What Makes You Feel Small?

I would not say it makes me feel small, or insignificant, but just more aware of our place in cosmos...



Carl Sagan, at his best...

And if you looking for something that will motivate you, or how big our wold is (and that there are not borders)... look here.

a reply to: RedEyes619

This! I love playing with this website and getting an idea of the scales of the universe. But you can also go in reverse and see how large you are in comparison to some of the smaller things in the universe.

htwins.net...

originally posted by: SuperFrog
I would not say it makes me feel small, or insignificant, but just more aware of our place in cosmos...

Carl Sagan, at his best...

And if you looking for something that will motivate you, or how big our wold is (and that there are not borders)... look here.

You are right, that youtube vid doesn't make you feel insignificant at all. It actually gives you an over whelming sense of connectiveness (lol, not actually a word I know) to your place and where you belong in the universe. Maybe more than my name, lol.

btw, thanks for that NASA live feed link of the space station. Had a look for it when I first recently hooked up broadband, but couldn't find it.

a reply to: RedEyes619

What Makes You Feel Small?

John Holmes R.I.P

a reply to: olaru12

Had to look that one up

:-)

Actually, I feel quite lucky to be a part of such a grand universe.

I mean, every living organism in the universe is almost certainly very small compared to the size of the universe, so there is no reason for me to feel particularly meaningless. Granted, in the grand scheme of things, Earth (just like any other specific planet) and humans (just like any other intelligent organism) is truly meaningless compared to the grand scale of the universe -- but no matter how small, we are all still a part of a incredibly great whole.

a reply to: RedEyes619

I feel small every time I look up at the sky, every time I contemplate the scale of the universe, every time give change to a homeless person, every time I visit town centre, every time I visit a rock festival.

But I never feel that being small is a bad thing. My DNA cannot be observed without the use of significant apparatus in order to resolve its features in great enough detail to be useful. And yet, these tiny structures are capable of programming my every cell and fibre, informing every single facet of which I am comprised, as to how to express itself in a physical format.

And yet smaller and more difficult to easily contemplate, the Higgs Boson, a thing so small, and so strange, that in order to even observe it, apparatus of such magnitude as to boggle the mind had to be constructed, and particles had to be smashed together, using VAST amounts of power. And yet, this difficult to observe, tiny quantity of stuff, the Higgs Boson has vast importance, because it is thought to be the particle which informs other particles how much mass they ought to have, and that is fundamental to the operation of the vast clockwork chaos that is the universe itself.

So, feeling small, and feeling insignificant are two very different things. Being small is not being powerless. Being small is not the same as lacking meaning. Small things are vital to the function of everything, from our own bodies, to the entire breadth of the universe, and we should understand that no matter how small we may feel, or may even BE at times, our responsibility as small things, is a huge one. We all have load to carry, we all have data to impart, or absorb in a given moment, we are all part of the great dance of life, and all of us carry the remnants of stars within our physical bodies.

We are small, but our potential and importance, even the least of us, is massive beyond measure.

a reply to: RedEyes619

I understand what you're after - I think

Space - of course. Reality and then art. 2001 is fiction, but just barely. It demonstrates the lure of space, why mankind's need to explore is a necessity. All our thinking, wondering - dreaming... so many possibilities





Free floating through space - terrifying and beautiful

It's funny - the unfathomable vastness of space makes me feel bigger - not smaller. Connected - to who knows what all is out there. This will sound a little silly - but I feel a lot of thinking out there - all kinds of thinking, in many different forms - all of it wondering about similar things. Just the idea of it improves my thinking and my mood

a reply to: TrueBrit

Love that

There's a kind of vast that is both small and large - boggles the mind

Norman architects of castles and cathedrals

18th century automaton makers

Aeronautical and automobile engineers

Physicists

Scientists generally

Anything bigger than me

This thread has taken off above my ability to reply independently to each person (possibly because it is 3:20am here in Australia!) But there are so many good ideas, videos, and opinions! Tomorrow morning I'll be able to give them the thorough attention they deserve!

I'm just happy ATS has managed to prove itself, imho, as a hub for critical thinking. I can't wait to see what everyone has to offer as their own personal media that makes them question life!