Billions and Billions of Stars...

Last week I watched a fascinating documentary on Stanley Kubrick. Arthur C. Clarke was talking about Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey. Something he said was thought-provoking that has really stuck with me, especially because I walk under the stars every night when I walk my dogs. Clarke said that behind every person was 30 ghosts. For every one human living there were 30 dead; this adds up to about 100-150 billion people who have ever walked the earth. That's about the same number as the stars in the sky. Clarke said, isn't it amazing that the Universe is so big that each person that has ever existed might have an entire world to themselves?

That's beyond my comprehension. If you really try and comprehend the sheer size of the Universe, you'll soon find it impossible. Our brains (as advanced as they are) do not have the ability to comprehend the vast size of our universe. To put it into context, the moon is about 500,000 miles away from earth. To travel around the Earth and end up at the same point, one must travel about 40,000 miles. The moon is more than ten times further than that distance, and that is the closest celestial body to our planet! The closest planet to Earth, Venus, is 25 million miles away. To travel 1 million miles on Earth, one would have to circle the planet nearly 30 times. To say we cannot comprehend the size of the universe is an understatement.

It is the most beautiful thing to look up in the sky at night and imagine where all those stars are. For all the shapes stars make in constellations, they are millions if not billions of miles away from each other. Such thoughts truly make me feel small, but it assures me that there is far more beyond this planet than most people bother to imagine. Next time you get the opportunity to look at the stars, see them and imagine the vastness of this universe. Even though we will never comprehend such size, it is an exercise enough to try.