Whenever I’m tempted to think that humans will someday create a “galactic empire,” I take a look at this.

This is the nearest 2,026,095 stars in our galaxy. Bear in mind that the galaxy is estimated to contain between 100 and 400 BILLION stars. This is just the local neighborhood, just our freakin’ back yard. There are between 50,000 and 200,000 other neighborhoods. (Never mind that the universe is now thought to contain 2 TRILLION galaxies, both bigger and smaller than ours.) Does anyone think we will EVER visit even a tiny fraction of these stars? Even if we invent a speed-of-light drive?

Here’s something even better. It shows the movements of these 2 million stars over the next 5 million years.

And bear in mind also that the scale of these little dots is HUGELY exaggerated. They would actually be much, much smaller than that, so small that they almost NEVER collide.

Do you think that anyone will be around to see this much movement? I’d like to think so … but I don’t.

Vancouver, WA
May 28, 2017