Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD
explanation lie much more inside Blake's head than outside? And
is not the truth of the Sun's nature as revealed by modern science
far more wonderful: no mere angels or gold coin, but an enormous
sphere into which a million Earths could be packed, in the core of
which the hidden nuclei of atoms are being jammed together,
hydrogen transfigured into helium, the energy latent in hydrogen
for billions of years released, the Earth and other planets warmed
and lit thereby, and the same process repeated four hundred
billion times elsewhere in the Milky Way galaxy?
The blueprints, detailed instructions, and job orders for building
you from scratch would fill about 1,000 encyclopedia volumes
if written out in English. Yet every cell in your body has a set of
these encyclopedias. A quasar is so far away that the light we see
from it began its intergalactic voyage before the Earth was
formed. Every person on Earth is descended from the same
not-quite-human ancestors in East Africa a few million years ago,
making us all cousins.
Whenever I think about any of these discoveries, I feel a tingle of
exhilaration. My heart races. I can't help it. Science is an astonishment
and a delight. Every time a spacecraft flies by a new world, I
find myself amazed. Planetary scientists ask themselves: 'Oh, is that
the way it is? Why didn't we think of that?' But nature is always more
subtle, more intricate, more elegant than what we are able to
imagine. Given our manifest human limitations, what is surprising is
that we have been able to penetrate so far into the secrets of Nature.
Nearly every scientist has experienced, in a moment of discovery
or sudden understanding, a reverential astonishment. Science
- pure science, science not for any practical application but for its
own sake - is a deeply emotional matter for those who practise it,
as well as for those nonscientists who every now and then dip in to
see what's been discovered lately.
And, as in a detective story, it's a joy to frame key questions, to
work through alternative explanations, and maybe even to
advance the process of scientific discovery. Consider these examples,
some very simple, some not, chosen more or less at random:
• Could there be an undiscovered integer between 6 and 7?
• Could there be an undiscovered chemical element between
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