This is a picture I took I can’t remember how many years ago now. It was dusk, having a cookout at my moms house, and I was laying on the grass and this was what I was observing. The colors and the light compliment each other so well I had to snap a pic. But keep in mind that this was, at this particular time of day, what was shown to me. Had it been a later hour, the view would’ve been much different.
This sort of represents in a nutshell how we have learned about our universe. What we see in our own system only accounts for 4 percent of the known universe. As we’ve discussed previously, other forces such as dark matter and dark energy are theorized to make up that other 96 percent. So that other major part of the universe, the parts that we don’t know, are propelled by things we don’t know.
Consider the video below. I’ll spare the explanation, because it’s simply breathtaking.
We have our technology to aid us in observing majestic sights such as the Andromeda Galaxy in the video. Realistically however, all we really have to expand our knowledge of these things is to analyze our own system. And it makes sense, given how old our galaxy is. We live on a celestial snow-globe, attempting to reach and discover the outside world that resides around us. And this outside world happens to be over a million billion astronomical units (and for reference, one astronomical unit is equal to 93 million miles).
There’s a carl Sagan quote that sums up everything rather nicely. Melancholic? yes. Cynical? yes. Does it put things into perspective? Absolutely. And while this quote is more about the idea of finding purpose and meaning on our tiny blue ball, to me it represents more of how small we are, and how there is still a whole lot out there that has yet to be discovered.
It's All Out There 