Does the vastness/ science of the universe scare you?

[CrazyOldMe]

Black holes, comets, galaxies... it all makes my lil head hurt! The vastness of everything surrounding us is terrifying though!

At the same time, I love it! I want to know as much as my limits will allow me.

Does anyone understand how it all works? Or how a lay person can start to understand it?

It's the universe!

Utterly fabulous, mysterious and we are all travellers on its path.

That's my take.

You might just have blown my tired mind

'How the Universe was Made' currently on Amazon Prime:
Used to watch this with DS, would recommend to anyone with an interest in space, the planets and black holes! Might just watch it all again
q

Look up 'In A Nutshell' on YouTube

I don't find it terrifying. It's the precondition that all life needs to live. Without the vastness of the universe, none of this would even exist.

Yes all of the above. Blows my mind...can't think about it too long or I just get more baffled. How can space just go on and on...into what....just more and more space, that blows my mind. How there MUST be more planets with life on. There must be, considering we are one planet in one solar system in one galaxy, there are millions of other solar systems we don't even know about, and must be all sorts of life forms out there. It absolutely fascinates me.

Oh we are here because we are increasing entropy in the universe. Apparently photosynthesis etc are an efficient process to increase chaos ,which increases entropy. Disorder is to be expected and what id more disorganised and chaotic then our mundane lunatic daily lives?

yes, stargate, farscape, star trek etc then as you zoom out from our universe then theres no way those galaxies have no life forms etc

No not scared of it. Why would I be? It's something our brains physically cannot comprehend therefore we can't really process it. Not much we can do about it so there's no point worrying about it. It's just another one of the unknowns we will never understand. It's strange we live on a floating planet in the middle of nothingness, yes but I do not let it consume me.

on a clear night, lie on the grass and look up at the stars. Now imagine someone could turn off the gravity holding you onto the grass and you could just fall towards them.

eek! I’m with the pp who needed to go back to bed with a cuppa.

I feel the same. Reminds me life is short and I am utterly insignificant so I may as well feel lucky to be alive and make the most of it.

Yes, yes, yes, 99% of the time I’m just getting on with my life, juggling work and home, worrying about my adult children, looking after my dog who has ‘issues’, caring for my aging parents, doing the housework, struggling with time management, all the general stresses and strains of life these days. But every so often when I get the chance to just sit for a while with a coffee and time to myself my mind drifts away and I consider my existence, humanity, evolution, technology, our place in the vastness of space, how earth became what it is now, how and why humans actually exist, life and all that, our place in the universe. It fries my brain, I mean why do we exist, why do things exist, it’s so unbelievable, so hard to understand when you really think about it. I’m no genius, I’m academic, but artistic not scientific and when my thoughts go that way it blows my fucking mind and leaves me questioning everything.

I'm feeling a bit queasy just reading this 😩

I also get mind blown at the amount of time before humans. If there was a time line going around the top of the room starting from the big bang, humans would only appear at the very last 3mm of the end. 🤯

The fact that for an outside observer we are a water planet. A planet mostly of water with lovely water creatures. It also has bits of land with hundreds of ape things living on it at the moment.

This blows my mind. And the fact that we apparently know more about space than our own seas. We really are nothing on this planet (yet doing the most to destroy it), let alone the universe! We are so irrelevant. Main character syndrome at its finest.

I find it comforting, when we're messing things up so much on Earth, that's there's so much more out there.

Yes It scares me too.

The whole thought of getting launched into space (not that I ever will lol) and that once you’re out there you may never come back if something goes wrong. I could not imagine being an astronaut and being out in space looking back at the earth. That scares me for some reason.

Apparently the universe expands every second of every day. It’s hard to comprehend how big the universe really is, how the universe started, why it started, what was there before it and what may be there beyond the universe now (if anything). I read that scientists believe the universe is possibly rounded and loops back on itself. what I always wonder though, is if our universe is just a small spec in a much bigger universe. The mind boggles and I doubt anyone will ever find out.

A few minutes with the lovely Professor Brian Cox explains it. It's mind boggling, but then I just forget about it and get on with my day.

Can't believe we're this far in and no one has posted this song:

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I love astronomy and find it comforting looking out at the stars and planets, wondering who is out there. In the grand scheme of things, our lives are so short we are really only the merest blip, a chemical reaction, yet we fit so much into that brief spec of time.

If you really want spinning out, think about how amazing it is that life is the universe experiencing itself. Or that we are forged from the leftover materials from star formation.

I'm just sad that we're unlikely to live to the point where we make contact with another planet.

It fairly makes my head spin but also feels oddly comforting. I particularly like that we are made of stardust and are still part of the universe when we die.

Many years ago I sailed in a very remote area of the world. (Too outing to be more specific)

At night, when you took the helm and looked out across the water, there were stars from horizon to horizon… on a 360 basis. There was zero light pollution down there.

It was like being in a ‘star globe’ as opposed to a ‘snow globe’.

I'll never forget it.

Interestingly, I’m completely at home in or on the water. It’s my happy place.
Mountains - especially remote places- completely freak me out.

I love this thread! I'd so love to understand more about space.

https://astronomynow.com/2020/04/03/cosmic-reads-four-great-books-that-explore-the-universe-we-live-in/

Some recommended books

The 'Goldilocks' theory is fascinating.
The many specific circumstances which have come together to make it 'just right' with our planet and our moon and our sun, for life to ignite here. It's mind blowing and such low odds.

It's a matter of logic though surely, that in all the millions of billions of zillions of other galaxies out there those special circumstances are similar?

However not only will it likely be a million billion light years away, but more devastatingly (if you're hoping for contact) our nearest neighbours did their evolving back a million billion years ago, or won't start till a million billion years after we've died out.

So then, the chances that they've evolved highly enough to invent space travel without killing their planet or themselves, near enough to us to then happen to blunder into the milky way and then us, and that be right now, in this tiny blink of an eye time wise, are more or less zero i would think.

Therefore i recon there is, has been or will be intelligent life out there among the stars, but i don't think it will ever visit us or that we will visit it. Sadly. I think ... <thinks about Alien>