Galaxies contain up to a few thousand stars each. Our own Milky Way contains ~300-400 BILLION stars, just in our cosmic backyard. It would take you thousands of light years to travel from one side of our own galaxy to the other.
If you were able to exit our atmosphere, and look into space with a fine tuned eye you would be able to easily see thousands of galaxies, each looking like a little, beautiful platter in space. In reality each of those collections and groupings of stars you see are literally billions of stars. There are millions of billions of stars just in the universe we know of, that we can actually see. It's not even worth attempting to grasp the universe, really...
Every part though, is fine tuned. Within every galaxy or star system, you can define quadrants (say, with us we're on a tail of the Milky Way galaxy), and within those quadrants you can define planetary systems such as our own Solar System. That is, what will generally be 1-3 stars (usually 1) and a grouping of other cosmic bodies including asteroids, planets, satellites, comets, and cosmic dust.
And that's just what a, more or less, 'standard' planetary system would consist of. There's free floating planets not even belonging to a particular system, just orbit the galaxy, suns that are being born, are dying out... all sorts of crazy things.
Using a generous example, of approximately 10,000 years we've had the opportunity to be at our common 'intelligence' with society, technology, science, etc. we can't come close to our own planet, let alone who knows for distant reaches of the universe. The general consensus is that our own Earth is about 4.5 BILLION years old. We've really only existed in our actual potential 1/4,000,000 the age of our own planet and we have the ability to understand and conceive what is around us, or at least potentially try to with a good degree of success as far as we can tell.
We've developed so quickly in the past 1,000 years it's hard to believe that in all this time there hasn't been a large number of other intelligent life in the universe to gain some cosmic understanding and aptitude that is far different from our own reality, even if is in the same 'physical' realm. I think the most accurate representation of what an intelligent body of life would perform, act like given all the time to advance technologically AND spiritually would most likely end up like the Protoss from Starcraft. I think that is an accurate representation of what an 'alternative' society may have been able to develop into.
My main intent with this passage though was to convey the utter size and the ability the universe contains to overwhelm any of our ideas, thoughts, beliefs just by us looking up through the dark skies and trying to comprehend what we maybe able to accomplish even just living in a different section of space... hard to come to terms with. That there is so much more possibility with the energy we know is around us, and what we may evolve the ability to use... that there's more to just this physical form we are in tune with.
And here's one of my most favorite videos I've seen of all time... it gets me everytime.
I... stepped out, of a supernova. And so did you.
I agree with a lot of this video. It has some fantastic points about our physical realm, and how we need to treat each others as long as we KNOW what we are. That we are human beings, that we just want to advance and live as fruitfully and joyfully as possible, and live for yourself and your knowledge. I'm more of a spiritual person, so I don't agree completely but I think it brings fantastic points to light.
And there might yet be a Heaven, but it isn't going to be perfect, and we're going to have to build it ourselves.
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