Field of Stars from our own Milky Way
Courtesy of ESA/NASA
In the light of Curiosity, here is a different kind of selection of videos and music to remind us of that insatiable need to know who we are and what is our place in this vast universe.
On a personal note, I am not sure where my curiosity for cosmology and metaphysics came from, but I guess it is natural for any person to ask these same questions, let alone for an eager child to try and understand why we exist in the first place and what the universe around us really is?
At the same time it is the most exciting to touch the infinity in your thoughts, yet the most frightening, as it makes us feel very small.
At the age of five or six, while I began to harness all the capabilities I thought were within my grasp at the time; starting from telepathy (failed) to flying (also failed, but it was fun to try!) to imagination (success!), was also the period, when as a first mental feat I wrapped my mind around the concept of infinity during one sleepless summer night.
You know, the age-old dilemma: If this universe has a finite amount of energy and thus a finite size [1], then what lies beyond? At the same time it is the most exciting to touch the infinity in your thoughts, yet the most frightening, as it makes us feel very small.
Which is why we need distractions to keep us sane.
Not only I kind of got the answers to these questions already then, but found I could tackle anything I set my mind onto, with same kind of immediacy of understanding, and bring the beauty I saw out in a way everyone can digest and be inspired by. Ego aside, that is another long story altogether, just had to nurture this gift the longest time, before I felt I am ready to come forth with a full force.
All that brings us to this week’s Broaden (Your) Horizons Playlist, which is inspired by space exploration in general and those curious thoughts about our own existence that nag us when we are young, but somehow forget when we grow – until someone or something, like Curiosity, comes and occasionally reminds us of the beauty that lies beyond.
It is not the dead rocks that get us going, but our ability to expand.
Now to the playlist, which starts aptly by growth of life in a form of ”The Nest That Sailed The Sky“, with ethereal music by Peter Gabriel that is directing, quite literally the flow of the one of the most beautiful computer generated videos in the recent years, produced by digital artist Glenn Marshall.
This continues with bits from various inspiring movies that give us hope as a species, while toying with our imagination: Including music from Inception and Sphere and the famous “Adagio in D minor” by John Murphy as a backdrop for the most gripping scene in Sunshine, leading us into a perhaps the most memorable and the most poetic scenes and lines in the movie history – “Like tears in rain” in Blade Runner.
Finally, this short, but hopefully a thought-provoking playlist tails with the most stunning time lapse video of Earth as seen from ISS space station, with a hypnotizing soundtrack and ends with a scene that starts the movie Contact, from which the quote “We [They] should have sent a poet“ is also from.
Share and enjoy!
(Playlist) ▶Broaden Horizons 3: “We should have sent a poet”
