How Astronomy Class Has Changed My Life

I have come to realize this semester that I am extremely thoughtful and contemplative person, and this has shown me that I tend to overthink things to an extreme level. It has to do with anxiety and extreme thoughtfulness, the fact that I overthink anything that happens to me. I believe that this Astronomy class has grounded me in many ways. The thought of the vast universe, with billions of possibilities for life, really makes my problems seem minute in the scheme of everything. The universe is 14 billion years old, which is much longer than my life span of only 18 years. The Earth alone is 4.54 billion years old, and there has been life on Earth for 3.5 billion years. Mammals have inhabited Earth for 210 million years, and humans began to exist 50,000-200,000 years ago. Even the “short” time that humans have existed still puts my 18 years of life to shame. Since humans have inhabited Earth since 11:58 p.m. on December 31st in …show more content…
The fact that I can go outside and look at the stars to see back in time is absolutely preposterous, and somehow I still find time to worry about why my friend hasn’t called me back. There are at least 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and around 20% of those are similar to our sun. That might seem like a small percentage, but when one does the math, that is about 40 billion stars similar to our own. 22% of these sun-like stars have Earth sized planets, which is 8 billion 800 million chances in our Milky Way galaxy for another Earth to exist. There could be 8 billion 800 million versions of me on other planets in our galaxy alone. As I delve deeper into the science, I begin to feel ridiculous about the small things I worry about and dwell on. I am an extremely small speck on the windshield that is the universe, which helps ground me and show me what I should be putting my energy