We live on a minor planet of an average star located within the Milky Way galaxy, in the outer limits of a hundred thousand million galaxies. Our sun is an average star but is not all that small. Its diameter is 1,391,000kms and can contain more than a hundred thousand earths! Earth’s diameter is around 12,742kms and it is not small too. Our nearest object, the moon, is 384,399kms away from us. The sun is roughly at a distance of 150 million kms from the earth. Giant planets like Jupiter can contain thousands of earths and are at a distance of 629 million kms The farthest planet Pluto is 5763 million kms away! The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.28 light years away from us.(Light travels at 300,000kms a second and the distance covered in an year would be 300,000x60x60x24x365kms!) There are stars out there whose light has not yet reached the earth! They are more than more than 4 billion light years away. Against these scales, even our own Milky way galaxy, (dia. 100,000 light years) wherein our own sun is just an ordinary star among 200 billion others, is just a speck or a dot and our sun (which can take in 100,000earths) is insignificant and our own planet is infinitesimal. If our planet tends towards zero, what is our significance? Our average weight is 70kgs and that of the earth is 5972200000000000000000000Kgs!
In an earth like planet with the optimum gravity to retain an atmosphere, at an optimum distance from the sun(to get just enough energy) with an abundance of elements life has to be evolved (A creator is redundant) and there is an advanced civilization flourishing down here. There may be millions of earth-like- planets in the universe and there could be life in many of them with advanced but alien civilizations. But we will always be alone here as the distances involved are too massive that there is no way another civilization can become our friends or foes. But life has to end before the demise of our own sun which is not far away in the astronomical time scale- a few billion years from now. Our sun would start expanding and end up in a supernova and a dark curtain of death will befall the entire solar system including the earth. Life on this planet will end forever. Life, if it exists at other planets of other stars, will end too with the demise of their respective stars.
Thousands of billions of people have taken birth here and gone. A majority of them died before they reached the age of ten or less. Millions died in wars fought for gods, religions, powerful guys and nations. Billions have perished in natural calamities and they still do. Deadly diseases have devoured legions. No one is alive now whose age is more than 125. That is our maximum life-span But this small planet has been there, almost in the same form, for the last 42000000000 years! It may be there for another 40000000000 years! But we humans are like an air bubble, forming and bursting out almost simultaneously. We are so insignificant and infinitesimal taking in a breath and breathing it out for ever. From this perspective, are your troubles really that big? Are your past, sad experiences, the problems you currently face and the challenges in front of you really as big as you think them out to be? We walk down here on this planet for such a short while. On the overall scheme of things our lives and their myriad problems are all just blips or less when we see them from the perspective of the universe and the eternity of time. Hence let us enjoy this sojourn and savor the short travel on the surface of this interesting globe. We have this life at this juncture of advanced civilization; we are able to enjoy the fruits of all scientific discoveries and material progress. So keep a smile now and give a hand to your co-travelers. There is no greater joy than having obtained this breath, this life.
