You’re not old!

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.
– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

Let’s for the sake of doing it, ponder how big this thing is.  The observable edge of the universe to us, from our planet is  46 billion light years away1.  A light year is about 9.5 trillion kilometers2.   Feel free to do the math.

The universe is estimated to be some 13.75 billion years old3.  The earth is some 4.5 billion years old4.  Humanity has been on the face of the earth for about 200,000 years5, that’s homo sapiens, and in our current modern form for some 50,000 years6.

These are all big numbers.

Big, really big.

There is no way for us to know how big and how old the universe is.  And frankly, although its mildly interesting, I don’t really care.  I anticipate that the universe will go on for quite a while without me.

Science does it’s best to test, re-test and refine these dates and numbers as new information comes to hand.

I can’t get my mind around such large numbers, I have no way to understand just how far it is to the edge of the universe.

So, to go back the other way, that means that the I’m small.  Compared to the universe I’m small.  In the universal time scale I will barely register as a blip on a blip on a blip.

And, if the universe should ever take to actually caring, it’s not going to care about me.  In fact, if the earth disappeared tomorrow, if all of mankind vanished, the universe would keep on and nothing will have changed.

If you’re a young earther, you will claim the universe is just 6,000 years old7.  This notion will be based on the bible.  The bible says that god created Adam on day 5.  We can count, using the bible, the generations and it comes out at about 6,000 years.  Give or take a goat fucker or two.

As I said, if we stopped being here tomorrow, the universe wouldn’t care about it, the bible would be gone and you know what – nobody else in this big expanse would even know it ever existed.

So, watch this to help you put it all into perspective.  The universe is big, you’re not.

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