Cosmic Appetite

I read a lot of science books and a lot of them take an almost fiendish pride in reminding us how “insignificant” we are. I disagree. They mention how the earth is very small, a grain in a vast ocean of useless space and time. They remind us that at one time people thought the entire universe revolved around us. Now we know we are the third planet to revolve around an average middle aged star in the backwater of an ordinary galaxy. One of billions. Sigh. Time for a sulk?
This is all true but there IS something we are the center of. We are, in a very real way, at the exact center of “reality”. The entire universe is made up of an amazingly ENORMOUS range of scale. At the smallest of these scales is the subatomic world and at the largest is the entire visible universe. This constitutes the sum total of what we believe to be reality. As far as we can tell, we exist exactly halfway between these two extremes! The atomic scale is 10^-25 centimeter and the universe is at the 10^25 centimeter scale. We and all other biological systems on earth exist at the centimeter scale. Weird huh? This seems to be the scale at which the universe can organize into the most “complex” stuff. Life is the most complex thing within the solar system and probably the universe. You could rearrange all the atoms of the Sun’s core and it would still shine. You can rearrange all the galaxies in the universe and it would still hum along. Life however is special. We are too complicated for that trick. In fact our brains are the most complicated thing for light years around. So, if you didn’t already know it we are cosmically special 

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

-Blake 1803

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