Friday, November 13, 2009

Hooray! Space!

In case you haven't heard, they found water on the moon. This is amazing, and not just because it's a potential resource for humanity and any moon base we might wish to establish (albeit at the cost of a bloody man-machine-space gorilla war), but because it means that here is some strong material evidence for the exploration of space.

It's theorized that water might actually form on the moon in an endogenic process from an interaction between solar winds and moon rocks. Something to do with charged hydrogen breaking apart oxygen bonds in the soil and creating trace amounts of water/ice. Here is something which doesn't happen on Earth, but at the same time is in reach.

Who knows what might be discovered on the other planets in our Solar System? Or beyond even the furthest reaches of our own Sun?

I have always been fascinated by the prospect of exploring space. Ever since we learned about it in elementary school, the idea's been emblazoned in my mind. I don't know if I'll ever be an astronaut, but someday, I'd like to go beyond the Earth. Someday, I'd like Mankind to reach out for the stars, and to know them, to understand the cosmos.

I believe that understanding is the key to our future, to the galaxy's even, if you think of it as one big organism. It's been said that we are a mechanism for the cosmos to know itself.

I'm inclined to agree.

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