Things I Can’t Even Comprehend About Space- Part 1

Space is endless so, of course, there’s a lot we don’t know about it and that’s what pulls me to it most. The unknown can be scary but the fact that it is unknown has a certain attraction that makes the thirst for curiosity increase every time one thinks about it. As if this isn’t enough, there are certain specific facts about space that I can’t even begin to comprehend or wrap my head around, and I think that most people are in the same boat as I am so let’s see what you make of it:

The first is a very common question but is still quite difficult to comprehend. How far does the universe go? You and I are tiny people, on a tiny planet, rotating around one star among millions of others, in a tiny solar system, in a tiny galaxy among millions of other galaxies that may be a hundred times larger, part of a universe when there may be multiple other universes out there too. That puts thinking that Antarctica is far away into perspective, doesn’t it? 

Second is, now that we’ve established how tiny a part we are in this universe, the fact that there has to be more life out there. Saying that the universe is gigantic is probably the understatement of the century, and thinking that we’re the only life in it simply does not make sense. We can’t be the only ones and there has to be other life out there somewhere, whether it’s as close as on our moon or as far as on an exoplanet. So how long will it be until we find them? Or until they find us?

Thirdly, if there is life out there, there must be some sort of creature that cannot only live but also thrive in the vacuum of space. If a human body were to end up unprotected in space, it could suffocate due to the lack of air, freeze due to the temperature, vaporize due to the absence of atmospheric pressure, and burn due to the sun’s radiation. After death, the corpse could float in space for millions of years because the decomposition process would be extremely slow in the shortage of oxygen. Knowing that this is what would happen to humans in space, it is hard to believe that there’s any living organism that could possibly survive in, let alone thrive, in such uninhabitable environments. However, the universe is infinite and has been around for a predicted 13 billion years, so it is a real possibility that some organisms can; who knows what could be out there?

Part 2 of this post will give you even more intriguing ideas that you can try and wrap your head around, stay tuned!