The Universe is an amazing place, and the way it came to be today is something very much worth being thankful for. Image credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA); J. Blakeslee.

10 Scientific Phenomena To Be Thankful For, Today And Every Day

Just because it isn’t Thanksgiving anymore doesn’t mean we don’t have an entire Universe to be thankful for.

Every day, we have a choice whether we take our lives, our existence, our freedoms, and our moments for granted, or whether we express appreciation and gratitude for the good things that exist. The biggest unifier that all human beings have in common, that we all exist on the same world and in the same Universe, never gets the due it deserves. Here and now, it’s possible for us to exist, and to exist as long as our natural lifespans will allow us. This wasn’t guaranteed from first principles, but simply happens to be. At a huge number of different points in our Universe’s history, the laws of nature came together in such a way to enable our existence, and to allow us to look back today, 13.8 billion years later, with thankfulness in our hearts. Here are ten phenomena that made it all possible, and ten reasons to give thanks.

The timeline of our observable Universe’s history, where the observable portion expands to larger and larger sizes as we move forward in time away from the Big Bang. Image credit: NASA / WMAP science team.

1.) Be thankful that the Big Bang occurred. As far as our Universe is concerned, there was a “day without a yesterday,” where the expanding…