What is the Universe? To me, it is that huge wonderful thing out there with lots of galaxies, stars and unsolved mysteries asking to be solved. But most people live like they are on a sheet of paper - All that exists is on their front, back and sides. People forget to look up.

I will list the reasons why most people don’t usually take some of their time to think about up there:

1— Big numbers

indeed

People aren’t familiar with the measures of distance or quantity of space. The closest big galaxy to us is Andromeda and it is more than 2 million light years away. The problem is that we can’t put that in any meaningful perspective. We can say that light, which travels about 300,000 kilometers every second (a velocity out of our experience), would take two million years to get there, but that really doesn’t mean much to most of us.

What can we do about that? We could scale everything down to Earth. However, it still won’t be much helpful because we won’t be able to get rid of the big numbers. For example, we can say that if the Earth was the size of a basketball, the Moon would be 30 feet away, that Mars would be a mile away etc. Good, but the numbers will get much bigger. Saturn would be 16 miles away. The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, would be 522000 miles away (which is more than 2x the distance of the Moon). Now it is starting to get confusing, isn’t it? The center of the Milky Way would be 3.6 billion miles away. Well — we should stop here.

2 — Space isn’t familiar

So far, only about 540 people have been in space. That is 0.0000077% of the current world’s population and 0.0000005% of all the people who have ever existed. So… we need to send more people out of the planet.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is doing a great job on that. People will be able to book a trip and fly out of the atmosphere and experience a few minutes of weightlessness. However, a seat will cost you $250,000. Celebrities like Justin Bieber and Ashton Kutcher have bought the ticket and it will definitely be the start of a new age. Due to the fact that famous people will be there first, it will motivate others to do the same or at least to have more interest in space. Also, I’m pretty sure the prices will drop after some months or years, so it will be affordable for more people. Get ready for #space #selfie #yolo

3 — It doesn’t directly benefit us

The Curiosity Rover got lots of media attention, mainly because of the rather peculiar way it landed on Mars. Some people liked the mission, others were indifferent and others complained: “Why are they spending billions of dollars to send a robot to Mars when we have so many problems here on Earth and even in the USA?”, “This is the third rover they are sending to Mars in less than a decade”, etc.

Well, I understand those people. In fact, nobody’s life is going to be better or more comfortable because a robot is in another planet. Some people can admire the knowledge and the science the rover is returning, but unfortunately they are a minority. I think that the space agencies should focus more on the public. A reality show on Mars would be awesome, wouldn’t it? It is a shame it would be so expensive. However, the money that would be made with the show could compensate the money spent… right? I like to think that it could.

4 — Astronomy education could be better

Astronomy is usually taught in the first years of school when kids are too young to have a good understanding about the subject. First of all, Astronomy and Physics go together. You can’t study the first without the second. For example, if a kid asks the teacher why the planets don’t slow down and fall in the Sun, the teacher will have to explain the Newton’s laws of motion and inertia. It isn’t easy for a kid to get their heads around that idea. If they ask why the stars shine, will the teacher have to explain what nuclear fusion is? It is not easy to simplify the explanation. Astronomy really deserves more attention in the classroom.

5 — Light pollution

Considering that most people live in urban zones, they never get to see what the sky really looks like in a cloudless and moonless night. They just see random dots here and there and have no clue that you can see the Milky Way galaxy, thousands of more stars, other galaxies, etc. That’s sad, I know.