Here are these massive balls of gas just floating in outer space, billions of them winking at you. Of those billions of celestial bodies, the closest one we know, our sun, is 93 million miles away and is about 109 times larger than earth. The way we see the sun is how it looked a little over 8 minutes ago because that's how long it takes the light to travel that distance. The closest star to us is 4.2 light years away, yes, that's right, light years, and that's the closest. The sun rotates around the Milky Way Galaxy approximately 24,000 to 26,000 light years from its center. It takes 225-250 million years to make one complete rotation around the Galaxy. Of course, ours is just one of the 200 billion Galaxy's in the observable universe.
Here I stand, all 6'1" of me, out in the cold night, looking up at the beautiful sky, my breath visibly rising before me.
I ask myself at these moments, "How insignificant am I in the grand scheme of things in a universe this massive?" "How lucky are we to even be alive, to be thinking, to be aware?"
Next time your out on a clear night, take a few moments to ingest the majesty of the cosmos and reflect on your own size and place in it. I do it often.
The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.
It is an overwhelming feeling. Reading about Kepler-22b really makes you wonder.
ReplyDeleteYour post is a good one for anyone who thinks the earth revolves around them!