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The universe is vast. Impossibly vast.

The Earth is part of the solar system of 8 planets and 5 dwarf planets.

The solar system revolves around our star, Sol a.k.a. The Sun.

The Sun is just one star… and not a particularly large one at that.

The closest star to our system is Alpha Centauri which is 4.4 light years away, meaning light from our sun would take 4.4 years to travel to it.

The stars in our galaxy, or indeed any galaxy, are many light years away from each other.

The Milky Way is roughly 100,000 light years across.

Our single galaxy is the Milky Way, and contains around 200 billion (200 000 000 000) stars.

Our Galaxy is just a single galaxy part of a local galaxy cluster. Our nearest neighbouring galaxy is Andromeda at 2 500 000 light years away. It contains around 1 trillion (1 000 000 000 000) stars.

There are more galaxies in the universe than there are stars in the Milky Way.

If there were 200 000 000 000 stars in as many galaxies, that would mean there were around 40 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 stars in the known universe. And that’s probably an underestimate.

The galaxy clusters are so many light years apart that light takes millions of years for the light to travel to other galaxies.

Some stars we see are so far away that by the time their light reaches our planet, they themselves have actually died. We are only seeing their imprint in the universe.
And our Earth is just one tiny planet, in a lonely solar system, around a single small star, out of a universe so large that a million years is no time at all.
On the grand scale, we humans are transient, not even a blip in the galactic time scale.

Our entire human history isn’t even a millisecond in the grand expanse of the universe.

We haven’t found life on any other celestial body except our own planet.

We humans are all living in a universe so large that it is nearly impossible to envisage.

We are all living organisms, we are all the same species, we all have functioning brainstems and beating hearts; we are one mankind.

A single lifetime for a human may be something like 70 years. On the universal scale, that is absolutely nothing. It is not even the blink of an eye. It isn’t even close to a millisecond and here we are, in our insignificant corner of the universe, where we are seemingly forgotten. We are more united than we think, yet we choose to fight amongst ourselves over small differences. It would do us well to see our place in the universe and perhaps put into perspective just how small our existence is.

In the great, wide, empty universe, we are alive. We exist, and we are aware of it. We are aware of each other, yet we argue over little differences, when really, all of us, have so much more in common. We are ‘us’. We are human beings. We breathe, we eat, we think, we maintain ourselves. We can move, we can respire, we can reproduce, we can eat, we can excrete, we can sense and respond, we grow, we feel, we hate, we love. All of us. All 6 billion of us. On this single tiny planet in the universe. The universe is so much larger than us, and makes our numbers look small. In the darkness of space, we live. Not for very long, but we live.

And even though our existence in the universe is unnoticeable on the grand scale, we can actually understand the universe. We can make sense of it. We can think about the impossible numbers and sizes, the beauty and majesty of the heavens and the galaxies, the ancient raging fury of the supernovae and black holes of the firmament. We, the insignificant humans, can understand something so grand and ancient. We possess a brain, very likely the most complex entity in the entire universe. We may be impossibly small and transient, but we can appreciate our tiny existence and our transience. And that makes us special.