Putting Things into Perspective

We all have a tendency to make a big deal out of things in our personal lives. These days, it doesn't take much to have a negative perspective on things. The seemingly well structured, predictable order in our lives has been revealed to be a thin veneer placed over an intractable mess. The thing is, knowing the truth is humbling and sobering but our experience in the world does not have to dwell on the negatives.

Teaching astronomy is a humbling enterprise both professionally (because I have so much to learn and the content is literally expanding all the time (see what I did there?)) as well as personally (nothing like thinking about astronomy to make you feel small, brief, and inconsequential).

Recently I came across an interesting compilation of 10 years worth of data from the Solar Dynamics Observatory. This satellite has been quietly taking near continuous pictures of the Sun for years.  That foundational, stable element if our lives ("As sure as the Sun rises") is, in truth, a messy cauldron of plasma being stirred about by rotation and convection, whipping its intense magnetic fields into crazy chaotic contortions:

https://youtu.be/l3QQQu7QLoM

In those images, a massive ejection of plasma (a CME: coronal mass ejection) was captured back in 2014:

This is an actual picture taken in ultraviolet (the Sun that it, obviously the Earth was added to the picture to give the viewer some sense of scale).

Luckily we live 93 million miles away and the ejection happened to be directed elsewhere (outer space is mostly empty space after all). If it had hit us, we probably would have lost satellite communication and our electrical grid for weeks... If our planet were closer (like in the picture), all life would have been extinguished.

The Sun and indeed our lives are and always have been only stable and reliable in an illusory way. When we are reminded of the underlying capricious truth, it doesn't necessitate despair.  I look toward the Sun now with thankfulness and respect. I do continue to expect it to rise predictably tomorrow but acknowledge that it may not. I see our home star with more nuance. Sure there is some additional uncertainty within me but there is empowerment as well from acknowledging the scary truth.

These days I sometimes try to look at my personal problems from 93 million miles away.  The messy cauldron of my internal emotions don't really seem as overwhelming from that perspective.