How Do We Know What We Do About Space?

I could drone on for hours and hours about how specific discoveries in astronomy have led to our modern understanding of it today, but there's no real point in shouting out specific examples. As a species, humans are very inquisitive. We're constantly pushing ourselves to answer more and more questions to find out more information about the world around us. The study of science has led us to the most amazing discoveries.

It wasn't long ago that mankind had no clear answer as to why life arose on this planet. Scientific inquiry led to the founding of the theory of evolution (although the idea itself has roots in antiquity, Charles Darwin was the first man to put a solid theory behind it, which has been modified and is now accepted as fact among a majority of the scientific community), as well as the formulation of the theory of abiogenesis. Of course these are biological examples, but the same reasoning applies to all scientific discoveries.

Humans are curious. We're always questioning what we see around us, because of our ability to be self aware. These questions have been the driving force behind so many great scientists to push the limit of human knowledge, and expand our understanding of the world around is.

This line of questioning as led us to some amazing discoveries.

Why doesn't Mercury's orbital period line up when it's mathematically calculated in classical Newtonian physics?

It's a question like that which baffled scientists. Following Einstein's groundbreaking work in the field of physics, we know realize that gravity warps space-time, accounting for the abnormalities.

Seemingly simple questions any average person could answer themselves nowadays (i.e. Why does ice melt?) have been some great questions throughout science. We have reached our understanding of outerspace and astronomy through asking these questions.

By developing models and theories, we can make predictions about different questions we may have. Yet another inspiring feature of science working to our advantage.

We know what we know about outerspace because of what we didn't know. Science is always pushing us forward, on all fronts.