I am an Astronomer…..

I am an Astronomer…..

You look above and gaze at the bosom of the colossal sky and you are lost! It is an unknown territory, you are so much among the strangers, there are just too many unfamiliar things, the milky white patch, small circular and elliptical  fudges, the twinkling stars and the almost identical looking planets (which you can hardly differentiate).They are all so random, disoriented, with little or no pattern whatsoever. These are exactly the sentiments which reflects in the following anecdote:

One night, Mirza Ghalib was lying in his courtyard, gazing at the sky. After few moments of looking and frustration, referring to God, he said, “When you do stuffs without anyone’s advice, you always end up in such disarray and being so disoriented”.

Well, any common man would think that way, for they do not understand the Heavens. Little did Ghalib knew of the patterns in the sky, the beauty in that randomness and the infinite pleasure of finding things out. When I look up at the sky, I get lost too, for all the different reason. I do not lose my way because I do not understand them, because I find myself in an unknown territory. I lose myself because I am mesmerized by the beauty of the randomness, I am hypnotized by the exotic patterns out there, for I can identify them. No matter what time it is or what part of the year I am in, when I look up I always find myself among a few friends. Some gods, some sea monster, some warriors and sometimes a Princess!

And not just that, I can make my own pictures, almost anything that I want. Just connect the

dots and there you are. The beautiful images comes out and the sky is no more just a ceiling, it comes to life!

 Tell me which branch of science can give you the pleasure of such kind at so primitive level. With one simple instrument that nature gifted you, your eyes, you can explore that most massive thing that ever existed. You can probe the cosmos! Think about it! Doesn’t that give you the feel of the subject? If that can’t then nothing ever will!

Say you are looking at a star, take the brightest one, Sirius for instance. Do you realize that the photon which just enabled you to see that star has been traveling through the interstellar medium for 8.6 years! And in all that time it came across billions of atoms and molecules and yet it chose to interact with nothing but the cells of your retina! Isn’t that awesome? A photon traveled for 8.6 years through the turmoil of the space just to say hi to you! Wow...this realization always sends a shiver through my spine! Where else can you feel such a thing?

All this fantasy of observation is just a small part of a much larger, wider subject of astronomy. Everything is so huge, so big, the scale is so large I feel almost insignificant and yet profoundly significant for I know we are the only species so far who are studying the subject. This always invokes in me what I call Schrödinger feeling. Consider this, 13.72 billion light years across, 10¹¹ galaxies, 10²² stars, potentially trillions of planets and I live on a small rocky planet, the Pale Blue Dot...gosh I am insignificant, we are insignificant! Consider this, 13.72 billion light years across, 10¹¹ galaxies, 10²² stars, potentially trillions of planets, and there is one Sun, one Earth, millions of species, and yet it is us who are studying the universe, trying to understand the mechanism that drives the cosmos...how significant are we?

I feel so significant and so insignificant at the same time. This simultaneity of feeling kills me and revives at the same instance. And it is an exotic feeling. Too deep to not to be involved in, too addictive to resist!

All this is great if we chose to live in our cocoon, oblivious to the world. But we live in a society that interacts and is symbiotically dependent on every member of it. Astronomy is no different. In order to continue our quest for knowledge something has to be given to get something. Very often I come across people who will ask me questions about this field of science. And invariably one of the question would be about the utility of the astronomy. How it is helping the general public? Is it of any practical use? Can we get out anything of this? And almost everyone would say, “Hey it is not that we don’t like astronomy, we in fact love it, it’s just that I don’t see why countries should be spending billions on a subject of fantasy!”

Well, who did ever say that astronomy was invented to help the mankind? Has any astronomer ever said that? It was the sheer curiosity of the mankind which gave birth to this field (after all it is the oldest branch of science for a reason). The gregariousness to understand the heavens, the way the stars move, the way the planets wander and the way the universe works! It is the same thing that we do today. Though, with time, like everything else the approach has changed. The way of doing things have

changed, and of course has become costly, but everyone is still in the quest of that ultimate knowledge. All that the astronomers are trying to do is to quench the perpetual thirst of knowledge of the mankind, in their own field. How is that different from any other field of science? May be today it looks too much theoretical, far beyond the track to be of any significance of the mankind, but so was once the concept of atoms and electrons. There was apparently no use of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. Who needed them anyways? It was the thirst of knowledge which drove the mankind towards them and revolutionized the entire planet. It could be the same with astronomy as well. May be today it seems useless, but after a century or two...who knows what the scene would be! This uncertainty in the future coupled with my zeal to understand the mechanism which drives the universe are the persuasive enough points for me to convince me to dedicate my life to the subject!

And to everyone who ask why I study such a subject, I just have one answer,

I love to do what I do, there are no other reason and for me there is no higher pleasure.

Yes, I am an astronomer!

                                                                                                                                    Ahmad Ryan