While wars rage on, the environment crumbles, and our solar system loses a member, scientists have discovered proof of dark matter. The matter and energy we can see (people, buildings, planets, stars, etc.) only constitutes 5% of all the energy in the universe. 25% more is found in dark matter, and 70% more in dark energy. For those too tired to do the math, that means 95% of all the stuff in the universe is invisible to us. We can determine its existence through its effects (as in the case of dark matter, and similarly black holes), but we cannot see it. To put it another way, the complete destruction of all visible matter - let alone our country or even our world - would leave 95% of the universe intact. To me, this is a sobering fact. Humanity has this almost intrinsic idea that it is the most important aspect of the universe, but even passing contemplation of our place in the whole of things leaves me feeling tiny beyond measure.

Disregarding dark matter and energy, we are still inconceivably small in this grand universe of ours. Our world, which is so giant compared to our cramped bodies, is a fraction of the size of its neighboring planets, let alone the nearest star, the Sun. Even the Sun isn’t so massive, its size paling in comparison to that of a red giant. With celestial objects so large, it is even more amazing to think about that stars rarely (if ever) collide, even in colliding galaxies.

For another perspective of Us vs. The Universe, consider some distances:

4,828 kilometers - East Coast to West Coast
12,756.2 kilometers - diameter of the Earth
35,764.4 kilometers - altitude of most weather satellites
363,000 kilometers - distance to the moon at its closest
150,000,000 kilometers- distance from you to the Sun
5,913,520,000 kilometers - distance from Pluto to the Sun

From here, things jump up quickly:

3.9 x 10¹³ kilometers - distance to closest star, Proxima Centurai
2.4 x 10¹⁹ kilometers - distance to the closest major galaxy, Andromeda
4.4 x 10²³ kilometers - radius of the observable universe

To sum all that up:

The size of the Earth is about 290 quadrillionth (2.9×10^-17) the size of the radius of the universe.

The quotes and images below are the impetuses for this unusual Undressing the Internet. The first box is a selection from a poem by Laurie Sheck in which she weaves personal statements between quotes from astronauts concerning their experiences. It may not exactly capture my feelings, but it provides a good glimpse with much more eloquence than I can offer.

The second box is two day’s worth of Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD). Everyday, obviously, APOD displays an interesting picture dealing with astronomy along with a thoroughly hyperlinked explanation of the picture. August 9’s APOD shows a dark Australian sky with the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds visible to the naked eye. The larger of the two, the Large Magellanic Cloud, takes up only an inch or so in the center of August 9’s picture, and only about half a degree (probably) in the night sky.

September 4’s APOD returns to the subject of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), this time in much much much greater detail. It is the combination of these two photographs that caused my mind some trouble. Viewing the enlarged version of the LMC allows you see the immeasurable multitude of stars contained within and in the background/foreground. The LMC is a dwarf galaxy, having only about 10 billion stars (the Milky Way has about 200 to 400 billion stars). If most galaxies in the universe are dwarf (although certainly most visible galaxies are not), and an estimated 125 billion galaxies (and counting) exist in the universe, then there are at least 1 septillion (a 1 followed by 24 zeros) stars besides our Sun.

If the Sun, which overshadows us with its huge expanse, is but a grain of sand in comparison to the number of other stars in the universe, then what are we?

Laurie Sheck, “Notes On The Earth Seen From Space”, A Public Space, Issue 2

Neil Armstrong said, “I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.”

(Is this what frightened you, is this what you sought to combat and to flee? This fragility, this somehow-knowledge even then before anyone had ever left the earth or seen it from a distance, of how small it is and delicate, as we are too, how finite, how beside-the-point, how fleeting.)

When Leonov and White floated in space they didn’t want to come back… They couldn’t have known this beforehand. And what is a footstep then, after that, and the feeling fo earth (so fragile, so small) beneath a shoe, or the thin tether of breath, or a name, or a day, a boundary, a theory, a bond-

APOD: 2006 August 9 and
APOD: 2006 September 4, respectively:

(click to enlarge )

This early morning skyscape recorded near Winton, Queensland, Australia,looks toward the southeast. Low clouds are seen in silhouette against the first hints of sunlight, while two famous cosmic clouds, the Clouds of Magellan, also hover in the brightening sky. The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC, upper right), and the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) are prominent wonders of the southern sky, named for the 16th century Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. They are small, irregular galaxies in their own right, satellites of our much larger, spiral Milky Way galaxy. The SMC is about 210,000 light-years and the LMC about 180,000 light-years away.

(click to enlarge )

Where does dust collect in galaxies? To help find out, a team of researchers took the most detailed image ever of gas clouds and dust in the neighboring Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) galaxy. The composite image, shown above, was taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope in infrared light, which highlights the natural glow of the warm materials returned to the interstellar medium by stars. The above mosaic combines 300,000 individual pointings to create a composite 1,000-times sharper than any previous LMC image. Visible are vast clouds of gas and dust, showing in graphic detail that dust prefers regions near young stars (red-tinted bright clouds), scattered unevenly between the stars (green-tinted clouds), and in shells around old stars (small red dots). Also visible are huge caverns cleared away by the energetic outflows of massive former stars. The faint blue (false-color) glow across the bottom is the combined light from the old stars in the central bar of the LMC. The LMC is a satellite galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy, spans about 70,000 light years, and lies about 160,000 light years away toward the southern constellation of the Swordfish (Dorado).

I’m trying not to lose myself.