While it's really enjoyable to talk/think about these topics from a purely scientific point of view, there's another side to all this, which is the sheer beauty of such a thing.

There's a great show on Discovery called How the Universe Works. Season 1 had an episode called Galaxies that sorta touches on some of this. The graphics for the show, first off, are awesome. When they show the super zoomed out view of all the galaxy clusters and how everything is connected, immediately I thought, "wow, those look like neurons".

And that's where the beauty of nature comes in. You can start to see how systems arrange and the patterns used from the micro to the macro. The distances on either level are incomprehensible (strings, atoms, molecules, galaxies, universe), but the patterns are visible.

And this is why I love science. While I'm not a physicist, I always appreciated Feynman because you could see he had that same love for the extremely complex and the simple observations - and he had a great way of describing it. I think the same goes for Sagan, although, in a totally different field. But Sagan too just had that love for the beauty of nature, on top of his accomplishments of the Mariner missions and other planetary science.

I have a 6mo son right now and I hope to instill that love of the beauty of nature through science. We're each an insignificant speck on an insignificant blue speck in an unfathomable universe. But, our connections to each other and our appreciation for the beauty of it all are a privilege. And posts like this, shows like How the Universe Works will be my way of conveying to him his place in it all. I hope he'll appreciate it someday like I do.

I hope, some day all people will.