I recently read an article, written by the fine folks at Space.com, that describes a mystery object found in the center of a supernova. According to the article, this mystery object is a young neutron star that is displaying characteristics of a much older neutron star.

It just goes to show how much we, as humans, still have to learn about the world we live in. It is staggering the advances mankind has made over the last 200 or so years. In fact, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore spoke to the compounded rate of technology innovation in what is commonly known as Moore’s Law.

Back in college in the early 1990s at The University of Texas, I had the pleasure of taking an Astronomy class that focused solely on black holes. At the time the course material was very theoretical, as there was more debate then as to the existence of black holes.

I spent the entire semester trying to get my head around the space-time continuum, studying diagrams of what black holes would look like, discussing wormholes, and trying to understand how a four-dimensional world would behave.

While I don’t remember a lot of the details of that class, I do remember the last class vividly. The professor began with his argument for why he thought black holes did, in fact, exist, and that one was likely sitting at the heart of Cygnus X-1.

He then said something that I will never forget: “I was not a religious man until I started studying black holes. How can science alone explain this?”

He then closed class and sent us all off into the world to think about that for the rest of our lives.

technorati tags: astronomy, space, science, philosophy, religion