atmosphere may be related to the period of orbit of its solar system’s sun. Thus, the current season of a central star may affect something as seemingly disjointed as a neighboring body’s chemical emissions, though no system is known for such a communication, which takes place over hundreds of thousands of miles (Bohlender).
I know that the researchers were children once, children who col-
lected bugs and probed mud and studied the stars. They chose the course they did for the same reason that I chose biology. It’s possible they couldn’t understand the root of their curiosity at the time, but I feel that the desire to understand nature goes deeper than the incessant inquiries of children. By the time they were old enough to give a name to their question, they were too constrained by formulas and chemical names and the ever present pressure to publish to pay it any mind anymore. But part of them still believes that science can answer that question.
The black-tailed godwit is a migratory seabird which mates for life but
may live hundreds of kilometers away from its partner, meeting her only once a year. Despite having no contact whatsoever between flocks, the birds arrive at the annual breeding ground within an average of three days of one another. Though scientists speculate that the birds may use seasonal clues or determine migratory timing genetically, no one is really sure how they manage to behave so regularly without any method of planning (Gunnarsson).
And the question is this: Where is the thread, the theme? What is
unifying us, with one another and with everything around us? It’s a question that, as it turns out, is hardly specific to science. It is the question of religion and of art, of psychology and anthropology and philosophy. People have asked this question since the beginning of people. And, clearly, every person must find their own way to answer it. Throughout history many have tried, with various methods and to various ends. But we, the collectors of flowers and probers of mud, we trust only our eyes. We seek the answer in our observations and our experiments, burying ourselves in the layers of complexity that we can measure. And it is here that science becomes both the best and Excellence in Upper-Level Writing 2012
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