The desire to feel important and special lies in the core of human nature.

For centuries, humanity believed that the earth was the center of the universe. 

It was was a comforting idea: we were central, significant – the purpose of creation. 

Then came scientists like Copernicus and Galileo, who dared to challenge this worldview. By adopting a scientific approach, they proposed the the heliocentric model – the idea that earth orbits the sun. This sharply contrasted twitch the geocentric model held by the church, which claimed that everything revolved around earth.

For suggesting that humanity was not the center of it all, these scientists faced sever consequences. Galileo, for example, was tried by the Inquisition and placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life.

Giving up the comforting belief of centrality was too threatening and scary. 

If we are not the center of the universe then, what are we? Are we even special? What if we don ‘t have a purpose?

It is a hard truth to accept. Earth is not a special place. It is a planet of average size and mass, orbiting a fairly ordinary star in a rather unremarkable solar system – all within one galaxy among billions.  without special position. And all of this might explode or collapse without leaving a trace of human civilization. 

Does any of this even matter?

Growing up – humanity

In many ways, our civilization matures like a single human being.

As children, we see ourselves as the center of everything – special and entitled.

As we grow, we begin to realize our place in a much larger, indifferent world. We come to understand that we are not the main character of the universe. We are merely another human on a regular planet living a regular life.

But perhaps that is not such a bad thing. If we are like everyone else, then at lest we are not alone. And if we are not alone, maybe there are planets like ours, beings like us, stories like ours.

Whit this idea in mind, we reach for the stars. Our planetary road trip starts with mars, searching even the smallest signs of life. We can the skies for electromagnetic radiation – signals of intelligent communication. We build massive radio telescopes to intercept waves from distant galaxies, hoping to detect patterns, clues, anything to suggest we are not the only ones here.

So far, no clear sign has answered back.

Until we find external life, we are left with ourselves. So, we build cities, fall in love, write stories, go skiing, read books, gaze at the night sky. Because, well… what else is there to do?

Our species not only feels special and entitled, but we also love to feel in control of the future – that we are the authors of the story, the wind that moves the leaves. But maybe the story writes us. Maybe we are the windblown leaves.

Are we so unsure of ourselves as a species that we constantly seek reassurance of our importance? We venture into space and try to shape the future – but in the grand scheme of the universe, across billions of light-years, even within our Milky Way, we change very little. 

At first glance, our cosmic unimportance feels like a punch in the face. It can be devastating, even frightening – like the world we thought we knew is crumbling.

But isn ‘t there a kind of peace in realizing we are not the center of everything? No pressure. No obligations. No need to prove anything. Isn ‘t is comforting to know we are free – free to explore, to experiment, to take the next plunge?  

And doesn’t ‘t it seem completely unreasonable to worry what others might think of you in this moment - just another tiny moment in a vast and unbothered universe?  

Magnitude of the universe

Unit of distances in the universe

Because the universe is unimaginably vast, we use special units to talk about astronomical distances. The most common unit is the light-year- the distance light travels in one year through a vacuum, moving at about 300 000 kilometers per second.

To calculate one light-year:

Distance = Speed x Time = 300 000 km/s x 31 536 000 s/year = 9.46 trillion km

That is 9460730472580.8 km – a number so large, it is hard to wrap your head around.

For comparison:

• The diameter of earth is only about 12 742km, so we comfortably measure it in kilometers
• But the diameter of the Milky Way, our galaxy, is around 1x 10^18 km, or approximately 106 000 light years. This means a photon (particle of light) crosses the Milky Way in 106 000 years.

Distances in the universe

While we haven’t explored the universes full extent and still don’t know whether it is infinite or has an edge, we do have solid theories.  The part we can observe – the observable universe – spans sphere with a diameter of about 93 billion light-years. That is the furthest region from which light has had time to reach us since the beginning of the universe, and it is already stunning.

Let ‘s zoom in and begin our journey outward:

• The distance to the sun is about 149 million kilometers, still measured in km because it is relatively close. And yet, when you compare it to something like a marathon (42km), it becomes clear we are dealing with a completely different scale.
• The Andromeda galaxy, the nearest large spiral galaxy, lies about 2.5 million light-years away. That is 2.5 million x 9.46 trillion km – a number so vast the human brain can ‘t visualize it. Ans that is just ur next-door neighbor in cosmic terms.
• The elliptical galaxy Messier 87 hosts one of the larges known black holes, M87*, which sits 53 million light-years away. We even photographed this black hole – meaning we captured light that left the galaxy 53 million years ago. We always look into the past…
• So far, astronomers estimated there are about 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. One of the farthest known galaxies is GN-z11, located around 32 billion light-years away – not because it was born that far out, but because the universe has expanded since the light left it. We are seeing it as it was just 400 million years after the Big Bang.

Cosmic humility

If those are only the distances in the observable universe and we have absolutely no idea what lies beyond this boundary… There could be countless more galaxies, structures, or even multiverses. We are only seeing a small part of reality limited by the speed of light and the age of the universe.

So where does that leave us?

We might just be an ordinary civilization, living on a normal planet, orbiting an average star in an unremarkable corner of one galaxy among billions. We don ‘t affect anything that happens 3 billion light-years away – in fact, we don ‘t even know what is happening there.

The unimportance of humanity, in this cosmic context, seems almost certain.