Final Comment

As my final comment, I want to leave everyone with a passage from a practice drill I was doing in order to study for the MCAT. Although I don't know who this author is, its message was not lost on me. The part that imprinted on me and which will most likely stay in my mind for awhile is the following excerpt from the above passage. It is the most eloquently and beautifully phrased description of art's true existence that I have ever read:

"Art's true reality, though, lies in neither tinctured pigment, smoothed on canvas nor the splendid stories brilliantly told by brush strokes, but in the eyes, hearts, and minds of those who drink its visions with their souls."

Best of luck to everyone in this class on their journeys throughout life.

Beads of a String: Planets, Suns, and the Universe

Although I like the images within SuperVision, I want to present the class with something is personal to me and will bring new visions, just as SuperVision attempts to do, to students.
All the images which I will be presenting are related to space, which is a fascination of mine. Whether it is meteor-watching or wondering about our origins, space has always provided me with an endless series of questions which keep me occupied whenever my mind begins to wander. Infinitely larger than the space within our skulls that contains the brain matter which fires action potentials to contemplate it, I would be surprised if in our current age of technological enlightenment we knew 0.0000000001% about the universe. Yet, throughout my reflections on the universe, I have come across dozens of ideas and images which support the repetition within nature (which can help our investigations throughout the universe), new creation (which will inspire us to investigate and make us modest), and possible dangers that our egoism will cause.

Repetition:



On the left, Cyclone Hondo rages across the southern Indian Ocean, while on the right, the Great Red Spot rages across the surface of Jupiter. Although the Great Red Spot is more continuous and larger, they both display the same storm dynamics despite being on different celestial bodies.



Despite their vast differences from the sun, gravitational pressures, angles of rotation, and variations in the internal heating of the bodies' core have caused Antarctica to appear very similar to the surface of Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons, which is believed to be covered in frozen ice.



Even on Earth, repetition is a key concept for physics and many other scientific investigations. Although the Northern Lights (left) are caused by glowing ions entering in the atmosphere and the phytoplankton swarms off the coast of Nambia (right) are reflecting light off their bodies, both utilize the same physical concepts and produce the same effect.



Indeed, even our own galaxy is a repeatable pattern of planets and gases flowing towards a supermassive blackhole. Our Milky Way galazy (left) looks very similar to the nearby M74 spiral galazy, which is a close neighbor. Even on the massively huge scales of galaxies, patterns can be observed.

Creation:



On the other hand, some things cannot be experienced on our planet or within our solar system. To the joy and amazement of scientists we are still discovering new things in the universe. For example, the M-16 Stellar Spire (Eagle Nebula; left) and the Fox Fur Nebula (middle) are not only beautiful acts of creation, but cannot be in their spontaneity and formation. In addition, scientists are baffled by other creations, which seem to defy the laws of physics, such as the hexagonal storm (right) in the northern pole of Saturn's dense atmosphere. It stretches over 25,000 kilometers across!
Human Egoism:



In our progess towards greater discovery, we must let human egoism remain a form of playful entertainment and not a vehicle of exploration. Some people see familiar objects in newly discovered ones, such as eyes (a Martian crater; left), happy faces (another Martian crater; middle), or birds ('Cosmic Bird' spiral galaxy; right). Although these are fun thoughts to entertain the layperson, sometimes scientists assume that newly discovered objects can only perpetuate known trends. For example, many scientists believe organisms have to be carbon-based because we are; however, the possibilities are endless for the development of living beings. The first extraterrestrial creature humanity discovers could be silicon-based!

Conclusion:


Humanity truly is unique. To our knowledge, we are the only organisms to evolve to this point of cognitive superiority over our surroundings. Like beads on a string, thousands of planets have been ensnared by thousands of suns, yet ours appears to be the only one which is the proper distance with the proper building blocks for life. Yet, in our awareness of ourself and this fact, we must remain humble and protective of this beautiful gift we have. In discovering how rare and unique we are as a biological phenomenon, one begins to understand how truly precious preserving our planet and our species becomes as we travel through space, time, and discovery.