Puzzles
Astronomy is all about puzzles. Astronomy is harder than a lot of science puzzles because we don’t get to set up and repeat and tweak and play with experiments. That is why in astronomy we talk about observing rather than experimenting. We can only collect data that happens to be heading our way.
It never ceases to amaze me how much we’ve been able to learn about the universe by just recording and analyzing this energy that hits us from all around. We are in a bath of radiation from sources as close as the Sun to the cosmic microwave background (CMB), a remnant of the Big Bang. We’ve figured out amazing things about planets, stars, galaxies and the universe as a whole. If history is any guide, our knowledge today will seem trivial and simple compared to the deeper understanding that future research will bring.
This understanding the universe stuff is pretty cool.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
