... the Total Perspective Vortex can annihilate a man's soul! ... When you are put into the Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little mark, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says, "You are here."
- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.Whenever I'm outside on a clear night, I have a tendency to look up at the sky in wonder, every now and then. Seeing this, a friend once asked me, in all seriousness, "Why are you so fascinated by the night sky?"
I couldn't believe my ears. Here was a devoted student of science (studying computers, specifically), asking me such an absurd question. How can anyone not be fascinated by the sky on a clear night?
I explained: those teeny pin-pricks of light in the void we see, were emitted by stars some millions of years ago, and are reaching us only now. In some cases, that time is as much as 13.2 billion years in the past, when the Universe was but a fledgling. How can the sheer immensity of the distance travelled or the time taken by that light to reach us fail to boggle the mind?
Seen another way, that light essentially constitutes information from the past. Another skull-numbing idea. Just think about what that means. That (hypothetical) supernova explosion we're seeing reports of in the scientific press today - yes, that actually happened a long time ago. We're finding out about the Universe's "early childhood" through that light.
After thinking of this, all things man-made seem so... inconsequential.
Besides, haven't you read Douglas Adams' book, or heard Coldplay's Yellow? :)
