This is a panoramic view of the Milky Way, which was made possible by the splicing together of 3000 photos by an astronomer from Central Michigan University. As a refresher of its magnificence, and how our little planet is but a speck of sand on the celestial beach, our galaxy has anywhere between 200 billion and 400 billion stars. You think that’s a lot? Well, it’s not. Our neighboring galaxy, Andromeda, is estimated to have one trillion stars. To drive the point home further, consider that astronomers estimate that there are over 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe (indeed, there are limits to what our telescopes can see since some parts are likely too far away for the light to reach us).
Just stop for a second and get your head around those numbers. Once you’ve done so, try to seriously consider whether we are special, whether anyone has a “plan” for any of us, and whether anything that happens on our tiny, inconsequential planet has anything to do with anything in the grand scheme. I further urge you to consider how, given the law of large numbers, we could make fun of people who believe in the possibility of alien life while we simultaneously espouse the notion of a magical creator who cares about what we do with our lives and makes time to intervene when it’s deemed necessary.
Let’s put some teeth on this little brainstorm. Going back to our neck of the woods, it is estimated that there are 100 billion planetary systems in the Milky Way (i.e. stars with planets orbiting them). From this, astronomers have extrapolated that our universe contains roughly 10 trillion planetary systems in total. Using our existence as a guide (one out of 100 billion), we can estimate that something like .00000000001% of planets contain life as we know it on Earth (of course, it stands to reason that we could be drastically underestimating this number since we don’t know much about 99.99% of the other planets in our own galaxy). If we were to apply that number to the 10 trillion planetary systems across the universe, then it would seem a mathematical given that there are 100 planets in the universe that are Earth-like in nature.
This is why I love science and it’s just one of several blunt instruments I like to use whenever engaging in philosophical debate about the meaning of life or the existence of god. I’ll take numbers and logic over man-made superstition any day.
