Science Rocks

I remember an afternoon in high school, at that point in the Earth's solar orbit when the tilt of the Earth's axis begins to favor the Northern Hemisphere, when I sat at a swim meet, waiting for my events and chatting with friends, but by and large reading the illustrated edition of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. I don't remember anything about the book, except that I was dazzled by computer renderings (this was a fairly new thing) of wormholes and black holes; indeed, I mostly remember the boy, and I have been wondering recently what happened to him.

There might be a tendency, when one becomes "religious", to push against science. After all, science is in the business of explaining things, and God, if God exists, is the holy grail of proof; God is probably the only part of existence that we will never prove or disprove, but as science inches ever closer toward possibly explaining the fundamental workings of the universe, I, as a religious person, often confront a fear that God will be, in the instant of some discovery, erased from the realm of what is possible. I always conclude, however, that this will not happen, and moreover, that a love for God can and does include a love of science.

All that being said, the study of nature is becoming for me once again like Christmas morning. Not that I am the one studying it -- but whenever I get to read about some new scientific discovery I am bedazzled. Recently I ran across a special from the show Nova on PBS called "The Elegant Universe". The special is a couple years old, but it happens to be rather timely still, as string theory, the topic of the special, seems to have been stalled since "The Elegant Universe" aired. Physicists, and not just string theorists, are hoping that some observational breakthroughs will come out of the new large hadron collider that just became operational in Switzerland.

So am I. Having been spoiled by growing up in the 20th century, when massive scientific breakthroughs were happening almost every day, I am a little hungry for something astonishing, like the formation of little miniature black holes, or the disappearance of gravity into what seems to be nothingness. But even simple things are fascinating: yesterday my girlfriend and I were talking about her experience at some hot springs -- the idea that you can take a bath in water that is heated by the center of the earth blows my mind; medical researchers are looking at various uses for snail poison; sunflowers detoxify the land that they grow in; and mathematicians can actually figure out that the laws of physics break down during the Big Bang.

It's just cool to let scientists send you on a mind trip.