The dying star
One of the biggest news right now is the deepest image of the universe pictured by NASA through the newly developed James Webb Space Telescope.
The picture shows hundreds of galaxies which could not earlier be captured by Hubble, NASA’s old telescope which has been replaced by the Webb. NASA’s website says that ‘Webb’s image is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length, a tiny sliver of the vast universe’. The more I look at the picture, the more I feel insignificant in the larger scheme of things. To imagine that we are just a speck in this vast universe!
Our species have not been around for long considering the age of the universe starting from the Big Bang. This makes me wonder what is the role of humans in all of this. The image gives the impression that there may be no role to play. We are just a product of ‘chance’ and ‘randomness’ governed merely by laws of physics. The earth with the right mass happens to be orbiting around the right kind of star at the right distance and speed. All of which made life possible on earth. A little tweak and we may not have existed at all.
The pointlessness of our existence makes the current world affairs all the more purposeless- the pandemic, Russia-Ukraine war, Sri lanka and Afghanistan crisis and whatever else is going on in the world. My sense is that the humans will self destruct themselves before the sun burns out. Even if we don’t self destruct, the sun will eventually burn out, ending all life forms on earth. And I don’t think anyone in the universe will notice. Afterall this is business as usual in the universe.