Over the past 50 years, astronomers have made dozens of major discoveries that help explain the nature and origins of the universe. They’ve measured the cosmic microwave background, or leftover radiation from the Big Bang, with extremely high precision to help paint a picture of the first nanoseconds of the universe. They realized that the way galaxies were moving was being influenced by something invisible called dark matter that makes up roughly a quarter of the universe. And they discovered a new “ghostly” particle that passes through matter without much of a trace called the neutrino.
Scientists have continued to chip away at some of the fundamental questions about how the universe and its multitudes of parts work together, but they haven’t really gotten close to answering the most basic and elusive question that has been pursued by philosophers and scientists alike since human consciousness came to be: Why us, why here, and why now?
