Just How Big Is The Universe?

I have quite a fair knowledge of the universe and our standing in it.  I have grasped the idea of its expanse, but I know that I cannot fully comprehend just how large that is.

It is very rare I have to go into detail about anything because usually there isn’t anyone around me that shares my interest in this subject, but on February the 21^st a little miracle happened.  Whilst we were driving back home my partner turned to me.  She wanted to know what the big bright star was that was to the bottom right of the moon.  She suggested that it was the North Star but I had told her that I was sure it was a planet.  As it got darker another star appeared to the top right of the bright star.  This was a reddish colour and it had begun to perk her interests.

Later on I looked into it for us and it turned out to be Venus and Mars.  My partner was astonished that she could not only see them but that she didn’t realise they were so close.  I began to explain to her that they were not close at all and in fact for us to travel there would take quite a while.

She then asked another question, she wanted to know how close the nearest star was to us.  I looked it up and it was roughly around 4.25 light years away.  Her obvious reaction was to try and work that out into something more fathomable based on our terms.  It equated to over 160 trillion miles – she was blown away.

I then tried to put something together for her hypothetically for her to try and understand how vast the universe is.

This is what I explained to her:

The universe does not work on our theory of time, it just exists and we try to interpret it into something understandable and useful.  Imagine if we had the technology right now to travel billions of light years from earth and then look back.  Imagine that we had a super powerful telescope so we could zoom right in on the planet. What would we see?  If we timed it right, we would be able to see the dinosaurs walking around!  We would be able to look back in time and see the planet in a much earlier state.  This is because of the distance we are away from the earth.  If we were 1 billion light years from earth and the planet were to explode, we would not see it for 1 billion years.

It really is hard to comprehend when you’re working with an expanse as vast as the universe.

Realising I Will Never Touch The Stars

I often find myself saying one simple line to answer certain questions – Never say never.  I am a firm believer in the thought that anything is possible.  How can you say now to what you do not know about tomorrow?  However, I am starting to realise that I will never touch the stars.  The thoughts I had growing up of being able to travel around in space to other worlds always excited me.  Seeing programmes on the TV like Star Trek and Stargate always kept me thinking that one day this could all be possible.  What I could not comprehend back then though was the time it would take to develop a new type of technology like this.  Something completely unknown being invented to propel man further and faster into space than previously achieved before. 

Whilst I have always realised that I would never really be traveling in space myself, it was more mankind as a collective breaking the boundaries and pressing on with discovery that tantalised my mind.  I would love to hear that a new type of spacecraft has been designed that will take a team to a distant earth like planet. I would then be waiting eagerly on the edge of my seat waiting for the results.

However, knowledge has grounded my thoughts of ambition.  Although I can still say that you can never say never, the fact of the matter is that technologically we are nowhere near even creating a prototype, ideas have floated around but at the moment the thought of traveling to a distant planet in a human’s lifetime is impossible.

I have to come to terms with the fact that I will probably live out my life never knowing if there were other possibilities out there.  But does this say more about me than I would care to believe?  I have only just asked myself this question as I have wrote to this point.  It has never previously crossed my mind, but should I be satisfied with what I have?  After all, we are incredibly lucky to have not only evolved but to also be at the top of the food chain.  I have a life that is of better quality than anything before and here I am writing a post about still wanting to reach for more.

Having paused for almost 5 minutes whilst pondering what I have just wrote, I am going to chalk this one down to human nature.  It is not within us to just be content.  Set your mind wondering and it will trigger a world of possibilities in your imagination.  I am the happiest I have ever been in my life but I will still continue to look at the stars and wonder.  This is not because I am unsatisfied in life, but because I am a curious little being who lives on a rock that has helped my species evolve to understand, and more importantly, to dream!

Ancient Visitors

I go through life with an open mind about everything. There are very few things that I can say 100% that I do not believe in because in my eyes, anything could be possible given the knowledge of its process. I’m sure that hundreds of years ago the thought of having light at the flick of a switch without a flame would have been an impossible thought. The idea of watching a box with a glass front that shows pictures and sound would have been a marvel, yet here we are with it all around us taking everything for granted without giving it a seconds thought.

What if we wanted to think bigger? What if we look to the skies for inspiration on this thought? More specifically out in to space. How could those reported flying discs have made it all the way to our planet? What are they doing here and how did they get here? The theory is that nothing can travel faster than light so disregarding any wormhole theories or the bending of space itself then we have a bit of a pickle.

 

I watched a program on the TV the other day called Ancient Aliens. A lot of it seemed like ‘episode fillers’ in my opinion but there are a few things that stick in my mind.  Particularly the ancient depictions and drawings of the visitors from out of space. They seem incredibly human like in most cases, but what if they were human? How could that be possible? Well here is a curved ball I will throw out there. Given my initial thought that anything could be possible with the right knowledge, who is to say that those ancient visitors and the discs that some people claim to see flying around the world are not humans from the future? What if somewhere in the distant future some clever scientists put their minds together and devised a way to travel back in time? We would not be able to see much evidence of this because no doubt it would be heavily policed. As with any society though there are always law breakers, maybe somewhere, someone decided to go back in time and help the civilizations of the past. It would certainly give an explanation as to how certain things were built or created that seem far too advanced for its time and in some cases too advance for us.

Is it possible that the pictures and carvings we see of the people of the skies are actually humans from the future? Well all I can say is it's certainly not impossible!