Of stardust and things beyond us

From here

For the second time in as many weeks an interesting person came to work to show us a world beyond our narrow ones. This time round it was an astronomer- the director of the Palomar Observatory to be precise. This wonderful elf-like man named Shrinivas Kulkarni stood up on stage and showed us worlds that one would think were the stuff of our wildest imaginings.

From here

One of the things he said that grabbed hold of me and hasn't let me go was about how the universe is a destructive place but also, how that destruction is necessary to maintain us as us. Through a wonderful alchemy or perhaps just as magical physics , the destruction of a star is what releases the iron that constitutes our blood. It amazes me that it takes an explosive instability to create whatever it is that makes us relatively stable as humans. And not just iron. But every stable element that constitutes the human body. There is stardust in each of us.

I have been long since convinced that our entire existence is tied in with the world around us. The Gaia Theory   hypothesizes just such an interconnectedness.
I don't necessarily know that that is going to stop us as a species from acting in our own self-absorbed arrogant way in destroying everything around us. But I hope we at least slow down that process. Or at least become more aware of what we are and our place in the universe.

Someone in the audience stood up toward the end and asked Professor Kulkarni how he could justify the astronomical sums spent in making the telescopes and other technology involved in studying distant galaxies and supernovae when there is an economic crisis on . Kulkarni had the most wonderful answer when he said that ( and I'm paraphrasing) we needed to know about things beyond us- beyond our own narrow concerns. I mean would we humans be what we are if it weren't for the sum total of our knowledge. Of our ability to reach for the stars (in this case literally).  The Palomar telescope was in fact built during the Great Depression. I find that fact truly heartening. Perhaps,  we as a species still have hope. Or perhaps in the natural course of things we are meant to end and perhaps that extinction is going to come at our own hands. Either way , in the time we have doesn't it make sense to try to understand our universe and beyond, whatever be the end?

Voyager (Source: here)

I leave you this week with this little nugget of information. Voyager 1 was launched in 1977. It stands today on the brink of leaving our solar system. It will literally be the first man-made object to ever do so and enter the wild wild west of inter-stellar space. I don't know about you but I am more than a little eager to see what lies beyond the edge- the edge of the universe, the edge of what I imagine is my universe...