Universe... the final frontier... of weirdness.

Been checking some studies and websites about cosmology lately, and I gotta say, the stuff is really interesting. I mean. I don´t know exactly is that makes the studies about space so curious. I don´t know if it is the sheer grandiosity of the cosmos and its elements, that helps us feel small as atoms themselves, or if it´s the raw energy it all has, everything swirling around, cracking, breaking, and exploding away. The universe sometimes can look like a factory, and a damm noisy one, if we could hear it.

Granted there are odd things that happen right here next to us. The very fact that we exist at all, is an absurd. But I find that when I look to the space outside, it all makes me feel a little more meaningless and makes things a little more absurd. 

Let´s get into it: we are beings living on top of a rock, that´s going around a gigantic thing, called a star. This star is - like I said - enormous, and produces a huge amount of energy and power - with not a lot of effort. It´s a big thing, but not the greatest - or monstruous - thing we find out there - and still, look at the power it produces every damn day! Suffice to say that the Earth is 149 million kilometers away from it, and we receive it´s heat like it was a fire that people next to us use to roast marshmallows while camping. It is sufficient to maintain almost all life forms on the planet, daily. Not only that, it has been so for about 4 billion years. For this long it produced the same amount of energy, and it will keep going for quite some time yet (around some billion years). And it´s not even the only thing that does so: we have an approximate amount of one trillion of those. Per. Galaxy. 

And I said there that our sun is not the biggest not out of a passion to scorn the guy - not at all. I say so because it is a fact, is even a fact that he has not enough mass to end his days (as a sun) supernova style. There are monsters that go out with huge explosions - deemed as supernovas - that - get this - emmit in this brief moment, the entire energy that our sun radiates - throughout its entire life. In a few seconds, these monsters throw energy in the cosmos the likes of which we (human beings) cannot even be allowed near.  Like thousands of kilometers near. Explosions that far surpass those of the most incredible atomic or H-bombs humanity can ever create. I don´t know the exact numbers on those - but I guess that if we detonate all our H-bombs, the planet would still be here, maybe? Well, if a supernova exploded near our planet - say, as close as the moon is - luckily the planet could be in one peace afterwards, because everything else in here would not exist anymore. It would leave the planet - the rest of it - as a rock solid desert. 

What about black holes? These are huge things - the smallest are not so huge actually - that - get this - have so much density,  not even light can escape their gravitational pull. Not even light. Light is the fastest "thing" in the universe, and even it cannot escape a black hole´s pull. You think some of our cars can do it? Maybe our jets? Don´t you feel the powerlessness? These things out there make no sense. They bend reality itself at their will - and it´s even more so with black holes. It is said that they have around them a zone that´s called "event horizon". Inside of it, even time isn´t the same - because the gravitational pull bends space and time (given that astronomers understand these concepts together -  spacetime), so,  as it´s gravity is absolute, it bends the very fabric of space. Things that are pulled to this zone can no longer escape their fate to become a part of the black hole. Again - get this - no escape. None. Nada. Nothing. No guns, no space aircrafts, no machine guns, no bombs, no nothing. Not even light, nothing. Is it just me, or the universe is some scary place?

I could go on and on. Everything in space is mind-boggling. It should make no sense, but it´s there. Above all, a sense of the blackness that Ligotti talks about, that Lovecraft talks about. The cosmic horror. The aloneness. The cold. The emptiness. 

But other than that, I was seeing an documentary about 'dark energy'. I think it´s a quite good name, although scientists named it so because they don´t yet know how to explain it very well, so the noun "dark" comes in, because it applies to something not yet explained. The same thing goes for 'dark matter', although there are hints that 'dark matter' may be already a little more "explainable" than 'dark energy'. Anyways, I think it´s a pretty good name for something so terrifying. Because, you know all this explosions, and power, and forces, I talked about briefly? You know the most incredible thing I think about it? Beyond, of course, the sheer monstruosity of power? The universe doesn´t care. It doesn´t care. The universe itself is too "big of a place", a 'thing' or whatever, to care about those.

But - once again - get this: 'dark energy' may make the universe to care - so to speak. It is believed to be, so far, the greatest universal force ever discovered. What is it doing, you may ask? Oh, nothing, just pushing all galaxies away from each other. Pulling. Galaxies. Away. From each other. Scientists have discovered that distance between galaxies is not diminishing, but augumenting. It shouldn´t get bigger, because the gravitational pull should bring things close together again, but is not. Something is driving everything - meaning the intergalactic space - away. Like if it was pulling. In the end, this will prove to be a great contribution of, you know, ending the universe as we know it. Because in given time, everything will be farther away from everything, and so the universe will cool down, reaching temperatures only slight above absolute zero, thus ending it all. Other than that, scientists are still at bay at what exactly are those "things" - 'dark matter' and 'dark energy'. 

So, I guess the universe makes everything the more strange and bizarre than it already is - in our mundane, day-to-day life. And that´s ok. I like it weird.

And, like I pointed out before, what´s is even more interesting about this is that this sense of weirdness was captured by Lovecraft in his tales and short stories. For those that are yet unfamiliar with, Howard Philips Lovecraft was an american writer that captured the sense of the fantastic and horrific throughout what began to be refered as 'cosmic horror' or 'cosmicism'. It´s no wonder. When one gets to realize that everything out there, in the universe, is so weird and dangerous, one tends to question why the hell people imagined that interstellar travels were even possible in the first place. To me, space is the final frontier indeed. It´s a menacing, inhospitable place, where one can only expect to be eaten alive by a freakin black hole. I guess people thought that technology would develop even faster than what we have now, and maybe by the years 2000 and somethings, we would be travelling around in private shuttles, but it doesn´t happened, and I´m not sure if ever will, and frankly I wouldn´t care. Space travelling seems to be the kind of game one can only expect to lose, sooner or later.

Anyways, this post or more less unfocused, but the thing is that universe is freaking huge and absurdly nonsensical to us. Just a few reads on these subjects may show where Lovecraft both inspired himself and hit the nail on the spot with his literary genre.

And just as bonus to sum it all up, a picture that makes me diminish my sense of self every time I see:

That big red thing in the right is just a part of a star called VY Canis Majoris. Granted, it is the biggest star astronomers have found so far in the observable universe, but look at the diminute point located at it´s left. This would be our sun, if it were next to the hypergiant. And our planet you might ask? Well, if it were there, we wouldn´t be able to see it, due the resolution of the picture. That´s how unimaginably huge and absurd things are in the universe.

Cheers to one and all.