Keep Looking Up
I have always been fascinated by those who have studied the nature of the universe and revealed some of nature’s best kept secrets. It made me wonder how often we all think about the world above and around us? I was recently reading Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson’s essay “The Cosmic Perspective” (I highly recommend it if you have a spare 15 minutes) and he poignantly states how a cosmic perspective of the world does not have to make us feel insignificant, but rather inspires us to achieve the impossible. The great innovations and inventions of the world have been predicated on understanding the laws that govern the universe, and discovered by those brave enough to fail.
Some thought-provoking quotes from the essay:
“There are more molecules of water in an eight-ounce cup of the stuff than there are cups of water in all the world’s oceans. Every cup that passes through a single person and eventually rejoins the world’s water supply holds enough molecules to mix 1,500 of them into every other cup of water in the world. No way around it: some of the water you just drank passed through the kidneys of Socrates, Genghis Khan, and Joan of Arc.”
“Time to get cosmic. There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on any beach, more stars than seconds have passed since Earth formed, more stars than words and sounds ever uttered by all the humans who ever lived.”
“Want a sweeping view of the past? Our unfolding cosmic perspective takes you there. Light takes time to reach Earth’s observatories from the depths of space, and so you see objects and phenomena not as they are but as they once were. That means the universe acts like a giant time machine: the farther away you look, the further back in time you see — back almost to the beginning of time itself. Within that horizon of reckoning, cosmic evolution unfolds continuously, in full view.”
These are just a few of the amazing insights Dr. Tyson expounds upon. Thinking about how much we don’t know and have yet to learn about the Universe always inspires me, not because it is some hurdle to overcome, but because it means that there is more to life than what we think we know right now. Curiosity propels us from our current state to a new world where anything is possible, it just takes willingness to learn one small step at a time. I believe that the moment we lose curiosity and stop caring about what’s above and below us is the moment we lose our enlightenment as humans. So is this curiosity worth us using valuable resources that could be spent elsewhere? You already know what I think. I believe that it would be shortsighted to mortgage our future out of fear that our efforts will be wasted and resources unwisely spent.
I’ll close with the words of Dr. Tyson: “Keep looking up.”
To read “The Cosmic Perspective” by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson click the link
