Cosmologist Alex Vilenkin, author of the Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes, meditates on the peculiar type of alienation one feels in a planetarium:
I don’t feel sad that I am small and insignificant. I think it is amazing that we understand so much about the universe. I’ve felt depressed for a different reason, because according to these modern theories the universe keeps going forever. And even though our local region will kind of succumb to an evil bubble, in different places there will be different Earths and in that scenario, things will repeat themselves. So there will be other Earths that are pretty much exact copies of ours. So of course most of the different civilizations will be nothing like ours, but there will also be ones just like ours.
So what I’m sad about is that we’re not unique in the universe. But small and insignificant … ? We are.
(Image: “Front Seats to the Universe” by Flickr user Pedro Moura Pinheiro)
The Dish 