To Dust, You Shall Return: Exploring the Universe to Discover Our Origins

You see, there is a growing desire to return to the basics – a basic truth or our existence. Scientists are carefully sifting through the dusts of our beginnings. Do they fear that there is, after all, something more than the “big bang”? This is very possible. As of this year, there have been many discoveries of this very same “space dust”. There are also strange asteroids that we wish to bag up and bring back home, specks of dust, and seven to be exact, that we feel may come from another galaxy and particles that may hold tiny forms of life. Yes life, we are still looking for that as well.

The deeper question in this instance is, “Are there others who are studying us and do they wish to make contact?” Unfortunately, they may be completely uninterested in us. Maybe we are boring or maybe we are just idiots. Maybe we are babes crawling through the universe, growing and finding our way through the interstellar forest.

Our reasoning is simple: to discover anything and everything there is to know about space. But wait! Does this mean that we have a wide spectrum of curiosity? Well, maybe, but we are humans and there is no way an observation will get past us. We must and will investigate all the tiny particles that float throughout the galaxy, those that we can get our hands on, of course. So what is it worth? What importance and what relevance to the past, present and future does this information hold?

Finding life, and then what?

As always, we are looking for intelligent life, or any life at all, doesn’t really have to be that smart. When we find life, then we will examine it, turn it about and get a reasonable idea of how this life came to be. The planet, the place in which we found this form of life, its dust will sift gently through our hands. We may or may not be able to conclusively predict anything at all. Many of these mysteries will shed another layer for our great grand kids, but we may never know anything more than that. We may go to our death beds with the fleeting thought that something may be out there. Is this enough to feel accomplishment?

From the beginning

In the beginning, there was darkness over the face of the deep. In the galaxy, this darkness was understandable. The far-away gods held particles of our planet in their hands. On a modern table experimentation occurred and vessels, filled with fluids, stood by busy microscopes. All the gods stared in amazement at what they had found. Is this how it happened?

This story has lingered in the minds of many, its questions ringing in our ears over time with thoughts that portrayed us a primitive beings. We are, in this theory, still the specimen of some far-away race that had advanced beyond us, still sifting our sands through their hands. How do we know they haven’t been here? Our entire life as we know it could be sitting underneath some huge microscope that is too big for us to see. It’s entirely possible and even quite believable.

Are we ready for the truth?

We do have proof of interstellar dust, we have it in our hands. We have found that this dust carries particles of organics which could possibly be from extraterrestrial life forms, so what if it is from alien beings? Can we really face the truth that there is something more out there, that we aren’t, in fact, all that special? Maybe this dust is s curse, it coaxes us further, driving and playing the cat for curiosity’s sake.

There is a growing desire, a burning intuition that drives us forward. There is a dust that forms in the boundless reaches of space, and it is everywhere. Should we continue to look, pulling back layers and getting closer to the unknown? Maybe the human race is very close indeed, so close that opening Pandora’s Box has become like a drug. Sifting through the sands of the universe is no longer satisfying to mankind. There is a pull, a burning addiction to push onward, grasping for every little particle of evidence that we can find. We will die with questions and we shall die with the universe sifting through our trembling fingers. So then to dust we shall return. And maybe some of us are content with this.

by Sherrie

Learning-Mind