Dust In The Wind

Kansas sings 'All we are is dust in the wind'....

We are not even dust in the wind actually.

Some facts about our existence.

1. We live for 80-90 years, the universe is approximately 13 billion years old.

2. We are inconsequential on the cosmic scale. Take a look at the following animation, made by using images from rense.com.

The Sun's diameter is 109 times that of the earth....i.e. its volume is 109*109*109=1.3 million times the volume of the earth.

You need 1.3 million earths to fill up the volume of the Sun!

The above graphic shows that the Sun is invisible on a scale on which Antares (photo 5) is a supergiant. Antares' diameter is 700 times the diameter of the Sun...i.e. its volume is 700*700*700=343 million times that of the Sun.

i.e. You need 343 million Suns to fill up the volume of Antares!

Let us look at some more facts.

A star named "VY Canis Majoris" has the largest diameter out of all known stars, 1800 to 2100 times that of the Sun.

i.e. You need 9.3 billion Suns to fill up VY Canis Majoris!

Let us look at some other facts.

A star named "LBV 1806-20" , located approx. 40,000 light-years from the Sun, is 38 million times brighter than the Sun.

i.e. you need to put together 38 million Suns to get the brightness of one LBV 1806-20!

If the Sun is as bright as a 1 watt bulb........LBV 1806-20 is as bright as a 38 million watt bulb!

Despite its phenomenal brilliance , LBV 1806-20 is virtually invisible from the solar system. Its distance from us is so huge that its light gets obscured on the way.

The distances within our galaxy are so huge that even a star that shines brighter than 38 million Suns is invisible to us!

Antares, VY Canis Majoris and LBV 1806-20 are just three stars.

Our galaxy, the Milky Way, has 400 billion stars...

And the Milky Way is just ONE tiny galaxy among more than 130 billion galaxies in the known universe.

Total number of stars in the universe is estimated to be: 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. (50,000 billion billion).

Kansas rightly sings...'All we are is dust in the wind'......but isn't our pride beyond imagination?

So the questions are........

Where do we stand? What is our importance, if any, keeping in mind the frightening scales of distance and time, in the cosmos?

Kansas sings:

"Just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do
Crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind
All we are is dust in the wind,
Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky..."

(Sarah Brightman singing 'Dust in the Wind' and 'Who Wants to live Forever'.)