Incomprehensible

There are realities that are easy to ignore. We ignore somethings because it makes us uncomfortable in a “I just can’t deal with that” way. And yet, we get reminded every so often.

Black holes are those unbelievable dense places in space which gobble up anything that falls within their range. When a black hole swallows material a fraction of material is ejected before the object falls in, which forms a jet on either side of the black hole.

This process accelerates radiation and particles at close to the speed of light which causes the elements to glow and can be detected by radio telescopes.

In 2018 astronomers observed twin jets from a supermassive black hole about 7.5 billion light years from Earth. We can be thankful it’s far away. The jets have the power of trillions of suns. The length of them is as long as 140 Milky Way diameters. Let that sink in a moment. It would take approximately 140 of our galaxy in width to equal that distance. The Milky Way is about 100,000 light years in diameter. One light year is the distance light travels in a year, about 5.88 trillion miles. Now imagine that number multiplied by 100,000. It’s incomprehensible. And yet, our entire galaxy would be a mere speck were it encompassed within those jets.

Even attempting to comprehend the magnitude of this reality is utterly mind boggling. We, on our miniscule, microscopic speck of blue lost in the unimaginable vastness of space, dare to puff ourselves up and imagine our concerns and ego demands to be of infinite importance. How ludicrous!

Of course, we could feel crushed by this reality and conclude nothing we do is of any significance whatsoever. We could also marvel that, so far as we know right now, we’re the only life there is. I don’t think that’s true but we don’t have evidence of any other. Even though we will, eventually, discover life elsewhere, we will still be an incredible rarity.

It puts into perspective our petty quarrels, it makes our most grandiose assertions of critical importance to be head shakingly laughable.

Approximately 1250 B.C.E. two armies, each numbering perhaps 2,000 warriors met in the Tollense Valley, which is about 80 miles north of present day Berlin. Archaeologists think the death toll was about 750 – 1,000. They think one of the armies probably came from outside of the area, southern Germany or Moravia. We don’t know who, precisely, they were. We certainly don’t know why they fought. We know most were young men between 20 and 40 but there were also at least two women.

Was one side “good” and the other “bad”? Don’t know, doesn’t matter. What we do know is precious life was wasted. Undoubtedly, some warlord decreed that others should fight, give their lives, to accomplish what he wanted.

The universe conspired to create life, unimaginably rare life, and then, that life was sacrificed in the name of some forgotten someone’s ego. Perspective is important.