Scientia sine arte nihil est

I don't know whose hand hung Hesperus in the sky, and fixed the Dog Star, and scattered the shining dust of Heaven, and fired the sun, and froze the darkness between the lonely worlds that spin in space.
-- Gerald Kersh

Every so often, Science-Fiction and abstract reasoning call me with a largeness I cannot comprehend, let alone quantify. What is the universe made of? How am I, a bunch of atoms, capable of studying other atoms? Does time exist if nothing is happening to mark its passage? I assume there are a finite number of protons in this world? Can they be broken up? Have we lost any? Do we have an inkling of how many there are? Can the universe have weight? It has mass and a lot of vacuum, but is there gravity acting outside of it? What about the gravity acting inside of it? What is the universe expanding into? The speed of light is dependent on the medium, and I always considered that a vacuum was not a medium, but I guess it is. Traveling through nothing means you can go a lot faster. If there was an infinitely long, frictionless path, arbitrarily in the -y with gravity acting on it, would, theoretically, an object fall long enough to turn into light? Right now, I'm sitting where I once cried on the floor wrapped up in your arms. How can I explain my thoughts? Why do they exist? How does existence, atoms of molecules of compounds of cells of tissue of organs of a body, somehow produce a being capable of thought? How does this physical form manage to function long enough to grow old enough to appreciate the life it was given? to fall innocently in love?