To Italy and beyond: Looking out from our pale blue dot. (Prague part 2)

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.”
-Douglas Adams

Where do we come from? We get a certain feeling when we look up at the night sky, what are we doing on this rock in space? And though the older we get, we trend to ask these questions less frequently. Hopefully it is because we found some answers, and hopefully the instinct of curiosity has survived too; to question is the seed of inspiration. Of cause a lot of people can tell you there opinion of the answer. Research and resources to draw on are expansive; comparison and scepticism are our best guides here. I have seen a lot of marvellous buildings built in the name of something divine. One place that made me return to this thought and further develop my opinions was the Prague observatory, and is probably the closest I come to the feeling of when a religious person goes to church. This however is not about my opinions, I may gladly ramble on those another time. This is a ramble about the excitement of the scientific answers we know so far, and the crazy tangent thoughts that come from it. Ari, Barney and myself met again, in a place where three telescopes look out into the magic of space. What focused on the lens was beautiful, unforgeable, bending the mind on a scale of such enormity.

As the telescopes were refocused thought the night, they pointed toward the trillion star Andromeda (M31) galaxy, our closest neighbouring spiral galaxy. Approximately 2.5 million light years away and also incidentally going to collide with the milky way in 3.75 billion years years time. Part of my love for the cosmos is this bewilderment of gargantuan scale in the universe, it is an astonishing 10,00 light years just to the other side of our (400 billion stared) galaxy, and that's peanuts. The more you try to fathom all the more breath taking to realise we are are to the universe, as a drop of water is to all the oceans, a pale blue dot in this cosmic expanse. Our whole Earth could fit into the Sun a million times, and our sun isn't even big as stars go. VY Canis Majoris the largest known star is approximately between 6 to 9 billion times bigger. Back to what was on the lens when the telescope refocused was the lights of Pleiades, a close by star cluster, mesmerising, inspiring, intense with piercing brightness as the light seemed to dance around like electricity around white-blue dots in space. It is a comforting feeling after looking and gasping such astonishment and wonderment, that you're feeling just as blown away looking at it, as the ten year old boy that gasped in amazement just before you. As an adult with each fact that you learn it just seems to become all the more beautiful.

The most astounding fact is the knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on Earth the atoms that make up the human body are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars, the high mass ones among them went unstable in their later years they collapsed and then exploded scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas cloud that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems stars with orbiting planets, and those planets now have the ingredients for life itself. So that when I look up at the night sky and I know that yes, we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up – many people feel small because they’re small and the Universe is big – but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars. There’s a level of connectivity. That’s really what you want in life, you want to feel connected, you want to feel relevant you want to feel like a participant in the goings on of activities and events around you That’s precisely what we are, just by being alive…
-Neil De Grasse Tyson

After the observability Barney and Ari took me to a classic spot not to far away, one of the oldest bars in Prague. The entrance could be found near the top of a hill but the bar was dug three stories into the ground. What made it special was the theme. Furs, swords, (porcine) skull representation victories in battle lined the walls and the ales brought to the table by the terrifically large breasted bar wench; that made careful to lean forward down towards the table when ever we ordered another round. Knights roamed throughout the bar, head to toe in mail. The servers were gruff in a manner that suited the environment, with full commitment to make you feel as if you were in not just a themed but truly medieval bar, giving nick-name for the night like Farmer Frenzil to the patrons, in half old half modern syntax. We toasted and quenched our to the good life, pulling apart a braised pork knuckle for our dinner; it was a great end to a great night.