We human beings spend most of our time thinking only about our day-to-day lives. We get ourselves fed and watered. We need a comfy place to sleep. We have to poop and pee. We toil away at school or work or whatever occupies our daily routine.
After we get these basic needs fulfilled, we start worrying about things like religion and politics and the environment. We buy smartphones and cars and condos. We get pets. We go to parties. We're born, we live and we die.
Most human beings don't end up travelling more than a few kilometres from where they were born. Some of us move away, and some of us travel. But even then, we're never really that far from home.
A walk down to the corner shop may seem like a huge distance when it's 37 degrees outside, but that's nothing compared to boarding a train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. And that's nothing compared to getting on a 747 for a 20-hour flight to Los Angeles.
But all those worries, concerns and distances are nothing if you take a few moments to think a little bigger — well, a lot bigger.
Our little planet is located in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way itself is about 100,000 light years across, and is located in what's called the Local Cluster, which is in turn part of the Virgo Super Cluster. The Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy are the major galaxies in this super cluster.
And all of that is just the beginning. Our little super cluster is still just a tiny speck when compared to the Observable Universe, which we currently think is about 93 billion light years across. Beyond that, we just don't know. The universe could go on. It could curve back on itself. There may be countless universes in the Multiverse. Now that's big.
But to take it back down a few notches, consider our own Milky Way Galaxy once again. As I said before, it's somewhere around 100,000 light years across. That means that light from a star on one side of the galaxy takes 100,000 years to reach the other side. That's a long time.
The written history of Humanity began around 8,000 years ago, give or take. We can look at the light from a star that's 8,000 light years away and know that our ancestors were just beginning to get the hang of scratching symbols on rocks and clay tablets when that light left its star. For all we know, that star might have burned out thousands of years ago, and we're looking at its ghost.
I like to think about stuff like this a lot. It helps me gain perspective, and hopefully not take myself quite so seriously. We are so very tiny. All of our wars and turmoil and love and hate all happen in a tiny fraction of an instant on a tiny dot in a tiny galaxy in a vast universe.
But it still feels like a really long walk to the 7-Eleven.
Sean Vale
Editor
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