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Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown, And things seem hard or tough, And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft, And you feel that you've had quite eno-o-o-
by lb1lf 7y ago
Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,
And things seem hard or tough,
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
And you feel that you've had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough,
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at 900 miles an hour.
It's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned,
The sun that is the source of all our power.
Now the sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In the outer spiral arm, at 40, 000 miles an hour,
Of a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars;
It's a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it's just three thousand light-years wide.
We're thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go 'round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy itself is one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!
John de Prez / Eric Idle
- cmroanirgo 7y agoI like to jump in the air when I think of that song and try to visualise how far I actually traveled (wrt centre of the galaxy) in that 1 second or so. One day I'll actually do the math... But back on topic, I've been looking for a small data set of stars for a little project that I've had in the back on my mind for the last 10 years or so, and this article has one: awesome.
- itronitron 7y agoMany years ago I was doing a lot of reading on astronomy and spent some time thinking intently about the scale of things in the solar system. After a few months of this I woke one morning from a hyper-real dream in which I was in a 'high-Earth' orbit and felt like I was seeing the solar system with a lot more clarity. That was it's own reward and I also think that it shows our minds are much more capable than we let on.
- Quekid5 7y ago... and it's still kind of sad that we (or anything like us) will actually, realistically never ever venture far enough to even reach the nearest star to us. I genuinely think it is sad, but it is what it is. Interstellar space is so unimaginably huge (insert HGoG reference or excerpt here). At least you won't be alive to experience the time when the expansion just overtakes everything and leaves "us" a lone galaxy pondering why here is no light from others like us. Hit #subscribe for more depressing space-facts! :|
- pengaru 7y agoThis doesn't strike me as sad. What really strikes me as sad is: Despite understanding how inaccessibly distant alternative potentially habitable planets are, people here on earth seem utterly incapable of living sustainably on what will very likely be the only planet their species will ever comfortably inhabit.
- crispinb 7y agoThis doesn't strike me as sad. Me neither. But it used to. I was a Star Trek (TOS) kid and grew up assuming I would at least visit planets in adulthood, if not have a modest spacecraft of my own. Also that the Earth's warring tribes would do away with war & poverty in some utopian approximately Federationish style. I'm not sure which seems sillier now. What really strikes me as sad is ...people here on earth seem utterly incapable of living sustainably That was my post Star Trek dreams phase, which probably lasted through much of my 30's. Beyond that I've come to accept that it was never biologically plausible that a fairly clever social primate species would (magically?) be able to extend its social/cognitive/conative/affective capacities, evolved to negotiate small group survival and interaction, to the competent management of an entire biosphere.
- yodsanklai 7y ago> the competent management of an entire biosphere. I eventually came at peace with the destruction of the environment when I understood it was is unavoidable, just like our individual death. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter. We're just an infinitesimal part of something too big to comprehend.
- m4rtink 7y agoSome much mass and energy to play with for the next couple eons! :-)
- samplatt 7y agoMy favourite road-trip and kareoke song :-)