SMRT: Revisited

I suppose before I get too in-depth with anything else I should start by saying Happy New Year everyone! 2014 was a roller coaster year for Yeti and me. We gained so much yet we still suffered two huge emotional losses. But i'm sure that 2015 will have plenty of exciting surprises in store for us as well. For example one of those surprises is the subject of this very blog post! Although I think the person who was MOST taken aback by this is yours truly considering  this post I wrote back in March. Allow me to explain...

If you had asked me back then if I ever thought I would be actively independently interested in something as dynamic and complex as astrophysics, I would have probably laughed in your face. Now to be clear, i'm not ignorant to space and science. Before I got into this, I knew about as much as your average joe on the street.  Sure I knew enough to understand simple science and had common sense about how the world around us works but I never thought I would have any inkling towards what makes everything work at the atomic level. Let alone the atomic level that make up the vastness of the cosmos! What? Who the hell is this monster and what has it done with Jo? Seriously, if I wasn't nerdy and awkward enough already, I think I just made it worse. Or better. Depending on who you ask I guess ;).

In the previous post that I mentioned earlier, I talked about going to see Dr. Michio Kaku and the recent revitalization of "Cosmos" on Fox and how I found them both fascinating. But what I didn't realize then was just how much my psyche would change and how much my confidence would grow as a result of it. I found myself wanting to know more once "Cosmos" was over. I started voluntarily listening to lectures by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, Bill Nye (who is a mechanical engineer, I know) and a whole host of others. For example, the above video clip is from the original incarnation of Cosmos from 1980 and it nearly blew my mind when I first saw it. "If you wish to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." Yes of course, Carl Sagan. That makes SO MUCH SENSE. Is it just me who thinks so? The next thing I knew I was learning about things like how stars form, the 5 points of Lagrange, the confusing mind-fuck that is Antimatter,the electromagnetic spectrum and the four constants of the universe  just to name a few. Everything has just been incredible to learn! It's not just going in one ear and out the other this time. It's actually sticking. And that's pretty much how it's gone since I fell down this rabbit hole. Or black hole. Or worm hole. Again, depending on who you ask I guess :-D.

Thinking back to when I was a kid I never really liked looking up at the sky and watching the clouds go by and guessing the shapes. It was always slightly scary knowing that there was this big guy sitting on top of the clouds watching EVERYTHING I do. I guess that does make you a little worried to look up after a while, right ;)? I remember the very first time I looked up at the night sky and marveled at what I saw. I wondered what took me so long to notice and it made me slightly sad. There's something very powerful and moving that goes along with observing the vastness of space without any added light pollution around.  Just the stars and the moon, a meteor here or there (this mind altering experience was during the Perseid Meteor Shower about two years ago). There was even the slightest view of the gas clouds of the Milky Way.  It was so vivid. And so big! And in that moment, I was so small. It was my "OMG what am I doing with my tiny life?" epiphany. 

See, that's how small we are....

Kudos to Yeti for putting up with all my ridiculous questions and observations that have come from this new found hobby. Honestly if it wasn't for him being so supportive and knowledgeable and willing to help me on this path to discovery, who knows what would happen? I enjoy who i'm becoming during this crazy stellar journey. i'm learning more about myself and my abilities and growing in more ways than I ever thought possible. Of course there are times when I feel like I have to re-read paragraphs a few times to get something which really frustrates me but then I think about how far i've come (which is not that far in the grand scheme of things) and about how even some of the greatest minds of our times STILL had questions. It's because of those questions that discoveries were made. So being curious and inquisitive about something so frackin' huge is completely normal. My favorite quote that I've come across so far sums this up pretty perfectly:

"As I 'galaxy-gaze' through time upon their diversity of colors, shapes, sizes, brightness, and structural detail, the boundary between ignorance and knowledge calls to me. When I reach for the edge of the universe, I do so knowing that along some paths of cosmic discovery, there are times when, at least for now, one must be content to love the questions themselves. " 

-Neil DeGrasse Tyson, 'Onward To The Edge', 1996

If you're so inclined to read the whole piece where that quote comes from, you can find it here.  

Do I think i'll ever be an expert on these things? Probably not. But i'm still going to keep learning no matter what. At least i'm making the effort to try and understand what makes everything tick. Maybe one day i'll wake up one day and forget all these amazing things. Which is highly unlikely, but it could happen ;).  But one thing I know for sure is that I will never look at the stars the same way again. We are all made of star stuff, after all.