Feeling Small

I was just compiling a folder with all of the hubby's latest finds on the internet. I was looking through some stuff and stumbled over this gem of astronomy:

Size chart of the solar system and selected stars

Looking at charts like that, videos, and documentaries about the vastness, the wonders, and the forces of the space makes me feel humble and small. There is so much out there we cannot even start to understand, to begin with the endlessness of space. One of the brightest stars on our night sky, Betelgeuse, is most likely to go supernova during the next one million earth years. The supernova will outshine the moon during the night and be clearly visible by day over a period of two to three weeks. How will the world look at this point? Will our decendents be able to witness this epic stellar event or will life be extinct by then?

The hubby and I love to watch "The Universe" series, and the girls are already hooked as well. There's so much yet to be learned and discovered. Do I think there is life out there? I definitely do. There are billions of stars, with their very own solar system just in our galaxy. And there are billions of galaxies out there; to me, it simply seems to be more likely that there is life somewhere out there than that we are unique there. Are thos life forms sentient? Maybe. Do they form civilizations like us? Possibly. Are they coming for us? Less likely, just taking the distances into account. It is physically not possible to achieve the speed of light, and it will take many, many generations of ingenious scientists to achieve speed close to light. And even then it would take still take years to reach the closest star in the Centauri system.

Enjoy the view!

Source