A High School Student's Journey with All Things Celestial

Today we will hear from a 17-year-old local high school student who wishes to remain anonymous. 

He is very interested in space, and as of right now, he wants to be an astrophysicist. Despite all you'll hear in this interview, this student is still afraid that he will not get into college. 

What's really inspiring about his story, apart from his tremendous knowledge about space, is that he struggled in the first part of his high school career with his grades. He says that he was a blow off and he did try very hard. But it's unfortunate in our school systems that we do base so much of a student's goodness on the letter grade they receive. 

He had an epiphany where he had to change his perspective on everything. 

 I hope that you enjoy this episode. Thank you for joining me. 

#podcast #spirituality #episcopal #history #prayer #love #ministry #interviews #christianity #contemplative #meditation #Bible #Bible reading #religion #Biblestudy #christianmystic #mysticism #space #celestial #planets #Nasa #spacex #blackholes #mandelbrotset #math #einstein

For more information about me and my work, please visit www.brianneturczynski.com or www.lovingtheimperfect.com

Transcript

 Intro: Welcome to Loving the Imperfect Podcast, a show for seekers of deeper contemplation. I'm Brianne Turczynski. For 10 years, I've been studying offerings from holy teachers and holy texts. I'm a journalist who has listened to the stories of many people throughout the years, and I continue to be captivated by the stories of how God nudges and directs us, either by closing doors or opening them. So join me as we listen to these extraordinary stories and become witnesses to the truth of love. 

Hello and welcome to Loving the Imperfect. Today we will hear from a 17-year-old student from a local high school. Who wishes to remain anonymous. 

He is very interested in space, and as of right now, he wants to be an astrophysicist. So he's here to talk to us about space, and if anyone has any questions after this interview, he would be more than happy to answer these questions. We could even do a listeners' questions episode with him, we'll see what happens. But he's such an interesting guy and I really wanted to introduce him to all of you. Despite all you'll hear in this interview, in this story, this student is still afraid that he will not get into college. 

What's really inspiring about his story which he just kind of grazes over in this interview, is that he struggled in the first part of his high school career with his grades. He says that he was a blow off and he did try very hard. But it's unfortunate in our school systems that we do base so much of a student's goodness on the letter grade they receive. 

And I think that that really struck his confidence at the beginning of his high school career. And so, it's miraculous when you're listening to him to understand that he didn't always have this confidence and that it came, he said, with an epiphany. He had an epiphany where he had to change his perspective on everything. And out of that came this amazing amount of knowledge that he has and he's able to absorb now because of that confidence he received somehow after his perspective changed. And so this podcast is about spirituality, but it's also about God nudging us in different directions. And even though this student doesn't talk about that, we don't really talk about God that much in this episode, it's very apparent that something was with this person and pushing them into a certain direction. Saving him at the last minute.

And so, I just want you to be aware of his background before you listen to this, because this is how a lot of students are in high school. I taught in high schools, and I saw, I witnessed very, very bright students that were not doing very well on paper. It's unfortunate because we're missing out on a lot of good people to help us in the future. I hope that you enjoy this episode. Thank you for joining me. 

Student: About nine, 10 years ago, I was learning about the moon and the phases of the moon in elementary school and like first or second grade. 

I don't remember exactly how I truthfully got into space, but I know I had to deal with being taught about the moon phases and just about basic space stuff like all the planets. 

And my dad had a big impact on me. We would look at celestial objects with his telescope.

So that was pretty cool and interesting to me. It's all so vast, and there's just space. I think it's crazy.

I don't think my dad is just knowledgeable on space. 'cause I ask him multiple questions, on different topics like evolution, earthly things like photosynthesis, I guess, or how things work. But I do view him as a source of knowledge 'cause he is older than me and he has been there for certain things and he's seen things that I haven't seen, especially with space. He is a knowledgeable guy, so I view him as a, source of knowledge. 

I do view my mom as a source of knowledge too. Same thing with my dad. She has been around for longer than me, she has helped me with language arts and just writing in general. She has taught me many things about the English language and religion and tons of things, and she has impacted my life tremendously as well as my dad has.

Brianne:  You have two parents that are willing to listen to you. Do you think that that's helped you? 

Student: Yeah. I mean, if I, if I get an idea, like an invention or something that I think will help the world. I'll pitch it and they will give me insight about it. I mean, they will either tell me, oh, that already exists, or that will not work, or maybe instead of that, you can do it this way and that will work better.

And it makes me rethink, not just the, the plans that I have or the design, but how it all could work and help people or do whatever it does, my mom and dad helped me think they, they helped me think better.

Brianne: What is the thing about space that you're interested in right now?

Student: There are so many things from constellations to Nebula. To galaxies. 

Brianne: What are black holes all about? I'm sure a lot of people are scared of them, and they don't know what they are. 

Student: Well, black holes, they were theorized by Einstein. He said that something should exist that that kind of breaks the laws of physics and black holes are insane.

I mean, I think they are probably the coolest space objects out there. It’s something that has a huge gravitational force where it can just suck in anything, you know, anything that comes, that's in its way, it will just be destroyed immediately. Of course that takes time, but Einstein also said that when two black holes collide, they will create a ripple in space time, the fabric of space.

And he said, we should be able to detect these. And in 2015, there were two black holes that were orbiting each other. I think it was like a thousand light years away and they collided. They ran into each other, and one ate the other, and they joined and there was a wave that got sent through space and we detected it in 2015 through these like really, really sensitive sensors, that were able to detect these. So, Einstein was right about black holes. He was right about gravitational waves, and he was right about us being able to detect them. And I think that's pretty crazy.

But essentially what a black hole is, I guess you can say it's a rip in the fabric of space time. Anything that falls into it, well, we don't know what will happen, but it's assumed that you'll just fall forever. But the thing about black holes that I think is most interesting is time dilation.

And this applies to any mass in space. Something that has a lot of mass, a lot of weight. Something with more gravity than the sun will have, you know, more time dilation. So, if you're next to a black hole, you're flying into a black hole and somebody's observing you far away, let's say you're waving your hand out the window, eventually they'll see your hand slow down at a very steady rate, and then it will stop, and your ship will stop with you and you are continuing to move.

But since time dilation is an effect, it looks like you're not moving, you're appearing to be stationary. And you're continuing moving you continue moving into the black hole, you know, and we don't know what happens after that. But time dilation is probably one of the most interesting things about space.

Time isn't the same everywhere. The most accurate clock in the world even that clock is wrong, but it is still the most precise. We'll never have a right on the dot clock I think ever. Time is different literally anywhere you go in space; you could be a thousand light years away your time is passing differently than it is here on earth. 

You know, the Twin Paradox, I think it's called. Two twins are born. You give 'em both a watch. They're both set at the exact same time. You send one at the speed of the light, 99.9% of the speed of light in space. And then they come back. The child that was sent into space is still going to be an infant while the kid that was on earth is going to be 30 years old. 

That's time dilation. And the speed of light is also like the same as time dilation in a way. But the laws of physics kind of break down as you get up to the speed of light and, really, I don't know why it's called the speed of light, because nothing with mass can move at the speed of light. And so only light particles, which are photons and things like that can move at the speed of light. And so really it should be called the speed of massless particles [according to physicists]. 

When NASA records, objects and what they could possibly sound like, I mean, we've recorded the sun and really what we're hearing is just changes in the celestial body itself, because there is no sound in space. Space isn't filled with anything you need some sort of gas for sound to pass through. 

And so, what that is sound passing through oxygen and the molecules kind of get excited in a way and sound can pass through them, creating vibrations and all these other things and it can generate a noise. 

But space doesn't really have noise. It's very silent, astronauts have said that it sounds like you're underwater. and that's probably due to them moving and just hearing their body in the suit because you’ve got to think there's nothing outside of them, literally nothing forever and ever but they're probably hearing their heartbeat, their lungs, they can probably hear their blood flowing.

Because it's just a very soundproof environment. I forget the way that we record objects in space. We have recordings of the sun and things like that, and other objects, but those, those sounds and movies of space. I think it was just like we're borne when space travel kind of became, you know, this new thing, this new idea in the fifties and sixties. So, they're like, okay, it's got to be like kind of sci-fi and have these weird noises that nobody's ever heard of. 

Brianne: Like computer-made noises. 

Student: Yes, exactly. But I mean, there's probably some object in space that creates some beep-boop noise. I guess that's what you want to call it. But no, space does not have sound, but we can still record objects. 

One thing that I've been studying more and more is probably string theory. And I think it's very interesting and it does correlate with space, on a quantum level. Like atoms and things like that, I think it's pretty interesting how the universe could be made of more than what we have or do know, but it is just a theory and there's no way to prove it.

I don't know if we ever will prove it. But I think it’s very interesting.
 
Brianne: How did you get onto string theory? 

Student: I've always known that Einstein had created all these theories about the universe, but I didn't know that string theory even existed. I've heard of it before, but this one point in time where I really was like interested in was when I was having a conversation with my chemistry teacher, we were talking about space and quantum physics and things like that.

[Things that are] kind of close to chemistry but they aren't really. And she mentioned string theory and she's like, Paul, have you ever heard of string theory? And I was like, no, I think I've heard of it, but I don't know what it is. And she kinda just skimmed over it quick.

And then I went home after school and I started reading about it and studying it and it's very, very complex and I can't comprehend it fully even though it's been all over five months, since I started studying it.

I don't study it every day. I but I do look over it once in a while, which is like every couple of days. But I think it's very interesting and it's a key thing for me to make my understanding of space and just everything better. String theory basically describes how the universe could work and [what it could] be made out of.

So essentially there are three things in string theory that are very fundamental. There's fermion, which is just matter particles. There are bastions, which just what makes up atoms and things like that. And then there's gravitons, it's very hard to comprehend because you have atoms and subatomic particles, molecules, things like that. Then you go even in deeper into the quantum level, you get strings. And this all came about. With Pythagorean, he made up a theory that the universe was made out of strings.

And then in the early to mid-1900s and even late 1900s, physicists were getting together, and they were making assumptions about string theory, making discoveries about string theory with through math. One of the most important people for string theory is either Einstein or Pythagorean.

Pythagorean kind of introduced the thought that the universe was made out of strings. He was at a blacksmith shop, and he saw some guy hitting long pieces of iron and he saw that the longer the bar of metal, the lower the note. And so, he was thinking about that for a while.

Then he came across a band. They were playing these string instruments, and he saw longer the string, lower the note and things like that. And then he realized that there could be an infinite number of notes and vibrations for those strings. So, it depends on the frequency and the tightness of the string to make the note.

So, he made the assumption that maybe the universe is made out of strings. And they create different vibrations to create different things. And I bet everybody that was listening to Pythagorean thought he was an insane man. But he went on to create a school and then the Roman Empire collapsed, and String Theory was like kind of thrown out the window for a thousand years or so, and then Einstein came along and all these other physicists and they kind of made string theory more dominant in the physics world. 

But, like I said, it is just a theory and there's no evidence to back it up, so. But the math is all making sense in that realm.

Brianne: What are you searching for in space? Do you have a goal when you look at space? Like, I have to do this thing and I have to discover this thing? Or are you just interested in it because it's so vast and it has so many different levels of study to it? 

Student: Yes, it does have many, many, fields.

There are many fields that revolve around space, but the reason that I really wanted to get into string theory was because it gets us closer and closer to a theory of everything. Hawking was looking for it. Einstein was even looking for it. They call it The God equation. G-O-D. Something that can describe or predict anything that could ever happen in the universe.

It basically could describe everything. And there might not even be a God equation or just a theory of everything, but we won't know until we find out if there is or isn't. So, kind of crazy for me to think about.

 Brianne: So, the theory of everything would solve everything?

 Student: No, no. That's not what it means entirely. It would, I guess, on some sort of basis would solve everything. But it would just tell us about the universe. More about the universe. Because there's an equation for everything and there's, you know, math that we haven't even discovered yet and math is, the language of the universe.

Everything revolves around math. Everything has some sort of math to it, whether it's dimensions or a rate of something, how fast this will depreciate over a year or how fast it will grow. There's a number to that. 

So, one equation that I really like, and it might be my favorite equation next to , 

but it’s 

Basically, this connects to a guy named Mandelbrot and he discovered that this equation is infinite in a way. And you can look up man Mandelbrot, and it'll give you this weird shape.

And you can zoom in literally infinitely, and it will keep on generating. And to me, it shows that somewhere in the universe or beyond the universe, there is a creator, a God of some sort, something with an infinite mind and infinitely complex and could imagine anything and everything and could create anything or everything.

I think that's really interesting.

Brianne: Like a god of creation?

Student: Yes, basically a God of creation. But this isn't like the God equation or a theory of everything. But it does show that there could be, it's like almost the next step is that equation, the God equation. And right below that is the Mandelbrot set.

So, I think the Mandelbrot set is so interesting, and it is probably one of my favorite things, maybe ever. So next to space and math and science. But yeah, I think it's pretty interesting.

I’ve never really been good at school, and I've always thought that the way that school teaches kids is a terrible way. They tell you this is how you do it, and then you have to repeat what they do. And sometimes they show you, they usually show you how to do things, but most students are hand-on learners.

You know, they have to do something with their hands to learn it, and they just don't teach it correctly. But I think what changed my perspective on school was to change my perspective on everything. 

I was just kind of a blow off. I didn't really care about school and suddenly, I just changed my perspective. On the universe and how it works in general. And I kind of changed my views religiously, politically and everything, and I think it helped me a lot. I think my ability to perceive reality has helped me tremendously to understand things.

Math is the universal language but math was never my strong suit. And I'm pretty good at math now, I think math is very enjoyable. So, I study it my free time, even if I don't have a test, I'll still go home and study math. It's like after I get out of math class, I'm like, kind of sad and I just want to go home and do math. I don't know, it sounds kind of dumb, but that's what it is. And I never liked math and never clicked in my head until I was like, wait a minute. Now it's starting to make sense. 

We're learning exponential growth in decay and now we're learning logarithms, but exponential growth and decay, I was like, this is awesome. We're using Euler's number, which is like 2.7182. It's an irrational number. But that is what changed my perspective was learning this, and I was like, this is kind of fun.

And, you know, math is fun when you get good at it. Because, you know, it’s a kind of a flow. It flows and it can make sense, but if it doesn't make sense, something's wrong. Either it's with you or it's with the math that you did. But now we're learning about logarithms and logarithms are very fun. And I have a quiz on that Monday and I'm excited to take that.

I think logarithms by far, at least as of right now, is my favorite form of math. But I also like calculus too. I don't study calculus as much, but I have studied calculus and it's, it's pretty fun. There are limits, you know, integral derivatives, things like that area under the curve, and I think it's just fun,

Brianne: How important is family to you?
 
Student: I think family is very important. They can help you and they cannot help you. And sometimes when they don't help you, it can make you rethink everything about you and your decision. I don't like being in big groups. I don't like parties at all. It kind of stresses me out. I hate it when we have get-togethers and there's like 50 people and it's like, oh my gosh. I don't like this, and I don't like parties in general. 

I don't really like to go out. I like small, tight groups where everybody's connected to each other. But family, I love my family, and my family has helped me a lot, I mean financially. And just basically giving me advice about literally anything life, drums, you know, doing stuff. They just give me advice. And, they have had a pretty big impact on my life as a whole. So, I think it's very important. Because those are the people that you're going to have when you're not going through a good time, a good point in life. 

If things start going bad for you, you just talk to your family, but some people don't have that, that connection. And, um, I feel sorry for them because family is pretty important and, you know, they're who are closest related to you. 

I do also have a really good friend that helps me, and he asks me questions about things all the time. I always give him advice. I ask him questions all the time. But he's a very smart guy. If you look at the questions that he asks me, you'll be like, wow, why is he thinking about this of all things? And I'll either say I don't know that, or I'll give him an answer, or I'll answer the question to the best of my abilities.

Maybe he can work something out of that. If somebody has a question and you know the answer, you can either tell them straight what the answer is or you can kind of not tell them the answer and guide them through to the answer and let them think. And that is what teachers really should be doing.

 And they do, but not really as well. And parents, please do that with your children. Let them experiment. You'll have the smartest kid in the world if you let them and I'm talking about under the age of like six or seven. You know, because at a young age, a child's mind is very open and they think about a lot of things like if an egg is sitting on top of a counter kid wants to push it over because they want to see what will happen, I think you should let them do that because it's helping them. 

You'll think that's creating a mess, but it's not. That mess is what's helping them think and create and it makes them more creative. So, if you really want your kid to grow up smart and be able to, think about their decisions and what could happen potentially, you’ve got to let them experiment.

You’ve got to let them make mistakes. If you teach your kid to be good, all good at a young age, it's a terrible idea. Let them make mistakes. Let them get in trouble. You know, I mean, don't let them get arrested, of course, but let them do things that they think is right in the moment.

And then tell them why they shouldn't have done that, the decisions they make are purely out of either instinct or just what they think is right at the time. And young kids don't really know what they're doing. I mean, I think before the age of like 13 or 14, kids don't really know what they're truly thinking about, and they don't really know what life is about. And how long it could be, how short it could be. And I wish somebody had told me that, that I could die at any second. Like as soon as I was able to hear, you know, you could die tomorrow, and you can't do anything about it. And the thought of that is insane. 

I think everybody takes life for granted in some way. And you are living against stupefying odds, you know, miraculous odds. And they're so close to zero of you even being here. And I don't know, it's crazy to think about that. Just life. 

Outro: Thank you for joining me on Loving the Imperfect. Again, if you have any questions for Paul, please email me by going to my website at www.lovingtheimperfect.com. Included on my website with this episode are pictures this student has taken of space with his telescope. 

Next time we'll hear from 90-year-old Dr. Daniel White, a local physician in this area. Well-known and well-liked by everyone. He's going to tell us how he was sent over to Vietnam during the Vietnam War and spent some time over there with the civilians and how he touched the lives of these people. 

So we'll hear from him next time. Thank you for joining me today. Have a good rest of your week. Bye-bye.