The Universe Around Us

Neil deGrasse Tyson, the famous astrophysicist, once said, “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.” Indeed, the same atoms and elements that comprise our very bodies can be traced to the stars that manufactured the elements that are fundamental to life. When such stars collapsed and subsequently exploded, they spread these elements throughout the galaxy. We have a direct connection to the universe, a connection that manifests itself in the atoms that comprise us.

Compared to the rest of the universe, this planet is quite small. As you know, we reside in the Milky Way galaxy. The observable universe houses roughly 350 billion large galaxies and about 30-billion-trillion stars. To put this into perspective, there are more stars than grains of sand on all of Earth’s beaches combined. Although the Earth is a pale blue dot in the vastness of space, the beauty of the universe is further displayed in nature around us. Indeed, the cosmic perspective embraces our chemical likeness with not only other forms of life on Earth but the entire universe itself. There are more air molecules in a single breath than there are in all the breaths of air in the Earth’s atmosphere. Thus, it is entirely possible, perhaps even likely, that the air you just breathed passed through the lungs of Aristotle, George Washington, Beethoven, and other famous historical figures.

The human body contains a whole universe in of itself. The heart, for example, is an extraordinary muscle. Weighing a mere ten ounces, this mass of tissue, chambers, and vessels is responsible for pumping 2,000 gallons of blood through the body and for beating nearly 100,000 times each day. The heart pumps incessantly day and night to keep us alive. Evidently, even in the things we take for granted (our hearting beating day in and day out), we can find beauty in nearly everything. Indeed, everything in nature fits together in a complex system that beautifully supports one another. The endless complexity of nature may seem daunting to comprehend or even confusing, but, for me, it just adds to my fascination of the universe around us.