Philosophy
Have you ever felt really really really tiny? Like microscopic tiny?
In case you're feeling too high and mighty today, I found out today that our galaxy, - just our galaxy - the Milky Way is a hundred thousand light years wide in diameter, end to end.
A light year is not a measure of time. It's a measure of distance. It's the distance that a beam of light can travel in one year [365 days]. Light travels at 300,000 kilometers per second. So in a year, it travels about 9467280000000 [9.46728 x 1012] kilometers. And the Milky Way is a hundred thousand light years across. That's about 9467280000000000000 kilometers. There are 13 zeros after the '8'. And that's just one galaxy in this Universe which has 25 billion galaxies that are the size of our's.
OK, I admit I've been watching the National Geographic Channel again. I feel so small, so utterly insignificant, so dot-esque - like a microbe. I compare myself inside this humongous Universe to a microbe in this world... but if microbes could think, how small would they think they are, in comparision with this Universe? What would they compare themselves to?
Why do we fight to gain control of the entire world? The Earth is such a small ball compared to the Universe! The Earth is about one part out of six hundred billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion parts of the entire Universe. Is it really worth all this death, all this killing to get control of this tiny thing called Earth? Why are things sometimes labeled as "universal" when they serve such a small part of the Universe?
In other, completely unrelated news.. Abu Mus'ab az-Zarqawi has been killed. He was Al-Qae'da's mastermind in Iraq and was commanding a killing spree that targeted Shi'ite Muslims and foreigners.
In yet other news, my illness is sort of going away. My nose is a little less blocked and the fever's completely gone. All because of my dahling mother's home remedies of taking steams [inhaling steam to open the sinus up] and drinking turmeric-cum-saffron flavored milk. No, not that 'cum'! I can still taste the cardamom in my mouth.
The point of this post? We live in huge universe and we're very, very small. We ought to stop squabbling so much; we must stop whoring ourselves to guns, tanks and nuclear warheads; we must stop selling ourselves to violence - we should just listen to our mommies and drink the turmeric milk.
In case you're feeling too high and mighty today, I found out today that our galaxy, - just our galaxy - the Milky Way is a hundred thousand light years wide in diameter, end to end.
A light year is not a measure of time. It's a measure of distance. It's the distance that a beam of light can travel in one year [365 days]. Light travels at 300,000 kilometers per second. So in a year, it travels about 9467280000000 [9.46728 x 1012] kilometers. And the Milky Way is a hundred thousand light years across. That's about 9467280000000000000 kilometers. There are 13 zeros after the '8'. And that's just one galaxy in this Universe which has 25 billion galaxies that are the size of our's.
OK, I admit I've been watching the National Geographic Channel again. I feel so small, so utterly insignificant, so dot-esque - like a microbe. I compare myself inside this humongous Universe to a microbe in this world... but if microbes could think, how small would they think they are, in comparision with this Universe? What would they compare themselves to?
Why do we fight to gain control of the entire world? The Earth is such a small ball compared to the Universe! The Earth is about one part out of six hundred billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion billion parts of the entire Universe. Is it really worth all this death, all this killing to get control of this tiny thing called Earth? Why are things sometimes labeled as "universal" when they serve such a small part of the Universe?
In other, completely unrelated news.. Abu Mus'ab az-Zarqawi has been killed. He was Al-Qae'da's mastermind in Iraq and was commanding a killing spree that targeted Shi'ite Muslims and foreigners.
In yet other news, my illness is sort of going away. My nose is a little less blocked and the fever's completely gone. All because of my dahling mother's home remedies of taking steams [inhaling steam to open the sinus up] and drinking turmeric-cum-saffron flavored milk. No, not that 'cum'! I can still taste the cardamom in my mouth.
The point of this post? We live in huge universe and we're very, very small. We ought to stop squabbling so much; we must stop whoring ourselves to guns, tanks and nuclear warheads; we must stop selling ourselves to violence - we should just listen to our mommies and drink the turmeric milk.