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과학자에 의하면 우주가 생성된지 얼마 안 되었을때 입자들이 있었으며 양자가 생긴 후 그들이 수소 원자가 되었다. (수소는 보통 양자가 하나 있으니 말이 된다.) 별이 생성되었을때 핵 융합이 수소를 헬륨으로 전환시켰다. 별들의 생명 단계 중 나중에는 방사능 때문에 탄소 또한 형성되었다. 요약을 하자면 사람을 만드는 모든 것을 포함한 이 우주에 있는 모든 것은 별에 의해 생성되었다. 우리의 몸을 만드는 모든 것은 사실 별 다섯개를 통해 우리에게 도달한 것들로 아주 오래된 것이다. (만약 몰랐더라면 별은 항상 형성되고 파손된다.) Carl Sagan이 말한 것을 훨씬 덜 세련된 방법으로 되풀이하는 것처럼 보일 수 있지만 내가 Carl Sagan에 대해 알기 전에 이 생각을 했었다! 정말로!
아무튼, 왜 우리가 서로에게서 동떨어진 것처럼 느껴지는가? 우리는 서로에게서나 자연에서의 연결을 느끼지 못한다. 우리 대부분은 자신이 개인 존재로 느낀다. 우리가 단지 별의 형성과 파손의 재생물로 만들어졌는데 어떻게 이런 동떨어진 자아 의식을 형성했는지 참 신기하다.
혼자 동떨어졌다고 느끼는 사람에게 추천하는 다큐멘터리:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcsSc2iksC0
*만약 내가 언급한 것에 대해 자세히 읽고 싶다면 Sagan의 인용문은 다음과 같다.
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. We are creatures of the cosmos and always hunger to know our origins, to understand our connection with the universe. How did everything come to be? Every culture on the planet has devised its own response to the riddle posed by the universe. Every culture celebrates the cycles of life and nature. There are many different ways of being human.
But, an extraterrestrial visitor examining the differences among human societies would find those differences trivial compared to the similarities. We are one species. We are star stuff harvesting star light. Our lives, our past and our future are tied to the sun, the moon and the stars. Our ancestors knew that their survival depended on understanding the heavens. They built observatories and computers to predict the changing of the seasons by the motions in the skies. We are all of us descended from astronomers.
The discovery that there is order in the universe, that there are laws of nature, is the foundation on which science is built on today. Our conception of the cosmos — all of modern science and technology –is traced back to questions raised by the stars. Yet, even 400 years ago we had still no idea of our place in the universe. The long journey to that understanding required both an unflinching respect for the facts and a delight in the natural world.
Johannes Kepler wrote: “We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh enrichment.”
It is the birthright of every child to encounter the cosmos anew in every culture in every age. When this happens to us, we experience a deep sense of wonder. The most fortunate among us are guided by teachers who channel this exhilaration. We are born to delight in the world; we are taught to distinguish our preconceptions from the truth. Then, new worlds are discovered as we decipher the mysteries of the cosmos.
Quote from http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/sagan_cosmos_who_speaks_for_earth.html