miracle & wonder – The Journey

Miracle & Wonder

miracle & wonder we are
i am
you are
and all that is

miracle:

– an event that defies all known laws of physics and nature

– an extraordinary and astonishing fact that appears inexplicable by natural causes alone.

wonder:

– the emotion aroused by something awe-inspiring, astounding, or surprising.

This beautiful planet we call Earth – also called Gaia or Terra – actually has come a long way to look like it is now.

Beautiful Blue Jewel floating somewhere in this endless universe, teeming with life and species galore.

An estimated 6.5 million species live on land and 2.2 million inhabit the oceans, not included the endless amount of microorganisms and bacterial life.

Thats a lot of life here on Gaia.

Gaia

Gaia is the primordial Greek goddess personifying the Earth herself.
Emerging from Chaos at the dawn of creation, she is revered as the Mother of All Life, giving birth to the Sky, the Sea, the Titans, the Cyclopes, and the Giants.
Her Roman equivalent is Terra.

Beyond mythology, the name inspired the Gaia hypothesis, a scientific theory formulated by James Lovelock in the 1970s.
This hypothesis says that the Earth functions as a self-regulating complex system where living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings to maintain conditions optimal for life, effectively treating the planet as a superorganism.

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And here we are!

Ok, not so fast, we – humanoids walking around upright on two legs – still had a long ways to go to be who we are now.

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How old is our universe, actually?

The scientific consensus is, that the age of the universe – the time since the big Bang – is estimated to be approximately 13.8 billion years.

	billion years ago	Event
	13.787	The Big Bang
	13.787	The cosmic background radiation.
	13.787	First atoms
	13	Oldest known Gamma Ray Burst
	12.85	First galaxies form
	11	Milky Way Galaxy formed
	8.8	Milky Way Galaxy disk formed
	4.57	Formation of the Solar System
	4.5	Formation of the Earth and The Moon

The Milky Way Galaxy disk – our galactic neighborhood

Here is our Solar System in the Milky Way Galaxy

Milky Way Galaxy seen from Earth

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How big is this universe, actually?

A breathtaking view capturing thousands of distant galaxies scattered across a small region of the sky that is one of the clearest windows on Earth into the deep universe. This image was taken by the Herschel Space Observatory, revealing countless galaxies, each containing billions of stars and offering a glimpse into the vast cosmic structure of our universe.

The different colors are called redshift and indicate the vastly different distances from the earth, the lightyears that the light needs to arrive on earth. The telescope is actually looking into the history of the universe.

Galaxies:

There are approximately 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe, that is 2,000,000,000,000 galaxies.

Stars:

There are estimated to be 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe.

It is estimated that the majority of stars have a solar system of some planets.

Planets:

There are roughly 320,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the universe.

These rough figures apply only to the observable universe.

The total universe is vastly larger — potentially infinite — and the actual number of objects could be exponentially higher, possibly exceeding 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars.

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I am not a scientist or a numbers guy, but such dimensions make me think twice about our place in this universe.

And our significance or insignificance in the big picture of things.

But more than that it fills me with awe, i feel a great sense of wonder, an almost spiritual feeling about the greatness of All there Is.

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What are the chances that is Earth the only planet in the universe
where intelligent life has evolved?

Current scientific estimates suggest the probability that Earth is the only planet with intelligent life is extremely low, with odds calculated at less than one in 10 billion trillion.

NASA researchers conclude that it is very likely other intelligent, technologically advanced species have evolved in the observable universe.

Galactic Odds: The chance that humanity is the only technologically advanced civilization in our own Milky Way galaxy is approximately 1 / 60 billion.

Cosmic Odds: For Earth to be unique across the entire history of the observable universe, the probability of a civilization developing on any given habitable planet would have to be less than 1 / 10 billion trillion.

What this means is, that our chance that we are the only intelligent and technologically advanced species in the universe is . . . microscopically small.

[ I am really glad to hear that! 😺 ]

So, where are they, our intergalactic brothers 👽 sisters???

I am still waiting!

Ok, lets move on.

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How did i get here?
How did you get here?
How did 8,292,825,108 (8.3 billion) of us get here

Thats quite a saga, according to the folks who seriously studied our history.

Development of Life on Earth

A quick overview – sourced from Wikipedia

Date	billion years ago	Event
	4.1	First known remains of biotic life (discovered in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia).
	3.8	First Life (Prokaryotes)
	3.4	Photosynthesis develops
	2.4	Oxygenation of atmosphere
	2	Complex cells appear
	0.8	First multicellular life
	0.67	Simple animals
	0.55	Arthropods (ancestors of insects)
	0.53	Fish and Proto-amphibians
	0.518	Vertebrates
	0.45	Land plants; Ordovician–Silurian extinction events
	0.4	Fish with Jaws
	0.35	Insects and seeds
	0.33	Amphibians; Late Devonian extinction
	0.3	Reptiles
	0.25	Permian–Triassic extinction event; 57% of all biological families are wiped out
	0.23	Dinosaurs
	0.201	Mammals; Triassic–Jurassic extinction event
	0.072	Birds (avian dinosaurs)
	0.13	Flowers
	0.066	Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, dinosaurs go extinct; Primates appear

Human Evolution

	million years ago	Event
	28	Apes
	12.3	Hominids
	7	Chimpanzees and Humans split
	2.8	Homos using stone tools
	400,000 years ago	Domestication of fire, likely by Neanderthals
	300,000 years ago	Modern Humans (Homo Sapiens) appears
	115,000	Beginning of most recent Ice Age
	35,000	Sculpture and painting
	12,000	Agriculture

And it took us another 11700 years (after the end of the Ice Age) to get to where we are now.

Finally able to buy us a new iPhone every year or so. Finally being smart enough to build some kind of Artificial Intelligent Machines that will make everything better for us – some of us think.

I certainly don’t!

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And here we are!
What a journey!

Considering the way we have come, considering all that shaped us into our current form.

Contemplating all that not as an intellectual exercise but feeling deeply into our history and roots back to the Big Bang . . . there is only awe, there is a sense of wonder that i can’t describe in words.

That everything is what is in this universe, and that it is exactly how it is . . .

I call it a miracle.

You can maybe describe it all with the laws of physics and evolution, but for me this is falling way short of the magic and the mystery that i see, when i look into the very big and the very small that is our visible reality.

And the beauty, and the mind-expanding complexity of all that is.

For me, that’s far beyond the rational mind’s understanding.

I prefer to approach it with awe, with reverence, with wonder, with prayer, with silent contemplation.

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What about intelligent life in Higher Dimension?

My favorite question, thanks for asking!

During all this contemplation up till now, we have been considering scientific facts only. This means 3rd dimension – Space – and 4th.dimension – time.

But there are many more dimensions beyond that, where space and time disappear and and completely different laws apply.

Obviously most of us can not see into those higher dimensions and can not travel there with the spirit.

But some can.

I find that very inspiring, and interesting.