Two world

Imagine our world our reality of things that`s caught between two very distinct worlds. We are living in a special place. We call our world the Universe. And last 100 years have been great. Perhaps the most revolutionary discoveries have increased our awareness of where we are. We have discovered two of the greatest systems. One that we call the biology and the other that we call astronomy. At the turn of the century we knew very less. Almost a drop of knowledge in the ocean of possible wisdom. We thought ours is a special world. All dots in the sky belonged to our world. They were stars of our local cluster perhaps limited to our own galaxy. We thought that all that the universe had was just one galaxy. How far away were we from the realization. And now traversing our 100 years of scientific exploration in astronomy. With Hubble picking up clues that the points are moving further and further away from each other. That the dots in the night are special and different. That what appears to naked eyes as dots perhaps represent a cluster of billions of stars together circling a common centre.

Its humbling to find the insignificance of our world in comparison to the vastness of space. With billion and billion of stars out there, our very own star the sun appears to be just one among many. And so does our earth. What makes us special then? The question tilts inwards. We’ve looked out farther than we’ve ever looked. Peering back into time we recently looked back almost 10 billion years back. And what an achievement it is. To question where it all came from. To explore questions of how it all started and debating the start of it all. I guess astronomy has enriched our perception much deeper that our notions 100 years back.
On a parallel track just like our astronomers there`s been a different level of exploration. While astronomers looked out Biologist looked in. Discovering a word as grand and complex as the cosmos itself. Look it this way, about 100 year back we had no clue what was going inside. We thought it was a sight and sound of spirits and worlds of the dead that dictate our life and our illness. Then in 1950 two young scientist mapped out the 3D shape of DNA. The master molecule of life. Simple in its design unlike the human ingenuity of storing data in digital form of zero`s and one. Nature opted out for a four letter code of life. So here we were looking back on our self truly speaking “finding the inner self”

Last 40 years and especially the last decade have been nothing short of a revolution in Biosciences. We haven`t discovered newer method of calculus, or newer methods of engineering or laws of physics. But in bioscience perhaps we have literally opened up a world of limitless possibilities. From decoding three billion letters that a human DNA is made up of to designing nano particles that can deliver drugs with a precision of a laser guided missile inside an infected cell. To me the world inside is as big as the universe outside “Perhaps a tat more complex” . It`s only when I try and understand this world that for a sec my mind wonders on the perfect design. Millions of molecules floating by in perfect harmony. Rules of physics obeyed in much the same way stars follow yet the interplay is so complex. Time spans of minutes and hours does not exist inside our cells. Events happen at rates of Nanoseconds (10-9 of a second) and at times in Femtosecond (10-15 of a second). Since the time you started reading this article and by now your cells have manufactured thousands of protein molecules. Your DNA molecules have twisted faster than a jet engines uncoiling itself to make multiple copies and billions of such events that go on like a universe busy making itself with the owner of the universe busy decoding digital content in a blog through complex human neural interpretation.

The connection is there but perhaps we don`t really connect the dot. For me it`s a simple realization. Matter was created within the first fraction of a sec after the big bang. All matter, all that we can see and touch got created in the furnace of the Big bang. The stuff that made the stars also made us. Hydrogen molecules adding up to form helium and later on to carbon and more heavy atoms. And as stars burned and exploded in giant fire balls of supernovas mater got a chance to grow and glow. Under super dense conditions heavy elements such as gold and other atoms were born. All this matter cooled over the empty space and condensed into a beautiful planet we all now call the earth. In true sense we are made up of star dust and the ring that goes around my finger was perhaps partly born in the most spectacular show in the universe where a star died to create something magical and rare.

So now whenever I look up at night sky. I truly feel the connection!