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Rants >> Rant 333

::Today's soundtrack: Tom Lehrer "The Periodic Table of Elements Song" ::


I often talk about things which annoy or bother me. Well, today I'm going to mix it up a bit and talk about something that I actually like. Weird, I know. Something that I like and enjoy reading and looking at is space. And by "space" I mean outer space. The moon, the stars, the planets, theories as to what may or may not be out there, pictures of planets and nebulas... I love that stuff.

I suppose what makes space so fascinating for one thing is that it is so vast. I mean we have no idea how much of it there is out there. We've only viewed a small portion of it. And that's only what we CAN see. Nevermind the stuff we can't. Sure we've got photos of distant stars and planets, but not inside their atmospheres, not of their surfaces. Just seeing that a planet is there is only a small portion of the picture. What's down there? Why, ANYTHING could be. And when I say anything, it is meant truly as literally as could be. I mean, these are other planets in other galaxies! They could be made of elements completely unknown to us! Just because such a thing is not present (or dare I say, not yet discovered) on Earth doesn't mean couldn't possibly have formed somewhere out there. Why, a planet in another galaxy could have a completely different Periodic Table than what we know!

And if the basic make up of a foreign planet can be totally different than what is known on Earth, who's to say that life wouldn't exist in a totally different way? It may not be carbon based or water dependent at all! It could something that looks like sand to us or tar. And I'm talking any sort of life here. A plant or an animal... they could be comprised of anything or operate on levels we cannot even imagine.

When I hear someone say that there is no other life out there in space, well, I cannot believe it. The entire breadth and width of the universe is so vast, the odds against our planet being the only one with life on it well, they're astronomical. How many stars are there? And how many more planets? There are some we can't even see. Many we are not even aware of existing. People who say there is no other life often use the argument that they would have contacted us. Well, they could be just as unaware of us as we are of them! Why do you always think of super-advanced space people when they could be thousands or millions of years behind us in development? Or, what if, life has come and gone on another planet? What if they evolved so long ago that they are now extinct? We may NEVER know about them. Heck, we can barely find the proof of old life on our own planet, nevermind one we have never even set a foot on.

The photos of space phenomena just serve to heighten my imagination and never cease to send my mind reeling, both intellectually and from sheer awesome beauty. It is nearly impossible to comprehend that we have seen, actually seen, photographs of an entire galaxy. A galaxy can contain an average of a BILLION stars. Think about our one star, The Sun, and our neighbouring planets. Now think of that multiplied by one billion. All in one photo. And it is beautiful. A big glowing spiral set against a sea of black.

And we're in one of those. A big, glowing spiral of a galaxy, constantly spinning our way through space. There are other galaxies doing exactly that, too. And all of the galaxies are supposedly spinning around something together as well. Think about this: our planets spin around our sun. Our sun spins around the center of our galaxy (a black hole?). Our galaxy spins around... the center of the universe? What is that? What could be so immensely powerful as to pull GALAXIES into orbit? A super-black hole of some kind? IS there even a center of the universe? If there is a center of the universe, does that mean there is an outer edge? That can't be possible, can it? The "universe" pretty much describes "everything" in the entirety of perception, that being everything in space-time (or something). Is it possible that there is an edge to perception? And now I just had a stroke. Thanks, universe.

The vastness of the universe, encapsulating space-time, therefore containing everything there is... clusters.... galaxies.... solar systems... planets... and then there's me. A tiny speck in the universe. Floating on this little, insignificant, but gorgeous, blue ball in blackness of space. If I'm this tiny speck on this tiny blue sphere, in my tiny galaxy what other oddities are drifting out there? The sheer odds against my coming into existence are high, and yet here I am. What else is going on out there? Things that I cannot even believe or understand? Things no one can understand? Me? I cannot WAIT to find out.

William the Bloody (And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.)

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