Letters to the Editor
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Boy are they wrong.
They center of itall is the letter "A"
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Beautiful and true!
This is a beautiful bit of perspective - not only on how tiny we are, but also how fundamentally unwilling we are to cope with that fact. As the Animaniacs' song put it, "It's a great big universe, and we're all really puny. We're just tiny little specks about the size of Mickey Rooney. It's big and black and inky, and we are small and dinky. It's a big universe, and we're not", though we don't let the fact stop us.
Oliver's point is something of which we should all think when we look up at the stars, and one I try to keep in mind. It is humbling, but also exciting. It is a complement to the other two thoughts that so often run through my head while looking up at a nigh sky speckled with stars: 1. how many others are looking up at the same sky here on Earth, and 2. how many are looking back, not only from worlds circling those distant points of light we see, but also those we cannot. Anyone else?
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Thanks for the panic attack
sigh...
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Great cartoon
I love such perspectives,
but my question is, if my parents never had sex that night, would I have EVER been born? Would I have been born to another couple? On another planet??
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@brightstar
Not meaning to make it harder on you, but another complication in your question is this: what would have been the probability, were the tape of history to be replayed with your parents having had sex at that same time, of the same sperm fertilizing that egg? Different sperm, different specific genotype, different starting point...or not. If a different sperm were to have gotten through, it might have borne a lethal mutation at some locus, resulting in a non-viable zygote, or some other variety of spontaneous abortion (as a pretty high proportion of human conceptions do).
Have you by any chance read Stephen Jay Gould's "Wonderful Life"? The last chapter, as I recall, basically plays this game as applied to life on Earth in general, and humans in general. I think you might like it, though it can make for some disturbing thoughts at times.
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Um, can we not give away punchlines in the title?
Thanks!
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Nice one, Berkeley.
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Skewed priorities
Yet further proof that NASA made the wrong decision to shut down Hubble and keep funding their stupid space station that will result in nothing. And they wonder why people lost interest in the space program.
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Mmm
I do love a good dandelion break.
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Further proof...
...that there is no god.
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it can also be argued...
...that it is further proof for the existence of God and an indication of how pathetically inadequate humankind's earlier (and current) definitions, understandings and characterizations of "God."
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Uh... I think you spelled your name wrong...
...shouldn't it be "iamthedupe"?
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Well, they're right, we are at the center of it all (maybe)
If the universe's expansion (i.e, the expansion of space-time) is accelerating and the speed of light really is a constant, then there's a theoretical limit to what we can see of the cosmos, because there'd be a sphere around us outside of which the universe expands faster than light can reach us. No?
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I think Sagan would have appreciated this
Too bad the xians et.al. can't embrace such good humility.
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If Humanity would also accept that being the center of the universe
means taking on HUGE amounts of responsibility for yourself, we might actually get somewhere...
Sadly, most are only staring into the heavens looking for someone else to blame.
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Trite plagiarism. Sagan's estate should sue
He ripped off Sagan so bad in these panels he should have at least thrown in one of his cute characters saying "Beel-yens and beel-yens" as a gracious thank you to the man he stole from.
But hey, Bad Breathed is making a little progress. He's now up to 1980 as source material for his banal strip.
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Sunday smiles ...
... are so much brighter with the new galaxy of Opus fun. Thanks, Salon. Thanks, Berkeley!
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I LOVE Oliver!
And am quite delighted to see Opus every week again....
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@Vic
If the universe's expansion (i.e, the expansion of space-time) is accelerating and the speed of light really is a constant, then there's a theoretical limit to what we can see of the cosmos, because there'd be a sphere around us outside of which the universe expands faster than light can reach us. No?
Correct. Also since the universe was concentrated at the beginning into one point, the orginal center of the universe is now everywhere.
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Re: Vic's comments of being the center
When all is said and done, it will be determined that Earth and our solar system were actually in the recycle bin of 'Space'.
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ISN'T IT ALL ABOUT ME?
Boy, as someone who still struggles with BPD, it is refreshing to know that there are others in this world, not necessarily with this or any disorder, who think they are the center.
Best go buy a tshirt they make for five year olds - "It's all About ME!" Then the world can finally understand. You just didn't grow up.
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still lonely...
With all those galaxies, why are so many so lonely?
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Good to see we can manage
..to take an occasion to get outside seeing ourselves as the centre of the universe... and use it to make peurile snipes at each others' religious and other beliefs. I think the correct and appropriate response to the size of the universe is just to STFU for a while, which I shall now do.
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great comic
Wow -- I found this to be one of the most beautiful Opus comic strips I've ever seen, and one that did a magnificent job of giving a graphic sense of the awesomeness of Creation.
The letter writers ahead of me have made it clear that the punchline was appropos, for they completely missed the point. In their pettiness, they proved that, in facing such an amazing Universe, many of us retreat into our own small egos.
We must all answer for ourselves certain basic questions: Are our lives a series of random events, without any meaning or intelligence behind them? Or is there some meaning and intelligence operating in the Universe, even if it often seems cruel and senseless? Is God a force "out there," busy with only the macro aspects of maintaining the Universe (or perhaps, like the Deists' clockstarter, a Force that left the picture a long time ago)? Or is God a force that is equally "in here," one which is personally involved with us, ready for us to listen to It and follow It?
Here in the thick of my middle age, I am beginning, for the first time in my life, to truly feel that it isn't "all about me" -- that I am happier, and my life goes better, when I accept that I am God's instrument, that I am nothing but a member of the orchestra. I am nothing but a teeny tiny speck in all that magnificence, but I am also an amazing creation, a highly complex universe in my own right (for which I can take no credit), and I have a purpose. I'm starting to feel -- and trust me, this feels really really strange to see myself writing this -- but I'm actually starting to feel that God loves me.
Maybe when the testosterone level drops, and the wind gets knocked out of you six or seven times, and you look around at the rubble of what you thought you wanted or expected out of life and you see that what's left are a ragtag bunch of people you're supposed to love and a job you're supposed to do, you give in, you give up, you face how much you fucked up and you
move forward, noticing that the Big Guy (or Gal, or Whatever) is looking over your shoulder and .... smiling. Where the hell did that come from? It's hard to explain.
I have no way of concluding this letter except to say that perhaps I will print this comic strip from Opus, hang it in my cubicle and reflect on the fact that somehow I know that that amazing force that created All That outside of me is somehow inside of me as well and telling me to tend my little part of His/Her/Its garden with all my heart. And I say, Thank you, God, you've given me a great universe and altogether a really good life. Stay near me and I'll do my best.