Quid rides? De te fabula narratur What are you laughing at? The joke is on you.
THE AMAZING UNIVERSE
ANTHONY ASCHETTINO OBSERVER STAFF WRITER
Issue date: 5/5/09 Section: Observations
For this year's ultimate edition of Quid Rides, we invite our readers to ponder something their ancestors have since the first humanoid creature gazed up at the sky during the night and wondered what exactly was out there: our universe.
Since the dawn of civilization, we as a species have been fascinated by the universe and rightly so: there is nothing comparable to the majesty of its boundless mystery, forcing us to keep prying away in order to grasp even a bit of understanding about it.
Long has man looked at the stars and the moon, indeed all of the heavenly bodies, and guessed what they were and what purpose they serve us.
In the beginning, we thought that we were the center of the universe: believing in gods, why would man not think that he had a special place in the grand scheme of things?
Thus did man see in the constellations figures of old and all sorts of mythical beings the names of which we still adhere to today.
It took centuries of learning before we realized that we were in fact not the center of the universe and, in reality, that the universe is something larger than ever could be expected.
We are but a tiny speck of a planet revolving around a small star on a spiral arm of a small galaxy: hardly the kind of thing that inspires delusions of grandeur.
Whereas man once thought that he could name each star, we now know that there are untold trillions of them, spread out so far that even moving at the speed of light it would take billions of years to reach some of them.
The universe is a place of great beauty, and the pictures we can now get from our advanced telescopes show us galaxies and nebulae that are truly awe-inspiring in their size and complexity.
It is also a place of great violence, with exploding stars, black holes, and gamma ray bursts. Every year we learn more about our universe, and with every answer it seems that several new questions arise.
It is humbling indeed to think that the lights from stars one sees in the night sky left their celestial bodies billions of years ago in some cases and are just arriving now.
Since the dawn of civilization, we as a species have been fascinated by the universe and rightly so: there is nothing comparable to the majesty of its boundless mystery, forcing us to keep prying away in order to grasp even a bit of understanding about it.
Long has man looked at the stars and the moon, indeed all of the heavenly bodies, and guessed what they were and what purpose they serve us.
In the beginning, we thought that we were the center of the universe: believing in gods, why would man not think that he had a special place in the grand scheme of things?
Thus did man see in the constellations figures of old and all sorts of mythical beings the names of which we still adhere to today.
It took centuries of learning before we realized that we were in fact not the center of the universe and, in reality, that the universe is something larger than ever could be expected.
We are but a tiny speck of a planet revolving around a small star on a spiral arm of a small galaxy: hardly the kind of thing that inspires delusions of grandeur.
Whereas man once thought that he could name each star, we now know that there are untold trillions of them, spread out so far that even moving at the speed of light it would take billions of years to reach some of them.
The universe is a place of great beauty, and the pictures we can now get from our advanced telescopes show us galaxies and nebulae that are truly awe-inspiring in their size and complexity.
It is also a place of great violence, with exploding stars, black holes, and gamma ray bursts. Every year we learn more about our universe, and with every answer it seems that several new questions arise.
It is humbling indeed to think that the lights from stars one sees in the night sky left their celestial bodies billions of years ago in some cases and are just arriving now.
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reklama
posted 4/12/10 @ 9:21 AM EST
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