We have somewhere between 50 and 100 trillion cells in our body. We
have been evolving separately from other apes for about 6.5 million
years, on a planet that formed 4.5 billion years ago and is expected
to support life for another 500 million years. We are thought
to have been “modern” humans for about 200,000 years, we have lived
in cities for around 10,000 years, we made the first really useful
steam engine 300 years ago.
We are currently one of
nearly 7 billion humans on this planet and one of well over 100
trillion living things ranging from bacteria to trees that weigh
over 2000 tons.
Our earth is one of 8 planets that orbit our Sun. Our Sun
contains 99.86% of the total mass of the whole solar system.
The Earth is about 150 million km from the Sun, to give a sense of
scale; the equator of the Earth is about 40,000 km around. The
furthest full planet from the Sun, Neptune, is 4.5 billion km away
from it.
Our Solar system is part of a galaxy known as the Milky Way, visible
on a dark night as a pale cloud of light. The Milky Way Galaxy
is 100,000 light years from side to side, a light year is the
distance that light travels in a year, just under 10 trillion
kilometers. So the width of our Galaxy is
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 km (a Quinitillion)- about. Our Sun
is one of between 200 and 400 billion stars in our galaxy, it is not
easy to count them all.
We are 25-28,000 light
years from the centre of the galaxy. Our closest neighbour
star, Alpha Centauri, is 4.4 light years away or 44 trillion km.
The closest galaxy to our own is known as Andromeda, with over 1
trillion stars, it is about 2.5 million light years away (remember,
a light year is the distance light travels in a year, it travels
186,000 miles in a second). The Milky Way and Andromeda are a
binary galactic system and part of a larger system of 50 galaxies
that form what is known as the Local Group, a part of the Virgo
Supercluster.
Our universal address would be Earth, Sun, Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo Supercluster. The Universe is thought to be 13.75 billion years old.
So we are a flash, on a speck, on a dot, not
more.
And yet...
...we and our small blue/green dot are all we
have.
We are on a life raft in a vast and hostile
ocean. If we bet, and it is a very big bet, that there is an
available and habitable planet within half the width of the
galaxy, then our situation is the equivalent of being on a life
raft, 0.0024 of a millimeter long, in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean.
On a cosmic scale our survival is
inconsequential, the loss of humanity or of the earth as a whole
would be no more significant that the loss of single cell is to our
own bodies.
To us however the loss of humanity would be more significant.
If we want to prolong our existence on our life raft we have to
figure out a way of living together with our co-dependents.
As a species, after 200,000 years we are still behaving like
teenagers. Like teenagers we are still primarily motivated by
fear. Fear of embarrassment, fear of loosing out, fear of
difference, fear of loosing control. Our fear leads us into
conflicts, war on everything, including nature and each other.
Like a teenager we are at risk of living fast and dying young. We need to grow up before we kill ourselves. Growing up means replacing fear with love, replacing conflict with peace and replacing greed with responsibility.