It would be interesting to look back on this time from the perspective of school children in the year 2200. They, like us will study how Copernicus demonstrated that the earth is not the center of the solar system. They, unlike us, are likely to study how in this age with the aid of Hubble (and leading astronomers and astrophysicists of our age), we increasingly became aware of the scale of our universe. They will look at images from the Hubble in their science and social studies textbooks and they will study our era as the era where we came to realize that we sit in a nondescript region of an awe inspiring universe substantially larger than the human brain can conceive (at least mine).

I’m curious to see where astronomy and particle physics leads us in the 50 years ahead. I’m equally curious as to what will be the anthropological impact of humans coming to see and accept that our place in the cosmos is far smaller than we’ve ever conceived it to be before. On this, I can only speculate.

Thank you C2ST for putting on a wonderful presentation. It was most inspiring.