Welcome to ORBITER

As young children, we stand in the same position as the ancients. Across time, across space, scattered in families, tribes and nations across this whirling sphere of rock and water, we look to the heavens and wonder at the stars. Scavenging across the ice. Roaming across the plains. Crossing the desert. Crossing the sea. When the clouds part, when the forest draws back its branches, when we stand upon the mountaintops, we lift our eyes…and we are overcome by the majesty, the mystery and the miracle.

Where did all this come from? Did it always exist, or did it have a beginning? Did someone begin it? What are this sun, this moon, and these stars—the stars that circle and the stars that wander—and who or what put them in place? What is this planet, so deadly and callous, and yet also so abundant, nurturing, and fruitful? How is it possible that something so staggeringly beautiful and wondrously complex and heartbreakingly broken should ever come to be?

The same questions pass down the stream of generations, and they turn inward. Where did I come from? Where did we come from? How did life and intelligence and love come to be? How do they work? Why are we different from one another—men from women, group from group, people from people? What stirs the human heart to acts of evil, and acts of staggering self-sacrifice? What happens to us when we die? Is there anywhere beyond the veil, anyone who can pass through it? Is anything stronger than death?

Philosophers and poets, theologians and scientists have helped us understand our place among the stars. ORBITER tells the story of how, even today, the world’s most extraordinary minds are striving to answer life’s most enduring questions.

ORBITER is about the greatest questions ever asked, and the great quest to answer them. If those questions are your questions, or you want to know how scientists and scholars today are advancing our most fundamental understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe, we hope you will follow along. ORBITER will curate the best material on the web, and create new material that tells new stories, on the heroes who have taken up the great human quest to understand. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to join us on the journey.

 

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Editor in Chief, ORBITER magazine