Reading #2: A Short History on Nearly Everything 2-3

Quote: "Now a natural question is why it took so long for anyone to find a moon in our own solar system. The answer is that it is partly a matter of where astronomers point their instruments and partly a matter of what their instruments are designed to detect, and partly it's just Pluto."

Questions: Why do people tend to play up the true "beauty" of our solar system when in reality it's mostly uneventful and bland? How did astronomers create the tools they use to discover that the universe is in fact boring?

Comments: While the cosmos are very interesting to me, it's funny to now learn that the representations of space and our universe that I've been seeing my whole life are just an artist's view of what they look like. It's rather disappointing.

Reading #1: Chapter 1 of "A Short History of Nearly Everything"

Quote: "This is decidedly odd because the atoms that so liberally and congenially flock together to form living things on Earth are exactly the same atoms that decline to do it elsewhere."

Questions: How were scientists able to discover things that are so infinitesimal? What kind of technology could possibly be used to look so deep into the universe that the edge is nearly visible? How much time and energy goes into designing such technology? How could the information discovered using these technologies be used to build newer and better devices to measure even smaller matter that is ever closer to the brink of the universe? Will humans ever be able to fully understand the true nature of our universe?

Comments: The human mind is designed to be curious, but I don't think there is an amount of time under infinity that would be enough to allow us to fully realize what we're dealing with. There is so much space, so much universe and so little time.