Space is “the final frontier”, according to captain Picard in Star Trek — The New Generation. He is absolutely right, because of the vastness of space. I mean, who could reach even 10% of this immense universe? It seems impossible even if we could travel with the speed of light.
I can say am passionate about the cosmos since I was a little child. I don’t know exactly when this started and why I began to love space, but I remember my father playing for me a set of slides using a projector on the wall with kids' stories, such as the Little Red Riding Hood tale or the story of Pinocchio.
While these tales were quite interesting, I remember my curiosity being triggered by a story that was about alien beings and their flying saucer.
These beings were not the green classic Martians, but some long-haired blonds with bluish space suits, probably some new-age influence of those times (the eighties). I found it fascinating how these beings were pushing the buttons inside that flying saucer and how, through the oval windows of the saucer, you could see space, with nebulas and galaxies. It was an oddly satisfying image.
Later, when I was in my early teen years (in the nineties) there was this TV series called Star Trek — The New Generation that got my attention. My father was watching it (again, he is the one indirectly suggesting to me the passion for cosmos). I asked him about the characters and the plot. He made me understand the series and its logic. It was about space exploration. Once I got hooked, there was no turning back…
I am mature now, but what always triggers me and I find it mind-boggling is how vast space can be. Just when you see one of the images shot by the Hubble telescope, you can realize how big the universe is. In one of those images, you can see star clusters with millions of stars. Just imagine that our Sun is such a star, and how big the solar system is, with a diameter of 287.46 billion km…amazing!
“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.” Carl Sagan
Just imagine that the Sun is more than 100 times larger than our planet and Earth has a diameter of 12.742 km. But the largest known star is 1700 larger than our Sun. Simply mind-blowing!
A galaxy contains hundreds of millions of stars of different sizes. The diameter of our galaxy is 105.700 light-years. Imagine this: in order to reach a point that is 1 light-year away, you need to travel at the speed of light for one year and this means traveling at approximately 300.000 km per second.
Knowing all these things…do you really think that we are alone in the universe? Very unlikely…In my opinion, the universe is made to be broad and varied. Just as varied the space bodies like stars and planets are, it could be filled with species. I mean, look at the stars! There are so many of them…
The scale of the universe is something the human mind has difficulties processing. This makes exploring the universe really interesting and mysterious. We could go to so many places and meet incredible beings!
Here I am as an adult and I am still amazed by the universe. It seems I do have very good reasons to be, and I know I am not the only one.
I bought a small telescope of 76mm aperture size to see the moon very close, and also the planets Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter. It is super cool to be able to see the light reflected by celestial bodies through the lens. It gives you a special feeling, knowing that light traveled such a great distance and what you actually see, it’s a past version of that light. It is much better, compared to a still image.
Humankind has begun space exploration. We reached the moon and now we want to send our first humans to Mars. We live in exciting times, but our children could be even luckier and leave the solar system, as Picard said:
“To explore strange new worlds
To seek out new life and new civilizations
To boldly go where no man has gone before”
