After around 500 years of rigorous scientific progress, we still have only a very limited understanding of All that objectively Is.
The total universal Macrocosm remains, almost entirely, a mystery.
Gazing into the infinite with humility, awe, and wonder is the proper attitude and orientation.
If we start from where we are and zoom out:
We know (approximately) that we are standing Here Now.
In a place…
In a community...
In a country...
On a continent...
On a planet…
That is orbiting around a star…
That is located on the edge of an arm…
Of a spiral Galaxy we call the Milky Way…
That contains over 100 billion stars…
Yet the fact that our Sun is only one of over 100 billion suns in our galaxy is just the beginning of how small we are.
We also know (approximately) that our galaxy is one part of a local group of galaxies…
And that our local group of galaxies is one part of a supercluster of galaxies we call the Virgo Supercluster…
And that this supercluster of galaxies is one part of the larger supercluster of galaxies we call the Laniakea Supercluster…
And that the Laniakea Supercluster is part of a far larger Galaxy Filament...
That is one of many Galaxy Filaments…
That follow (something like) Strings of (something) humans have not understood or measured yet that we call Dark Matter or Dark Energy…
These (strings) of Dark Matter / Dark Energy appear to structure the Observable Universe....
Which is composed of hundreds of billions or trillions of galaxies...
Each containing tens or hundreds of billions of stars...
Most of which have planets...
And some percentage of which have earth sized planets in the habitable zone.
The expanse we just covered is often called the Observable Universe.
The Observable Universe is the subset of the Universe as such.
Our sun is not at the center of our small galaxy, and our small galaxy is not at the center of the universe.
From our position on earth, orbiting around our sun, which sits out on one of the spiraling arms of the Milky Way galaxy, we can "see" around us to given a given distance.
Thus the Observable Universe as we Perceive it is a sphere extending out in all directions, with us and Earth at the center.
This presents a very partial and earth-centric view of the Universe.
If we were to move our observation point half way out along the radius of the sphere of our Observable Universe, the entire observable universal sphere would shift along with it.
Half of our existing Observable Universe would vanish from our view, and a new half would emerge into our view.
In other words, each of the trillions of planets in the universe has its own unique Observable Universe.
As of yet, scientists have not discovered any way to know how small the subset of the total Universe is that we are viewing within our Observable Universe.
All we know is that we can observe only an indefinitely small portion of an indefinitely large Whole, that is composed of trillions of galaxies.
[Dark Matter] and [Dark Energy ]are the frontier of our ability to perceive within the physical universe, and the vast majority of Mass-Energy in all leading models remains Dark.
The end result is that even with our most advanced tools and space probes, here we are, alone in the dark by our campfire, which casts a faint glow out into the infinite unknown.
Outside the glow is pure darkness as we perceive it, and inside the glow we can only see shadows.
The Reality is that between the shadows, and beyond the glow, there is an entire Universe of activity we cannot perceive or fathom.
Combing the total philosophical, scientific, and technological capability of all humanity, out to the very edges of cosmic theory, it becomes obvious that we are nearly entirely blind at macrocosmic scale. From those outer limits of conception, let us return to our bodies.
Forward to 7.9 The Mystery Of The Microcosm
Back to 7.7 Perception From Our Vantage Point
Back to table of contents The Book of Lionsberg