Sublime

My parents taught me that the provable, tangible, verifiable things were sacred, that sometimes the most astonishing ideas are clearly profound, but that when they get labeled as “facts,” we lose sight of their beauty. It doesn’t have to be this way. Science is the source of so much insight worthy of ecstatic celebration.

After nearly five years he had returned from one of the great scientific odysseys of all time. It was a journey that would capture the imagination of the age, but that has been strangely forgotten in our own time.

I’m not saying that [a particular unlikely event] is possible; I’m saying that it happens. —SIR WILLIAM CROOKES

As scientist and writer Carl Sagan explains in The Demon Haunted World, A multitude of aspects of the natural world that were considered miraculous only a few generations ago are now thoroughly understood in terms of physics and chemistry. At least some of the mysteries of today will be comprehensively solved by our descendants. The fact that we ca

while we cannot control the data that the universe provides, we can control how we go about seeking it, assessing it, and recalibrating our future scientific undertakings. The world of possibilities to which we choose to open ourselves, bounded by the evidence we collect and that we allow our collective intelligence to consider, very much determine

Long before I confronted the evidence presented by ‘Oumuamua, I had learned that across all facets of life, taking the evidence presented to you and pursuing it with wonder, humility, and determination can change everything—if, that is, you are open to the possibilities contained in the data.

Another motivation was that colonizing other planets would help ensure the survival of human civilization and consciousness in case something happened to our fragile planet.