Menu
header photo

Project Vision 21

Transforming lives, renewing minds, cocreating the future

Blog Search

Blog Archive

Comments

There are currently no blog comments.

How great do we assume we are and how do we measure it?

Francisco Miraval

I recently watched a documentary about the universe and one segment of the documentary focused on the discovery in the first half of last century of the distance between our galaxy and Andromeda, thought to be at that time only a nebula inside the Milky Way. In fact, it was believed that the Milky Way encompassed the whole universe.

The documentary reminded me of the first time I read the story about the discovery of the distance between our galaxy and Andromeda. I read it in The Universe, written in the late 1960s by famous science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov. The book deals with the history of astronomy from its remote beginnings to the mid-20th century.

The book was translated into Spanish in the 1970s and that’s the version I read.

Regardless, until almost 100 years ago scientists assumed that everything we see in the nocturnal sky was inside our galaxy. There was not even the thought of gigantic cosmic objects at unimaginable distances far away from the Milky Way. People believed that, so to speak, the Milky Way and the universe were one and the same.

Then, between 1917 and 1943, advances in science and technology firmly established that Andromeda was not a just a nebula inside our galaxy, but a neighboring galaxy, located around 2.5 million light-years away.

Not everybody accepted immediately the new measurements. And many of those who did accept them thought that the Milky Way was still the biggest galaxy in the universe. It took several years to finally correct that wrong assumption.

In other words, people thought our galaxy was the whole universe and then, when that was proven wrong, they thought our galaxy was the biggest one. And we still laugh at those who in the past thought earth and later the sun was the center of the universe.

In fact, it is probable that our universe is just a bubble in a sea of multiverses. Therefore, it is unlikely for our universe to occupy any position of privilege. However, in order to accept the conclusion that we are not the center of anything we need to show some level of humility, something most of us clearly lack.

At an individual level, we act as if we were the universe, or at least we assume we occupy its central and most privileged place. Everybody else is small and “nebulous” because we use ourselves to measure all others.

But then, astronomers such as Heber Curtis, Edwin Hubble, Ernst Opik, and Walter Baade show us we thought we were the biggest ones around because we were using the wrong measurements. In other words, we were wrong.

In fact, we are but an insignificant speck of dust in the cosmic ocean. Yet, we act pretending to be the supreme beings, with such arrogance we assume all others have to serve, obey, and worship us (and even vote for us). One day, however, sooner or later somebody will truly “measure” us and our narcissistic illusion will simply dissolve.

Go Back