Assignment 4 - Christian Lauritzen

     This image of the world famous "Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula presents a powerful perspective of humanities place in the Universe. Taken by the Hubble Telescope in 2014, even such a beautiful picture cannot explain how truly, mindbogglingly massive this structure is.  The left-most pillar is 4 light-years tall. That is the distance from the Sun to the nearest Star, Proxima Centauri. And even this structure is a tiny part of the even more massive nebula it resides within.
     Comprehending how large space is presents a profound challenge.  Another even more-so challenging feat is understanding how small our little section of space is compared to the rest of the Universe.  The farthest we have ventured into space (a little over 240,000 miles to the far side of the moon) is a relative nothing when put beside our visible Universe.  We are incredibly small.  Another famous picture presenting the same thoughts, a Pale Blue Dot made famous by Carl Sagan, and numerous other projections from deep space show that every single even in the history of known life is irrelevant to the rest of existence.  It just goes to show that sometimes we need to understand that human efforts could be put toward so many more positive efforts than fighting, among other things, to better ourselves and perhaps someday see these pillars with our own eyes.