A starry sense of wonder can pry apart the fears and doubts that turn so many people away from science.
Crescent Neptune seen by Voyager 2 on August 31, 1989. The spacecraft was looking back at the known planets, even as it was racing off toward uncharted space. When I was eight years old, a mundane school assignment changed my life. In my class at Lomond Elementary in Shaker Heights, Ohio, I had to write a school report about one of the planets. To ensure variety, the teacher picked a planet for each student. Mostly the kids wanted Saturn or Mars . I got...Neptune.
From my current adult perspective, it's easy enough to come up with a list of pragmatic advances that justify investing in astronomy. If you regularly read popular science stories, you have probably encountered some of these arguments: Over the centuries, astronomical research and space exploration have driven critical advances in timekeeping, navigation, optics technology, digital imaging, and high-speed computing. But the nuts-and-bolts, dollars-and-cents payout is not the point.
Astronomy does not trigger the same kind of reflexive political and cultural responses as climate change or public health . It gives people a wide-open space, literally, to think about what human minds can do when set loose to gather information, formulate ideas, test hypotheses, seek better answers. And then, maybe, they can turn back to the politicized issues and see that there, too, the path to the better answers is exactly the same.
The center of our galaxy, imaged by the MeerKAT radio telescope, is full of mystery. A black hole lurks at the center. Nobody knows what causes the filaments.
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