exploring the real wonders of the universe
If you're looking for surreal, downright astounding beauty and wonder, all you need to do is look up and ask some questions about what's happening in the night sky...
People all over the world spend a lot of times looking for wonders, especially ones of the supernatural kind. If we consider the millennia of religious traditions which shape the worldviews of billions of people, it's hard to imagine that they wouldn't. However, while looking for gods, angels, demons, and monsters, they often miss the real mysteries and wonders of the universe. Consider this segment from the BBC series Wonders of the Solar System, in which Professor Brian Cox talks about volcanism on Io. Hundreds of millions of miles away, an alien world is being kneaded by gravity is erupting with searing hot lava as the plumes of ash reaching up to 190 miles into space are bathed by deadly auroras. That's not science fiction. It's a real, observable fact.
That's not amazing enough for you? How about another a world next door called Europa, a moon which could host alien life in an ocean hidden under miles of ice. Or what about Titan, where liquid methane behaves like water on Earth at a bone chilling -290°F, and which could also be a habitat for exotic alien creatures. And if that's not doing it for you, what about planets around other stars where superheated winds lash out at nearly 10,800 miles per hour, or where temperatures soar to 4,000°F on an average day and worlds about the size of Neptune could be stripped to their rocky cores by the solar winds? And while we're at it, how about huge, puffed out gas giants which orbit their parent stars backwards, and worlds as big as their suns? Finally, if you want to see something really bizarre, how about galaxies devouring each other, black holes both stellar and supermassive, and the invisible, enigmatic substance known as dark matter? Oh and we could go on and on since we haven't even scratched the surface of what observational astronomy can show us.
When we focus on debating about the supernatural, ignoring how much there's left to learn about the cosmos and how many places there are to explore, we're losing sight of what's really important. We're alive in the here and now, living in a vast and mysterious universe that will provide us with glimpses of things that will perplex us for as long as it exists. Diverting all our energies to what we believe will happen once we die and using our beliefs to squabble about who's the most moral and who has all the answers to the universe's big questions because they ascribe to a certain religion seems to be an awful misuse of a very limited resource: our time on Earth. Sure, metaphysics can be be deep and exciting to discuss, but many of the real, everyday mysteries of the cosmos are just as fascinating if you take the time to learn about them…
