When I think of space, of anything above our atmosphere, it’s usually clouded by my belief that anything in that realm is far too complex, large, or confusing for little me to possibly understand. However, every time I read a chapter or take a class about space, it feels like the things going on in that sky above me are simpler than the jumbled mess of life happening on this spaceship called Earth.

Space, while we may not understand anywhere close everything that’s going on, obeys sets of rules and principles that are constant and universal. Down here, those rules are quite so set. Laws for humans are created, broken, and re-written. Ecosystems change and evolve towards the goal of survival but in a random capacity that is dependent on random mutations. Things like free will or God get thrown into the mix and then wars break out and those rules and laws turn into mere suggestions or a memory of a past that is long gone.

In his lecture, Kocevski took us back to the Big Bang, the origin of the Universe as we know it. It was presented that we know with telescopic certainty how the Universe has grown for the past 13.7 billion years, back until it was a mere 400,000 years old. Beyond that, it is mere speculation. Fortunately, the constant rules and principles that the Universe obeys allow us to dive in to the even earlier universe with a dignified certainty of events up until “The Inflation Era”, which is an era that encompasses just a minuscule portion of a second after the Big Bang where the physical laws and understanding we have start to no longer make sense.

This certainty was all thanks to Order. An Order that allowed us to look back billions of years through what would be utter Chaos– a Chaos that was apparently necessary and sequential to creating 60 to 100 year segments for us humans to enjoy this strange thing called life. This Order is what helps us break down and understand natural systems around us in additional to the physical world we inhabit. This Order is what simultaneously provides a clarity to some who look up at the night sky and understand the how the nuclear fusion in stars fuels life on Earth, and clouds our brains to possibilities that lie outside of these boundaries.

What if we are all just…wrong?

We are so ready to latch on to answers that follow these theories and rules and laws. Yes, they have empirical evidence and are followed too closely for conclusions based on these laws to be too far off, but what if?

What happens if the Origin of the Order we find in our Universe, the physical laws, is wrong? Or just off?

Will I no longer be able to look up to the night sky with that sense of peace and understanding I was able to find before? Will the atoms fusing in our sun suddenly decide to follow their own free will like the people down here that confuse me so?

Maybe it is just safer to look up, down, and around and see chaos everywhere.