Happy Birthday, Dr. Hawking!

While much of the buzz this month related to the Academy Award Best Actor nomination of Eddie Redmayne for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, the astonishing story is that Dr. Hawking celebrated his 73rd birthday earlier this month (January 8).  In addition to the amazing feats of man in space, we need to think of the amazing feats of man on Earth, one of whom devised brilliant theories changing our understanding of the universe while suffering with ALS since age 21, as well the others who supported him, be it his family and friends, or the doctors and engineers that made his existence better and his ideas known.

So often space exploration is thought of in terms of rockets and the brute ability to escape the gravity of this earth, and it is in part, but given man has never gone farther than the moon, all that we know about this remarkable galaxy is based the ideas, experimentation, and observation by multitudes on Earth, be it theories of black holes and the origin of the universe, to the application of theories, to telescopic investigations that now allow us to ponder billions of Earth-like planets in our own galaxy.  And who knows if some of the theories may lead us beyond brute force into something more amazing that allows us to physically explore this galaxy of ours.  Just as Hellenistic astronomers would be amazed by what we have learned and the solar system objects we have visited (mechanically), the story continues and hopefully the future will take us to new places we cannot even imagine today. 

As Dr. Hawking stated, “We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”