To Matter or Not to Matter
Few of us who live in modern countries can see the stars at night, or more than a few at most. This is because of light pollution, the production of artificial light at night that is not strictly necessary (though what is not strictly necessary is probably itself incapable of strict definition—what is unnecessary for you is necessary for me). A recent article has suggested that 80 percent of Americans and 60 percent of Europeans never see the stars.
I am fortunate: On fine nights at my house in France, which is in an unpopulated area, the Milky Way is easily visible. When I look up at the sky on such a night, I am slightly ashamed of my ignorance of astronomy; I am awestruck in a completely ignorant way.
Apart from awe, I feel a certain unease when I look at such a sky, not to say terror. I know that the light from those stars has taken years to reach us, and that light travels at 186,000 miles per second (I used to know how the speed of light was first measured, but I have long since forgotten). The distances and the sizes are beyond imagination, or at any rate beyond my imagination. The thought of all that vastness at a temperature of absolute zero freezes my blood. How tiny we are, how insignificant! A single bacterium is more to us than are we to the universe!
https://www.takimag.com/article/to-matter-or-not-to-matter/
