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The Universe, in perspective.

Posted by Darth Alex Humva , Jan 25 2013 · 93 views

In neat bulletin points too.

There are between 200-400 million stars in our galaxy.
There are between 400 billion to a trillion observable galaxies, and we discover new ones every day.
This means there are 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the observable universe, according to the higher estimates.
This is merely the observable universe, which due to the expansion of space and the speed of light, is only a tiny fraction of the greater expanse. Even ignoring the fact that space is infinite (matter and energy are not, however), what we see only accounts for a tiny part of a much greater whole.
This ultimately rounds out to the fact that the universe is a pretty big place.

So next time you look up at the sky at night and ponder your significance in the greater scheme of things, remember that the universe is massive and you are tiny. Don't feel too bad about that though, because for all your tininess, you possess something we have yet to encounter in that great expanse; the ability to realize your insignificance and from that, paradoxically, your significance for being able to realize that.

Though, when the aliens invade, this might lose some of its impact.

The Inquisitive Automaton

Jan 25 2013 01:16 PM

Bloody aliens. Coming over here, stealing our significance...

Legolover-361

Jan 25 2013 02:14 PM

What significance is there to steal from us?

Ymper Trymon

Jan 26 2013 10:58 PM

It was going well until you got to what you think our reason for being important is. It's not the ability to recognize our smallness in the universe, it's the ability to say, "Hm, no, that can't be right. Here, I'll go ahead and write 'Kilroy was here' on that planet, that ought to fix it" after recognizing how small we are.

This blog

WARNING:

The following blog contains excessive rambling on the world and extremely poor paragraphing. If you are easily offended or turned off by these two things, leaving now would be a good idea.

This blog is written by Alex Humva, penname of some random teenager named Alex Censored. He writes stories, writes rants, writes screenplays, plays games, makes games, has a terrible work ethic, and is generally sarcastic. He believes in a Judao-Christian god, but most other people who do too give him a glare because of his weird beliefs, possibly because he's somehow bi at the same time. He's an utter equalist who feels that any discrimination amongst humans for things they were born with is wrong. He doesn't care about xenos though, let them all burn.

He's also an aspiring engineer who hopes to get a scholarship at his local big engineering college and one day help humanity. More likely he'll be a pencil pusher in a basement somewhere, but he's a bloody minded optimist.

Because of his peculiar personality and beliefs, he gets into fights often, though they usually end when he wakes up the next morning and doesn't feel motivated anymore.