I forget, quite often as many of us do, to wonder at the greater spectrum of things, to find significance in insignificance, to respect accordingly the miracle that we are alive…

We had our first science lecture of the winter season tonight. The winterover cosmologist (our Canadian beaker, Keith) for the South Pole Telescope gave us an overview of the equipment and what it is the SPT team is currently pursuing.

Turns out, in short, that they are working to better understand the forces of entropy. In a series of steps, they are utilizing images from the beginning of time (or as far back as we can see) to better reveal the expansion of the universe since its explosive start. In more completely understanding just how galaxy cluster upon galaxy cluster has traveled over the eons, they will begin to gain an understanding of how gravity and the theoretical force of dark energy interact to keep the universe expanding, rather than contracting as gravity alone would dictate.

SPT begins the first step in this process by identifying thousands of galaxy clusters in the distant sky. Upon identifying the clusters (each themselves made up of thousands of galaxies), they will provide that information to other telescope teams (such as Hubble) which will then track the identified galaxy cluster to measure its distance from and the speed at which it moves away from us.

They identify the clusters by observing the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) which is, in effect, the afterglow of the Big Bang. In essence, the light from that first explosion, from the very beginning remains present in the background of the sky as microwave radiation. If it was part of the visual spectrum, we would see the night sky glowing with iridescent clouds - remnants of our violent start. Although we can’t see it completely without the mechanics of SPT (a massive machine and mirror, bringing the sky to receptors sensitive to 1/100,000,000,000,000,000,000 the energy of a 100W light bulb), we’ve all seen it to some extent. About one percent of the static that you see when a TV is struggling to find reception is due to the noise of the Cosmic Microwave Background. If you sit to watch the snow traveling across your unreceptive television screen, you are bearing witness to the beginning of the universe. In my eyes, that should be defined as reality television…

What amazes me about tonight (as always when it comes to the stars) is the sheer scope of it all, how truly small and insignificant our spaceship Earth is when compared to the vastness of space - how daunting and amazing it is that we exist, struggle, and thrive so tiny, so isolated in the larger view. The image above is from a very small portion of our sky. It is a rendered image of the data that SPT is working to collect and the black specs, each one of them, is a galaxy cluster standing out against the background radiation. Catch that - each tiny black spec in this photo is a galaxy cluster - a grouping of thousands of galaxies, each galaxy made up of billions of stars. Try multiplying those numbers up…and that’s from only a sliver of our sky. Our own single galaxy, our Milky Way, has over two hundred billion stars - two hundred billion brothers and sisters to our own sun.

And here we sit, on spaceship Earth, traveling around as part of it all.

After the presentation, I sat down for parts three and four of From the Earth to the Moon, a mini-series documenting the Apollo space program. Suffice to say, watching the risk and the struggle of our first steps to orbit another heavenly body, of our attempts to grow beyond our humble sphere…it was magic. And soon, when the sun completes its slow spiral downward, I’ll be able to gaze up at the night sky in the darkest space imaginable, be able to see the great beyond as only we can here. Gaze up, and dream of falling skyward.

Jim Lovell, William Anders, and Frank Borman, while orbiting the moon for the first time in human history closed a message home with this:

“good night, good luck…and God bless all of you, all of you on the good earth.”