Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion
In a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit DiscussionIn a time of the spring, old paths are obscured and new growth begins.
There are many people alive today who still accept the old religious belief that humanity is at the center of the universe, and that all of the Cosmos is just a creation upon which a divine being intended human beings to be the dominant players.
The people who still believe that would do well to consider the implications of this video, which shows the size of Earth relative to other planets, and then to the sun and other known stars. It reminds me of a short animated spot that used to run on Sesame Street years ago, with the lyrics, “That’s about the size, where you put your eyes, that’s about the size of it.” The idea has also been discussed well in Carl Sagan’s book Pale Blue Dot.
Theists need to explain this, and never have: If people are the special creation of a divine ruler of all the universe, what is everything else, the immense vastness of the non-Earth universe, there for?
(200 votes, average: 3 out of 5)
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July 18th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Part of why I’m an atheist.
Our ‘pale blue dot’ is 12756 km in diameter. The sun is 1239500 km in diameter. The largest known star is about 2100 times the diameter of the sun - approximately 2500000000 km in diameter. Using the formula for the volume of a sphere - 4/3 pi r ^3 - we see the volume of Earth is about 1.1 trillion km ^3 and the volume of the largest star in the universe is 8.7 octillion km^3.
This means about 7.9 quadrillion Earths could fit in the largest known star in the universe.
The comoving distance to the edge of the visible universe is 46.5 billion light years. A light year in km is 9.5 trillion km. The comoving distance in km is about 469 sextillion km. The volume of the observable universe is 9.21370482 × 10 ^47 km ^3. Earth’s volume is 1.1×10 ^12 km ^3. This means we could put approximately 850×10 ^35 Earths in the observable universe. This is a shitload. For numbers this huge, I use scientific notation.
A human’s volume is about half of a square meter by contrast. This is 1/2000000th of a square kilometer. If you multiply that by 6.5 billion - factor in the small volumes of small people - that’s about 1300 km ^3 of human matter.
We aren’t even on the universe’s big radar screen.
July 18th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Ah, but the size of your head is not the only measure of your “place” in the cosmos. Each of us fills our own cosmos completely, and while our physical size may be small, our imaginations are boundless, and so to will be our reach (hopefully our wisdom will catch up).
Kum Bah Yah
July 18th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Really. You fill the cosmos completely? You’re in the Andromeda galaxy?
July 18th, 2007 at 3:36 pm
It’s a trash can, you know, for our nuclear waste n’ stuff.
July 18th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
How can the distance to the edge of the universe be 46.5 billion light years when the universe is only about 13.5 billion years old?
RED DAVE
July 18th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Red Dave -
http://www.astronomybuff.com/how-can-we-see-galaxies-47-billion-light-years-away-when-the-universe-is-only-13-billion-years-old/
July 18th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
I believe that the answer has something to do with the Big Bang being the expansion of space itself, not just the movement of objects in space - but then, I’m not an astrophysicist. Is there an astrophysicist in the house?
December 7th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Nobody should think that the largest is the greatest. Living creations are superior than lifeless material creations and intelligent beings are superior to non-intelligent ones. So human beings can fly to the moon not the largest birds and elephants are tamed and use in service by human beings not vise versa. So there is no doubt in it that human being is the greatest creation, not the largest lifeless celestial bodies. One may say that ‘perhaps’ there would be intelligent animal in other celestial bodies who may be more intelligent than us. But existence of intelligent human beings is beyond doubt and ‘perhaps’ or ‘possibility’ cannot stand before the confirm one.