Images of the microwave background radiation, the leftover glow from the Big Bang, show a mottled universe with blobs of color that, at first glance, appear to be randomly scattered.* Apparently, enough evidence is in to suggest that there is, in fact, a pattern to the blobs. Why are the blobs or their pattern significant?
Don’t take offense, but you are one of those blobs. The image of the cosmic microwave background radiation from the early universe actually shows you how significant your blob is. You are a central blob.
As the astrophysicists tell us, the universe began essentially nowhere and small-where. Everything that now is was once, as the expression goes, packed into a dot much smaller than the period that ends this sentence. In fact, everything began in a dot smaller than a proton.
That description of the early universe is important when you look skyward today or see images from the Hubble Telescope. If the universe has a radius that stretches tens of billions of light years because of inflation and expansion, that scale of distance makes you seem a bit of a tiny dot today. You live on a little planet on the outskirts of a galaxy that is itself a rather ordinary collection of stars and planets. Larger galaxies exist, and although no one knows the total number of galaxies, some have estimated that there are well over two trillion of them, most with hundreds of billions of suns and many more planets. Dot. That’s you, right? Little blob lost in a universe of indefinite size stretching toward nothingness.
The news isn’t all that bad. You are a very significant blob. In all that scattered blobbiness only certain blobs think and emote. You are one of them. In all that vastness, there you are, a blob conscious of itself and of the other blobs. All the blobs began in the same place from the same stuff insignificantly small.
You were once the center of the universe as all blobs were once the center of the universe. Now you are the center because, unlike the other blobs, you can understand your blobbiness. You are a significant blob. Don’t do anything to diminish that significance, and remember that you share your central nature with everyone on the blob called Earth.
*http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/universe/sights/cosmic_microwave_background_radiation/
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=microwave+background+image&id=1A61B1B934B399AC5C59966CE09223F5A48402D7&FORM=IQFRBA
Don’t take offense, but you are one of those blobs. The image of the cosmic microwave background radiation from the early universe actually shows you how significant your blob is. You are a central blob.
As the astrophysicists tell us, the universe began essentially nowhere and small-where. Everything that now is was once, as the expression goes, packed into a dot much smaller than the period that ends this sentence. In fact, everything began in a dot smaller than a proton.
That description of the early universe is important when you look skyward today or see images from the Hubble Telescope. If the universe has a radius that stretches tens of billions of light years because of inflation and expansion, that scale of distance makes you seem a bit of a tiny dot today. You live on a little planet on the outskirts of a galaxy that is itself a rather ordinary collection of stars and planets. Larger galaxies exist, and although no one knows the total number of galaxies, some have estimated that there are well over two trillion of them, most with hundreds of billions of suns and many more planets. Dot. That’s you, right? Little blob lost in a universe of indefinite size stretching toward nothingness.
The news isn’t all that bad. You are a very significant blob. In all that scattered blobbiness only certain blobs think and emote. You are one of them. In all that vastness, there you are, a blob conscious of itself and of the other blobs. All the blobs began in the same place from the same stuff insignificantly small.
You were once the center of the universe as all blobs were once the center of the universe. Now you are the center because, unlike the other blobs, you can understand your blobbiness. You are a significant blob. Don’t do anything to diminish that significance, and remember that you share your central nature with everyone on the blob called Earth.
*http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/universe/sights/cosmic_microwave_background_radiation/
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=microwave+background+image&id=1A61B1B934B399AC5C59966CE09223F5A48402D7&FORM=IQFRBA
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