The exploration, the discovery, was the adventure.Ī deep sea diver entering the sea, c. They were sailing the seas in search of treasure, but it was not a glittering hoard of gold they sought - it was the knowledge of The Silent World.

Cousteau and his motley crew were not brigands and buccaneers. It was the first time in all my daydreams of adventure that I was exposed to the idea that science was part of the adventure. Captivated by The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, I was suddenly exposed to a world that I hadn’t known existed - a world completely alien compared to everything I had known up to that point, but one that was clearly and inextricably linked to all other life on Earth. A ship named Calypso, captained by a thoroughly modern explorer in a red knit cap - Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau. While my early imaginings of ocean voyages were of treasure, desert islands, and eye-patched pirates, the lure of adventure at sea was soon supplanted by a new ship and a new hero. With feet firmly on the pebbles of a Pacific seashore, one is filled with a deep sense of sehnsucht - an inconsolable longing in the human heart for a far, familiar, non-earthly land one can identify as one’s home. It makes for heady daydreams, and an aching longing to leave the safe shores of Earth and go exploring. Coupled with a sense of awe is a tickle of imagination intertwined with a vaguely unsettling desire to cast our fortunes into both those deep seas.

Perhaps most importantly, both inspire a visceral and compelling urge to explore. Both the sea and the Cosmos challenge the limits of our understanding both are inhospitable to life forms as frail as we and both have deep, hidden mysteries that we have yet to discover. While we know better today, the metaphor of the sky as an unfathomably deep ocean is not an untenable idea. The sky and the ocean are almost inseparable, as early legend, myth, and speculation suggested. But at night the ocean stretches to the horizon where it merges seamlessly with the sky. During the day, you can see the distant horizon line, a boundary between sky and sea. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and often had the chance to walk up and down the lonely, rocky beaches of Oregon and Washington. The Milky Way rising over the Pacific Ocean at Ruby Beach on the Olympic Peninsula (photograph by Dave Morrow).

The shores of the cosmic ocean