A Broader Perspective

  We as humans think mighty of ourselves, we always boast of what we achieved as a race & as an individual. We feel proud about the amazing structures we have built on our planet & the significant technological advancements we have made. Yes we have been to the moon and our probe has reached safely to mars and is sending out images for us to understand our universe better.

  We as humans also argue over trivial matters with our friends, family, colleagues, acquaintances. Fight over preferred seat in a train, parking, overtaking on roads, standing in queue, favorite channel in TV,  the list is endless.

  But what we don’t realize is, how insignificant these things are & how insignificant we are in the larger sense of universe, if we look in a broader perspective. To emphasize what I am trying to say & to prove that I am not being philosophical, let me show you…..

1.

Our planet Earth, our home is the third planet from the Sun and is about 12700 km in diameter. 

Beautiful isn't it?

2.

The nearest neighbor to us is our own Moon, which is about 356,400 km from us. 

3. 

The picture below shows Earth as compared to other smaller planets of our solar system, Pluto being the smallest & Venus is smaller but close to Earth's size. 

That’s all we can be enthusiastic about. As every thing from here on gets larger & larger

4.

The picture below shows Earth with respect other giant planets of our solar system. Jupiter is the largest and 11 times larger than Earth & Saturn 9 times. Pluto is very tiny at this scale.  

    

   Lets go a little higher in our hierarchy and lets see how it is with Sun in the picture. 

5.

Could you spot Earth, yes there it is, so tiny compared to Sun which is 110 times larger. Pluto is almost invisible in this scale. That’s how big Sun is. But Sun is just a medium sized star in our galaxy. There are millions of stars in our milky way galaxy alone which are much larger. And beyond that millions of galaxies. 

Lets go higher and compare Sun with other commonly known stars in our galaxy.

6.  

     Sirius the brightest star visible in the sky and it is more than 4 times larger than Sun. Pollux another bright star is a red giant star in constellation Gemini & is 18 times larger than the Sun. [Our enthusiasm & morale can not take it any more & wears off at this point]. The next star Arcturus, third brightest star in our night sky in Bootes Constellation, is 32 times larger than Sun. Earth is no longer visible at this scale & Jupiter is just 1 pixel in size. 

7.

  Lets get seriously higher..

    Where is the Sun??????

Betelgeuse- A Super Red Giant star in constellation Orion is so huge that if Sun is replaced by this star in our solar system, its would occupy till the orbit of Jupiter. Its that massive. Now comes Antares a Super Giant of a star 1400 times the size of Sun. In this scale Sun is invisible & we can forget about Earth.

  Now how big are we and how big are our problems? Some times a different perspective or more appropriately a larger perspective is required to realize how infinitely small we are. Yes its depressing, but thinking about this keeps my head straight and my feet firmly on the ground. 

8.

Finally, This picture taken from the space probe -Voyager 1 while on its way out of the solar system shows Earth suspended in a beam of Sunlight. The blue circle marks Earth.

This picture famously known as “ Pale Blue Dot”  when seen by Carl Sagan a famous astronomer, inspired him to quote as below. Which leaves me in a pensive mood.. 

     "We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you know, everyone you love, everyone you've ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies  and economic doctrines. Every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner  in the history of our species, lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

Take Care 

Ravindra

Delhi

20-10-12 0050 SAT

(Note: The pictures in the above article are not my property nor do I claim to own them. They were downloaded from Internet & used in aid for interpretation for my article. The Images are not to actual scale & used as an example. The ideology behind has been depicted by more than one person).