I Love Space

I was re-listening to Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" speech, and then I found myself channeling him again, in writing a comment... I tend to do that a lot... but heck, it's not a bad thing that my words end up emulates those of Carl Sagan... that's a good thing. And I'm not going to stop it.

Watch this first:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PN5JJDh78I

Then listen to this while reading my little spiel...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89eaxsthTqc

Saganist: A sentient product of dying stars that follows the wise, echoing, timeless words of the great, legendary Carl Sagan, and dreams of carrying these words and enlightening the world with his resonant philosophies in order to stop this senseless selfishly driven violence that serves no purpose but to drive our world into chaos...

import carlsagan.lgd

A cosmologist may not be god, but one comes as close as possible to godly understanding, of knowledge and truth—harboring the answers to the ultimate questions in existentialism, seeking the Grand Unifying Theory of Everything, to make sense of this 13.7 billion light year ball we call the universe.

It isn't until we gaze up at the stars do we truly realize that we are awfully insignificant. We are a mere infinitesimal on the scale of the cosmos. We are not even a dot. We are not even a pixel. Our reach only extends so far as our atmosphere. We may have stroked the surface of a few planets and moons, a comet, and the far reaches of our solar system, but we are but a pixel in our solar system, which is a mere pixel in our galaxy, which is a pixel among our galaxy clusters, which are pixels among our superclusters, which are pixels in our universe, which is a literal infinitesimal among the infinite number of universes in the multiverse. Even considering chaos theory, our existence simply isn't, on the scale of the universe.

Yet, here we are so awfully insignificant, legends in our own fraction of a pixel of a pixel of a pixel of a pixel of a pixel of an infinitesimal, many unable to appreciate the vastness of the universe. We are inebriated by our own ego; delusional that we are significant. We are far too drunk to realize that we are in fact drunk and drowning in our own flattery. We refuse to realize the truth that we don't in fact matter in the cosmos.

Still, there are a few of us that have woken up. We are the cosmologists, the mathematicians, the stargazers; we are the philosophers, the existentialists, the few privileged individuals on this pale blue dot that have sobered up and know that we will never play a significant role in the cosmos; however, even more sobering is the thought that we even begin to comprehend the cosmos at all. While it is almost certain that life could have evolved elsewhere in the universe numerous times, only a handful of the spawns of life would even come close to understanding the vast cosmos as intimately as we do.

Despite being as tiny and insignificant as we are, we're able to understand something as vast and mysterious as the universe. That is something significant on its own. We are one of the few lifeforms in existence capable of truly comprehending the cosmos, and that makes our existence significant. We may not be able to do much to the cosmos, but we can do all we can do to understand it. We can affect our own world--our pale blue dot. I could not be more privileged than to be blessed with the appreciation of the cosmos and everything in it. If I had to choose between ruler of the world blind to the truth and cosmologist with existential philosophies, I would choose the latter without hesitation.

I'm only a 17 year old girl. There is only so much I can do right now. But I am blessed to have developed an appreciation for this universe at such a young age; that means I have even more time to bring as much new understanding about the cosmos as I possibly can within my lifetime. To others, the sky is the limit. I see no reason to limit myself. I may never physically leave the earth, and it is possible that this is due to unfortunate technological,economical, and political reasons; however, nothing is going to stop me from doing my best to peer into the cosmos to understand something more... something beyond, something bigger, something that created this pale blue dot.

TinkerTheTock

^_^ I was just reading Contact by Carl Sagan.

“At the very moment that humans discovered the scale of the universe and found that their most unconstrained fancies were in fact dwarfed by the true dimensions of even the Milky Way Galaxy, they took steps that ensured that their descendants would be unable to see the stars at all. For a million years humans had grown up with a personal daily knowledge of the vault of heaven. In the last few thousand years they began building and emigrating to the cities. In the last few decades, a major fraction of the human population has abandoned a rustic way of life. As technology developed and the cities were polluted, the nights became starless. New generations grew to maturity wholly ignorant of the sky that had transfixed their ancestors and that had stimulated the modern age of science and technology. Without even noticing, just as astronomy entered a golden age most people cut themselves off from the sky, a cosmic isolationism that ended only with the dawn of space exploration.”
― Carl Sagan, Contact

johnny253

If there is a Multiverse, do you think there is a definitive number and could it be possible that our lives will be repeated over and over and in a real sense our lives will be eternal?

TetrisGuy · 26-30, M

Paranormal experiences are bullshit since it defies science. I'm not close minded. I'm open-minded to things that you know... stay in the realm of possibility and reality and all.