this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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For me it is the fact that our blood contains iron. I earlier used to believe the word stood for some 'organic element' since I couldn't accept we had metal flowing through our supposed carbon-based bodies, till I realized that is where the taste and smell of blood comes from.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 120 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (18 children)

Planets and stars and galaxies are there. You can see them because they're right over there. Like, the moon is a big fucking rock flying around the earth. Jupiter is even bigger. I see it through a telescope and think "wow that's pretty," but every once in a while I let it hit me that I'm looking at an unimaginably large ball of gas, and it's, like, over there. Same as the building across the street, just a bit farther.

The stars, too. Bit farther than Jupiter, even, but they're right there. I can point at one and say "look at that pretty star" and right now, a long distance away, it's just a giant ball of plasma and our sun is just another point of light in its sky. And then I think about if there's life around those stars, and if our star captivates Albireoans the same way their star captivates me.

And then I think about those distant galaxies, the ones we send multi-billion dollar telescopes up to space to take pictures of. It's over there too, just a bit farther than any of the balls of plasma visible to our eyes. Do the people living in those galaxies point their telescopes at us and marvel at how distant we are? Do they point their telescopes in the opposite direction and see galaxies another universe away from us? Are there infinite distant galaxies?

Anyway I should get back to work so I can make rent this month

If I point my finger at one of those galaxies, there's more gas and shit between us within a hundred miles of me than there is in the rest of the space between us combined

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

People don't realize how crazy it is to have a moon orbiting earth

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

A moon isn't that strange, our moon is.

First, it is massive compared to Earth. The mass of the Moon is so large that it messed with definitions of planets and plutinos.

Second, the Moon's size and distance from Earth is a near match for the Sun's, which is really rare.

And for a strange fact, the Moon is about as reflective as worn asphalt. The Moon looks white in photos of just itself, but it is a dark grey when in photos with Earth.

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