Lessons from an astrophysicist

"For so long we've just sort of taken it for granted that space and time exist around us. Time flows in one direction. Space extends perhaps to infinity. But then there was also a time when we we didn't think that air was anything. People didn't realize that we actually live at the bottom of this wonderful ocean of air that is our atmosphere." —Dr. Michelle Thaller

I am completely taken with that phrase and concept in the quote above — we live at the bottom of an ocean of air that is our atmosphere. Such a dreamy way to imagine our place in our galaxy! We're not walking around topside on our planet but are deep sea dwellers with fathoms of air above and around us.

This concept comes from a YouTube video of the wonderful astronomer/astrophysicist Dr. Michelle Thaller. (She explains near the video's beginning that the designations are virtually interchangeable in modern science.) The video is just over an hour and is rich with information about our universe, modern astronomy, quantum physics, binary stars, solar and stellar winds, space weather, and more, more, more.

But I also came away thinking about what Dr. Thaller talked about as the mindset of a scientist and how applicable that is for anyone, not just NASA-level researchers.

How much we do not know

Why quantum entanglement exists. What happened before the Big Bang. Connecting — possibly — the theory of relativity with quantum mechanics. Science is continually facing big questions and working toward answers. I wish for all of us that we could approach life in general with this attitude and be open to what we previously didn't know.

Holding ideas lightly

In science, you have a theory and work toward proving it. It may or may not prove true. And other, long-held ideas can eventually be proven false (ie, the earth is flat). Because there's so much we don't know — why are we here? what existed before the Big Bang?

are other forms of life out there? — remain flexible in your thoughts and open to seeing other ideas and points of view.

Being willing to be wrong

This concept goes hand-in-hand with the first two. Wouldn't our world be in a much better place if we weren't all so attached the absolute rightness of our ideas and left room for new ways of thinking to arise?

Approaching life with wonder and curiosity

Dr. Thaller states, "Today we actually have telescopes that are so powerful they can see back to a time about 400,000 years after the Big Bang. That's amazing. We can see so far away in space that the light has taken that long to get to us, you know, nearly 13.8 billion years."

This is such an astonishing concept — we can see back in time! Everything about this talk made me feel small in the best way and aware of how much I don't know. It made me feel aware of the mysteries of being alive on this planet and excited both about not knowing and about continuing to be curious and learn.