Long past midnight, when Earth itself seems to undergird ones heartbeat, its not hard to make a momentary leap into the space-time continuum. Even without enrolling in an astronaut program, its the sort of instinctual connection thats always available to those who stop long enough to look up and listen. But were still left with some whopping questions.

Why is there something rather than nothing? Are we alone in the cosmos? Are we as humans really meant to leave Earth and our own solar system? And if so, why does that seem so difficult?

Heres also one that isnt bandied about too often: What meaning can we extract from the short temporal nature of our own human lifespans; particularly when compared to the projected 11 billion-year lifespan of our own planet? Or the estimated 100 trillion-year lifetime of the universe as a whole?

As Woody Allen once quipped, I dont want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve it through not dying.

Thus, if E.T. is out there, would some permutation of hyper-advanced sentient beings have long discarded their physical shells and literally begun living in an intelligent nexus between the stars? And, as such, with virtually no limit on their biological longevity?

Regardless of philosophy or religion, such questions refuse to go quietly.

The Milky Way as seen from the U.S. East Coast. Credit: Chris Bakley (chrisbakleyphotography.com)

Whats left of the unspoiled night sky from Earths surface still makes it easy to understand why so many astronomers remain so eager to answer the big picture questions shaped by the science of cosmology over the last century or more.

Even so, we also sometimes forget that technological progress in aerospace, in particular, has been nothing short of astonishing since that day in 1903 when Orville and Wilbur Wright gave us the worlds first powered, sustained and controlled airplane flight. After all, on geologic timescales, a hundred years is like a fleeting nanosecond.

But most researchers and engineers keep the philosophizing to a minimum and opt instead for long hours of hard data analysis. Astronomers seem to have figured out that understanding and making this life as we know it work for us, is likely only to come in a hard-won piecemeal process. Or maybe not at all.

The rest is here:

5 Questions Astronomy Still Can't Answer