A Glimpse into the Master Notebook

(Disclaimer: The Master Notebook is not a proper noun. It is not how I address my notebook. I hold all notebooks in equal regard.)

May 19 marked the completion of one year since this blog has been fully operational. My distant future is uncertain, like the durability of humans in this Universe. But let's enjoy our brief moment in the sun.

I have taken to updating this blog monthly, so I spent all of May 19th debating whether or not to do this – seeing as it's the middle of the month, and all.

I'm going to post a snippet of something I had considered posting on the blog as an article, but reconsidered it for abstract reasons.
Because apparently this is something authors do for their audience.

"Preparing for the SAT Subject Tests made me think about the physics we take for granted. And I was thinking about physics as the plane took off [...].

"There's Bernoulli lift in the takeoff. The air pressure difference pops your ears as you get to cruising altitude. You think about your position in three dimensions. Velocity takes on a whole new meaning.

"Little moments like this make me reaffirm my thoughts. Yes, I want to study astrophysics. I want to see the interplay of theory and practice. I want to cry with awe at the beauty of the world we live in. I love physics.

"People often groan when I point out the physics of everyday life. These are the same people who think physics has no 'practical application.' "

There's more after this, but what comes after this is the reason I won't post the entire thing. I think in harsh words, and that is reflected in my writing, no matter how tactful I try to be.

Well, until June 1, then.

The Greatest of Mysteries

"The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be. Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us – there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries."
                     – Carl Sagan, Cosmos

This is an article on what this quote means to me. Not anyone else. I can't and won't speak for anyone else.

It's so easy to pretend, sitting on the couch, that the everyday occurrences throughout the Universe don't affect us. The fact that you can't even look up while in the city (because of light pollution) doesn't help matters. But the Universe isn't "out there". It's just an amplified version of science at everyday scales, though that's not to say that what we're experiencing here on Earth is a dumbed–down version of what we could be experiencing. It would be an error on my part to say so, because Earth is intrinsically connected to the Universe. As are we. But that's just it. It's so easy to forget that this is where we came from, that ultimately, we all come from the same event that created the stars and galaxies.

We are the Cosmos, the Cosmos is us. But our lives have taken us away from it, what it truly is. That is why when we think about it, we feel the kind of exhilaration that doesn't happen everyday at the desk, because the desk came after the Cosmos. In our contemplations, we attempt to connect with the most primal parts of us: the parts that came from the nuclear furnaces of stars, the parts shrouded by our basic needs of survival and, too often to ignore, by our ego and pettiness.

The reality of our place in the Universe can be maintained, however. By stepping outside, at the very least, and traveling into interstellar or intergalactic space, at most. (Yes, I know the impossibility of that. That's why I said "at most".) These are better methods than any to get even an inkling of the significance we hold in the Universe (and even that is close to none).

The existence of the Universe is like a big chemical reaction. Here, we're intermediates, a temporary result of the initial conditions that set our Universe into motion.

"Anyone who does not...Gaze up and see the wonder...Of a dark night sky filled with countless stars loses a sense of their fundamental connectedness to the Universe."
– Dr. Brian Greene