For some, outerspace represents a sense of hope and advancement.
For others, the cosmos has more of that whole “terrifying hellscape” thing going on.
This article is probably going to vibe a bit more with group 2 than the “space, the final frontier” set.
Reddit user Zjaf asked:
“What’s the scariest space fact/mystery in your opinion?”
Who’s ready to get plunged into some fact-based existential dread? Let’s get into it. These are the space-facts that people find the most unsettling.
It’s HUGE.
“The sheer distance between things. It’s scary and somewhat depressing.” – regretfulbastard
“Definitely scary on the existential dread scale.”
“Even better, the scale is only increasing faster. Short of developing faster than light travel or the expansion of the universe slowing down, eventually the only things lighting up the night sky where humans once roamed will be our own galaxy and our nearest galactic neighbors.”
“All those other galaxies spotted by Hubble will be beyond the distance that we will ever see light from them again. The entire Milky Way will be in quarantine with just a few family members to call company for the remainder of the universe existing.” – desolation0
“If Einstein is correct (every experience so far has proved that he is, unfortunately), space isn’t meant for us.”
“Even if we manage to reach to build a near light speed spacecraft, it would take years to reach the nearest star systems – but time would seem to go by faster to everyone aboard the ship.”
“But it gets worse: any communication is also bound by the speed of light. Even if we create an outpost on Proxima Centauri b, it would take at least 8.5 YEARS to get an answer to any communication. And it’s the nearest planet. Any kind of united civilization is utterly impossible in these conditions.” – asshai
A Single Destructive Event
“The Kessler Effect is the theory that a single destructive event in Low earth orbit could create a cascade where satellites break up into tiny fragments.”
“Those tiny fragments would then go about taking out other satellites, breaking THEM up into smaller fragments and so on, until the earth is completely surrounded by a massive cloud of tiny flying death shrapnel which would make leaving this planet almost impossible.”
“If you look up how much space debris there is already up there and how many satellites currently orbit, plus the continued growth of the commercial space industry… I think about it a lot.” – sosogos
“A large volcano eruption has the capacity to knock out enough communication for long enough to trigger such an event. The fact that magma below the earth surface has the capacity to takeout satellites blows my mind.” – a55per
The Void
“The Bootes void.”
“An area of space where there should be 50,000 or so galaxies (compared to other areas of the same size) but there’s only about 60.”
“Could just be empty space for some unknown reason, or it could be an ever expanding intergalactic empire using Dyson spheres. Also I think it appears to be growing but that could just be galaxies moving away from the void” – nazi_marxist
“It’s 330,000,000 light years in diameter. You could travel at the speed of light for literally 330,000,000 years and see absolutely nothing.” – r0b0tMark
We’re Stuck Here
“This visual that either shows how slow light speed is or how vast space is, depending on which way you look at it.”
“I’ve seen videos showing the scale of the universe before, but this one really hit home for some reason. The speed of light, the fastest speed possible, looks painfully slow when you look at it in the context of even a fraction of our solar system.”
“We’re stuck here, aren’t we?” – [Reddit]
“This is the first time I was able to actually GRASP the scale of the universe. Holy sh*t is space huge…” – Cringetorics
What’s Beyond The Sphere?
“I can’t accept the fact that there is no end in space. But if there is indeed an end, then… what’s beyond it?”
“I’m stucked in the absurdity.”
“In the numerous answers I’ve received, the one that seems to come back the most is ‘the universe is curved, you would end up back where you started.’”
“Seems fair enough… Then again, that wouldn’t mean there is no limit.”
“On the contrary, that would just mean we are trapped in (or on the surface of) a sphere.”
“There is still a limit to a sphere. So the question remains… what’s beyond it?” – tartokwetsh
Way Overdue
“The earth is way overdue for a civilization/all life ending event.”
“Meteors and asteroids didn’t just stop hitting earth. Will it happen in my lifetime, my kids or my grandkids lifetimes? Or 1000 years from now?”
“Humans have only been here for a minute amount of time over the course of earths complete history and many things have happened to completely wipe out almost all life as we know it.” – tonkajoe6646
Brain Soup
“The Boltzmann Brain”
“The most likely ending to our universe will be all stars and black holes exploding and eventually the universe becomes a completely even soup of particles for all eternity.”
“In this theory, the Big Bang was actually a cosmic coincidence, in which enough of those base particles (literally every one that currently exists) collided in the even soup of a PAST universe. This collision caused the big bang to occur, thrusting into motion the energies that run our current universe.”
“Such an occurrence in the soup of infinite is INCREDIBLY unlikely.”
“What, instead, is far more likely is that just enough base particles came together in the exact right way as to create a literal floating brain in the infinite soup that has all of your memories and experiences up to the current moment.”
“Statistically speaking, it is unfathomably MORE likely that nothing you’ve ever perceived exists and, instead, you are merely a floating brain in an endless expanse of nothing, imagining the universe and doomed to return to the soup from whence you came, none the wiser.” – Snaz5
ISS Lifeguards?
“There is a section of ocean where the closest help at any time is 250ish miles straight up. On the International Space Station.” – Overly-mannly-mann
“Point Nemo is the most isolated (from land) point on earth. Due to the isolation and low shipping lane traffic in this part of the world, the nearest humans to someone at point Nemo would be those astronauts on the ISS.” – ViperSRT3g
From An Astronomer’s Perspective
“Astronomer here! There are a lot of things posted here that are not really likely to happen any time soon or affect your life on Earth much. So, if you want something to worry about, may I introduce you to the Carrington Event of 1859.“
“Basically Carrington was a scientist who noticed a flash from a huge cluster of sunspots, which was the biggest coronal mass ejection from the sun ever recorded (aka a ton of material ejected from the sun at high speeds). It hit Earth within a day- aurora were seen as far south as Hawaii, wires on telephone poles burst into flame, and telegraph operators even reported contacting each other when not connected.”
“If a similar event were to strike Earth today, it would cause billions of dollars in damage, because blown transformers are super hard to replace and a lot of satellites wouldn’t be able to handle it (and it goes without saying you’d have a serious radio blackout for a bit until it ended on a ton of essential frequencies).”
“Electronics would be fried, batteries wiped, etc. Some scientists think it could zap us ‘back to the dark ages.’ “
“The crazy thing about the Carrington event though is we really have no idea how often such events happen. But we do know that in 2012 there was a Carrington-level solar flare that barely missed Earth…“
“However we really don’t know how common these big flares are. Interestingly data from other stars shows they seem to be much more common around other stars than our own, with huge implications for life in some cases.” – Andromeda321
It Might Be Up To Us
“You know those classic utopian sci-fi stories, where benevolent aliens come down and end all the wars and uplift them to super-intellects and give everyone miraculous technology and immortality and welcome them into a peaceful galactic union and everything?”
“Ever wonder why, if aliens are roaming around faster than light, they haven’t swung by us yet?”
“One of the answers to that question: We might be the first. Depending on how long it takes life to develop, we might be the first to evolve to a point where we could plausibly make that happen without nuking ourselves into oblivion or destroying our atmosphere or what have you.”
“It might be up to us whether we make it or not as an interstellar species. We have the responsibility of getting our sh*t together, because it may well be up to us to save everyone else.”
“Uncountable genocides, wars, famines, death on a scale larger than our species have ever understood. Literally the fate of the universe might depend on us.”
“I look around at us now, and that’s what scares me.” – sirblastalot
OK honestly?
That last one is the one that freaks us out most.
