By strict accounting of cosmic abundances, our planet and the life we find here amount to essentially zero. Insignificant. A small speck of blue and green suspended in an ocean of night, a tiny bit of rock and water orbiting just another star. The great forces that shape our universe have grown the voids over billions of years, and their present-day monstrousness puts cosmic insignificance into stark relief. Forget planets and stars; at these scales, even mighty galaxies are reduced to mere dots of light. […]
Yes, the universe is mostly void, but we have found many wonders in those great expanses. The voids don’t simply exist; they define and provide contrast to the galaxies that surround them. The properties of the voids — their shapes and sizes and so on — reflect the mysterious forces that govern the evolution of the universe. Within the voids we find the occasional dim dwarf galaxy, like an oasis in the desert. And we have found that the voids are brimming with cosmic energies that may someday overwhelm the rest of the universe.
It’s true that in cosmic terms, Earth is neither large nor long-lived. But that is only one way of measuring significance. Compared with the voids, there is something special happening on our planet. Despite decades of searching, Earth is still the only known place in the entire universe where conscious beings raise their curious eyes to the sky and wonder.
Earth is the only known place where humanity exists — where humanity can exist. It is the only known place where laughter, love, anger and joy exist. The only known place where we can find dance, music, art, politics and cosmology.
Our disagreements and jealousies and all the beautiful complexities that make us human aren’t meaningless. The presence and dominance of the cosmic voids guarantee the opposite — the stories and experiences we fill our lives with are special precisely because they will never happen in the empty expanse of most of the universe.
I have learned that the same lessons that cosmic voids teach us are found in the voids we encounter in our own lives. Voids sharpen and define; they create contrast; they are full of potential. The pain we feel from loss is the last reminder of the gift of a life deeply loved. The silence before a performance begins is sparkling with electric anticipation. Our choice to ignore anxiety-inducing news is necessary to allow us to focus on what matters. […]
Billions of years from now the sun will engorge and Earth will turn to dust. The cosmic voids, guardians of great nothingness, will remain. That bare fact, at first uncomfortable, gives us the ability to treasure what we’re given.
Tell a joke to your friends. Fight for what you believe in. Call your mother. Create something the cosmos hasn’t seen before. The implacability of the cosmic voids calls us to action. The universe won’t do anything for us except give us the freedom to exist. What we do with that existence is entirely up to us. It is our responsibility to imbue the cosmos with meaning and purpose.
— Paul M. Sutter, from “The Emptiness of the Universe Gives Our Lives Meaning” (NY Times, November 3, 2024)
Thank you Cara for sharing.
Life should carry more meaning than the facts would bear. Which facts were these: we occupied a tiny corner of the universe, minor planet orbiting a minor star, in an even tinier corner of cosmological time. Still we wanted all of it, the sun and the moon and the firmament that held them, to be about us. This want had been bred into humanity, selected by nature, so it must have served some purpose once, but it had long outlived its usefulness… What was needed now was to know.