Dancin when the stars go blue....

where do you go when you're lonely? where do you go when you're blue?.... yeah yeah, I'll follow you....

*I'm listening to a Corr's song feat. Bono from U2... I love U2. And Stars. I really love stars.

the intensity of the universe amazes me every second. We are so happy going along with our lives, with the immediate importance of whatever we see in front of us; be it this instant, next week, or 30 years from now. But when do we ever stop to really contemplate the enormity of what surrounds us? to me, 10 years is a long time. heck, a week is a long time. I have a difficult time imagining a lifetime. an even harder time picturing a century, and its, well, impossible to imagine a million years. but, that is just what is needed to comprehend just how BIG the world is.

we all know how fast light is. At least, we all have an idea that its fast, only the science nerds can spout off that its about 3 x 10^8 m/s. thats 300 000 000 meters per second. see that? 300 million meters per second. ok, that's fast. light can travel around the earth in about 0.004 seconds. or, to put it even easier, a seagull flying at the speed of light could go around the earth 23 times in one second. *wewf* all that crazy calculator math. so I've got this seagull flying super fast. now back to the stars. the stars are hundreds of light years away. Polaris (the North Star) is 680 light years away. Now to define a light year: its the distance light can travel in a year. Lets go back to the seagull. Mr Seagull is flying at 300 million m/s. there are about 32 000 000 seconds in a year. so 300 million meters per second, times 32 million seconds in a year is, well, a lot of meters. 95 with 14 zeros added on. And thats just the distance travelled in ONE lightyear. so, if Bob the seagull were to leave Polaris, and travel to earth, it would take him a really long time. because stars are really far away. And those are just the ones we can see. what about the rest that are too far away? or the ones that have just formed and their light hasn't reached us yet? And some of these stars don't even exist anymore - we just see the light that's still traveling.

so when I think about stars, and how far away they are... its rather mind blowing, to put it mildly

now I know that we can;t all wander around with the enormity of the universe filling up our thoughts. that would make us all crazy people. but we cant ignore it either. it puts our presence here on little Earth, only the 3rd planet from Mr Big Sun, who in reality is not so big at all, in perspective. And, to get religious, it puts the size of a Creator who could even conceive of it all, into something resembling perspective.

the idea that the world stretches out beyond our capability to imagine its limits in anything but a mathematical term fascinates me.

plus. stars are beautiful : )


so if you see some strange person wandering around looking UP rather than down where her feet are going... umm.. pull me out of traffic? pls? ;)

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