I don't know if you saw the news, but it looks like Jupiter is developing a second red spot:
As a backyard/armchair observational astronomer, this is exactly the kind of thing I like to hear about.
I’m guessing that most of you have never looked through a telescope, and so don’t understand the power of the experience, but it can change your life.
I just spent the past three weeks freaking out because I had more work than I had time, had to do a lot of traveling, didn’t have as good an experience as I would have liked (although the week ended fabulously), and came home to several hundred unread emails. I’m going to be spending several hours alone over the next few days getting caught up with my correspondence.
What’s great about this news of Jupiter, though, isn’t so much what it is – just that it is.
Look at the photo – it’s this planet, in our solar system, and it’s just going to keep on keeping on no matter what we Earth people do. It’s sitting out there, its periphery fringed with shadow, having everything to do with itself, and nothing at all to do with us.
And it’s massive. And it’s just one. Of quajillions.
If I get fired tomorrow, Jupiter isn’t going to care. Mars will continue rusting, and Venus will go on getting all hot and stuff.
It’s a beautiful message.
When you look at Jupiter through a telescope and realize that it’s light from the sun, reflected off the surface of another planet, that’s traveling across the solar system and being viewed by your own eyeball, it’s an awesome experience.
You understand just how small you are compared to everything else that’s happening. You remember how insignificant your stupid blog is. The negative comments don’t matter.
Whether I do a good job or a bad job is irrelevant.
I don’t matter at all in the Grand Scheme of Things. I am Nothing. I am Nobody.
Space is huge, dark, and very cold. And in a few billion years, our sun is going to explode and consume the solar system in a growing sphere of hellish fire. Nothing will be able to escape it.
Nothing you’re doing right now matters. You might as well stop knitting those little booties for your grandkids, ‘cause if the universe doesn’t eventually get you, your fellow humans probably will. We’ve proven ourselves to be a bunch of aggressive, selfish, childish, violent bastards who will stop at nothing to get More and More for ourselves.
‘Course, that doesn’t matter either. Even after the sun has destroyed everything that was ever important to any of us, it’s eventually going to run out of fuel. And, unless we manage to account for a hell of a lot more matter in the universe, it isn’t going to collapse back in on itself for another Big-Bang, but rather will just continue to expand for eternity. Eventually, through entropy, all objects in the universe will be rendered totally inert, and it will finally become a huge, dark, and very cold DEAD place. Nothing new will ever come of it, and there will be no life left to remember what there would have been to forget.
No babies being born. No tears of joy. No weddings. No happiness.
No kittens, newborn pandas, or Jehovah's Witnesses.
No candy, cartoons, or Swedish massages.
No life.
No freedom.
No hope.
No love.
Nothing.
Just DEAD.
Happy Saturday.
[Note: If you would like me to come to your place of business to improve morale with my obvious gift as an inspirational speaker, just let me know.]