How fragile are we?

Very.

There is a very, very tiny corner of the Universe in which we humans can live in comfort. Or live at all, really.

So let's talk about the Universe a little bit. The Universe, my daughter, is a big place. Tremendous, stupefying, mind-numbing big. Just how big it is, is a topic for another time, but trust me that it is bigger than anything you've seen. It's bigger than that elephant we saw at the zoo, it's bigger than our house, it's bigger than Deeda's car, it's bigger than even Deeda. It was pretty close for a while, but then the Universe had a late growth spurt, and I didn't. [If we were to split hairs, that is actually quite true; at one point, the Universe wasn't just smaller than Deeda, it was smaller than even you...all compressed into an infinitely dense point that we, rather weakly I think, call a "singularity".]

But to get things rolling, here's a sense of scale. Look at the picture below.

That is a picture of Earth taken by the Voyager space probe from within our own solar system, just beyond the orbit of Pluto. There floating on a beam of sunlight, you see our home, the size of a pixel in that photograph. The radio signals that carried that photograph back to Earth traveled for five and a half hours at the speed of light to give us that perspective of our place in the cosmos.

One more picture.

See that blue glow around our planet? That is our atmosphere. That thin skin around our planet is what gives us life and protects us from deep space. And even within that layer, we cannot live comfortably everywhere. We need a very narrow range of temperature and pressure. Too much sunlight and radiation and we are...toast. We are like Goldilocks; things have to just right. Deserts and tall mountains won't cut it. Deep sea, nuh-uh. Too far to the right or left of California weather, and our numbers dwindle rapidly. You wouldn't think like that when cooling off by the A/C or soaking in the July sun, but when it comes to livable conditions, clemency is the exception. Hostility is the norm.

That is why I say we are so very fragile. And perhaps astronomically lucky to be here, walking around in that thin layer of breathable gases on a bit of space-dust that we call Earth. Surrounded literally everywhere by an incredibly inhospitable Universe. So remember that and try to be nice to everybody who shares this bit of luck with you.

So we are a bit of a wuss-out, for sure, when it comes to being a species. Who's tough? What animal on this planet do you think is better suited than us to tackle all this sucktitude the Universe is chucking at us?

Meet Mr. Tardigrade. Or more cutely known as the water bear. Believe me, this is the least scary picture I could find of him on the Internet.

That little guy--grows to about a millimeter--is tough. Super tough. If we were a tenth as tough as him, we would get our swag on and give the Universe the smackdown it so deserves. He is what is conversationally called an extremeophile ("loves extreme conditions"). Try using that in a conversation next time.

If you check out his eHarmony profile (or wikipedia entry), you would notice that he says:

1. Athletic build.
2. Agnostic.
3. Willing to live in almost absolute zero temperature to well above boiling point of water.
4. Can survive pressures six times higher than the deepest ocean trenches.
5. Can go for over 10 years without food or water (but loves a good mug of stout).
6. Can suck down hundreds time more radiation than would kill a human. (eat your heart out, Dr. Bruce Banner).
7. Smokes: Socially.

So there you have it. The original Quiet Man, the John Wayne of Nature. Beware his tiny fists.