It’s so easy to get caught up with our insular lives. We spend our days in such a frantic bubble of work, eat, sleep, repeat, that sometimes it’s just too easy to sweat the small stuff. “Did Andy take offence over my throwaway comment last weekend? It’s been six months since I’ve had sex. My fingers feel funny… am I developing Osteoarthritis?”

Images VIA

Firstly – your worries are insignificant when compared with people who have real problems in the world. Secondly, when juxtaposed with the grandiose scale of the entire universe, earth is just an irrelevant spec of sand.

I’m not trying to depress you – it’s more of a reminder to stop giving a fuck. The following pictures should help you to realise this even more (or maybe just throw you into an early existential crisis):

Here’s the sun as viewed from Mars

Earth is the planet on the far left

Earth is part of one galaxy – the Milky Way

This image shows thousands of galaxies in one small section of space

That smudge is North America to scale on Jupiter’s surface

This is the largest picture ever taken by NASA

This is Hubble’s high definition panoramic view of the Andromeda Galaxy

And this is it close up

Here’s a shot taken by NASA showing the northern lights

This is a picture of aurora australis, sister of aurora poralis, captured from the International Space Station

This is the extremely hot remains of a supernova from 20,000 years ago

Even at the speed of light it would take 100,000 years to cross the Milky Way

Here is a cluster of five galaxies

Roughly 70% of the universe is made up of dark matter

And finally – here’s a picture of every single Maccy D’s in the US.

Feel small yet? I certainly do – and it feels fantastic.

If anything, this further confirms my belief that aliens definitely exist. Not that I need confirmation – at least the Pope would agree with me.