by Tom Shafer
February 22, 2022
I stepped outside a couple of evenings ago to take a quick gander at the full moon rising over the woods behind my house. Of course, when it, the moon, is so close to the horizon, it looks enormous, especially when compared to the planets and stars that populate the nighttime sky. A couple of hours later, it will look so much smaller – though it is not – an optical illusion (called the luna mendex) created because the overhead moon has nothing of size near it like it does when perched above the horizon.
It was very still, a rare windless night here, and it was quiet as usual. An eastern screech owl was hooting along the Little Miami River to my south, the only sound – save the crunching of treats from cats Luna, Boots, and Rainbow.
I thought about our ancient ancestors, about my Cherokee descendants, and how they must have studied the darkened sky. Of course, they would notice and mark the movements of the moon and other celestial bodies, and might have even recognized the difference between the light emanating from stars, which twinkled and pulsed, and the light being reflected by the “constant” planets.
And, it would be so easy to understand how they might think that these points of light rotated around us, that we were the so-called center of the universe. Because the universe is still expanding exponentially, no one spot can be considered its locus – though if traveling near Tulsa, Oklahoma, you might want to visit the “Center of the Universe,” an acoustical anomaly where your voice, or any sound for that matter, is amplified and echoed significantly louder than originally made.
And though that “sounds” pretty trippy, allow me truly to blow your mind. In a high school science class, you may have learned that our earth is moving around the sun at 30 kilometers per second, or 67,000 miles per hour – which might seem pretty quick. But consider that our solar system is traveling at 220 kilometers per second, or 490,000 miles per hour, within our galaxy, and that our galaxy, the appropriately named Milky Way, and all of the galaxies in our neighborhood are rushing along the galactic highway toward a region of space called the Great Attractor at a smooth 1000 kilometers per second, or 2,237,000 miles per hour! If it weren’t for gravity and the truth of Einstein’s Theory of Relatively, our bodies would be ejecting out into space and our eyes couldn’t possibly focus on the images flying around us – as we too would be scurrying along toward the Great Attractor.
Even given my learned mind and scientific background, these numbers are truly astounding and almost impossible to grasp and comprehend. But to make this even worse (or better?) – and definitely more confounding – ruminate on this: astrophysicists estimate that there are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way alone, or 100,000,000,000. And, estimates coming from the Hubble telescope reveal that there are 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe, and that this number is likely to increase to about 200 billion as technology (like the James Webb telescope) in space improves. So, for those of you counting, there are approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or one to two trillion trillion, better known as one to two septillion) individual stars in the universe. I’m not sure what the over/under is according to Vegas.
Oh, and if you need a primer to better understand the size of these phenomenal numbers, let me provide you one. One million seconds equals 12 days, one billion seconds equals 31 years, and one trillion seconds equals 31,688 years. One septillion seconds equals a staggering 3,168,800,000,000,000,000,000,000 years. Holy yahtzee, Batman!
I know that our native ancestors could not have possibly imagined any of these numbers – and certainly not these velocities or the physics involved. For them, the night sky had spiritual meaning, and they looked there for explanation of the natural world and for guidance. The Pawnee and Cree believed that their people came from the stars while my Cherokee understood that entrance to the Land of the Souls (the Milky Way) required passing between the Canis Major and Canis Minor constellations (“Greater Dog” and “Lesser Dog” respectively). Many tribes utilized the stars for navigation, and others consulted them for planting and cultivation of crops.
For me, the night sky provides stability and a sense of comfort. I love my nightly excursions to the hot tub, and not just for the soothing, bubbling convalescence. I love lounging in the pulsing water, sometimes positioned toward the south, other times positioned toward the north, watching the stars, constellations, and planets change position throughout the year – Cygnus (the Swan) and Draco (the Dragon) of summer giving way to Orion (the Hunter) and the Pleaides (the Seven Sisters) in winter. And though I tend not to think about the fact that I am (and you are!) moving at thousands to millions of miles an hour while reclining in therapeutic extravagance, I can’t help but marvel at the world – and universe – that I am part of. In my hot tub, gazing at a beauteous night sky, I am the center of the universe.
