Hi Universe, It's Me, Diana

Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind. -Albert Einstein

I get really excited about people working to unite physics and metaphysics. I think part of the reason is that I found spirituality through science. I think, like a lot of people, I had been perfectly happy to side with science. We had proof, calculations that explained how we came to be. Religions had nothing but a book and a promise. Science 1, Religion 0.

But as I got older, things got a bit more muddied. I discovered space. Not the near planets, not the constellations and their Greek mythologies - but deep space. The space they don't tell you about in high school.

Because while I had been wading around in my blissful teenage self-absorption, some very smart people decided to send a telescope out into space. Then they decided to point it at a very empty-looking piece of blackness about the size of your pinky fingernail. And then they opened up the shutter for 11 days.

And when they finally blinked, they saw this:



Over 10,000 galaxies, as they existed billions of years ago.

The first time I saw it, I couldn't find my breath. My heart leapt. It was the most beautiful and humbling thing I had ever seen or known.

I wish this was mandatory learning - there should be centres where you can go and recline and look up at a great big IMAX dome projecting this image 24/7. Because seeing it, thinking about how every light in that picture represents a galaxy, comprised of billions of stars. To think that there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth.

It made me feel small, but special. And that's exactly what god does for most people, right? Makes one feel small, but special. I guess that's how I found (my) god. The universe became something much more complicated and abstract than I had thought - and it challenged all of my notions of how things work - because when it came to the bigger stuff, I soon discovered that even the best scientists out there just kind of shrug. They don't have all the answers either. Believe me.

I later came across quantum physics - another interesting little branch of science that had the lab coats scratching their heads. Particles acting like they have a memory? What on earth?!

But as we start to understand the universe in all its facets and functions. I hope that we'll also find out more about how we as a species fit into the bigger picture.