I have been watching Hubble Telescope images of the universe on YouTube - mind blowing. 'THE' picture to check out is the one of Hubble deep field, where it takes the darkest spot of the universe and zooms in - and voila - a bazillion galaxies are there!
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| Hubble Deep Field Picture |
I have also been reading here and there about 'life on earth' - starting with a 'A short history of nearly everything,' by Bill Bryson, which is a tour de force in this regard. There is an excellent article in the Atlantic Monthly this past month on Neandrathals. They were on this earth for 250,000 years. They were here 5X what we modern humans have been thus far. Life on earth is 3.8 billion years! (Holi Tamoli!)
In percentage terms, assuming we humans have been around 50,000 years - humans as a percentage of life on earth are 50,000 / 3,800,000,000 = 0.0013 %
If we drew a vertical axis line for life on earth - we as humans (for the entire time we have been around) will barely make a small sliver of a notch at the edge of such a scale.
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| See 'the thin blue line' at the bottom! |
Even more, the universe is estimated to be 13.7 B years old. So human span as a percentage of life of the universe is 0.0003%.
Neither in terms of time, nor in terms of space are we significant at all. Just the Thin Blue Line in the time-scale picture above!
From the time the mythical apple fell on Newton's head, (or from the time Aristotle & co put an emphasis on human reason), to the time humans launched a rocket to the moon, was a flick of the geological eyelid.
It is not inconceivable in 100,000 years (2X all of human history) or 200,000 years (4X) that we could be launching rockets and space ships with humans to explore worlds beyond our solar system.
Blogs may not be around. Facebook may not be around. Yahoo groups may not be around. But here and now, a three cheers to the exploratory power of humans anyway!
One last thought. I just read Brian Greene's piece that our universe is but one universe in a sea of bubbles, with each bubble being its own universe.
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| Blue Hills Hiking |
2 comments:
just mind RATTLING ( NOT MIND BOGGLING) FIGURES . Instead of calling thin blue line we may even say the unseen line, because human race is nothing in comparision with the time and age of our earth and our universe which happens to one among of billions of universes .
Very much enjoyed this as it’s something I think about a lot too. If science should have taught us anything, it’s that, along with what amazing animals we are to have figure all this out, also how damn insignificant we are for all that.
As a side note, when I first read the subject line and then the mention the Hubble telescope in the link, I’d assumed your piece as going to be about one of those amazing pictures of earth from space that show a very thin blue line enveloping the planet – our atmosphere – sandwiched between the hugeness of the planet itself and the vastness of black space
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