We watch with wonder the images beamed back to Earth by the Mars Sojourner probe: wonder at the fact that we are seeing pictures of a new, largely unexplored world. It is a great tribute to our space program that we can see these pictures and wonder, that these images lead us to ask important questions about our place in the cosmos. Yet we are also exploring strange new worlds right here on Earth, worlds just as wondrous, worlds that require new and exciting technologies just to visit, worlds that ask and answer even more questions about how our universe came to be These are the worlds of…
