There are a lot of things we take for granted and just accept as normal. We never realized this more than when the pandemic happened and a lot of normal things we enjoyed were suddenly closed. For example, we have never appreciated movie theaters, restaurants and schools so much.

In the same way, we take for granted a lot of things about the universe. This is partly because many of us don’t stop to think about it, but if we do stop and think about it, there are a whole lot of amazing things about the universe we live in.

One Reddit user asked, “What’s the most amazing thing about the universe?” Many Reddit users responded with truly amazing examples. Here are some of our favorites.

1. How We See the Universe

   One Reddit user wrote:

   The only way we can see the universe is from inside it.We will likely never possess any way of viewing our universe from outside its physicality.

2. Neurons

   Afferent_Input shared:

   A single human brain has as many neurons as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Around 100 billion.Source: am neuroscientist filled with useless facts about the brain.

3. How We All Live Forever

   Another Reddit user explained:

   That in the grand scheme of things we are all immortal. Our organic cells will die, our consciousness will cease, and we will no longer be able to directly observe existence, but the atoms that make up our bodies will simply be new compounds. And if energy is neither created nor destroyed, if our atoms continue to be, we will eventually make up the building blocks of new compounds. Pieces of us will watch the sun swallow up Mercury and Venus. Pieces of us will watch supernovae and black holes and all sorts of cosmic phenomena. Perhaps even one day our atoms will return to a nebula, and the cycle will begin again. A new star is formed, new planets begin to orbit it, liquid water forms on a small green rock orbiting this star, and an intelligent species evolves to travel to marvel at the wonders of our universe. One of my favorite shows is Battlestar Galactica and one of the quotes that stuck out to me was “All of this has happened before, and it will happen again.” I tend to think there’s some truth to that. I’ve had a couple friends and my grandfather die this year, and as an agnostic I am processing death a bit differently from the rest of my family. I don’t think of death as the ending, as a finality. I don’t think there is an afterlife as most religions conceive of it. I think that in a weird way, we all live forever.

4. Dinosaurs

   Swimmergent answered:

   If you were on a planet 65 million light years away from Earth and had a really good telescope, you could see the dinosaurs.

5. That’s Deep

   Jesus_marley shared:

   That every single random event since the dawn of creation. The birth and death of stars, planets and galaxies, the very genesis of life has led to you being here right now to ask this question.

6. That We Can Think

   Sphyrwa wrote:

   That somehow all the particles accumulated in a specific way and in specific quantities to give you conscious thought.

7. It’s Young

   Five_Decades explained:

   How young it is.People look at the universe being 13.7 billion years old and say ‘that is ancient’. That is nothing. Stars will continue to form for another 100 trillion years. Even after that, stellar remnants will exist for quadrillions of years. Black holes will still produce energy that can be used by intelligent civilizations for 10100 years. Keep in mind if biological life doesn’t destroy itself, we will just keep getting more and more knowledge. Its probably a safe bet that within 500 years (which is nothing on universal time scales) we will be an interstellar species that has long ago transcended biology.

8. Magnets

   Lululemonparty_ wrote:

   It gave us magnets. How do those work?

9. “We Don’t Understand It”

   ibi1kinibi shared:

   That we just don’t understand it. It could be flat, it could be irregular, there could be another one, it’s growing at an exponential speed, it’s invisible contents. We try to learn more about it using our earthly knowledge but there is certainly more to it. It’s like trying to wrap your head around eternity.

10. Life

    suyashkhubchandani shared:

    It sounds super philosophical and like something a stoned person would say, but the distinctiness within our universe is what sets everyone apart. The way each of us, made up of the same elements of this universe, yet manage to be so different. Perhaps you could say the greatest and rather miraculous thing of all is in-fact, life.

11. It’s Beautiful

    OnTheSideoftheShirt answered:

    No matter how insignificant and bleak life may look up close, when climbing a mountain and admiring the view, or finding a spot away from the city and looking at the stars, we will forever be hit by its beauty. The big picture is always there to be admired. To make us forget how small and pointless daily details are.

12. How Fast It’s Expanding

    JScrambler wrote:

    The universe is expanding so fast that there are galaxies we would never be able to view.

13. Sand

    HUMANPHILOSOPHER added:

    Sand.Hear me out! Without sand we wouldn’t have glass, so we wouldn’t have telescopes to see the larger universe, or microscopes to see the amazing micro universe around us. We wouldn’t have the car, space travel or spectacles. Sand also gives us bricks, cement, and roads to make cities. Our homes are mostly just piles of sand. Sand makes land, islands in the middle of nowhere, and gives us something to hold onto all those the oceans with. Put a bunch together and you get mountains and planets. Sand pretty damn amazing, we can do amazing things with it, and it probably exists on most planets.