Sensawunda regained - how Philae and real science drove my wonder engine

This week saw the most spectacular space event since humans landed on the Moon.  The culmination of the Rosetta mission, the tiny lander Philae succeeded in landing on a comet three million miles from Earth after a ten year journey.  The feat had the magic of the Moon landings, with the modern twist of seeing the events unfold real-time via social media.  At one time the ESA's Twitter account was receiving ten thousand congratulations messages a minute.  The landing has captured the imagination of everyone.

I happen to be reading the Human Universe book right now, and the ideas in it also feed my sensawunda.  An infinite number of universes means that it was inevitable that one universe would arise where conditions were just right for us. Brian Cox speculates that there may be many universes where the laws of physics are different.

Two mind-blowing real science events in one week.  It's at times like this that I wonder if we need SF.  It was fabulous to watch the congratulations to the Rosetta team pour in on Twitter, from NASA, other scientists, and prominent SF writers.  For a few brief hours, humanity united to celebrate an extraordinary achievement for our species.

But the news will very quickly swing back to focus on the petty side of human existence, the latest atrocities of war, or some organisation claiming that not enough money is spent on something.  But I don't want to be ground down again by the petty false conflicts of a too-comfortable civilisation that is losing its drive and purpose.  I want to retain that sensawunda and common purpose.

In earlier ages, I could only get that feeling by reading SF, by sharing the dreams and inventions of the future that SF writers created.  But right now I feel that science has closed the gap,  Philae, the work being done at the Large Hadron Collider, the theoretical exploration of the origins of the universe, have their own sensawunda, one rooted in real science.  

And I've delved into real science in my rewrite of Jade. This week I've looked at DNA computing, crystal matrix storage, cells and viruses, neurons and memory.

The real events of this week, and each piece of research I've done, has shown me that the flights of fancy I've set up on my fictional planet aren't so crazy after all.  Many of the pieces that I need to slot together to make my planet 'work' already exist.  Real science has given a hell of a boost to my fictional sensawunda this week.