Truth

found this at Boing.

"NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft was about a million miles from Earth last month when it photographed the Moon passing in front of the sun."



Isn't this wild? It has been color-corrected and what not, but wow. And it may even be completely fake, who knows.

Either way, while watching this video, I was reminded that I know very little about my own being. Everything that exists is essentially undiscovered territory.

That's an exciting concept, no? It is accompanied by thousands of delicious questions. If I could shrink inward to infinity plus one, where would I be? If I could travel to the end of space as we know it and then traveled 100 billion trillion zillion times even farther, would I end up back where I started? Is there really curvature in space and time? Who knows. I certainly don't, but I'm not a big fan of space/time curvature. Playing with time or any nonlinear temporal tampering is so beyond my comprehension that I can't enjoy it at all...even superficially at the science NON-fictional level. Time travel...ugh.

Back to being in awe of massive concepts. I can barely wrestle with the scale of our existence and the space we share. The numbers are staggering. Like our existence on Earth. If you hold your arms out to your side as if to say "I love you this much", the distance between your left and right middle fingertips represent the current theoretical lifespan of Earth. If you take a fingernail file and run it over your middle fingernail just once, you will wipe out the entire existence of mankind. I love that example. It's my favorite out of the many.

When the questions and numbers become overwhelming, I'm reminded of my Christian upbringing. As a kid, I LOVED church. It was a great time. I loved the friendships, atmosphere and activities at my church, and I enjoyed the comfortable feeling I got from believing in the love of a god/Jesus. But as I got older, the desire to ask questions and seek truth in myself, my world and my beliefs caused my body to swell. The walls of the religious room in which I was living didn't budge. I continued to expand and I could see I would soon reach the walls. Then what? Would I stop expanding to fit within my container?

Over and over, answers became all too similar. Regardless of who I asked:

"There's no point in thinking about that kind of thing, only God knows the answer to that"

"That's a question designed by the devil...he wants you to think about those things"

"You really aren't asking these questions in search of an answer"

Eventually I chose to get rid of the walls. Ultimately it had very little to do with the lack of sustainable answers and the whole "don't look behind the curtain" issue. If I needed answers, I certainly wouldn't turn to science, science has few answers. I don't need answers. I just need truth and the sincerity of raw examination. At the very least, the scientific process strives for truth. Magic just doesn't do it for me anymore.

Those walls were crumbling anyway, all I needed was to experience NYC/Chicago, to get perspective outside the Bible Belt and hang out with people not affiliated with the compound. If it weren't for my years away, I may have floated in the grey waters that a few of my friends like to swim. Insert The River Denial joke here. Either way, I'm thankful I did a little rehabin' because that room was crampin' my style, yo. Now I've got a pretty good view of things and I'm able to enjoy every single day. Life is short, delicate and quite finite.

Then again, I know very little. So who knows, maybe there is a personal god that listens to and answers prayers and somehow participates in our lives. Maybe there is a heaven and hell where the fortunate are happy and the unfortunate are on fire FOREVER (echo echo echo).

I must admit that if such things do exist, that sucks for the majority of folks born into non-Christian countries. It's much easier to make it into heaven if you're born in America and The Bible Belt compared to, let's say, northern China or North Korea or the Middle East. I wasted a great seat, in a way.

Who knows. I know very little, but I do know that this video is pretty cool. Stupid religious tangent. It's too late now, but I want to get back on the science topic. Hopefully soon.