i was watching a bunch of science videos today on youtube (theyre damn entertaining). i learned that the radius of the universe is 14 gigaparsecs wide. 1 gigaparsec is 3.3 billion light years. 1 light year is 5.88×10^12 miles. 93 billion light years across. thats a ludicrous amount of space and its all full of mostly nothing. the earth is just a small rock floating in all this nothing.
to compare; there are over 1 trillion bacteria on the skin of an average human. these bacteria are about 2×10^-6 meters long. a 6 foot human is 1.83 meters. that means that we humans are almost a million times bigger than these bacteria and yet most people dont care about them, feel them, or even think about them on a daily basis. theyre so small that we can’t even see them! and we’re like a million times larger than them! they die and multiply thousands of times a day and no one pays them any mind! theyre on us and they live and die!
if these bacteria are so insignificant to us, being only 0.000001 our size, if they’re so small as to might as well not exist, what does that say about us? how do 1.83 meters compare to something a light year across? something a parsec across? a gigaparsec? how do 1.83 compare to 879,847,933,950,014,400,000,000,000? in the grand scheme of things, what does anything we do on this floating rock matter? we live. within a few decades we die. more people live. more people die. people get forgotten. actions get forgotten. eventually the earth will die and so will the sun and then a few billion years later our galaxy will get erased by a black hole and then we’ll just be another empty space in the dark.
and you think you’re important? that you matter?
5 comments
But we do matter… because we are self-aware and in control of our actions, and have but a small blip of limited time, during which to find enjoyment and profound experiences, before we’re erased from existence.
I can understand what you’re saying, raincloudz, but as clever says we are far superior beings than bacteria, although some people I admit might throw that statement into question! I also don’t think we will be erased by a black hole, because something doesnt lead to nothing. Life always finds a way of becoming and evolving so if anything it will just be further evolution.
It’s true. In the big picture of things, humanity means nothing. Every thing we do on this planet will be ultimately lost in time. While that is certainly profoundly sad in some ways, it’s also kind of beautiful. The thing is, if more people realized just how insignificant we are and how this life is all we have, we might be able to work together to make it to another tiny, insignificant rock in the cosmos. We’d most likely already be there if not for religion, greed and wars holding global science and research back.
I like to go to this site for the true perspective:
http://www.numbersleuth.org/universe/
@painman-
You should maybe research “heat death of the universe”
Or consider that all known and conceivable matter in the entire universe, is thought (by the most studious scientists) to have come from a singularity.
The theory is that something /literally/ came from nothing… and so, eventually, to nothing all will return.
There are theories about “bouncing,” in which the universe begins, spends, and returns to its original state, only to “bounce” outward once again, through a new big-bang.
I doubt life has always existed. I think life… arose… at some point, through astronomically small chances for things to chaotically, naturally, end up in the right places at the right times, for it to occur. We can barely even comprehend “tens of billions of years.” It just barely makes sense according to the human time-scale.
If a natural, organic, living being can die… then why not the universe? It’s just a giant reaction (or rather, a dispersed series of reactions and interactions). One day the fuel runs out, and the heat dissipates, and there is no more “work” for anything to do, as entropy finally maximizes. But then there will be nothing to maintain the expansion process, and it *should* all eventually get sucked back together to a singularity. I could imagine that all matter in the universe being sucked back together into a single point, could possibly generate enough energy to cause another big-bang.
As time goes on, supercomputers keep crunching more data, and people keep having new ideas, and our predictive capacity both sharpens and increases, allowing us to more effectively “look into the future.”
Besides, black holes don’t really erase anything. They’re not really “holes.” They’re giant phenomena with astronomical mass and gravity. Basically, they grow exponentially as they consume, until they get so big they tear themselves apart.
Check out the “gravastar” concept.
The reason we “matter,” is because we are able to think and act and experience a life. It has nothing to do with how miniscule we are, compared to the rest of the universe.
I can’t wait for the earth and the sun to die. I think it’s going to happen soon in some kind of unforeseen catastrophe. It would be a great thing to end the torture of living beings on this stupid rock. I do think how insignificant I am every day. Even in a small crowd of people I get overwhelmed at how may people exist. Imagine how many people have existed and died before us throughout history. The vast majority of them un-exceptional, completely forgotten. Even the most famous of people will be forgotten one day. Take a walk down the street imagine how many bugs exist. There are way too many of us, living things, for no reason. I’ll be glad to go when my number is called, just rather not exist than live in a world of suffering.