Those tiny, twinkling lights that speckle the night sky are called stars. Seemingly benevolent, these expansive, raging fireballs fuse the lightest of elements, hydrogen, into the heaviest of elements, ununoctium, through nuclear fission. Seemingly small, an average star spans over 1.4 million km in diameter, commanding and warping the fabric of space-time. Seemingly cool, average stars have a surface temperature around 5,800 kelvin. Although one may feel the urge to reach up and pluck one from the sky, the light from these stars travels for millions of years to reach us. Although seemingly calm, the dramatic death of a star explodes its contents across the universe before collapsing into a singularity from which no matter or light can escape.
The study of the universe beyond our Earth reveals the truth about stars. In addition to the pure fascination stars instill, we can learn far more than surface temperatures and diameters through the continued pursuit of extrasolar knowledge. The cosmos beckons to us, deserves to be explored, indeed needs to be explored; however, we cannot boldly go anywhere without the financial means to do so. Humanity needs and should strive for further exploration in space, therefore public, private, and global funds should be dedicated for that quest. The question space exploration’s intrinsic value and the question of it’s funding link together: “If scientists cannot give to the man on the street a satisfactory explanation of expenditures in the exploration of space, it is not obvious that public funds should be allocated for such ventures” (Sagan). Before our government grants the wishes of astronomers, advocates of space exploration must first demonstrate the benefit of space travel for the United States and the world.
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The funding that goes into space exploration benefits all involved—most directly impacting scientists. Not only will astronomers and physicists be able to delve deeper into their studies, but scientists in all fields will benefit from the expansion into space. More planets, more worlds, means more geological features, mechanisms, and weather patterns for geoscientists to study. More planets that could potentially host life could mean non-carbon based life, non-nucleic acid inheritance, and mechanisms of evolution unbeknownst to us for biologists to study. Distant and strange regions of the universe could turn the laws of physics, as we have been able to deduce them, on it’s head. Space exploration will skyrocket the work conducted in every discipline of the natural sciences by expanding the experiment from Earth outward, for we are like “linguists on an isolated island where only one language is spoken” (Sagan). When you give scientists the entire universe as a playground, the discoveries become unlimited and inconceivable.
Imagine all of the information that we know about stars, planets, galaxies, and the universe; then, imagine all of the knowledge we have yet to learn—which surely encompasses far more than what we already know—knowledge that could change all of our views on life, death, and the nature of humanity. In addition to revolutionizing physics, space expansion promises to revolutionize metaphysics: discoveries in the natural sciences will aid our concept of the social sciences, benefiting historians, humanitarians, and philosophers. Society has a “philosophical hunger, a need to know who we are and how we got here,” and a further developed view of the universe will aid in our “ongoing search, often unconscious, for a cosmic perspective of humanity” (Sagan). The discovery that the universe did not revolve around the Earth not only corrected our astronomy textbooks, but knocked us off of our centralist pedestal. As our world grows increasingly scientific, our worldview must also evolve to fit a more cosmic perspective, which can be achieved through continued exploration of space. As we learn about our natural origins, we realize how deep our connection to the cosmos goes, and we can begin to see the Star Stuff within us. We are truly a part of the cosmos, and this small portion of the cosmos requires sufficient funding in order to continue our self study.
