I Was Called A Downer Once
We live in a very large corner that is somewhere in another, even larger corner. We aren’t the center of it all, nor are we really all that special when compared to everything else out there.
In that image above, most of those beautiful twinkling lights hold planets. Most with more than one, some are alone, and others have neighbors. None are more noticeable than others (well, save for the stars being born in that large bright area eventually though, even those will leave their cosmic nursery and join the others in relative anonymity). Anyway.
Our home is the Milky Way. It is only one of countless galaxies, each essentially indiscernible from the rest. It’s floating along amid a mass of other, equally as indiscernible galaxies. Really, just masses of gas and light spinning out in the middle of nothing.
Image: NASA
Just, silently floating along aside our cosmic neighbors.
Image:BellaCielo | DeviantArt
Which, some suspect may not even be that spectacular. Our universe could potentially be one of an almost infinite amount.
Image: NOVA
Even our own corner isn’t anything to write home about when compared to the rest of what we know about.
Image: NASA/ Voyager 1
Our own home is one of 8 (or 9, depending on your opinion and love of Pluto) and comparatively small- tiny even.
Really tiny (including Sol, you wouldn’t be able to see Earth).
Image: Carlton.eduAs Carl Sagan Said (in regards to the Pale Blue Dot image):
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Look again at that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
That us. In the middle of a vast nothing. With expanses between things are far too large for our minds to truly comprehend. Expanses that are really tiny in the grander scheme of everything.
Now, with all of this said: You are not at the center of it all.
Now, I know there’s someone you want to send this link to so here you go copy and paste:< a href="http://notquitecookiecutter.com/2011/03/i-was-called-a-downer-once/"><img src="http://notquitecookiecutter.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Not.png" alt="You Aren’t the Center of the Universe" /></a>
