No Lives Matter

Honestly, I believe, all lives matter but only on earth; it’s just that in the greater cosmic scale, no lives matter. This simply means that we must stop worrying about issues that trouble us because in truth we are just a moment away from cosmic oblivion.

In the greater schemes of the cosmos, no lives matter. Even in the galactic scale, nothing will change if tomorrow a giant cataclysmic event destroys Earth into tiny fragments of rocks and end all life forms. The Milky Way galaxy will continue to exist; the only tiny change might be that the Sun would wobble a little bit and the moon will hurl itself towards another celestial body.

The question that pops up is do such galactic events occurs?

Yes and we have proof of them!

In 2015, the Star N6946-BH1 in the constellation Cygnus went missing! How? Well, the belief is that the star, which was a red supergiant as per the photographic records from 2007, had failed to go supernova and it just vanished. Whatever the scientific study will point to the cause but the point is, if a star which was 25 times bigger than our Sun can vanish and the Universe keeps on carrying on unaffected, then a rocky planet like Earth getting destroyed will not matter at all to the cosmos.

Photo Credits: NASA, ESA, and Christopher Kochanek (Ohio State University); https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21467

I hope, a few of you must have heard about the Great Void in the Boötes Constellation. Boötes Void, as it is commonly referred to, is a giant empty space of nothingness. The Boötes Void is about 330 million years in diameter. In simple English, it means that it will take light (that travels at a near speed of 300,000 km/second) will take 330 million years to travel from one edge of the void to the other edge across this emptiness! And that space is about 1/400th the diameter of the total observable Universe! Although, by the end of the 20th Century, astronomers have spotted about 60 galaxies in the Boötes Void, but the question remains as to what cataclysmic event(s) might have occurred there that had wiped out almost the entire observable matter?

Recent discoveries have been increasing the number of such voids in our observable Universe. We can either derive solace from that fact that maybe the Universe expands in this way – galactic super-clusters and intervening voids – or we are just getting to document that the Universe goes through frequent cataclysms than we had thought before; and that these voids are the remnant of such events. [Side Note: Do you know there is a Corona Void (Corona Borealis Void) too?]

These are two of the examples that illustrate how fragile life is. They also reiterate that no lives matter in the scheme of the cosmos.

What does this mean for us?

A few years ago, I read a story where Charlie Chaplin told a joke to his audience and the entire hall break out into laughter. He then repeated the joke and this time, a few in the hall laughed. Chaplin said the same joke for the third time, and this time no one laughed. After that, Chaplin told his audience, "When you cannot laugh on the same joke again and again, then why do you cry again and again on the same worry?"

Honestly, I believe, all lives matter but only on earth; it’s just that in the greater cosmic scale, no lives matter. This simply means that we must stop worrying about issues that trouble us because in truth we are just a moment away from cosmic oblivion.

However, instead of being paranoid of any imminent asteroid impacts destroying everything on Earth, we must cherish the wonderful miracle called life and try to lead a happy life away from the ‘web of triviality’ which mankind seem to have been tied down to.

Let me conclude this blog by quoting the famous astronomer, Carl Sagan’s golden word on the pale blue dot, “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

How could we be so obsessed with our troubles on this tiny speak of dust suspended in a sunbeam that we forget to live life itself?