![\"Morris](\"http:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Morris-head-new.jpg\")
<\/a>By Hobie Morris<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Earth:\u00a0 a beautiful blue orb flying through the universe<\/p>\n
I often wonder what we must look like to other beings watching from<\/p>\n
deep space…what does the light emitting from earth show today.<\/p>\n
When people see our past will we be proud of what they are shown…<\/p>\n
—Stephen Hawkin, A Brief History of Time<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
(Brookfield, NY- Dec. 2014) It\u2019s a bitterly cold, black central New York winter night.\u00a0 The Brookfield hills are snow covered and silent.\u00a0 Starlight makes intricate shadows on the barren landscape.\u00a0 Warmly dressed my beautiful wife Lois and I stand in deep snow awesomely staring up at countless millions of flickering stars.\u00a0 Our MILKY WAY is like a flowing river of soft lights with its billions of stars.\u00a0 How can two simple country people living in these remote hills possibly comprehend, let alone articulate in words, what we are seeing.\u00a0 All we can do is thank God for this amazing and majestic glimpse into the visible universe.\u00a0 We earthlings on our tiny speck of the universe are seemingly so small and insignificant in the cosmological scheme of the known universe.\u00a0 The Greek philosopher Aristotle was however wrong.\u00a0 The universe has not existed forever, as he claimed.<\/p>\n
The \u201cBig Bang\u201d that created the universe occurred about 13.7 billion years ago.\u00a0 If we look far enough above the handle of the Big Dipper, we can see the most distant galaxy whose light has taken over 13 billion years to reach earth; amazingly awesome with light traveling at 186,000 miles per second.\u00a0 Europe\u2019s Planck Space Mission supports a dramatic faster than light expansion of the universe immediately after the Big Bang.\u00a0 In less time than blinking your eye the universe inflated in volume one hundred trillion trillion times.<\/p>\n
Despite the fact that 20 per cent of Americans believe that the sun revolves around earth, when we feel sunlight on our face it has taken a little more than eight minutes to travel 93 million miles and reach earth.\u00a0 We are seeing the sun as it was eight minutes ago.<\/p>\n
Five billion years ago our sun was just an embryonic patch of drifting gas waiting to collapse to a central core and burst forth with light.\u00a0 In another five billion years our earth planet will disintegrate in the outer layers of the red giant star\u00a0 that the sun will become.\u00a0 When this end comes the brief story of humans on earth will have come and gone.\u00a0\u00a0 Our time on earth has only been a few brief seconds in its 10 billion year life span.<\/p>\n
From space earth is so majestic and beautiful.\u00a0 There are no wars, borders, boundaries or killing.\u00a0 Our tiny orb is so peaceful and lonely.\u00a0 We are all space travelers as our tiny home pivots on its axis and speeds through space.\u00a0\u00a0 Sadly, how much longer will man sustain life on this planet.\u00a0\u00a0 Cave man aggression and modern technology are putting the entire human race and all life on earth at grave risk.\u00a0 Behavior that through much of our planetary history appears not calculated for the survival of our species.\u00a0\u00a0 We must begin to use our intelligence to plan for our collective future both here on earth and possibly towards distant stars.\u00a0\u00a0 We must all come together to preserve and expand the boundaries of our civilization for the first time since Columbus.\u00a0 We have the intelligence and resources but do we have the will to protect our endangered home as well as taking the giant steps of journeying to distant stars.<\/p>\n
My lovely wife and I, two simple country people, think about such things as we gaze into the universe.\u00a0 Tears of happiness freeze on our cold cheeks.\u00a0 It\u2019s time to warm up by the wood fire.<\/p>\n
Hobie Morris is a Brookfield resident and simple country man.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Musings of a Simple Country Man By Hobie Morris Earth:\u00a0 a beautiful blue orb flying through the universe I often wonder what we must look like to other beings watching from deep space…what does the light emitting from earth show today. When people see our past will we be proud of what they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59780","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59780"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59780\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}