Do yourself a favour. Right now, go to your favorite travel website and book yourself a ticket to Cobar, New South Wales, Australia. It\u2019s a fifteen-hour flight across the Pacific from Los Angeles to Sydney. You\u2019ll lose a day (but you\u2019ll get it back coming home, unless you go all the way around the world, in which case, it\u2019s gone forever).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then you\u2019ll need to take a plane from Sydney to Dubbo. It\u2019s a short, one hour flight on a propeller plane, but there\u2019s in-flight service. Then you have two options. If it\u2019s daytime, I recommend driving the remaining hundred and eighty-five and a half miles to Cobar. If you get in at night, either stay in Dubbo until the morning (Dubbo\u2019s a nice town) or take the puddle-jumper into Cobar. Do not attempt to negotiate the roads at night! The kangaroos are like locusts. They\u2019re active and they will jump in front of your car, leading to bad karma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At any rate when you get into Cobar talk to the locals. Be friendly. Remember, they like to fight, but they\u2019re pretty nice to out of towners. Ask them where the transmission tower is. It\u2019s not on Google\u00ae Maps (at least, not at the time of this writing). It\u2019s definitely \u201coff-menu\u201d. Go up there during the day. Afternoon is best. Read the graffiti and have a good laugh. Some of it is very creative \u2013 my students \u2013 I feel so proud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then, as the sun begins to set, make sure everyone shuts up and just feel the land. The radiance of the hot Australian sun on the raw outback earth is being released (even in winter) and, as the land cools at night it comes alive. Now consider the local indigene. He or she feels the life of the land and stories begin to emerge. The effect is more pronounced in summer but then you miss the stars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the night begins to fall they start to come out. Count them. Over near the horizon, where the sun has just set is Venus, our closest planetary neighbor. A little later you may see Mars, glowing golden red. There are numerous apps that you can download that will tell you what is what, in the night sky. It\u2019s fun identifying them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hopefully, you\u2019ve come bundled up because you want to be here in the middle of winter. Now put the cell phone away. This is a lesson in perspective, not astronomy. The sun is completely gone now, and the stars are shining. Close your eyes for a moment. Let them adjust to the darkness and then \u2026 look up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What do you see? Stars. As Carl Sagan said, billions and billions. It is only from down here (in the Southern Hemisphere) can you see the heart of the galaxy. Look at it. Look at its form \u2013 it does<\/em> bulge in the middle, and you can<\/em> see the plane that all of the stars swirl around. Lie down. Take it all in. Realize what you\u2019re seeing. Of course, you can\u2019t see into the heart, heart of the galaxy \u2013 there\u2019s too much stuff in the way, but you can see, with your own eyes, the majesty of our own Milky Way galaxy, just like on TV but on a scale that makes IMAX look like a Zune (what\u2019s a \u201cZune\u201d you ask? Exactly my point). Our celestial neighborhood and it\u2019s important to get to know your neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why are we looking at the stars? Because this is where you fit in. You, me, everybody. How big is our galaxy? Imagine this: if our sun were the size of a grain of sand, then our galaxy would be twice the size of the Pacific Ocean. Just think about that for a moment. Imagine a grain of sand. Kneel down and pick one up. There\u2019s plenty of sand in Cobar. Now, look all the way to the horizon \u2013 whether over ocean or outback. As far as the eye can see is a fraction of the size of the galaxy. If you flew across the Pacific, remember how long it took and how much ocean you saw when you looked out that window. You would have to do that twice to get an idea of how far that is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now look again at that tiny grain of sand. That\u2019s not you. That\u2019s our sun. You are much, much, much smaller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How big is our sun? It is 865,370 miles in diameter. That\u2019s kind of meaningless, isn\u2019t it? Well, that\u2019s what I\u2019m aiming to do here. I\u2019m hoping to overcome your innumeracy<\/em>. Illiteracy is the inability to comprehend the written word. Innumeracy<\/em> is the inability to comprehend numbers. We see numbers like this \u2013 eight hundred and sixty-five thousand miles \u2013 and we go \u201cwow, that\u2019s a big number.\u201d Well, just how big?<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I said, the sun is 865,370 miles in diameter. The Earth is 7,917.5 miles in diameter. Roughly speaking that\u2019s a ratio of 109 to 1. In other words, you could fit 109 Earths across the face of the sun with a little room to spare. That\u2019s one hundred and nine Earths across that tiny grain of sand. And you\u2019re just a tiny speck of schmutz on one of those Earths. How small a speck of schmutz?<\/p>\n\n\n\n At last count there are roughly 7.6 billion people on the planet Earth. How many is that? Let\u2019s count them. Let\u2019s say you could count one per second, it would take you 243 years (and some change) to count them all. Or let\u2019s say you are this dot<\/p>\n\n\n\n .<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s ten of you<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2026\u2026\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And here\u2019s a hundred of you<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2026\u2026\u2026.\u2026\u2026\u2026.\u2026\u2026\u2026.\u2026\u2026\u2026.\u2026\u2026\u2026.\u2026\u2026\u2026.\u2026\u2026\u2026.\u2026\u2026\u2026.\u2026\u2026\u2026.\u2026\u2026\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Using a standard font and no line spacing, with margins, I can fit approximately eight-thousand of you onto a standard US Letter Size page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That means I would need approximately 950,000 pages to have a dot representing everyone on Earth. The average book has 400 or so pages. So that would be 2,375 full-length novels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And you are just one dot, on one of those pages, in one of those books, on a speck of dust circling a speck of dust circling a galaxy twice the size of the Pacific Ocean. And this galaxy is only one of over 125 billion galaxies so far found in the observable universe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How small thou art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So why do you think you\u2019re big? The reason is simple. What is at the center of that immense universe?<\/p>\n\n\n\n You.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And me, and everyone else. This is the part that people forget. This is the lesson to remember:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere south of the Tropic of Capricorn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Middle of winter<\/p>\n\n\n\n New moon<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wow!<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are so small!<\/em><\/p>\n