Holding on to Our Sense of Wonder and Awe

摘要

Just days ago we, here in North America, experienced a full solar eclipse. As daylight turned to twilight in midday, outside temperatures fell, and we witnessed one of the grandest celestial dances as the moon slipped between Earth and sun. Awe and wonder is a natural and human response to such an event. It's hard to escape the reality that we are flying through space on a small planet in an infinite universe. It creates perspective. This sense of wonder about the natural world is what drew many of us to geology in the first place. Galaxies and planets, mountains and oceans - we wanted to understand how they formed, how nature actually works, and how they changed over time. Understanding the cosmos might just give us a deeper understanding of our place within it.