Introduction: Adventure, Imagination, and Curiosity

Abstract

Radio astronomy is one of the great adventures of the human spirit. Exploratory behavior, the primal urge that drives us into the unknown, is rooted in curiosity and expressed in a deep human hunger for venturing into new worlds, a hunger that has been dramatically expressed in thousands of years of slow, systematic, and sometimes frightening journeys of exploration and evolution. Such journeys, overland and across the seas and oceans, have carried people from their birthplaces to the most distant corners of the planet and farther. Like pollen on the wind, our species has moved from the caves of earth to the craters of the moon. Our instinct drives us on, not just to the planets, but further, into the universe beyond our senses where profound mysteries have been uncovered, mysteries that challenge our imagination and our capacity for comprehension.