Exploring Galaxies
In Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, Captain Barbosa and Captain Jack Sparrow are looking at the Cracken that the antagonist of the killed, which has washed up on the beach. Barbosa says, "The world used to be a bigger place," to which Jack replies, "The world's the same. There's just ...less in it." Earlier in the movie, the antagonist, Admiral Beckett, watches as a workman finishes painting a complete picture of the world on the wall. In his mind, he now controls all of that map, except the pirates, which include Captain Barbosa and Captain Jack Sparrow. The pirates represent, not death and pillaging in this movie, but as Elizabeth Swan later cries out, "Freedom!" Freedom from civilization, to do what you want and be beholden to no one. To explore the seas and beyond. Barbosa and Jack lament the Cracken's death because they feel like all that there is to discover has been discovered. There's nothing outside the realm of man's control. Every inch of the globe has been mapped, especially now with google maps. There's an anonymous quote often circulated online that says, "We are the middle children of history. Born too late to explore Earth, born too early to explore space," –anonymous. It's a depressing thought. There are no unexplored corners of the globe.
But is that true? Is there really nothing left to explore?
Large swaths of the depths of the ocean have never been explored and scientists are constantly finding new species in the depths of the sea and in the canopy of the rainforest. Let alone all the microbes that are being explored. The pirates thought everything was found, because that was all they could see. They couldn't see into space, plumb the depths, or ascend into trees. Even more they couldn't see the world in front of their eyes. There are millions upon millions of microbes on our skin, in us, and floating in the air all around us. Some find that incredibly distressing, but I prefer to think about it as countries' worth of microscopic organisms all around me. Explore the galaxy or the one in each of us?
I like that we’re somewhere in-between stars dying and electrons moving at about 2,200 km per second** around and around an around in literally everything we see. Even in the stars that are colliding, there are electrons going super, super fast. On a smaller scale there are also entire complex systems going on in a single cell and even more actions up a level to an organ and up a level to an organism, house, neighborhood, city, state, country, or planet. It’s like a sliding scale. The world suddenly seems very big even in its smallest places, if you think about it from the respective of an atom, or even smaller an electron, which is very weird. Very very weird. Nothing is holding still everything is constantly moving. Even the table is constantly moving, not just because we’re spinning around on a giant rock in space but because every the atoms are moving at a certain speed for temperature and even more so the electrons. So watching a table could be as relaxing as watching the leaves in a breeze if we could zoom in enough with our eyes. Weirdly all this movement makes me feel calm. I don’t have to do a lot of things. I’m already moving a lot. I don’t have to shake my leg back and forth all my electrons are doing that for me. I’m not in a cramped space there are billions of particles right in front of my eyes in the space between me and the trees at the back of the property. There’s so much space. I’m not trapped my brain’s not trapped either. Lots of space. Some people get scared if there is a lot of space, and I do too if there’s “nothing” there, but I get more scared when I’m trapped and I was feeling trapped. But I’m not trapped. I can stretch and move the length of about one thousand times the length of 25,000,000,000,000 electrons in a single inch***. So much space, but I can cover the long distance of millions of particle lengths quickly. That’s nice. Sometimes when i’m stressed I feel like I need to run away, just keep going and going and going and going away. But I can do that really easily if I walk across a room or the deck. I just moved the span of several continents in particle distance. I’m not trapped. That’s nice.
But is that true? Is there really nothing left to explore?
Large swaths of the depths of the ocean have never been explored and scientists are constantly finding new species in the depths of the sea and in the canopy of the rainforest. Let alone all the microbes that are being explored. The pirates thought everything was found, because that was all they could see. They couldn't see into space, plumb the depths, or ascend into trees. Even more they couldn't see the world in front of their eyes. There are millions upon millions of microbes on our skin, in us, and floating in the air all around us. Some find that incredibly distressing, but I prefer to think about it as countries' worth of microscopic organisms all around me. Explore the galaxy or the one in each of us?
I like that we’re somewhere in-between stars dying and electrons moving at about 2,200 km per second** around and around an around in literally everything we see. Even in the stars that are colliding, there are electrons going super, super fast. On a smaller scale there are also entire complex systems going on in a single cell and even more actions up a level to an organ and up a level to an organism, house, neighborhood, city, state, country, or planet. It’s like a sliding scale. The world suddenly seems very big even in its smallest places, if you think about it from the respective of an atom, or even smaller an electron, which is very weird. Very very weird. Nothing is holding still everything is constantly moving. Even the table is constantly moving, not just because we’re spinning around on a giant rock in space but because every the atoms are moving at a certain speed for temperature and even more so the electrons. So watching a table could be as relaxing as watching the leaves in a breeze if we could zoom in enough with our eyes. Weirdly all this movement makes me feel calm. I don’t have to do a lot of things. I’m already moving a lot. I don’t have to shake my leg back and forth all my electrons are doing that for me. I’m not in a cramped space there are billions of particles right in front of my eyes in the space between me and the trees at the back of the property. There’s so much space. I’m not trapped my brain’s not trapped either. Lots of space. Some people get scared if there is a lot of space, and I do too if there’s “nothing” there, but I get more scared when I’m trapped and I was feeling trapped. But I’m not trapped. I can stretch and move the length of about one thousand times the length of 25,000,000,000,000 electrons in a single inch***. So much space, but I can cover the long distance of millions of particle lengths quickly. That’s nice. Sometimes when i’m stressed I feel like I need to run away, just keep going and going and going and going away. But I can do that really easily if I walk across a room or the deck. I just moved the span of several continents in particle distance. I’m not trapped. That’s nice.
I was going to write about insects, and the microscopic structures in our bodies that I’m learning about in my anatomy class. How the smoothest blanket really has endless bumps and protuberances if you could look close enough. But this made me feel better. I’ve learned that I’m rather claustrophobic and thinking about how large the universe is only makes me feel like I need to move farther because I’ve seen so little of it. But this made me feel better. I’ve seen rather a lot of all the crazy amount of things here. This is a solar system’s worth of stuff in just a couple feet in front of me and I don’t have to move very far. That sounds lazy, but I don’t feel as squished as I did.
Sources:
**http://education.jlab.org/qa/electron_01.html
*** I'm basing this calculation off of information from the World Book Encyclopedia. Chicago: World Book. It says that, "the diameter of an electron is less than 1,000 the diameter of a proton. A proton has a diameter of approximately 1/25,000,000,000,000 [of an] inch." So that would mean 25,000,000,000,000 protons in an inch and you just multiply that by 1,000 to get the number of electrons in an inch. That's such a crazy number right?
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