I am 4,000,000,000 years young.
I don't know what it is about science classes or science fiction, good science fiction, or the change of weather that gets me thinking about these things. I just know that today I felt young. Four billion years young. I choose that number because we don't know how far or fast the universe has expanded, the light from the edge hasn't reached us yet, slow thing that it is. So I pull from my hat the age of this place, colliquially known as 'the third rock from the sun'.
It's stirring, don't you think, that maybe just as little as 15 billion years ago we were all jam-packed into one crazy little ball. Maybe it was too much. Maybe it was physics. Maybe it was (a) God(s). Maybe it was that joke I told. But whatever the reason, we all left. Everything that is or was, once was there, one big happy family that found it had to strike out and expand.
But not all of us decided to leave one another. As particles coalessed, they came to form bodies such as stars, nebulae, galaxies. Each one a piece of that original puzzle, unable and unwilling to seperate themselves from each other. Ionic forces, hydrogen bonds, gravity... all a part of a cosmic courtship and a continual family reunion.
Finally, some of those particles came together 4 billion years ago and began spinning in a whirlpool from here to Neptune. Sorry Pluto, you're a Kupier guy now. Some of our friends stayed farther out, a lot of them did. Even more had to get to the hot spot in the center, always social climbers. But enough of them stayed around in a particular spot that coincidentally just happens to be one AU from the star, howaboutthat?
Oh, the particles form and reform. Shapes may change, and we're added to and lost. Some of us has been cosmic radiation, ferns in Africa, water in the Pacific, maybe some of us have even been lucky enough to have had a part in a dinosaur (or two if one was hungry.)
But think about it. Just. Think. About. It. For the most part... by and large... the basic blocks of you, me, and anyone you meet on Any Given Day is made up of the same particles, the same matter, the same starstuff that's been travelling together since The Beginning Of Time.
It's been a hell of a (approximatly) 15 billion years, hasn't it?
It's stirring, don't you think, that maybe just as little as 15 billion years ago we were all jam-packed into one crazy little ball. Maybe it was too much. Maybe it was physics. Maybe it was (a) God(s). Maybe it was that joke I told. But whatever the reason, we all left. Everything that is or was, once was there, one big happy family that found it had to strike out and expand.
But not all of us decided to leave one another. As particles coalessed, they came to form bodies such as stars, nebulae, galaxies. Each one a piece of that original puzzle, unable and unwilling to seperate themselves from each other. Ionic forces, hydrogen bonds, gravity... all a part of a cosmic courtship and a continual family reunion.
Finally, some of those particles came together 4 billion years ago and began spinning in a whirlpool from here to Neptune. Sorry Pluto, you're a Kupier guy now. Some of our friends stayed farther out, a lot of them did. Even more had to get to the hot spot in the center, always social climbers. But enough of them stayed around in a particular spot that coincidentally just happens to be one AU from the star, howaboutthat?
Oh, the particles form and reform. Shapes may change, and we're added to and lost. Some of us has been cosmic radiation, ferns in Africa, water in the Pacific, maybe some of us have even been lucky enough to have had a part in a dinosaur (or two if one was hungry.)
But think about it. Just. Think. About. It. For the most part... by and large... the basic blocks of you, me, and anyone you meet on Any Given Day is made up of the same particles, the same matter, the same starstuff that's been travelling together since The Beginning Of Time.
It's been a hell of a (approximatly) 15 billion years, hasn't it?