On Exoplanets

Earlier today, astronomers captured the first ever images of planets orbiting a distant star. They are little more than low resolution dots surrounding a star known as HR8799, but these "humble" images represent our first look into a solar system that is not our own. In this vast expanse created to abide by laws that will inevitably produce life, my mind marvels at a universe that is not only filled with stars and nebulae, galaxy's and quasars, but is now also teeming with earths, maybe with beings like us. Though many may find it offensive for me to conclude we may not a singularity in this universe, I feel it takes unmitigated hubris to assume we are. And I hope you will find, as I have, not a sense of relegation in the realization of our smallness, but one of complete and utter awe at the scale and beauty of the universe we inhabit, and a more informed sense of reverence for the character of the Being that created and sustains it.

Astronomers have been finding exoplanets for some years now, but this image is something important. Like the early rockets sending back the first grainy images of our home world, we barely have sensed from these images what we may come to know about these worlds. I know the images of these planets will continue to be enhanced, until at last we arrive at a moment not unlike that which first gave us our beautiful images of the pale blue dot. A day such as the one when that image of the "earth rise", as seen from the surface of the moon so many years ago, exploded in the consciousness of a generation, and changed the way we see our world, and ourselves. I can't wait to see more.