Are you an insignificant piece of crap?
- Sivaraj Kumar
- Nov 10, 2019
- 5 min read
Okay. Maybe the title is a little bit offensive. But when you think about it, it’s really not.
Like Carl Sagan said,
Who the hell are you?
Where are you?
What is your place in this marvelous vast Universe?
Does anybody else, other than a small percentage of Earthians, in this Universe have any idea about your existence?
Does your existence really matter?
Are you an insignificant piece of crap?
Maybe….. Maybe not…..
We should really answer this question.
WHO ARE YOU?
You are on the first day of your class. Teacher arrives. What’s the first thing she asks you all to do?
"Introduce yourself in front of the class"
I don't know about you but that’s a nightmare for me! Really!
Have you ever asked yourself,
"Who am I?”.
How do you define yourself?
Who are you? What are you?
*Existential Crisis enters the chat
From physics’s perspective,
You are a collection of 7 octillion (10 power 27) atoms that have found order in chaos which responds to the name “<Your_Name>” which was probably given by two another 7 octillion collections atom. Some of these atoms were once cooked at the core of a star that died more than 4.6 billion years ago.
You are mostly made of water and water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. And all these hydrogen atoms are produced right after the BigBang during a process called ‘Primordial Nucleosynthesis’.
So you should introduce yourself as,
“I’m a collection of 7 octillion atoms and I’m mostly 13.82 billion years ago by ‘Primordial Nucleosynthesis’ Some of them are ~4.6 billion years old but whatever. The atoms that make me are not that rare. They can be found almost everywhere in the Universe. My father is a collection of 7 octillion atoms and my mom is another collection of 7 octillion atoms.”
From biology’s perspective,
You belong to a genus called ‘homo’. You named yourself ‘A wise man’ or ‘Sapien’ (That is actually opposite of what ‘a wise man’ would really do). You are the result of 3.8 billion years of evolution. Most of your species deny this fact over their ‘Imaginary Friend’ who they believe stalks them all the time (That’s creepy). Nobody knows how your ancestors started swimming around deep volcanic vents in the oceans but soon your species might figure it out. They are pretty good at solving mysteries.
So now you should introduce yourself as,
“I’m a Homosapien who is the result of 3.8 billion years of evolution. I have a rich number of relatives because I’m related to every life on this planet Earth. Even bananas and I have 60% similarity in DNA. Most of my species disagree this fact over an ‘Imaginary Flying Spaghetti Monster’ I’m weak, fragile and I won’t even last a century. That’s a bummer :(“
(If you can define yourself in any other science’s perspective please let me know in the comments or in WhatsApp)
So we have answered the question “WHO ARE YOU?”.
It seems like you are not that rare in both Physics’s and biology’s POV.
You are made of same atoms as the rest of the Universe and you are just one of 7.7 billion homo sapiens that lives on planet Earth.
Your existence doesn’t really matter.
WHERE ARE YOU?
Maybe you are not that special. But at least you are in a special place, right?
You are on a rocky planet with a small atmosphere and magnetic field called ‘Earth’.
It is not too close to its parent star (Sun) to be as hot as steam inside the pressure cooker and it is not too far from the Sun to be as cold as ice inside freezers. Earth is just perfect!
Unlike other planets in your solar system, yours is the only planet that has liquid water on its surface. You are sooo special.
Well, this anthropocentric idea fell into the abyss when astronomers start finding earth-like exoplanets (planets beyond Solar System). Astronomers estimate there could be at least 2 billion Earth-like planets in our Milkyway galaxy alone!
And there are trillions of galaxies smaller/bigger than our own out there in our Universe. Our place in this Universe is not that special.
ARE WE ALONE?
The answer to how many intelligent species like us out there lies in the Drake Equation and I’ll write about Drake Equation someday. Now let’s just focus on the answers alone.
According to the Drake Equation, if we take the best optimal conditions there could be 100 Million civilisations like us in our galaxy alone (there could be civilisations far more advanced than us too).
Even if our Earth is completely destroyed or our entire solar system is completely devoured by a stellar-massive blackhole our Universe will keep doing its job.
Stars and planets will continue to form for another 100 trillion years.
Other intelligent civilisations would have found a way to travel between different Universes or harnessing the energy from a black hole while we, homosapiens, busy fighting and destroying each other over imaginary borders or 2000-year-old comic books.
DOES YOUR EXISTENCE MATTER?
About 107 billion humans have lived on this planet Earth and we remember only a very very small percentage of them. Around 99% of all the species ever lived here have become extinct. So even if the Earth is not completely destroyed and we humans become extinct, our planet will continue to sustain life for another billion years or so.
Even if you die right now reading this blog (which I hope not), everyone will move on. Few people might mourn for a few years but after 1000 years the odds of someone remembering your life is really really small.
So again, it seems like your existence really doesn’t matter.
To put everything in a nutshell,
"You are an insignificant creature who is one of 7.7 billion creatures who belong to an insignificant species called 'homosapiens', which is one of the 5 million insignificant species living on an insignificant planet called 'Earth', which is one of the 8 insignificant planets (sorry Pluto) that orbits around an insignificant star called 'Sun' which is one of the 400 billion insignificant stars in an insignificant galaxy called 'Milkyway' which is one of the trillion galaxies in an insignificant Universe which is probably one of the many multiverses out there."
All these answers are trying to tell you something.
“You are an insignificant piece of crap!”
Okay Okay…. I don’t want to end the blog like this. Let’s take a look at how precious you really are.
YOUR MATTER MATTERS
The matter/stuff that make you up maybe not that rare in the Universe. But you are really special. You can mix up chemicals and atoms that make you up in a lab and you still won’t be able to create a human similar to you. Laws of physics (Uncertainty principle) prohibit creating a person exactly like you atom by atom. So you are rare and special in physics’s POV.
You are the result of 3.8 billion years of evolution. Every single event in the past, even the asteroid that missed Earth some million years ago, have carved a path in making you. What if your great great great …… great grandparents never met? So you are special in biology’s POV too.
There could be 107 billion humans lived on this planet. Every single one of them played a big role in the progress of human civilisation. Right now you are also playing a huge role in this progress. 99% of the species ever lived here are now extinct but we are not.
There could be billions of Earth-like exo-planets but we have zero evidence whether they are hosts to "intelligent" life like us or not.
We have been listening for any extraterrestrial alien signals for more than half a century and we still haven’t heard any greetings message from our neighbours. Absence of evidence is not the evidence for absence. But still, you are the only one with whom I can share my happiness and sorrow. You are a big part of my life.
You may or may not be special in this Universe but you certainly are very very special to me.
I love you all with my whole heart ❤
Thanks for reading!
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