Getting back to the Big Picture

The Earth changes. It always has. It always will. To the best guesses of our scientific research, this little planet has been through drastic changes since it first took shape from an enormous cloud of cosmic dust and gases. The creation process would have taken so long that humans cannot grasp the time concept. At some point along the way, very gradually mind you, living things began to populate this planet. There is no way for us to know how this started, but there are many wild guesses out there.

Is it possible that a bunch of hydrogen, oxygen, sodium, potassium, calcium, carbon, and other elements just happened to form together under just the right conditions to make some proteins that went on to form some DNA strands, that developed into a single celled organism, which then started to evolve over millennia until we have millions of diverse bacterial, viral, plant, and animal species? Even by the best efforts of a Hollywood SciFi movie, this seems quite far-fetched to me. However, one thing that is a must with science is to keep an open mind and remember how difficult it is to prove any theory, especially when you’re talking about a microscopic event that happened millions of years ago which could never be tested or proven in a laboratory.

Some think that a supernatural force planned and placed everything here. The number of religions from recorded human history is astounding, but most center on the belief that a God or Gods put us here. Many feel that our every move is being watched and recorded as if we are all rats in a laboratory maze. Some religions make claim that their religion is to be the only one and those who think differently are wrong. The number of wars fought over these beliefs and the number of people killed in the name of religion is staggering. A very egotistical view held by many religions is that humans on Earth are the only intelligent beings in the universe.

Then there is the fringe element who thinks life either moved here from another planet, or by chance arrived in some form carried on a comet or other debris that crashed into the Earth during the formation of our solar system. Again, not something that could ever be positively proven or disproved with the scientific methods we have available. So let’s try to look at the bigger picture for a moment.

Here are a few bits that we do know from scientific observations. Our Sun is but one of at least 200,000,000,000 stars and perhaps as many at 400,000,000,000 stars in just this one galaxy. Since the Hubble telescope has been making observations of deep space, we have found that there are at least 125,000,000,000 galaxies within range of our detection in the known universe. For the sake of simple math, if each galaxy contained the same number of stars, that is about 25,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars. If only 1 in a million has a planet system and only 1 in a million of those has a terrestrial planet and only 1 in a million terrestrial planets has conditions capable of supporting life, that would still give 25,000 possible living planets, perhaps some very similar to our own Earth. I for one am willing to bet there are at least that many with some form of life. There is one Hubble photo in particular that was taken of a very small patch of dark space where no Earth-based observations have seen anything before. There are literally thousands of distant galaxies visible in that section of sky, which you could cover up with the tip of a pencil held at arm’s length.

The question that immediately comes to my mind is what is beyond what the Hubble can see? There must be something. The universe can’t just stop at an abrupt edge somewhere. But then, maybe it stops at a giant glass wall, which turns out to be the inner surface of a sphere being carried around on a cat’s collar. The point is, we are but a minute speck in the cosmos.

So, if life formed here from zip, then it has probably happened elsewhere. If there is a higher power or God, then there are probably other solar systems full of people. Otherwise, the rest of the universe would just be a waste of space, right? If life crashed here from somewhere else, then we have to revert back to the original question for the point of origin, so it is moot. There is much debate between religion and science over “creation” vs. “evolution”. That will be an article for a future installment.

Again, the sheer size of these numbers is beyond the grasp of most people. However, anyone who passed Logic 101 must admit that the possibility of our human race being the only intelligent life is just wrong. The numbers are full force against it. Now, to flip this concept just a bit, do you think that the universe cares at all about our presence on this planet? Nope. Don’t even need to ponder that one. The planet, solar system, galaxy, universe, everything out there doesn’t care we are here. Where am I going with this? In order to understand ourselves, we need to be reminded just how small and insignificant we are in the big picture. And we need to remember how much we don’t really know about the universe and even our own planet.

It is when we forget how small we are that things go amuck. People start having delusions of grandeur and think that they are the most important thing. My religion is right so I make an army and go conquer and forcibly convert those of other religions, or kill them if they refuse. You look or think differently than I, so you must be inferior and my people will enslave or murder your people. You have more (insert anything here) than I, so I must take it from you. You live on a different street than I do, so I’m going to kill you. You released an insignificant quantity of gasses into the air by burning a hydrocarbon, therefore you are destroying our planet and you must be stopped. What?

In all seriousness, if you take the time to ponder how insignificant humans are and you take a step back and look through the daily load of “news” that is put out; you can start to see how most of our problems are caused by people thinking they are important. Alas, it’s not entirely that simple to fix, because people are also quite stubborn. But we must also realize that we cannot “fix” others; that is up to them. We are only responsible for ourselves and our children.

For now, I just want you to go outside on a clear night, lay back and gaze up at the cosmos. If you’re one of those city-dwellers, you’ll have to take a trip out to the country to do this, but trust me it will be worth the effort. Find a dark spot, preferably in a quiet natural setting, kick back, clear your mind and gaze. The light you are seeing from the stars actually left those stars years ago because they are so distant. While there are a few close stars, the vast majority of them transmitted the light you are seeing right now hundreds and thousands of years ago. In fact, as the universe is in constant motion, the stars you are looking at are not even in the same place now. They have moved, new ones have formed, and old ones have died. Allow yourself to become immersed in this concept and try to visualize just how tiny we are. Once you come to that realization, you’re on your way to an understanding of how to fix the little problems of today.