Bonneville Salt Flats / Utah
To accurately describe a thing, describe everything around it until you have a hole the size and shape of the thing you’re describing.
Based on dinosaur skulls science can figure how big and powerful their brains were. The hole is only so big.
Consider a time in the future when humans are obsolete. Imagine any hint of us buried under so much dirt, and for so very long, and whoever finds our remains is so different from us, biologically, that our form is incomprehensible. Or boring. Instead they become fascinated with the curios surrounding us in the layers of sediment, the internal combustion engines and drive trains.
And when they study the cavernous interiors of these monsters they mythologize about a time when quadruped beasts ruled the land, conquering great distances and achieving dominance despite possessing poorly formed and inefficient brains.
Time Zone Border / Nebraska
When a moving car stops suddenly everything thrusts forward. A body in motion stays that way. So we have seat belts and cup holders.
If our planet stopped rotating, if Earth slammed on the brakes, all loose objects would go from zero to one thousand really fast. Friction from air would slow you down, but odds are you’d crash into the side of a building first. You’d be lucky to be standing in the middle of nowhere.
Escape velocity for the surface of the Earth is roughly twenty-five thousand miles per hour, so there’s no chance of being cast into outer space.
Assuming Earth maintains its orbit, anyone who survived the stoppage of the planet’s rotation would inhabit a planet of days as years, sun fixed and spiteful. One could approximate old notions of time by driving east as fast as possible.
Little America / Wyoming
Is it not exceedingly beautiful to be sole inhabitants of the Universe, the chosen few? Alone in the cosmos, every breath a precious gift. A life so delicate, so intricate, so overwhelming. Waking up every day is a privilege. Nobody but us. We are the greatest of all time.
Or is it more exciting to share the stars with other creatures? Do they go to work every day, staring at screens, solving problems, creating new ones? Do they die? Do aliens eat salsa? Is there someone on another planet wondering about someone on another planet wondering about them? If they are not alone. If there’s life elsewhere, that would really take the pressure off of me.
You’re free to choose which reality to inhabit, for now, which is the most lovely thought of all. Because one thing is for sure: once we confirm either way, we’re all going to be miserable.