Friday, March 28, 2008

Sunday Scribblings - "Out of This World"

The concept of space, beyond that we get within Earth’s atmosphere, is simply mind boggling. To think of all the millions of miles of empty space between every planet in our dinky little solar system, which is only a tiny part of the Milky Way Galazy, which itself is only, apparently, a small galaxy... the billions of stars that exist within just the Milky Way Galaxy... and then to learn that there are billions of galaxies much much larger than the Milky Way, each of them with billions of stars and miles of empty space between, with still more billions of empty miles between each galaxy... with the Universe expanding rapidly (but to WHERE? What was there first?) all the time, making itself bigger and bigger…

Well, eventually, trying to imagine this sort of thing sends shivers down my spine and fills me with a restless itchiness beneath my skin, leaving my mind in utter chaos. It’s just such an incomprehensibly huge thing to get my head around that I have to go off and do something mundane for a while to feel normal again.

And don’t get me started on the black holes that are apparently gobbling up all the empty space and any stars or asteroids or worlds that might come their way, getting stronger and bigger and swallowing it all ever more and ever quicker. Perhaps one day, at some point - in a year, a century, an eon, a millennium - all those black holes will get together to make a humongous big nothing down which everything will have disappeared... and then what?

The Big Unbang?

13 comments:

Gemma Wiseman said...

A zany, entertaining take on the prompt. Smiled with your comment on "our dinky little solar system".

Gemma

Granny Smith said...

Nice twisty ending! But also an appropriate sense of wonder at the infinite spaces and of the relative smallness of our own "dinky" world.

Anonymous said...

I definitely share all of your puzzlement ... and then some.

Here's to the big unbang!

(May it take a while yet.)

Anonymous said...

Just love it! A light hearted take on a serious subject

Teesu (very very Indian, very very good) said...

This is the reason I don't think too much!Everything seems uncertain and out of (my) control. Unbang -- he he, good word. What COULD be the opposite of bang anyway? gentle tap? THE BIG GENTLE TAP? Nope, I prefer this new wonderful word 'unbang';) I sincerely do not want anything to unbang anytime soon. And...Right now, my understanding of the black hole is that it refers to my stomach:)

Tumblewords: said...

Unbang - nifty concept. The wonder of space is incredibly huge.Nice post.

Anonymous said...

...then its onward to beyond

Anonymous said...

Terrific post. I used to do a lot of star gazing when I was young, getting myself all bent out of shape with the amazingness of it all. The mind boggles at the out of the world possibilities.
Kamini

Boricua in Texas said...

I think we need to make peace with the fact in such a crazy big Universe, we will never be able to know everything. But that doesn't mean we should not try to learn as much as we can.

Patois42 said...

I get the shivers about it, too. Love your "Big Un-bang" theory.

Rob Kistner said...

Splendid post! …rob

Anonymous said...

Gemma: Thank you :)

Granny Smith: It's difficult to imagine such vastness, isnt it?

Steerforth: Amen!

Keith: Thanks :)

Teesu: That's a totally different topic altogether1 :D

Tumblewords: Thank you for your comment and for stopping by :)

Winedarksea: Hmmm...

Kamini: I think I'll be boggling till the end of my days!

Ingrid: So true.

Patois: Thank you! :)

Rob: Many thanks! :)

rebecca said...

and to believe we are the only living beings in the universe? oh, aren't our egos a bit grand?

this was good...funny ending...the big unbang indeed!