My name is Darren Ciastko and I remember the day like it happened yesterday. It was 1986 and I was in class in grade 2 or 3. My mom appeared at the door of my classroom and the look on her face was of great sorrow and concern. I had never seen her like that before and I knew something was terribly wrong. She called me over and said we had to leave right away. I was confused and asked why we were leaving. The space shuttle had just exploded and everyone on board had died.
Prior to this tragic event, I had a fleeting interest in space but after seeing how upset my mom was and then watching news story after news story about the tragedy and then learning how incredibly amazing the space shuttle was, my interest in space, the space shuttle, the planets and the stars became a growing passion. My mom bought our family an amazing book called “Our Universe” and I think it’s still sitting in my parents living room right now. I’ve probably flipped and read through it a dozen times. Discovering that Venus is hot enough to melt metal, that stars are massive nuclear fusion reactors and that it takes the suns light 8.5 minutes to reach the earth blew my mind. I was hooked.
Star Trek the Next Generation was introduced to me by my best friend in grade school and I’m not alone in becoming inspired by the stories of wonder, fantasy and the utopian future of humanity living and exploring space. This ignited my interest and passion in the possibility of extraterrestrial life, physics and technology. We are seeing many of the ideas pioneered in that show becoming reality today. Talking computers, tablets, universal translators and communicators are just a few.
I’ve been reading and educating myself about space, science, physics, technology and the possibility of extraterrestrial life for more than 25 years. I don’t have any actual formal educational training and I don’t claim to be any kind of expert however, I believe that through our shared human DNA, we all at some point in our lives look up and think, how did we get here? Why are we alive? How weird and crazy is it that we live on a rock that is travelling 67,000 mph (107,000 km/h) around a blazing fireball which is also travelling around with hundreds of billions of other fireballs around some invisible centre of the galaxy. WTF!
I would like to invite you to think about these questions again. My hope is that through posting simple and easy to understand commentary here on this blog about how humanity is searching the stars, exploring the depths of scientific & physical research and trying to answer the question of whether we are alone in the universe, will inspire you to inquire and seek further knowledge about how incredible our universe is and our connection to it.
Thank you for taking the time to drop in and visit!