It’s one thing to go outside on a crisp, clear night and marvel at a sky full of stars. It’s another to marvel not only at the spectacle but to recognize that those stars are the result of exceedingly ordered conditions 13.7 billion years ago at the moment of the Big Bang. It’s another still to understand how those stars act as nuclear furnaces that supply the universe with carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, the raw material of life as we know it.

And it’s yet another level of experience to realize that those stars account for less than 4 percent of what’s out there — the rest being of an unknown composition, so-called dark matter and energy, which researchers are now vigorously trying to divine.

Brian Greene's NYT Op-Ed, "Put a Little Science in Your Life", touches on the fact that science is not only a discipline, but a way of life and a perspective. That is, you don't have to work in science to be a scientist. And perhaps some people who do work in science aren't scientists.

Of course, I couldn't resist the above astronomy excerpt. Just like I can't resist this quote, from Kaddish by Leon Wieseltier:

Look at the night sky. You are not seeing only the light of the stars. You are also seeing the journey of the light of the stars toward you. Admire space and you admire time. In this way, immensity conducts you to history.

Leon Wieseltier is not a scientist in the traditionally understood sense of the word, and the book Kaddish is not about science, overtly. Except that actually, the book is about science, in that it is about systematic inquiry. Relatively systematic inquiry; the kind of systematic inquiry that is personal.

The point is that systematic inquiry makes me a very happy person. Kaddish is a record of Mr. Wieseltier's explorations of the origins of the prayer, and is highly interesting. Also, there are various references to Washington, DC, which is always nice.

Also, the photo is todays APOD, a particularly awesome photo of a solar eruptive prominence taken about eight years ago.