Suspended Between Extremes

May, 2026

I took a swim in the pond, the first of the year. It was good to stretch the joints and muscles, to feel the resistance, to dip below the surface and hear the distorted and muffled sounds of a watery world.

On my final lap I switched from freestyle to back stroke. The clouds had broken so the sky was a  patchwork of gray and blue. I focused on the blue, remembering a video that took a tour of the cosmos at the speed of light.

If we had the ability to move at light speed, we would leave our solar system in one earthly second. In four seconds we’d reach Proxima Centauri, our nearest star system. After eight seconds we’d approach Sirius, the brightest star in our night sky. In ten minutes we’d pass Kepler 226b, a distant world with a rocky core, covered by oceans.

For perspective, the Moon is about 1.3 light-seconds from Earth. It takes modern astronauts three days to get there. Using existing technology, reaching Kepler would take over 11 million years.

In two hours we’d pass the pillars of creation, one of the most iconic structures ever photographed—enormous towers of interstellar gas and dust inside the Eagle Nebula. In five hours we’d reach Stephenson 2-18, a star so enormous it makes our sun nearly invisible. Another 24 hours and we’d leave the Milky Way galaxy.  After 29 days we’d reach the Andromeda galaxy, which is on a collision course with our own galaxy a few billion years from now.

We’d travel on, and realize our local group of galaxies is but a tiny part of a much larger super cluster, and by the 16th year of travel the Milky Way would be a faint point in the darkness. One hundred years into our journey we’d reach Ton 618, one of the most massive black holes ever discovered, with a mass tens of billions of times that of our sun.

And after 1000 years of cruising one light year per second, we’d reach the edge of the observable universe, 46.5 billion light years from earth. It’s not the true edge, just the limit of what we can see.

With the aid of advanced telescopes, satellites, and physics modeling, we’ve detected galaxies billions of light years away, estimated the age of the universe, observed black holes, and measured the afterglow of the Big Bang. Yet, more than 80 percent of our oceans have not been mapped or explored. Oceans present unique challenges. The study area lies in a highly corrosive environment under a veil of perpetual darkness, with pressures a thousand times greater than found at sea level.

In all probability, those deep recesses of the unknown harbor life and functioning ecosystems. Scientists believe we’re familiar with less than a third of the highly specialized animals inhabiting the depths. Sixty percent of DNA sequences taken from marine sediments are not associated with known taxonomic records. Our understanding of deep sea biodiversity has major gaps, and it’s fair to say the ocean depths are less explored, observed, and mapped than the known universe. We have a better understanding of the surfaces of stars and planets multiple light years away than we do of the seafloor a few miles below the surface.

We know a lot about oceans—tides, currents, salinity, their role in thermodynamics and climate systems. It’s not accurate to say we know less about the oceans than the universe, but we know surprisingly little about the deep, dark, depths.

These thoughts drift through my head as I swim in a pond suspended between extremes. I lose track of laps. A cloud passes and I feel the penetrating warmth of a May sun on my face. A chimney swift twitters overhead, a green heron perches on a log near shore, a breeze sways the cattail leaves. The air smells of life in abundance.

What a privilege to draw breath and experience it all. To have curiosity, to consider the known and unknown, to learn. What a responsibility to care for the only known planet allowing us to live freely, without specialized gear or domes or engineered atmospheres. 

We’ve looked around the visible universe. There is no place better. We are charged with preserving what we have. There is an urgency here we’re dismissing, a mountain of scientific evidence we’re disregarding. In cosmic terms, we have a fraction of a heartbeat to respond.