC3 was installed by NASA astronauts in May 2009, during the servicing mission to upgrade and repair the 19-year-old Hubble telescope. NGC 6302 lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3,800 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius. The glowing gas is the star's outer layers, expelled over about 2,200 years. The "butterfly" stretches for more than two light-years, which is about half the distance from the Sun to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. The central star itself cannot be seen, because it is hidden within a doughnut-shaped ring of dust, which appears as a dark band pinching the nebula in the center. The thick dust belt constricts the star's outflow, creating the classic "bipolar" or hourglass shape displayed by some planetary nebulae. The star's surface temperature is estimated to be about 400,000 degrees Fahrenheit, making it one of the hottest known stars in our galaxy. Spectroscopic observations made with ground-based telescopes show that the gas is roughly 36,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is unusually hot compared to a typical planetary nebula. The WFC3 image reveals a complex history of ejections from the star. The star first evolved into a huge red-giant star, with a diameter of about 1,000 times that of our Sun. It then lost its extended outer layers. Some of this gas was cast off from its equator at a relatively slow speed, perhaps as low as 20,000 miles an hour, creating the doughnut-shaped ring. Other gas was ejected perpendicular to the ring at higher speeds, producing the elongated "wings" of the butterfly-shaped structure. Later, as the central star heated up, a much faster stellar wind, a stream of charged particles traveling at more than 2 million miles an hour, plowed through the existing wing-shaped structure, further modifying its shape. The image also shows numerous finger-like projections pointing back to the star, which may mark denser blobs in the outflow that have resisted the pressure from the stellar wind. The nebula's reddish outer edges are largely due to light emitted by nitrogen, which marks the coolest gas visible in the picture. WFC3 is equipped with a wide variety of filters that isolate light emitted by various chemical elements, allowing astronomers to infer properties of the nebular gas, such as its temperature, density, and composition. The white-colored regions are areas where light is emitted by sulfur. These are regions where fast-moving gas overtakes and collides with slow-moving gas that left the star at an earlier time, producing shock waves in the gas (the bright white edges on the sides facing the central star). The white blob with the crisp edge at upper right is an example of one of those shock waves. NGC 6302 was imaged on July 27, 2009, with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in ultraviolet and visible light. Filters that isolate emissions from oxygen, helium, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulfur from the planetary nebula were used to create this composite image. These Hubble observations of the planetary nebula NGC 6302 are part of the Hubble Servicing Mission 4 Early Release Observations.
context_page_description: Common heritage of mankind is a principle of international law that holds that defined territorial areas and elements of humanity's common heritage should be held in trust for future generations and be protected from exploitation by individual nation states or corporations.
context_section_description: Kemal Baslar has stated that the Common Heritage of Mankind principle "is a philosophical idea that questions the regimes of globally important resources regardless of their situation, and requires major changes in the world to apply its provisions. In other words, the application and enforcement of the common heritage of mankind require a critical reexamination of many well-established principles and doctrines of classical international law, such as acquisition of territory, consent-based sources of international law, sovereignty, equality, resource allocation and international personality."
  The common heritage of humanity principle in international law has been viewed as one solution to the tragedy of the commons dilemma described in an influential article by that name written by Garrett Hardin in the journal Science in 1968. The article critically analyzes a dilemma in which multiple individuals, acting independently after rationally consulting self-interest, ultimately destroy a shared limited resource even when each acknowledges that outcome is not in anyone's long-term interest. Hardin's conclusion that commons areas are practicably achievable only in conditions of low population density and so their continuance requires state restriction on the freedom to breed, created controversy particularly through his deprecation of the role of conscience in achieving justice and equality in society. Hardin's views have been noted by scholars and policy-makers supporting privatization of common spaces and suggesting economic rationalism on such social and ecosystems.
  The extent to which the Common Heritage of Mankind principle does or should control the activities of private multinational corporations as well as nation states, particularly with regard to mining activities, remains controversial. Underdeveloped nations often see the principle as a means of protecting critical resources from exploitation by capitalist nations and their corporations. As world oil, coal and mineral reserves are depleted there will be increasing pressure to commercially exploit Common Heritage of Mankind areas. It appears at the present time that exploration of outer space is unlikely to initially proceed under the jurisdiction of a supranational organization, but rather through the coordination of national space programs. It has been argued that photosynthesis in its natural or artificial forms should be considered the common heritage of humanity.
caption: The NGC 6302 nebula. Militarization of Outer Space would be contrary to common heritage of humanity principles.
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