Another Time Round

In approximately 4 hours as of the beginning of this post, I'll have achieved somewhere around 24 rotations of Sol on this crazy rock hurtling through space that we call Earth.

It's not a bad way to hurtle through space at something like 67,000 miles an hour.

That's pretty fast. At least comparatively. For us, the fastest man made vehicle (considered to be the Space Shuttles) can travel around 9, 528.12 meters/second in the atmosphere or more, which is about 6 miles a second, and thus around 6*60*60 = 21600 miles an hour.

Then again, light travels at 299,792,458 m/s in a vacuum, which is a big ass number in miles/hour.

So compared to our puny definitions of speed, based on what human beings have been able to travel at, the Earth is the one to beat. When compared with light though. It might as well be standing still.

The reason I'm going through this (somewhat) tedious speed analysis is basically to draw a little mind picture of perspective.

We are small. Very small. Incredibly small. Some would say we are insignificant. I agree that we are incredibly small, moving on a rock through space around one of billions of stars with the next nearest star to ours, Alpha Centauri (which is actually three stars) approximately 4.37 light years away. Remember that light travels at around 16,108,252 times the speed of our Earth. For earth to even travel the distance that light travels in one year, we'd have to have a planet around three and a half times older than it is. In order then for it to travel to Alpha Centauri, it would have to be nearly 16 times older than it is (Assumed at around 4.5 billion years). Lets keep in mind that a generous estimate of the earliest humans is put at 200,000 years ago. That implies that we've been around for around 1/360th of the time needed to traverse the distance to the nearest star to ours on the fastest vehicle we have: the Earth.

That's only the closest. No one knows the true expanse of the Universe, although it is generally agreed through rampant estimation that there are around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

Alpha Centauri and Sol make up four of those.

Here's another way of looking at it. Lets say we live 100 years and that all stars are equally spaced (They aren't due to the distances between galaxies, but this is for simplicity's sake).

In order to visit one star that is not ours, we'd have to live 720,000 times longer than we do. In order to visit all stars... we'd have to live, assuming perfect course choice among stars, 720,000 * 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = 720,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times longer than we do. Seven Hundred and Twenty Septillion times longer.

We are incredibly small.

I would argue that we're not insignificant. We can in our heads visit the end of the Universe. We can travel at speeds overtaking anything that nature can do. We can create and destroy our ownUniverses, we can do amazing things.

All by just closing your eyes and imagining it.

Imagination is what makes us significant, for even though we may never physically visit the furthest stars, probe the deepest secrets of the Universe, we can already do it in our minds. Anything that can exist, the mind can contrive of, there is no limit on human imagination.

Push yours once in a while.

As I reach what is (nearly) a quarter of my life by my assumed standards I like to think that I've lived more than many people get to in their whole lives. Who knows what will happen in the future for sure? I know that I see a future in my mind for the human race. It's private, my ideal society.

I also have explored more than many others will get to. Exercize your imagination... be light! Be a wave and a particle at the same time and blast through space. Or be something more! Be a spiral, a springloaded beam of intelligence speeding up and slowing down as you compact and spring out through the depths of eternity. Fly around the sun, take a trip to Mars. Go anywhere you want.

I've got (maybe) another 76 trips around Sol on this planet.

I intend to enjoy every single one of them.