Behind and ahead

In the early days of recorded history, people looked at the skies and saw that the stars rotated, that the sun rose in the morning and set in the evening, and that the days were longer in summer, shorter in winter.  There are monuments built by them that highlight the solstices, rotation of the stars, and their understanding of the days of the year.

Thousands of years passed, and finally, in the Middle Ages, people figured out that the Earth revolved and rotated, the sun was the center of the universe, that the 8 planets also revolved around the sun as the Earth did, and that the moon controled the Earth's tides to a large degree.

A few hundred more years passed.  Then, people figured out how to calculate distances in space. They also discovered that the stars represented other solar systems, ours was just one of many, that galaxies existed everywhere, that black holes and white holes served as mechanisms to destroy and birth stars, that galaxies were on the move toward each other, destroying each other, that galaxies were connected by a solar type of matter that appeared like thread, and much more.

I'm thinking that as we learn to terraform and populate Mars and learn to travel beyond the solar system we now inhabit, that we will continue to be spellbound and  unravel the great mysteries that will have arisen from our knowledge.  An astronomer working for NASA was interviewed about all of our current exploration, including the search for a habitable planet like Earth in galaxies far away.  She said, "If we ever find an Earth-like planet somewhere else, it will profoundly change the way we look at the skies."

I guess our own lives are microcosms of the journey civilization has taken with the skies.  We are trained to reason a certain  way until we are about 30 before we start exploring on our own.  Then, we learn the world around us so well that we began to manipulate it to our advantage.  Eventually, we discover the more accurate truths about living and change our thinking to match our new knowledge.  But, there's that one pending piece of knowledge, that if discovered, will profoundly change our thinking.

I have changed my thinking already... a lot... along my way.  But I also know of an Earth-like planet that exists in a sphere outside of mine.  If I ever get there, it will profoundly change the way I look at and live life.