Lest we forget, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Mach, Einstein, et al - Cosmologists, every one. Our current understanding of the nature and behavior of the world, from the very small to the unimaginably large, is reliant on the work of cosmologists. Any valid theory, cosmological or other, must be disprovable, and our leaps in knowlege have been the result of one theory (or set of theories) superceding their predecessors. Certainly the current, occasionally competing theories, will in their turn be replaced by others that agree with observation more completely. And observational astronomy must always remember the debt of understanding owed to cosmology and to theory. Urbain LeVerrier and J. C. Adams were both theorists whose work led directly to the discovery of Neptune. We humans, by our nature, are given to inventing stories to account for the experiences we encounter in the world. Now our tools allow us to experience the world in ways vastly more sophisticated than those of even our close ancestors, and our stories have become more complex and detailed. But now and always, in the words of the late J. B. S. Haldane, the world, both large and small, will remain "not only queerer than we imagine, but queerer than we CAN imagine."

Clear skies,

Starrman