I have been reading a lot of history lately. Old History. Big Bang history. Cosmic dust old. Universe old. The most interesting of late has been one of the many space telescopes view of the back side of a black hole never before seen. For years articles have appeared about the planetary nursery of planets blah blah blah. Of late, the increased space rock watch that is now more of a concern than in the past makes me wonder what scientist have discovered that they are not telling Now that really worries me. But, the article about black holes where matter flowing into them is being called food gets even more frightening since the discovery of the back side of one actually showing that food being spewed out as it begins to forms new stars is really quite amazing.
At the same time, I have been reading a lot of futuristic stuff. Like Saturn's moon, Titan is the only other rock that we know about that has flowing liquids. Or, the black hole of our galaxy, The Milky Way, that is 100 times the size of our sun. Or, that there is another galaxy that will collide with our own galaxy in a few million years or so (don't want to be around for that). You though that when I said futuristic, I was talking about some action figure of comic books fame.
All this got me to thinking. Serious thinking. How my views of life and goals made, achieved, readjusted or missed have once again changed from the days of my youth, early adulthood, mid-life and currently. When the space race began, going to the moon was a three day trip. Now, the talk of Mars is a three year trip. I'm sorry, but travel time needs to be more speedy.
In the grand scheme of things --and seeing what we see overall as the big picture, most likely is just a view of a pin-head size world that we are aware of-- that does not frighten me as much as I though it might. What really frightens me is the degree of arrogance display for our 400 years on this side of the Atlantic. When you stop to think that the weekend home of Queen Elizabeth II, Windsor Castle, was first viewed and laid out by her distant relative, William the Conqueror of 1066 fame and that every King and a few Queens since have made significant contributions to that 13 acres of Perpendicular Gothic style buildings, or its parks or twin farms. Windsor Castle will not stand forever. It almost ended with the fire in 1992. The point being is that we will all come and be long gone after what we build and accomplish on this earth. Really, 13,000 years from now, who is really going to care unless they are an anthropologist or archaeologist. The second point is that life can change in the blink of an eye but only a small (and I mean small) sample of anyone in the future is really going to give a rats ass.
So while be build great architectures on the island or a show house in the Hamptons on yet another island and write and perform the humanities we love and enjoy on an Ivy League Green or an English campus cloister our only hope is somewhere out there in this amazing cosmos, there really is our creator.
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