I've been reading "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson, which is mostly about all the wacky people who made great scientific discoveries, or scary things that might happen to us, like massive asteroids hitting the earth or Yellowstone Park blowing a huge hole in it. It's very entertaining.
One of the parts I found most interesting is the discussion of sub-atomic particles. Quarks, bosons, etc. And how, when physicists were able to learn more about the atom, they realized that none of its parts behaved the way we expect things to behave. They are still trying to find new particles that fit their calculations, or new calculations to fit the particles they know of. Also, the Large Hadron Collider is about to be switched back on after a massive 2 year upgrade. Having found the Higg's boson, they are now going to look for Susy -- supersymmetrical particles that will either confirm physicist's Standard Model of how the universe works, or send them back to the drawing board to come up with a new theory.
Reading the details of these quests to figure out how gravity works, what dark matter is made of, why the universe is expanding at an accelerated rate, etc, makes it much less scary to think about how it can be that the Spirit creates us all, connects us all, nurtures and guides all of creation. Life has mysteries on many levels. Except of course on TV, where even the mysteries are predictable.
