Space is really big

AndromedaIt’s a little disheartening to think about the vastness of space, especially in contrast to the shortness of our lives. We talk about a “close” star being only 50 light years away — but holy cow. If my mother sent a message when I was born, I’d be dead before the congratulations ever got back from E.T.

Our 90ish years (and that’s only if I quit eating so much pizza) is such a small amount of time, that it’s a wonder any of us have bothered to discover the cosmos at all. It would be easy for a pessimist like myself to just forget about it. And yet, even I stare up at a billion year old picture of our universe every night, dreaming myself amongst the stars.

So what’s a 30+ year old man to do with himself? My only hope of travelling the cosmos will come from an amazing physicist here on earth discovering something “impossible”, or more likely an alien species gifting us interstellar magics. It’s quite a sad day when the more likely event is that of little green men coming to the rescue. Plus, in either event, *I* am really not a likely candidate for the free ride in a space car. I’m just a guy that wears a Spongebob t-shirt on the weekends…

Hmm, what are my choices? Freeze myself, in the hopes that in 1,000,000 years our descendants will just be aching to thaw out a Neanderthal like myself? Give up and drop some acid for a special “trip” of my own? (The answer there being “NO” of course…)

What I do is what mankind has always done — all that we can. I’ll keep reading science fiction books, watch on streaming TV when the space shuttle takes off, and prepare myself for huge philosophical debates when it turns out there is microscopic life on Mars. 🙂 I can only hope that our (by “our” I mean our generation) discoveries can help someday bring mankind to better and clearer understanding. And maybe, just maybe, evolve our collective intellect enough to handle an interstellar world. We can’t even handle an intercontinental one now…

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