Coping with Millions – Billions – Trillions
Most of us have difficulty in conceiving enormous ranges of volume or proportion.
Human lifetimes rather readily encompass repeated actions, earnings, and lifetime financial figures that we can assess if we choose – whether it is getting out of bed, numbers of meals, sporting participation, hours of training or practice of crafts or skills and so on but usually everything, including our bank balance, involves hundreds, thousands, rarely millions and only occasionally could a miser be able to sit down and count his trillions!
The same lack of elasticity of imagination shows in us also, as very few of us can handle considerations of atoms, and nanoparticles as do the scientists involved in the microscopic worlds in their work.
Regarding the human populations in the countries of the world we have had to become more elastic however, to clearly perceive the relationship between the different groups in the well populated and in the sparsely inhabited areas, as we face the fact that the global population continues to increase worldwide.
However, grasping numbers and sizes in the third dimension is relatively easy compares with the more subtle aspects of distance, time and life energies of the cosmos where we have to move into another mental faculty in order to focus, and this is difficult.
How many enjoy the exercise in thinking of the number of grains of sand on all the beaches of the planet?
Or can cope with the knowledge that for thousands of years civilizations have come and gone without material evidence of their knowledge or existence?
Or that there are as many cells in the human brain as the stars in the heavens?
Or that a country can be billions of dollars in debt?
Or that there are minute worlds where man can manipulate atoms and that human science has had to develop miniscule instruments in order to do so?
But we must continue to exercise the faculties that permit us to understand even one iota of what human life is demonstrating to us as well as appreciating the natural miracles that exist without our intervention.
If we can move a little towards understanding some factors that are within our range and reserve a sense of wonderment in areas we cannot grasp, we may gradually learn to cope with the recognized world that appears ‘real’ to us and life that extends but in which we may feel we have no part…..
Here are a few facts that may be of relevance or not to your interests and your ability to grasp their importance. These items have just recently appeared in our news reports in Australia -
Australian medical exports amounted to $4 billion in one year.
Earth has 8.7 million biological species – others claim up to 100 million.
On March 25, NASA’s Swift orbital telescope captured a surge of X-rays from deep space, disgorged by what was clearly an immensely powerful source – a “supermassive” black hole with a mass a million times that of our sun, but this is relatively small. Other black holes exist with a mass of more than a billion suns!
And finally, who amongst us can sincerely relate to galaxies that are thousands of light years away?
Or what do we understand is a ‘light year’ that involves distance and time?
Compared with the expansion of consciousness needed for these exercises, our dear Earth and our daily life seem very cosy.
The study of our planet and our neighbouring ones in our own Solar System acquires a new attraction through a more comfortable demand upon our ability to comprehend the magnificent but immense spheres as well as the minute and miraculous.
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