Where do we belong?

I am not trying to make this a philosophical post, but it's just something that I think about from time to time....

Most of us are trying to figure out where we want to be in five years, ten years, later tonight... or where we were last night. Job security in this economic climate has many of us nervously twitching, hoping that the clock will make it to 5:00 before the manager calls us into his/her office. What's more, is that we all-too-often strive to earn more money so that we can purchase things that will make us feel good in that moment. The sound your LCD makes when you turn it on for the first time. The sound and smell of the new leather interior in a car that just came off the assembly line. Looking at the new DVD player on your ride home and imagining how much 1080p entertainment is going to bolster your every moment sitting in front of your television.

There are so many things that we constantly have to worry about (education, finances, children, politics, etc.) that we never take the time to come up with an explanation as to why we need to worry. Lately I have been caught up in books and videos about the universe. Much of my fascination with the universe comes from not knowing. Not knowing what is beyond what I can see standing on my balcony. Not knowing why those things that I can see from my balcony exist. Only knowing that there has to be some significance to the enormity of the universe. The Hubble Ultra Deep Field picture was something that is almost too much to wrap your head around, and too important to ignore. In 2003, scientists decided to aim the Hubble telescope at a seemingly empty area of deep space. The size of this area is about the size of a dime that is placed about 75 feet away. (Obviously the area that the picture actually covered was much greater than that of a dime, but this is just to be visualize the amount of space compared to the entirety of the universe itself).  Within this picture, scientists were able to isolate over 10,000 galaxies. 10,000!

I know I personally would think "yeah, I know the universe is big, but how big could it really be?". Think....no, look up how big the Earth is in comparison to the Milky Way galaxy. It's akin to pinpointing a grain of sand on a beach. We haven't even begun to chart the seemingly endless reaches of the Milky Way galaxy and scientists have discovered another 10,000 galaxies somewhere in the vastness of space. While looking through many websites, I've come across a few estimates by scientists that put the number of known solar systems in the Milky Way galaxy at around 70. These are the solar systems that have been identified thus far, but scientists believe that there could potentially be many billions of solar systems within the Milky Way galaxy. This is where it tends to get a little tricky to try to visualize the universe in it's entirety. I wouldn't recommend it unless you have a couple Tylenol lying close by.

So with a small patch of sky revealing roughly 10,000 new galaxies and scientists estimating that there could possibly be billions of solar systems in our galaxy, how can anyone believe that there is not life beyond our solar system? Which I guess leads back to the title of this post: Where do we belong? Could we really be the first intelligent species to evolve from a singularity billions of years ago? I am not saying that I do not believe in God, because there is something far greater than any person at work. The fact that scientists have yet to determine the precise conditions just before the Big Bang occurred let's us know that we are missing something important....what that is may not be realized for many years after my generation has passed. But to think about all of the possibilities that could come to fruition from the research that has been accomplished to this point is what keeps the wheels churning in the science department.

For everyone else, it's back to the grind. Waking up early to make it to work on time, putting in your 40 hours (sometimes more) each week. Cashing your paychecks in order to make the car payment, the mortgage payment, the seven different credit card payments, and having just enough left over to put gas in your over-priced and continually depreciating vehicle (with the leather interior that smells oh-so-good) to make it back to work. I suppose a more appropriate question for this post is: Why? Why do we feel the need to work tirelessly each day? Why is the universe expanding and not contracting? Why have we found no other signs of life in the universe? Why have no other beings found us? Maybe it's all one big "Truman Show". Hopefully we can find some answers sooner rather than later.