I have always enjoyed looking up at the night sky in wonderment. Stars, planets, galaxies all whizzing around the universe at dizzying speeds and yet, as we stare up at them, they appear to move around us in slow pageantry. It’s as though the universe looks inward at us daring us to stare out into infinity and not completely lose our minds at the sheer scale of it all. In reality, I believe that the universe is completely indifferent to our existence. I think that most people find that frightening. Humans like to think that we are special, different…chosen. The fact is, and I do not use that term lightly, the fact is that we are essentially animals that just happened to develop a self-awareness, the whole “I think therefore I am”. Thank you, René Descartes. I would like to think that we all sit and wonder, at some point in our lives, how did we get here, or, probably more central to each of us, how did I get here? The existential rabbit hole of youth when we wonder if we are really alive or just a construct of our own imagination. If I am, indeed, a construct of my own imagination, then, is everyone else? I am old and wise enough to reason that away. If that were true, then Michelle Pfeifer would visit me every night and call me “Mr Man” while we sat on the beach and pondered the big dipper. If she reads this I would just like to invite her to the beach some night so that we can sit and “ponder”.

I had a telescope when I was growing up. It wasn’t the best telescope in the world, but I could point it at Jupiter and make out the Big Red Spot. I could also point it at Saturn and, if I fiddled, fussed, squinted, and bit my lower lip just right I could see the rings. Fast forward forty years and I can go on the Internet and study images of galaxies so far away that they can’t even be detected by the largest telescope on the earth. Thank you Edwin Hubble. More accurately, thank you Nancy Roman, the first woman to hold an executive position at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Edwin Hubble dared to suggest that there were galaxies outside our own. Space telescopes were proposed as early as 1923, but we had scarcely learned to fly by that time. But like all visionaries, scientists continued to work on the idea, as they do, so that when it became possible they would be prepared to make it happen. Nancy Roman fostered the Hubble Space Telescope program for decades in her position with NASA. Thanks to the Hubble we now know that the universe is expanding. We also know that the rate of expansion is accelerating and not decelerating which is another mind-blower that developed thanks to these scientists that think hard, do the math, and persevere. The Hubble telescope has produced images from light that has been traveling for so long it dates back to tiny fractions of a second before the Big Bang. We have learned how to find exoplanets or planets outside our own solar system. More interesting than that, we have discovered how to find the kind of planet that is likely to harbor life. I say likely, because we haven’t been able to figure out how to know for sure and we are still looking for some sign or signal from another civilization outside of our own. You can thank another woman for keeping that program going, not to mention the great Carl Sagan. As an aside you can also thank Hedy Lamarr for spread spectrum radio and frequency hopping, without which we would not have WiFi, CDMA, or Bluetooth. Isn’t it fun that the actress who starred in the controversial love making scene from the 1933 film Ecstasy was also tremendously intellectual and scientifically talented? As I was saying, I had a telescope when I was young and I would scarcely make out those images and now I can set out my digital camera and capture gorgeous photographs of the milky way and ponderous images of the night sky. These are things I could not even dream of when I was ten years old. The things that science has discovered continue to astound. The amazing things that science has to teach us compound exponentially every day. It is a shame that, for the most part, nobody is listening.

I look up at the sun and find it amazing that this -26.74 magnitude ball of plasma is the single source of all life on this planet and yet is completely indifferent to us or anything else in this great universe. For that matter, the entire universe is completely indifferent to us and our “grand accomplishments”. You know, like Facebook and the iPhone. I like to stay up late at night or get up very early in the morning and go exploring. There is an entire world out there that is busy when most people are sleeping. I can walk around the corner in my own neighborhood and find deer grazing in neighbors’ yards every night. O’possum and armadillo wander about starting just before the sun goes down. Owls call to each other all night long. Wild hogs, bears, raccoons all spend a lot of time rooting around in the dark while most people lie in bed, blissfully ignorant.

I can tell what month it is by the constellations in the sky. I can tell where I am at on this great planet by the stars in the sky. I look up at the stars now, being older and wiser, and wonder who might be looking back at us. Can they even see our sun with the naked eye? Do they even have eyes? Do they use money, the one thing that has crippled our civilization? Do they have emotions or are they pure logic like Spock? Do they have a religion? A philosophy? How long do they live? Would we recognize them if we encountered them? Yes, even though I don’t believe most alien yahooism, are they already here? Have they already been here? Will they come here? Will we go there? I can ponder that all night and often do. If these questions seem far fetched to you then I urge you to get a book, preferably not one of the many religious tomes that we humans seem to love to reference while trying to justify our mutual destruction, but instead a book about science or philosophy. Allow yourself, if only for a few minutes, to imagine that your notions about yourself and your place in this big world may not be exactly what you think. Humble yourself and you will be free. Free to ponder. Free to imagine ways that we can make this world better, maybe even ways that we can someday make another world better. Free to imagine a brighter future. Free to imagine new ways to do the same old thing or, free to find old ways to do the same old thing or, old ways to do new things.

To start off just take the time to find a place with dark skies, lie on a blanket and stare up at the stars. You will find yourself coming up with questions you never thought you would ask. Then, go find the answers to those questions. If those questions burn in your mind and nobody else seems to have the answers then you can be the one who answers them. If you do answer new questions please share them with the rest of us. I, for one, can promise you that even if I find it hard to believe or agree with, I will find it interesting. Anything that you might think up while looking at the stars is bound to be interesting.