Ex-plo-ra-tion: The investigation of unknown regions; when applied to oneself, the realization of previously unknown capacities.

“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it?”
~Richard Dawkins