How Insignificant We Are?

             We live in a blue-green piece of rock floating in the vastness of space. Our particular neighborhood is called the Solar System which is ruled by the mighty Sun, a star that provides conditions for sustenance of our civilization and the other phenomenon in our neighborhood. In the vast blackness of space we have other pieces of rock called planets which too are floating around the neighborhood. The peculiar thing is that we all are moving around one

specie and that is our very own, the Sun. Okay, enough with the fancy description. So in this article, I will take you on a journey through the vast blackness, mystery and vastness of the space. More importantly it is the feeling of being insignificant in so large a universe that is the most astonishing. It brings me Goosebumps!

             In this Solar system of ours we are surrounded by seven other planets, some smaller than our Earth while some really larger than our little homeland, and other species like asteroids and blah blah stuff. The Sun we are revolving around is the largest specie in our neighborhood and amazingly it is too revolving around something. And more interestingly it is among many other stars. It means our Sun has brothers who are revolving around something. And hold on to your seats when I tell you that our Sun has not just one or two but billions of brothers. There are actually billions of stars out there that are revolving around the particular ‘something’ which is called the Galactic center of our galaxy called the Milky Way. And sit tight again when I tell you that there are just like our own galaxy, hundreds of billions of galaxies each containing billions of stars. Do some math, and you get the approximate number of stars in our whole universe that we are able to observe. Yes, hold one to this word ‘observe’ because I will come back to it later.

A Black Hole!

             So here we are then where we have travelled pretty quickly from our homeland to the far places in the universe. You must be getting an idea of how insignificant we are in this universe. Just imagine in your head travelling through this journey where you have so large and so numerous of stars and other things that are even complex to grasp. In your journey you will be bombarded with extremely fast asteroids and comets. And further you go out in the vastness, you will be confronting enigmatic species called Black Holes. They will suck anything that passes near it and they won’t even leave light alone! Because even light is sucked inside a black hole, you cannot see it and so it is called a ‘black hole’. Moreover you will prefer to stay away from the destructive, chaotic and gigantic explosions happening out there. These explosions are called supernovae and are actually the announcements and ‘celebrations’ of the death of a star; at least that is what I think it is! You also have an attractive force out there that will pull you whenever you are near a massive specie like a star, provided that you survive the blazing temperatures. That is the mighty Gravity lurking everywhere out there. The list of your hosts is extraordinarily long so get ready to be welcomed by a large party out there.

             Coming back to the point of ‘observable universe’, it is important to realize that whatever you see is not everything. There is a whole lot of undiscovered, unknown, mysterious and new world out there that is yet to be observed. So it is quite possible that the actual universe is even larger than what we can observe. The reason for this, if you can bear the technicalities, is that light takes some time to travel a distance and there may be some light that has not even reached us yet. So summing up everything, I think of us very insignificant in this universe. Just imagine our Earth floating out there among the gigantic monsters, so little a piece of rock out there. In that little piece of rock, there are humans living. We are so alone in this universe since we haven’t yet found others living out there is other planets. In a universe, we live in one of the hundreds of billions of galaxies. In that one galaxy, we are revolving around one star among the billions of other stars. Around that star there are many planets, dwarf planets (like Pluto which is not a planet) and asteroids and we exist in one small planet called Earth.

             Being so insignificant we still consider ourselves to be the masters of the whole universe. We dare to rule the whole world yet we are helpless when an earthquake hits us or a hurricane comes along. So helpless we become that we cannot do anything against any natural calamities like an asteroid coming toward us. Even the seas and oceans destroy us yet we cannot do anything. Then why are we so filled with pride? It is something to think about.

             So think about it till my next post when I will again come up with something to think and to ponder upon.