The Pacific Northwest gifted me with such a gorgeous night last night. For the first time in months, it was "warm" enough to sit outside and enjoy the view. Looking up at all those stars made me feel so small and insignificant compared to the vast universe. Everytime I think of it, it makes me appreciate every little thing in life. There's a quote from The Immense Journey that I adore. Speaking of the first time a man looked to the stars, Loren Eiseley wrote:
“For the first time in four billion years a living creature had contemplated himself and heard with a sudden, unaccountable loneliness, the whisper of the wind in the night reeds. Perhaps he knew, there in the grass by the chill waters, that he had before him an immense journey.”
Any stars you can see in the night sky without the aid of a telescope is part of the Milky Way.
There are over 200+ billion stars! If every star in the Milky Way was a grain of salt, they would fill an Olympic sized swimming pool!
The largest supply of alcohol in the universe is in deep space! Astronomers have spotted an alcohol cloud in the Milky Way that measures 288 billion miles across.
(Now get ready for the most interesting fact) The Milky Way tastes like raspberry and smells like rum! How can a galaxy taste of raspberry and rum?! I'll elaborate since I'm sure you're more than curious now. As impossible as it sounds, scientists have found traces of the chemical ethyl formate, which gives raspberries their taste and rum its smell! The discovery was made by accident (as most discoveries in science are). They were actually looking for amino acids in the galaxy, which would indicate the possibility of life & just happened to find large traces of ethyl formate!
“If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I'll bet they'd live a lot differently.”
-Bill Watterson
-N.
