The dusty regions that visible-light telescopes cannot penetrate are revealed by the infrared views of ESO’s HAWK-I instrument, showcasing the sites of new and future star formation where the dust is densest. Image credit: ESO / H. Drass et al.

5 vital lessons scientists learn that can better everyone’s life

Science may be one of the most complex human endeavors, but the lessons it teaches can be applied far outside of science.

“I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.” -Johannes Kepler

Scientific breakthroughs may be rare, but they never take place in an intellectual vacuum. Newton’s recognition that he was standing on the shoulders of giants has never been more true than it is today, where the titans of the past have laid the foundations for our vantage point today. Yet the history of science isn’t merely a simple line filled with forward progress, but a meandering set of paths that intersects, loops back, dead-ends and more. Every once in a while, a new trip down a path leads you to a brand new destination, and if you can understand where you are and how you got there, the reward is a brand new discovery.

The evolution of large-scale structure in the Universe, from an early, uniform state to the clustered Universe we know today. Image credit: Angulo et al. 2008, via Durham University.

Most of us won’t become scientists, and most of us who do will never have a world-changing discovery of the magnitude of Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Barbara…