Growing up, when I heard “universe”,
I thought about astronauts, the moon, and the sun. Not much else. Those were
the only significant things brought up in school with regards to the universe.
The names and details of the other planets in our solar system seemed to be negligible
and passed by when we learned about them. The concept of just how large our
galaxy is, along with how many of these unimaginably large galaxies there are was also a glanced over topic. Learning about these topics later on, outside of
school, has been just short of mind-blowing. It’s amazing how small we are. Not
perfectly accurate of course, but making a point: if earth’s makeup consisted
of being nothing but a beach full of sand, portraying the universe, earth would
be one grain of sand among those trillions of grains. We’re hardly even a
fraction of microscopic in size.
If earth can survive long enough to
develop technology capable of exploring more of the Milky Way, let alone
developing technology a billion times more effective than our current to learn
about all of it and possibly neighboring galaxies, it’s amazing to think about
what’d be discovered in our microscopic corner of the universe. Unless we’re
truly a phenomenon of being the only success story of life from the Big Bang
there is out there, I believe there are likely millions of other inhabited
planets out there. Our solar system gives us a sample size of 9, with 1 planet
containing intelligent life, being us. When you find an 11% success rate in a
home town as small as we are, the possibilities of discovery are endless.
I like how you mention the possibility of discovering more. I think that is so significant in playing our part in the universe. Of course, there is always the difficulty of creating technology capable of doing so. It's amazing when you think of our universe and how little we know. Then again, how much of our brains do we actually have access to? There is so much in our lives that we are missing.
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