Funny I can’t sleep longer than 5 hours at a stretch these days - I used to require at least 8 if not 9 hours before (yeah I know I’m a pretty lazy bum - but hey they have been times when I found (code) solutions even in my dreams!!) :)

 

I woke up at about 1am today; finding myself looking up at the clear, summer, star lit sky. Its "BEAUTIFUL" - the stars speak from the past in the quietness of the night (the light we see from the nearest one in the night sky being about 4.5 years old). There is so much more for us to learn, but yes there is so much we've already learnt. Though my philosophy is always not to look back and see how much we've accomplished but only to look ahead to see how much further we have to go, It does intrigue me as to what man might have had thought when he looked up at the night sky maybe a few thousand years ago - must have had been a very pretty scene, with no air (and even "electricity light") pollution, truly an astronomers dream.

 

But at the same time I’m sure with the lack of knowledge, it must have had been a pretty scary scene, not sure as to what and where all the shiny light came from. Its interesting to see what the Egyptians learnt from watching the night sky - apparently they didn’t find it very amusing* - but they were very much aware of five of the planets in our solar system - Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, Saturn  and Venus. They thought of them as deities sailing across the heavens - they (even quite a lot of people now) believe that stars influence human destiny. The ancient Egyptians regarded many stars and constellations as gods (the brightest star in the night sky "Sirrus" was the goddess Sopdet, The Orion was god Sah). They couldn't recognize more than 5 constellations in the universe (Amenhope catalog). They however, did recognize a few groups of stars which they used to tell time at night.

 

Compare that with today, we have man made satellites orbiting or at least "visiting" most of these planets. We have remotely "driven" around on these planets but yet the universe is so vast - there is so much more to go. They say the Egyptians not being very good at geometry was one of the major reason for they not catching up on Astronomy. If geometry was one of their fall point then one of ours is of course our inability to travel faster across our endless (as we know it) universe. I remember presenting to a bunch of my fellow colleagues on space travel and how we "could" make it at light "warp" speed :) then that’s theory (let me repeat, theory not fantasy) but if we could make it, then there are quite a few place for us to go..I don’t want to ofcourse get into Space/Time travel now, if you are curious do take a look at www.spacetimetravel.org if you haven’t yet.

 

... now maybe I should go catch up on some sleep :)