Astronomy

Seeing that my astronomy final is tomorrow, I'd like to talk about my astronomy class as I was planning to discuss all my classes in a future post but I'll save myself some trouble by talking about astronomy first.

I genuinely think astronomy is a truly fascinating science - it's one of those never-ending subjects where you can just keep learning, exploring, and discovering.  Astronomy also teaches us that even though we are important as human beings, we are exceedingly insignificant compared to the rest of the world.  Arthur C. Clarke, a British science fiction author said this :

Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

He's totally right - the fact that we are the only creatures in the universe is almost like saying there's only one ant on the face of the Earth.  However, if there were creatures other than ants, our lives could potentially be in jeopardy as well - at least this is how I interpreted the quote.

However, as awesome as astronomy may be, it kind of surprises me how there are some astronomers that don't really understand how to think outside of the box.  Astronomers, geologists, and other professionals that deal with 'outer-space science' keep defining 'life' in terms of 'water' and 'oxygen' (I'm oversimplifying here).  I know that perhaps these people are just keeping the term of 'life' consistent to Earth's resources of life - so that perhaps it'd be easier for us to discover or even relocate to those places one day.  But have they ever considered that maybe oxygen and water is the poison?  Have they considered that how come out of all the other planets and closer solar systems, that only this one blue planet was able to grow a bunch of stuff on it that are slowly destroying it inside out?  I know it's good to individualistic and all, but have these astronomers and scientists also considered that perhaps something is wrong with the Earth - and in fact all the other planets that are 'lifeless' are the normal ones?  The sources of life on other extraterrestrial or stellar planets could be found in sources of ammonium or hydrogen cyanide for all we know - then oxygen would definitely be poisonous for those alien creatures.  And according to geologists, before the Earth became the planet we know, oxygen actually was a poison and this planet is possibly the only planet light years around that has adapted to this poison.

My astronomy teacher did touch on a particular topic, though : there is this moon of Saturn by the name of Titan and it has volcanoes erupting water.  Obviously, just water probably isn't sufficient enough to sustain any forms of life - but it should remind astronomers and other scientists not to explore the world by our own standards - what may be water to us can be lava to another creature, and vice versa.

I really do like astronomy though, mostly based on Biblical reasons that the universe is all God's handiwork and that simply through prayer we can communicate with a being so great!  Astronomy shows mankind that we're not so high and mighty as we may strive to be and that many things are inconceivably incomprehensible to discover the explanations of.  We aren't 100% sure if it's really an iron core in the center of the Earth, we're not sure if Jupiter really just blends from gas to liquid, we can't yet find the explanation of why Saturn tilts at essentially a right-angle (the Earth tilts at a 23.5 degree angle), why one out of the dozens of Saturn's moons decides to spin in the opposite direction of all the other Saturn moons, and various other things like this.  Granted, I'm sure mankind will find the exact answers to these one day.  But I just have this gut feeling that the answers will be shocking and definitely not what scientists predict or expect (like how physicists proved that all solid, inanimate objects to the eyes are actually constantly moving and have hyperactive atoms).