Back in 2008, Time magazine interviewed Neil DeGrasse Tyson and asked him: "What is the most amazing fact about the universe you could tell us?" His answer turned out to be a really very good, true and amazing fact about our universe: that all the complex atoms that make up everything we know owe their origin to giant exploding stars that existed billions of years ago. This is an amazing fact. But there is another, even more fundamental and profound fact, if you think about it.
Imagine that the universe - with everything in it - would be different.
We could have a universe without trees, without mountains, without our sky and without oceans. We could have a universe without planets like Earth, or without planets at all. There could even be a universe in which there was nothing that we know: particles, forces, their interactions.
But despite the endless possibilities of what could have been, this is the universe we deserve. It exists as it is, with all the particles, forces, interactions, structures, and a unique history of how it all came about. And this is amazing. It is here, in our own little corner of the universe, that we find ourselves in a forgotten, nondescript group of galaxies that are no worse or better than any of the billions out there.
But if our planet, our galaxy and even our place in the Universe can hardly be called special or outstanding at least something, the Universe itself is very special against the background of what it could be. It manifests itself on every conceivable scale. We can look into the very structure of matter, down to molecules, atoms and the most fundamental subatomic particles.
We can see everything, not only stars and galaxies, but the entire Universe, up to quasars, clouds of intergalactic gas, even the cosmic microwave background and the very first neutral atoms of our Universe. We can see it all.
And wherever we look, we see the same amazing fact everywhere. The whole universe
on all scales, Promotional video:
in all places, at all times
obeys the same fundamental laws of nature.
From the weakest and lowest-frequency photon of light to the largest galaxy our world has ever seen, from unstable uranium atoms decaying in the Earth's core, to neutral hydrogen atoms that were first formed 46 billion light years away, the laws in the Universe are the same everywhere and The same.
And this is amazing. Imagine if this were not the case. Imagine a universe in which nature behaves erratically and unpredictably, where gravity turns on and off on a whim, where the sun can simply stop burning its fuel for no reason, where atoms spontaneously stop sticking together.
Such a universe would be truly terrifying, since it could never be understood. What you learned about the nature of things in one place might be completely different later. But the universe is not like that.
The Universe is a place in which everything can constantly change, matter flows into energy, space-time itself is excited, but the basic laws will remain constant. Thanks to this alone, we can observe the Universe, experiment with it, collect and disassemble the things that we have found, learn.
And only if the fundamental laws of the Universe are the same everywhere and always, we can learn them. Only if these laws apply everywhere and always can we use this knowledge to find out what the universe - and all of its contents - did in the past and what it will do in the future.
In other words, it is this fact, the most striking fact, that allows us to do science and get to know our world. That is why science exists in principle and is a useful tool for understanding the Universe. The most amazing thing about our Universe is that it exists in such a form in which it can be understood.
ILYA KHEL