Did you know...
...that knowledge is growing so fast that ninety percent of what we know if fifty years will be discovered in the intervening fifty years?
Since the time of the Babylonians (1100 BC), the bright spots in the night sky have been the subject of much speculation and scientific study. The ancient Greeks noted that some of these points of light reappeared in different places in the sky, and eventually discovered that there were apparent paths through which these particular points of light moved. The word "planet" is derived from the Greek "planetes," or "wandering star." It took 2000 years until the ninth planet was discovered, only a scant 60 years ago. In 1958, when the Soviet Sputnik opened the space age, 31 satellites were known. Today, we know that there are more than 65 satellites in the solar system and new discoveries are still being made as data from the outer planet missions are being analyzed.
It has been said that we, as a species, are evolving exponentially. This evolution occurs not in a biological sense, but rather an intellectual one. The knowledge gained by our predecessors is communicated to successive generations directly through teaching and writing. As Alan Dressler states in Voyage to the Great Attractor,
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It may be that humans will have come to grips with the idea that there are limits to what they can know. What came before the big bang, and what lies beyond the bubble of our own universe, are likely to be fundamentally unanswerable questions, at least within the framework of science, because they deal with a reality so different that we will be unable even to pose questions for which answers can be sought. We should not be disheartened, however, because the vast range of expression of nature will keep scientists occupied for a long time to come, and all of us entertained and amazed, forever. | |
Arecibo
Project Phoenix
Hubble Space Telescope
Voyager
Magellan
Galileo
Mars Pathfinder
Apollo
Space Shuttle
Internation Space Station
Open Your Eyes - information on space exploration
SEDS - Students for the Exploration and Development of Space
Space Exploration - past, present, and future space exploration
* Picture credit - Einstein: unknown (believed to be public), man: unknown (believed to be public), background: Library of Congress
* This text was adapted from Our Solar System, a Geologic Snapshot by NASA and Voyager to the Great Attractor by Alan Dressler.
