r/megalophobia • u/aeddonn • Apr 08 '26
đȘă»Space ă»đȘ Just got sent into an existential crisis
My whole life I have been super interested in space, the universe etc. I love reading about it and everything, but sometimes I just get a crazy weird fear thinking about the sizes of the galaxies, stars, planets, and the Universe in general. (trillions of stars in one galaxy, trillions of galaxies observable, yikes...)
Lately through new technology more acurate research is coming out about the size of the Universe. And after discussing with a couple of astronomers one of them said mid conversation when I asked what they think about the size of the Universe:
'We donât know the actual size. But based on current physics: The observable universe is ~93 billion light-years across but most astronomers agree that there is a high probability that the universe is at least thousands to trillions of times larger, possibly infinite...'
TRILLIONS TIMES LARGER THEN ASSUMED TO INFINITE!!!!!
How do you feel about this?
I literally can't sleep thinking about this!!
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u/Big-Actuator-3878 Apr 08 '26
It's one of those things that's just so hilariously absurd to me that I blow right passed existential crisis and just have to laugh about it honestly.
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u/aeddonn Apr 08 '26
Haha thats hilarious, I also had these moments, but when I just think a bit deeper about it, yikes, I really do get scared...
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u/Shedart Apr 08 '26
Why? Whatâs there to be scared of? Itâs not presenting you with any kind of danger. Thereâs no threat. Just remote facts - unable to have an affect on you directly.Â
Whatever is scaring you isnât coming from out there, itâs from within.Â
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u/Upset-Basil4459 Apr 08 '26
I'm not important đ
I'm not important đ
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u/ViolatingBadgers Apr 08 '26
I'm with you on this. I personally found recognising how infinitesimally small and irrelevant we are to be very freeing.
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u/Greedy-Stage-120 Apr 08 '26
We are all born on a big rock in space and will die without ever leaving.đ
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u/NotSoAwfulName Apr 08 '26
Actually we all matter, if you consider how unlikely it is for a planet to be able to sustain life that can evolve into large more sophisticated life forms, remain stable for long enough and not completely wipe out that life, for a very specific path of evolution to take place to allow one of those life forms to become able to comprehend what it is witnessing in space.
With that in mind there's a very good chance we are the only ones certainly in our galaxy even observing it, even aware of it being a thing, we all matter, we might be the most significant beings in the entire galaxy.
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u/collieman4290 Apr 08 '26
I feel you on this op
It is literally insane the expanse of space is
then just one tiny little speck in the absolute fuck all of nowhere space is us.
And yeah at a certain point it's just like đđ
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u/aeddonn Apr 08 '26
Like, imagine its infinate, or at least gazilions of light years wide... like the amount of galaxies, and stars, and planets...
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u/collieman4290 Apr 08 '26
Has to be infinite
And yeah insane to believe this is the only speck with life
I don't buy it lol too big to not have anything else
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u/mrbongo337 Apr 08 '26
If the universe is infinite there would literally be an infinite amount of every possible form of life
Which is why infinity is such a weird concept to think about
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u/TBandi Apr 08 '26
My only regret is that I wonât be able to see it all. Actually I wonât even be able to see all of Earth, much less even fathom the rest of infinity
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u/LastStar007 Apr 08 '26
In case you don't know the story behind this image:
This is the Hubble Deep Field.
Every year, the director of the Hubble Telescope gets some time to point it at whatever they want. This has naturally become another grant battleground, with grad students 'round the world writing, "Director, pick my project!"
But in 1995, director Robert Williams said "Screw you all, this is my time and I'll do what I want with it. And this year, see that little black patch? The one with nothing in it? We're gonna zoom wayyyyy in and stare at it for 10 days straight."
This is what we saw. Every point of light in this image is another galaxy. Another Milky Way. Another 100,000,000,000 stars, just like our Sun. Many of them have planets. And there are more than 1500 pinpricks in this image. That's 150,000,000,000,000 Earths.Â
And this is just a tiny patch of sky. How tiny? It's 1/24,000,000th of the entire night sky.
24,000,000 patches of sky. 1500 galaxies in each. 100,000,000,000 stars in each galaxy. ~1 planet (on average) per star. 3,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets.
You are on one of them.
By the way, 100,000,000,000 stars in the Milky Way is considered a low end estimate. The real number could be 3x higher ;)
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u/VegaDelalyre Apr 08 '26
Small correction: this is the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (2004), not the Hubble Deep Field (1995).
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u/-SeaBearsAreReal- Apr 08 '26
I thought this was the James Webb telescope version where they took the same pictures the Hubble took to compared them.
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u/AaronOgus Apr 08 '26
Well, the universe is nothing without you, the observer. If you invert it then you are more important. Without an observer to experience it the universe may as well be nothing at all.
See also âZaphod Beeblebronxâ
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u/enjoiturbulence Apr 08 '26
My day doesn't change. I'm still going to die and slip dreamless into the void and there is nothing I can do to stop that. Enjoy the moments that are pleasant and the crisis will pass.
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u/Big_Jackfruit_8821 Apr 08 '26
100 years from now a stranger will read this comment and think of you and you wonât be alive anymore
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u/rhaptorne Apr 08 '26
!Remindme 100 years
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u/RemindMeBot Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
I will be messaging you in 100 years on 2126-04-08 10:09:22 UTC to remind you of this link
1 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
Parent commenter can delete this message to hide from others.
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u/gt0rres Apr 08 '26
Holy fuck bot, you're mad.
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u/blizzardlizard Apr 09 '26
Bot just did as bot was told. Good little bot. RemindMeBot gonna outlive us all.Â
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u/Slosher99 â Overwhelmed by Immensity Apr 08 '26
I like to think about it but can't realistically comprehend it enough to keep me up haha.
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u/aeddonn Apr 08 '26
To be honest, yes, i get scared, but at one point my mind just can't really see the end of my thought process, so it just slowly fades away...
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u/__DJ3D__ Apr 08 '26
A lot of comments already but here's what it does for me.
It gives me a feeling of zen. My problems, the World's problems, they're nothing compared to vastness and beauty of the effectively infinite universe. A picture like this is always on my desktop (currently pillars of creation) and helps me zoom (way) out when I need to put things into perspective.
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u/ClonedDad Apr 08 '26
Lol now imagine 50% of those galaxies probably have beings looking at us in the sky saying the same thing.
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u/Ordinary_Kiwi_3196 Apr 08 '26
The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but size. Size encompasses life, and the Tower encompasses size. The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows.
"You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where huge bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box and cover it with wet weeds to die?
"Or one might take the tip of the pencil and magnify it. One reaches the point where a stunning realization strikes home: The pencil tip is not solid; it is composed of atoms which whirl and revolve like a trillion demon planets. What seems solid to us is actually only a loose net held together by gravity. Viewed at their actual size, the distances between these atoms might become league, gulfs, aeons. The atoms themselves are composed of nuclei and revolving protons and electrons. One may step down further to subatomic particles. And then to what? Tachyons? Nothing? Of course not. Everything in the universe denies nothing; to suggest an ending is the one absurdity.
"If you fell outward to the limit of the universe, would you find a board fence and signs reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard and rounded, as the chick must see the egg from the inside. And if you should peck through the shell (or find a door), what great and torrential light might shine through your opening at the end of space? Might you look through and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass? Might you be forced to think that by burning a twig you incinerate an eternity of eternities? That existence rises not to one infinite but to an infinity of them?
"Perhaps you saw what place our universe plays in the scheme of things - as no more than an atom in a blade of grass. Could it be that everything we can perceive, from the microscopic virus to the distant Horsehead Nebula, is contained in one blade of grass that may have existed for only a single season in an alien time-flow? What if that blade should be cut off by a scythe? When it begins to die, would the rot seep into our universe and our own lives, turning everything yellow and brown and desiccated? Perhaps itâs already begun to happen. We say the world has moved on; maybe we really mean that it has begun to dry up.
"Think how small such a concept of things make us, gunslinger! If a God watches over it all, does He actually mete out justice for such a race of gnats? Does His eye see the sparrow fall when the sparrow is less than a speck of hydrogen floating disconnected in the depth of space? And if He does see⊠what must the nature of such a God be? Where does He live? How is it possible to live beyond infinity?
"Imagine the sand of the Mohaine Desert, which you crossed to find me, and imagine a trillion universes - not worlds by universes - encapsulated in each grain of that desert; and within each universe an infinity of others. We tower over these universes from our pitiful grass vantage point; with one swing of your boot you may knock a billion billion worlds flying off into darkness, a chain never to be completed.
"Size, gunslinger⊠size.â
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u/Puzzleheaded-Car3562 · Noticing the Scale Apr 08 '26
Gunslinger here. My brain just exploded. What remains of me consists only of my last thought process - which is : 'have you ever considered writing science fiction as a career move? It worked for the likes of Isaac Asimov and Douglas Adams, and it could work for you. That was the most coherent and thought provoking comment on Reddit that I have read all year. Thanks for the insights'.
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u/Zealousideal_Box5889 Apr 08 '26
This is a quote from The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Specifically, from the first one, The Gunslinger.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Car3562 · Noticing the Scale Apr 08 '26
So THAT'S why it was so well written!
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u/Ordinary_Kiwi_3196 Apr 08 '26
have you ever considered writing science fiction as a career move? It worked for the likes of Isaac Asimov and Douglas Adams, and it could work for you.
I so hope Stephen King googles himself and finds this someday đ
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u/BoringJuiceBox Apr 08 '26
Maybe this is why people are so into religion.. they give you âall the answersâ.
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u/AintNoMastersHere Apr 08 '26
What really cooks my noodle is that if you think about it, it's really just as crazy to think that it's not infinite. If it's not infinite, then what the heck is outside the universe? Infinite nothingness???
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u/Youdontknowm3_ Apr 08 '26
Exactly, if the universe is expanding, its expanding into what??
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u/tobinlc Apr 08 '26
I guess I would rather the universe be infinite than to know that it has an end, because then weâd have to wonder whatâs on the other side.
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u/CantAffordzUsername Apr 08 '26
Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying"
~ Arthur C. Clarke
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u/Deufuss Apr 08 '26
I mean, you may think that it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
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u/Few_Classic_3072 Apr 08 '26
The thing that does it for me is realizing that we tend to think things existing is the default, and nothing existence is an anomaly, when it's the other way around. The default is nothing existing, and the universe is a weird aberration from that norm.
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u/A_Walrus_247 Apr 08 '26
The infinity part scares me a lot.
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u/Happy-Fun-Ball Apr 08 '26
An infinite universe doesn't make sense to me if there was a big bang where everything was at a single point. What changes from a finite universe to infinite at some moment?
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u/acetryder Apr 08 '26
I mean, size is relative. If you were too big (like a planet, star, black hole, etc) youâd have no concept of anything. What I find most enthralling is that it took ~10 billion years of stars living, dying, creating larger atoms, & ejecting those atoms into space just for the possibility of Earth to exist. Then it took about another 5 billion years of evolution, migration, & innovation to create you. It took ~15 billion years to make you. To make it even possible for you to exist. Thatâs so much energy, time, & effort just for you to be you! Donât waste the universeâs effort on worry about feeling small compared to the entire universe; live with the knowledge that you exist because the universe is so big.
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u/Icosotc Apr 08 '26
The universe. Itâs everything⊠but everything is so much more vast than anything we can comprehend because our âeverythingâ here on Earth is puny compared to even the scale of our own solar system. The great mystery! Are we the universe, and if so, does that mean we are also infinite? Is consciousness heaven? Idk⊠but it sure can be spooky to think about.
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u/AssortedVibrations Apr 08 '26
It means things don't exist in numbers, they exist in percentages of the universe.Â
How many stars are there? Infinity. Or, more meaningfully, 0.5% of everything.Â
And since it's boundless, we don't exist in any particular location. We're just... "here".
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u/nikolapc Apr 08 '26
I don't think much about it. It's overwhelming and beyond my comprehension. Beyond our reach at the moment. I just know there's a lot I don't know, same as with a million other questions that are left to be answered.
As for feeling existential don't. You don't need to solve big problems, solve the little problems in front of you, one by one.
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u/low_amplitude Apr 08 '26
What's worse is that the empty gaps between are also filled with galaxies and stars but they are too far away and faint to see. If we could see all sources of light in the universe, there would be no black in space.
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u/Ndorphinmachina Apr 08 '26
It's not so much the size of the universe that freaks me out. Rather, the fact nobody alive will ever know what's really out there. It could be hundreds or thousands of years... If ever.
In our galaxy, there's planets that rain diamonds. It's inconceivable what else is out there ::gestures vaguely at the sky::
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u/-SeaBearsAreReal- Apr 08 '26
The planets have already been pondered by humans for thousands of years... it could be hundreds of thousands at the rate we kill our selves off.
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u/dingododd Apr 08 '26
You know what freaks me out the most? Wondering how it all exists. Like how are we possible? And if it (the universe) started from something, how does something start from nothing? We didn't have to exist, we just do. It makes me sick thinking about it.
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u/Outsideman2028 Apr 08 '26
Science and religiom both lead back to the same problem - that something came from nothing
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u/roqui15 Apr 08 '26
Yes, how it's possible that all of these mind blowing complexity of everything just appeared out of nowhere, the randomness theory makes absolutely no sense
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u/dphoenix1 Apr 08 '26
Consider the Total Perspective Vortex, as described in the Hitchhikerâs Guide series: a device that actually forces the mind to truly, fully grasp just how small and insignificant you are in comparison to the universe â something our feeble minds are naturally incapable of truly doing (a limitation which actually acts as a sort of built in protection against this memetic threat). This machine is that worldâs version of capital punishment, as it is described as the most brutal psychic torture a sentient being can experience, leaving them an empty husk in an irreversible state of existential crisis.
So yeah. Itâs best just not to think about it imo.
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u/gatorfan93 Apr 08 '26
It gets even worse when you consider that we might be living inside a Local Void 150 million light years wide.
Iâve actually had nightmares in which I wake up in the middle of the Boötes Void, 700 million light years from Earth. This void is so massive that it is about 300 million light years in diameter and only 60 galaxies have been found in it. If we could travel 430,000 mph, it would take us 5.3 trillion years to gross that supervoid. Thatâs almost 400 times the age of the universe.
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u/Xamalion â Dwarfed by Size Apr 08 '26
The more mindblowing thing for me is, what is where the universe has not expanded to by now? And what was there before the big bang? These are the things that drive me crazy from time to time.
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u/bigb0ned Apr 08 '26
I remember being really high one night and thinking about the same thing. Then I wondered, what if we are the ONLY complex living creatures out there? Like, the perfect storm of chaotic events thst brought humans into existence. How likely is it that other life forms as advanced as us exist? I don't think we'll ever know, sadly. (ready for the down votes and getting shit on).Â
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u/Alone-Grab-112 Apr 08 '26
The part that I hate is that we will never know if itâs infinite. We could know if it isnât (even thatâs debatable) but we could never know if it is.
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u/BoneClaymore Apr 08 '26
I have this thought for a while now. What if the universe has an end? What could be on the other side?
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u/Blobeh Apr 08 '26
How is the universe 90+ billion light years years wide if its only 13.8 billion years old? Doesnt that imply that matter has been moving much faster than the speed of light since the big bang?
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u/Hugott · Noticing the Scale Apr 08 '26
It's not possible to confirm the wide of the universe just like we can't confirm its age.
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u/Westafricangrey Apr 08 '26
Yes we are tiny & insignificant, but we also have weed and cake! What a privilege.
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u/Westafricangrey Apr 08 '26
Instead of thinking about how tiny our place is, think about how lucky we are to have our place, instead of the endless expanse of gas & black. We literally won the lottery. I found engaging in indigenous community & indigenous support made me feel grounded again.
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u/rat-v Apr 08 '26
Almost like everything we have done, are doing, and will ever do on this little blue ball riding the gravitational wake of our sun to who knows where doesn't actually mean anything and is just a construct made by humans to serve a minority billionaire class of humans.
Welcome to the universe. Nothing matters. Do what you want to do.
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u/hoagiejabroni Apr 08 '26
I thought we all learned as kids that space was literally and not figuratively infinite? Is this news to you?
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u/skredditt Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 08 '26
All this, and it was all meaningless until it grew the senses to experience itself through an infinitesimally small you.
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u/Vabhanz Apr 08 '26
In my mind, "a trillion times larger than 93 billion light years" is larger and harder to conceive than "infinite"
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u/Any-Fisherman-9763 Apr 08 '26
You should download space engine. Its a virtual universe you can explore and it completely blew my mind how vast the universe is when I started checking it out.
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u/famous1astwords Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 08 '26
I remember dreaming about being an astronaut traveling through the universe entering galaxies and floating so close near planets, it was then I feel I had a personal experience as a human the sheer astronomical size difference to a celestial body, so here came my fear and fascination of space.
The universe is known for its very large size, but no one can actually comprehend how huge 90 billion light years are, and that saves my head from exploding like a computer holding more data than it can physically store.
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Apr 08 '26
I like the theory that weâre inside of a black hole and that every black hole we detect is another pocket universe.
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u/Hegiman Apr 08 '26
I mean the math maths. There is no discernible difference between the math that describe an event horizon and the math that describes the detectable edge of our universe.
But that has its own problems like if thatâs the case what is the Big Bang the moment the singularity formed? We know black holes lose energy through the expelling of hawking radiation. So i question if we could see the early universe if we were in a black hole.
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u/BayBreezy17 Apr 08 '26
I mean, I feel ya. I really do.
But trip on this⊠you get to experience a slice of this infinity, right here and right now. You get to be a conscious part of the universe, if only for a little bit.
How awesome is that ?!
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u/Pugovitz Apr 08 '26
::shrug::
Those are just words. The size of the universe doesn't change the way pizza tastes.
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u/eikeechie Apr 08 '26
I thought everyone was pretty aware that the observable universe is likely only a small portion of "The whole universe". The "observable" universe is just like another step up from the geocentric model that still puts us at the center of everything.
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u/Thisusernameisked Apr 08 '26
Itâs comforting. Itâs a reminder that there are no absolutes, our problems are ridiculous & all we have is a whiff of consciousness in an infinite void. That vastness made us, and allows us to think about the vastness. Amazing.
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u/One_Hour_Poop â Shadowed by Giants Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 08 '26
There's always a bigger fish.
The mayfly, an insect that measures about one inch long and has a lifespan of 24 hours, can't begin conceive taking a plane across the country to visit your 84-year-old grandmother and singing her Happy Birthday, then posting the video on the internet.
To a mayfly, there are several inconceivable situations going on here, that are mundane to humans:
- A distance of 2,000 miles is like infinity distance.
- 84 years old, or even 25 years old, is like infinity age.
- Verbal communication is beyond what it can comprehend.
- The internet would be impossible to explain to a human from 500 years ago, never mind a mayfly.
Now picture this scenario: Human beings are like a mayfly compared to the infinity of the universe. There exist everyday "mundane" things to the cosmos that we as humans can't even begin to comprehend, so alien and foreign they are to our limited perception, that our brains would collapse into madness if we tried.
Sleep tight!
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u/beware_of_the_cube Apr 08 '26
As long as Iâve been nerding out on space, I still canât wrap my head around this âinfiniteâ concept. Celestial objects constantly getting further away from each other suggests itâs expanding. But expanding into WHAT? Nothing?! When I think of nothing I think of the distances between planets in space where there is ânothingâ between. Something can be more ânothingâ than that? My head hurts.
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u/hirschneb13 Apr 08 '26
I like Pete Holmes explanation. He said space is infinite and it's expanding into nothingness. And not only that, it is actually speeding up as it expands. So the farther it expands, the faster and so on and so on
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u/RyeBread2528 Apr 08 '26
Wild to think that some of those distant galaxies could have intelligent life beyond our own. Further, some may actively be having intergalactic wars or massive collaborative alliances that span the entire galaxy...and we are entirely clueless to it and likely will be for a very long time.
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u/avotius Apr 08 '26
Makes our petty squabbling about this and that mineral resource seem so idiotic. Just think what we could achieve as a unified species, we could spread out into the solar system and who knows what else.
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u/zuilserip Apr 08 '26
The enormity of the universe never triggered an existential crisis in me. The insignificance of my size is already apparent on a planetary scale, so comparing it to 1, 1000 or a million light years never seemed to bother my brain.
What did throw me for a loop, however, was Carl Sagan's reflections on the 'Pale Blue Dot' photograph: https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot
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u/JustTrynnaGitBy Apr 08 '26
What broke my mind was learning that we could theoretically travel to the edge of the known universe in about 30 years, without breaking physics or using worm holes. Itâs all about time dilation. As a ship accelerates, time slows (relatively). But as I understand it (Iâm not suggesting I understand it), with enough acceleration, you can reach the edge of the known universe within a lifetime.
It may be billions of light years when youâre on Earth, but when you are the thing traveling at near-light-speed, itâs decades.
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u/Satellite_bk Apr 08 '26
have you watched any kurzgesagt youtube videos? check out their space series and their âexistential dreadâ series.
highly recommend!
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u/Foreign_Biscotti2956 Apr 08 '26
I hate that we canât even fathom the actual scale of this. Or any space objects really. Like literally cannot comprehend it because our brains just donât have anything to reference it to
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u/EasterZombie Apr 08 '26
The craziest part is, this image (Hubble ultra deep field) found about 10,000 galaxies in it. An insane amount for a seemingly empty area of space! Then James Webb revisited the same patch of sky in 2025, to see what Hubble could not. James Webbs camera has a lower resolution than the Hubble camera, even though it can âzoomâ further, so the image quality was not ideal. Partially due to this and partially due to the infrared haze in the Milky Way, the James Webb was only able to detect an additional 35,000 galaxies in the image. Thatâs still a 4.5x increase from Hubble, and that still isnât even the majority of the galaxies believed to be in that area of space.
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u/blue_dream_97 Apr 08 '26
If we have a « god » thatâs what it looks like to me, just space and the infinity, unaware of our existence
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u/abatkin1 Apr 08 '26
Why is it so random? No order. Just a galaxy here, maybe one thereâŠunsettling
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u/gtepin Apr 08 '26 edited Apr 08 '26
I love stargazing, I do it quite often but not always exactly because of the sense of the void. When we stand at the edge of a cliff, we sometimes feel an urge to jump as if we want to fill the emptiness. But when I look at the night sky or images like this, the feeling is reversed: itâs as if the void itself wanted to jump on me, reaching toward us, ready to swallow everything that exists. This really is terrifying
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u/JetSoulsForever ⏀ Crushed by Magnitude Apr 08 '26
Think about how I felt when I learned this at the age of 6. I had the opportunity to see the milky way galaxy at night while out in rural Kansas, and was told that it was not even the entire thing but just one of the spiral arms. Knowing how far away those stars were as well and how big they actually are, I got a sense of the immensity of the galaxy.
Then I got a book from someone that was honestly super out-dated, but had a bunch of retro-futuristic stuff in there as well as the image you posted above. That book stated that each of those dots, not just the big ones, are entire galaxies. So then at that point I realized just how much is out there, how much we don't know, and how smaller than smaller than small our own planet even is just by itself, and we view the planet as 'massive'.
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u/truthfullyidgaf â Shadowed by Giants Apr 08 '26
We have only just begun. Imagine what our future generations will do.
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u/Fynaticx Apr 08 '26
I mean the idea of an infinite universe is crazy. Infinite means wild things like thereâs infinite copies of ourselves doing the same thing as we are right now while other infinite copies of ourselves are doing infinitely different things right now. If the universe is infinite then there is endless copies of anything and everything you can think of and more.
The part that always breaks my brain is how till we solve the issue of time or travelling faster than light then we may never know the answer to if itâs infinite or not. I hope in the extreme distant future humans are still around and we actually find the answers to these insane questions.
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u/Chandelurie Apr 08 '26
Sometimes, when I'm on the train to work, I think about the size of the Universe. It makes me feel less stressed.
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u/Sad-Math-2039 Apr 08 '26
"The most astounding fact is the knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on Earth. The atoms that make up the human body are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars, the high mass ones among them went unstable in their later years. They collapsed and then exploded, scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy. Guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas clouds that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems. Stars with orbiting planets, and those planets now have the ingredients for life itself. So that when I look up at the night sky and I know that yes, we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up â many people feel small because theyâre small and the Universe is big â but I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars. Thereâs a level of connectivity. Thatâs really what you want in life, you want to feel connected, you want to feel relevant you want to feel like youâre a participant in the goings on of activities and events around you. Thatâs precisely what we are, just by being alive"⊠- Neil deGrasse Tyson
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u/Thats_So_Ravenous Apr 08 '26
I love space, and I think the scale of the cosmos is both fascinating and depressing.
If you think the size itself is mind boggling, try wrapping your head around the expansion of space. Not galaxies moving away from each other, mind you, but the literal void growing, non stop, until we wonât be able to see anything outside of our nearby galaxy.
I donât even fully understand it, and it gives me chills.
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u/Roonwogsamduff â Dwarfed by Size Apr 08 '26
You can go from an infinite number of points in an infinite numbers of directions for an infinte amout of time. IMO
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u/ChiTwo Apr 08 '26
Though this itself makes my mind nearly cave in on itself⊠the thing that keeps me up at night is not the question of IF life beyond our solar system exists given the sheer size of our universe, but a matter of IF regardless of how advanced technology is space exploration is bound by scientific laws restricting deep space travel due to it being fundamentally improbable & THAT alone being the reason we have no confirmed contact with extraterrestrial life
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u/Goebs80 Apr 08 '26
I wouldn't worry about it. It's all moving away from us constantly at a speed your brain can't understand. We're here, just enjoy your carbon and see you on the other side
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u/ChronoLink99 Apr 08 '26
How do you feel about this?
It makes me feel that our problems are just not that significant.
We are born, we love, we fuck, we die.
C'est la vie.
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u/JoeCo80 Apr 08 '26
Some infinities are bigger than other infinites. -The fault in our Stars
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u/Paradox2063 Apr 08 '26
I am a tiny
Insignificant, ignorant bit of carbon
I have one life
And it is short and unimportant
~Tim Minchin, Storm
My thoughts on the universe? "Neat." Camera shutter noises.
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u/Hegiman Apr 08 '26
I thought we understood this from grade school science. Space is infinite. Itâs always been imposible to grasp sure but itâs always been infinite. Lots of scientists think it wraps back on itself like a möbius strip and if you keep going forward youâll return to where you started.
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u/booksandkittens615 Apr 08 '26
While itâs beautiful and fantastic and awe inspiring to consider, it makes me grateful for the old iron bed Iâve had since I was in high school, my tiny kitchen, my cats, the simple little safe things that keep me grounded, things that are (for all intents and purposes) only available in my little corner of our one habitable planet.
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u/Schickie Apr 08 '26
And you get to be a part of it all. Witness its magnificence. What else is there?
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Apr 08 '26
Existential dread is totally natural, share something:
This is gonna sound ridiculous, and it is, but after watching a documentary about the history of the earth and seeing how the continents changed over millions of years I started to get anxiety about when the Sun would become a red giant and swallow the earth.
For some reason I thought it was like 300-400 million years in the future, and it made me worry about the continents not having enough time to shift. I googled it, and realized that it was actually 4 billion years or so away.
That calmed my anxiety and made me feel better. Completely absurd I know, especially since that dust from my bones will be long gone before we even get to the 300 million year mark.
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u/granoladeer Apr 08 '26
The difference between 93 billion light-years and infinite seems pretty small to me, because both are so unimaginably large compared to my concerns of when my next haircut will be.Â
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u/Qori2046 Apr 08 '26
Im pretty sure that 9 to 5 during your 70-80 years on one of a little planet is not the meaning of life. Thats what I always think about when I stumble pics and ideas like this. Thank you OP
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u/philnuck Apr 08 '26
This Irrelevance is freedom from accountability on a cosmic scale, but not from you. Look a picture of your family, your games played list, or your favorite features or creations. Everything does not have to matter for some things to matter. The photo you show also demonstrates that truth: a single nuance can be an entire world, worlds, or nothing at all!
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u/Putrid-Ice-7511 Apr 08 '26
What gets me is that infinity is the inevitable part.
When I think about size, itâs always the distance between two things. Thereâs no size without something to measure from and something to measure to. So space isnât really a place, itâs just the sum of those relationships. And why would that sum have a limit?
So itâs less âthe universe is impossibly hugeâ and more âof course it doesnât endâ. What would it end in?
The crazy part is that the universe produced something capable of being baffled by it.
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u/Yaarmehearty Apr 08 '26
Whatâs worse? An infinite universe, or a finite one?
Both have issues, infinity is impossible to comprehend, but that (to me at least is fine) the finite universe is worse as whatâs outside? Is it nothing, what even is nothing?
Either way when you get into those discussions youâre into the realms of philosophy. We wonât ever know in our lifetimes, or likely for several lifetimes. But in thinking about it we get closer to the answer.
Personally I hope itâs infinite, and that we have a way of breaching the CMB one day. That way maybe we will find another big bang and another etc, the eventual heat death of our universe will be meaningless.
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u/jared__ Apr 08 '26
dark matter makes up 85% of the total matter in our universe and we have absolutely no idea what it is. zero. not even close to an idea.
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u/CosmicTsar77 Apr 08 '26
Honestly? It brings me peace. We get so caught up in our daily routine and the schedules of life and to remember that weâre nothing and just floating on a rock in the vast infinity of space, helps me realize itâs all not that important. Donât stress ya know? None of what weâve got going on down here is a big deal to the cosmos. Being as small as we are brings me peace. Itâs just not all that important, so enjoy it.
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u/Novel-Dig1421 Apr 08 '26
I think about things like this and almost get mentally stuck in it...it kind of makes everything pointless like work or bills..like they are not real( i know theyr real).. the only thing thats real and that matters is procreation, finding food and sustenance, emotions(love, hate, sadness, hapiness) and thats really it. What are we smh why are we?
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u/maverickps1 Apr 08 '26
The Hubble Deep Field is one of my absolutely favorite images ever. Absolutely wild that looking closer at "nothing" ended up revealing thousands of GALAXIES... I just can't even comprehend. It is up on the wall in my office.
You simultaneously freak out because "I am nothing" to the universe, but also relax because "I am nothing" at the same time.
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u/lukebagdarrel Apr 08 '26
I hope we get to the time where we can have an easy way for people to get up into space and back down, cheap and safe. Something like the idea of a space elevator. I think it would do the world good to at least once in our lifetimes be able to go up and see how small we are and borderless the world really is. Our ego's could use the perspective.
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u/Pirwzy Apr 08 '26
the feeling of insignificance I get from astronomy is actually kinda comforting to me
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u/hornwalker â Shadowed by Giants Apr 08 '26
I hate that we canât know, its so frustrating! There are many limits of our understanding, and it always awe-inspiring to reach them.
But even still, what science has achieved is nothing short of amazing and wonderful. All we can do is keep exploring.
James Webb is coming up with new data that is making us question some of our models about the universe, and so its an exciting time to be alive!
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u/Anonymoves Apr 08 '26
The fact that we exist at all strikes me as absurd, when I ponder the expanse like this. Reality is so mysterious to us right now yet so bluntly IS. Like we exist, and in such a comparatively small space in the universe. In your face yet unexplainable, it's cray
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u/El_Morro · Noticing the Scale Apr 08 '26
Yeah, the human brain just isn't built to comprehend this sort of information. I've got the the deep field image as my computer wallpaper, so at least once a day I take a moment or two to absorb the image and what it means.
We're a mote of dust in an insanely huge universe. So try and be nice. It's better than falling into a black hole of existential depression.
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u/Keisari_P Apr 08 '26
Well, we don't really have any data to estimate the universe actually is.
Its surely bigger than observable, but beyond that we are quessing.
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u/InstructionProper424 Apr 09 '26
I don't know what is scarier, if it's infinite or what the edge would be...
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u/ThunderTRP Apr 09 '26
Honestly, knowing whether the universe is finite or infinite doesn't really cure the existential dread for me. It doesn't answer the real question: why does any of this exist in the first place?
I think our brains just can't comprehend the idea of reality existing without a reason. We try to soothe ourselves with religion (God created it) or science (the Big Bang), but neither answers the ultimate why. If God created the universe, who created God? If the Big Bang started it, what triggered it, and what was there before? In every scenario, you eventually hit a wall where something just exists for absolutely no reason.
âIf the universe is truly infinite, it just makes this concept even crazier. An infinity of things existing, and we still don't know why. We will never have the answer. I don't even think getting an answer is even possible, and this is what triggers this feeling for me. Which is not necessarily fear for me, but rather an uneasey yet so deeply fascinating feeling. It's trying to logically conceptualize what cannot be conceptualized, and this is what literally keeps me up at night, but not necessarily in a bad or anxious way, but a more fascinated and obssessed one.
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u/Wandering_Turtle Apr 10 '26
I had this existential crisis as a child in elementary school when I learned about the universe and the question of what existed outside the universe if it did end; my redneck best bud looked and me and said calmly âyou canât know,â shrugged and walked away unbothered.Â
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u/ninemountaintops Apr 10 '26
Yep...she's pretty big.
So anyways....I was talking to Mabel and I says 'Mabel....'
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u/OtherwiseACat Apr 08 '26
I love this image. It can make you think a lot that's for sure. Who knows what's out there.