What We Know

What we know , in all its almost incredible detail and complexity, is such a tiny fraction of what we think we know, and an infinitesimal part of what we are yet struggling to find out. I am reading a book by John Gribbin entitled, The Origin Of The Future. I was horrified to find it was published in 2006, and I am just learning about some things our scientists thought they knew then.

Studying the mind-boggling elements of an atom, they were then pondering pieces of its structure beyond a nucleus encircled by electrons. They are contemplating six or eight other elements or pieces, to this simple picture, (I am too confused to be more precise,) and asking us to contemplate a mini-universe in at least ten dimensions. (If I am confusing you, join the club!)

Consider again that this book was written more than twenty years ago… What else have they learned since that time? Considering the chaos of the world we live in, it doesn’t hold a candle to what is going on beyond our ken among the tiniest elements of our existence, and extrapolate that to the universe we inhabit without the least idea of what is going on.        

Nevertheless, there are people around us who are devoting their lives to expanding our knowledge of what we think we know.

We only think we know things about the universe because the clues we are hoping to study are so tiny, that we have not been able to build structures  massive enough to test the hypotheses our scientists have, about the building blocks that make up our universe’s vastness. And they are still talking about the possibility of parallel universes. Scientists think that understanding the dynamics of matter, energy, and particles at the sub-atomic level, will explain what is occurring at the galactic level in our universe.

When we contemplate what we are faced with in the world we live in, just trying to get along with each other, it seems comprehensible that the universe we live in is so full of the not understood, as well.

Our scientists think that they know  the universe is fourteen billion years old, and our planet dates back only four billion of those years. Beginning with a tiny fiery ball of matter, “the big bang” initiated our expanding universe. After ten billion years our galaxy settled down to the nine (or ten) planets we see around us.

My latest reading is that so far scientists think we are the only planet bearing intelligent life forms.

What we know is, there are some people on our planet who want me, and maybe you as well, dead because we were born into a different family than they were.