Humans’ interest in exploring the unknown and new worlds has existed since ancient times. It is in our nature to be curious. Today, space exploration keeps expanding, as artificial satellites orbit around our planet and we establish space stations and launch spacecraft into the sky. After all, looking up to the sky and wondering what exists beyond our world is a common theme among most civilizations. So what is it that makes space so interesting to us?
From the smallest planets to the largest galaxies, the cosmic world is so vast that we can never stop learning new things about it. There are so many unknown questions and unknown entities beyond our world in the spectacular space that it doesn’t fail to surprise any humans. It is our innate curiosity as humans that finds this vast and possibly limitless so interesting.
This curiosity has led humans to the missions of space exploration all around the globe, with NASA in the lead. We have settled space stations in the outer world and are ready to go beyond. In this article, we will discuss what exactly makes space so interesting and fascinating, and the development of space exploration historically. What did the ancient people interpret the sky/space as?
What Makes Space So Interesting
Space exploration has helped us answer many fundamental questions, especially about our role and existence in the greater universe, the moon, and the star that keeps us alive: the sun, and much more. The fact that space is endless along with the knowledge we can gain about it further drives us to learn more and more about it.
Humans are curious by nature, and it was this curiosity that led us to keep increasing our knowledge of the universe and the science that surrounds us. It feeds into the human imagination, and it is due to imagination that we have become the knowledgeable beings that we are today.
As we learn more and more about space and the world beyond, this imagination and curiosity make space seem even more fascinating to us. The idea of a life beyond both terrifies and excites us at the same time, including the fact that we may never find out about so many wonders of the cosmic world.
The space is known as the last frontier, where our imaginations and curiosities run endlessly. For some it symbolizes comfort and home, for others, it is an exciting endless hole of countless stars in the cosmos. For a frontier where any of us can imagine what lies beyond it, it becomes such an interesting topic to us.
Just like the skies for the ancient generations, it excites and terrifies us the same but with the help of science and space exploration in play. We are even getting some answers about our universe now, and nearing many other answers. Though, we may still never be able to know everything about our universe.
Here’s a video to make sense of how vast this universe is:
Ancient Astronomy And Astrology
In modern times, we have discovered a lot about our universe. We are knowledgeable about what’s beyond the sky above us, and can even travel to such heights now. It makes us wonder, how did people of ancient times decipher the skies as?
Most of us may say that spirituality played a huge role in this understanding of the skies, with the stars including our sun becoming a huge symbol in the world of spirituality and religion.
This endless constellation of stars in the sky gave a rise to Astrology and Divination. Foretelling the future through the patterns of the stars became a common practice. In fact, as time went by, astrology even played a huge role in politics.
Through the development of time as humans studied the land, sea, and skies, science started progressing. Although the first generation of scientists couldn’t study the cosmos with scientific accuracy, their contribution and drive to learn more due to curiosity is what led us here today.
Astrologers and astronomers such as Claudius Ptolemy who published a thesis on space, and Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi who was one of the earliest to decipher the existence of a galaxy other than the Milky Way: Andromeda Galaxy, Wan Hu who is known as the first astronaut who made a sense of rockets, and so many more scientists were all driven by their curiosity of what lies in space.
A Stream Of New Consistent Discoveries
Today, the new era of space exploration with new and consistent discoveries has challenged the boundaries of our scientific and technical limits. We learn about space destinations like near-Earth asteroids, and NASA is even preparing for a mission to Mars.
These undiscovered places where we haven’t seen what goes on through our own eyes, ignite the curiosity within us as space keeps becoming more and more interesting.
These new discoveries include the viral never-seen-before images of the earliest bright galaxies discovered by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The beautiful glowing stars have made everyone fascinated by the cosmic world. Another discovery is of the closest black hole to earth, which is said to be roughly 10 times larger than the size of the earth. It is almost 1566 light-years away.
These are not the only space events that have sparked humans’ increasing interest in space, a discovery of a planet with the possibility of life has also kindled everyone’s excitement. An exo-planet discovered in 2017, a super-earth, is under the observation of scientists for the possibility of life. These recent discoveries along with many more have only made humans around the globe more interested in space, as their curiosity keeps growing.
Conclusion
Space exploration has always fascinated us. As we discussed in the article, it is in human nature to be curious and imaginative about the endless cosmic world that we can never know enough about.
