To maybe better appreciate the significance of human presence in the cosmos, we can take a look at some gross assumptions and a few numbers.
I've seen popular press articles on astronomy in which numbers get bandied about rather cavalierly along the lines of there being one hundred billion stars per galaxy and there being one hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. Even if those numbers are substantially off target, they lead to an interesting consequence.
Using exponential notation, one hundred billion is one hundred times one billion which is 1E2 times 1E9 which is 1E11. Then, one hundred billion stars per galaxy times one hundred billion galaxies comes to 1E22 stars. Are you with me so far?
Now let's say that someone is born and, like George Burns, lives to be one hundred years old. Let's further say that this hypothetical someone was super precocious from birth and by some means or other, immediately started at birth contemplating individual stars at the rate of one star per second.
We're going to ignore the challenges of categorization and record keeping here and also having to do without sleep or food. Somehow, this kid manages to do it without any interruptions and without ever pausing to rest.
We come up with the following tabulation showing that this person will have contemplated somewhat more than three billion stars in the course of a century long lifetime.
That's a lot of stars maybe, but it is a microscopically small percentage of all of the stars that stood ready to be contemplated, never mind about their various properties and their associated planets, moons, comets, asteroids and whatever else.
Humble pie, anyone?
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