NASA: 235 trillion miles is close by in the universe!

On February 22, 2017, The Washington Post reported:

"A newfound solar system just 39 light-years away contains seven warm, rocky planets, scientists say. The discovery, reported Wednesday in the journal Nature, represents the first time astronomers have detected so many terrestrial planets orbiting a single star. Researchers say the system is an ideal laboratory for studying distant worlds and could be the best place in the galaxy to search for life beyond Earth."

 It's been weeks since the discovery was announced.  

By

now

I suppose I should have fathomed this news.

But as many times as I read accounts

of the discovery, I am awed. My brain can

absolutely make no sense of the distance. 

NASA says that these exoplanets

can be reached in 40 light-years.

40 light-years, huh?

That equals

235 trillion miles, a distance that 

NASA says "is relatively close to us."

Double HUH??

Why do I keep coming back and 

coming back and coming back

to what I call one of the deepest

mysteries I can recall.

I was talking to my son-in-law Evan, a rather

brilliant scientist, about light-years.

He calculated that if you were traveling at the speed

of light, you could circle the Earth

seven times in one second!

Maybe it's just me, but I believe that

all of this is rather impossible

to take in.

It's a little (just a very little) like standing

at the edge of the Grand Canyon and

trying to absorb the vast pink and brown and orange 

glory before you.

This news is definitely in the category of 

things I will never ever comprehend.

It's right up there with staring at a baby

or a flower or somebody's eye

and all those other miracles of Mother Nature.

I could spend each day for the rest of my life

contemplating all of this and I am quite sure

I will always end up in the same place

Mystified and oddly, comforted too,

that there is an INFINITY of 

of miraculous things and us? Hardly a speck of dust in the Universe.