A Time Eternal

Credit for the art goes to m-a-t-h-e-s of deviantart.com

Sometimes (not often, but sometimes) I think about what's out there. Like, in outer space, as can be seen in the above image. I tried finding a scene from Wall-E, but I couldn't find it, so this will have to do. Sometimes I wonder what it's like out there. I'll see movies, I'll see pictures/art like this, and the rest are just thoughts and images my mind decides to create. But what's it really like?

Let's say I were to go to... that planet in the middle. Would it be a paradise, filled with lush green forests, and friendly natives to boot? Or would I be able to view a majestic panorama dominated by those fluffy white clouds, all the while plummeting towards the center of the planet due to the lack of solid ground? Or, would I find giant blue-skinned people three times my height, who, apparently, ride horses by linking their strange hair-things together?



That stuff's nice and all to daydream and think about, but one thing I always wondered is exactly how long those planet's have been out there. Every now and then in U.S. History class, I'll think, "Man, America was populated by the Europeans around the mid-15th century, or something. Europe's been populated over 1500 years before that." Not really sure why, but I think that that's pretty weird. I always feel that the USA is such a strong, influential nation, when it's not even a half as old almost every single other one we share Earth with. So, what about Earth? I mean, according to the speculation of Earth's scientists, Earth's pretty damn young. (I'm not going to bother looking this up, since I don't know exactly what to look for on google. Most of my searches turned up irrelevant information relative to what I'm looking for.)

I've probably lost a few people from boredom by now...

Earth itself is several billion years old (approximately 4.5 billion, to be "exact"). To give you a rough idea, if I recall correctly from the Earth Science Reference Table, humans appeared around 1.1 million years ago. Rounded to the nearest million, that's 4.499 billion years of no humans. And, like I said before, Earth's young.

What do you think's out there? We've come this far in such a (relatively speaking) small amount of time. I don't know why, but I think that something enigmatic lies out there. So enigmatic, I'm going to describe it with multiple adjectives. Magical. Arcane. Majestic. Grand. Magnificent. Let's shy away from that morbid and creepy Aliens vs. Predator stuff.