Get the world into perspective. Trust me, it's a big place.

Here's something that makes me go all weird for a few minutes if I think about it: the Earth's crust is only 70km thick at it's largest point, and something like 5-10km thick at the lowest points of the ocean bed. below that is 2,200km of mantle. Have you ever seen lava flow from a volcano? That stuff is magma. This swirls round at stupidly hot temperatures at very high pressure, and moves the earths crust around. Want to know what causes things like earthquakes and grounds your flight to Iceland? That'll be the mantle. below that is the core. This is mostly iron and is more dense than your average Big Brother contestant. it's constant moving causes the magnetic field that helps you find your way. It is unimaginably hot, and the whole shebang goes down a total of 6,500km, which is about the distance from England to Uganda. Wowzers!

Now, look at the ground. All that is going on right under your feet, right now!

Doesn't that make you feel just the tiniest bit small and vulnerable? Well if so, then that's nothing. Here's an interactive animation that really sums up just how small you really are. If you can't load it, or can't be bothered to look at it, then let's put it into perspective for you. You know roughly how big the earth is in comparison to you, but if the earth was the size of a pea, then the sun is about the size of a basketball. That's huge, isn't it? No, not really. If the Sun was the size of a pinhead, then the biggest star we know of is the size of an average house! Wow! If you could fit the whole solar system into a teacup, then the Milky Way Galaxy would cover all of North America! Now that's big, right? Nope, not yet, because the sun is one of about 100 billion other stars in the galaxy, and the Milky Way is one of about 100 billion galaxies that we are aware of in the limited universe we know of. I can't even get my brain to fathom such a large thing as that! Feel a bit tiny yet?

So, really the end product of this is that you're teeny weeny, along with the other 6,500,000,000 people alive. You'll be around for, what, 70 years? Well the earth's been kicking around for 4.5 billion years, and will be making its merry dance around the sun for a long while yet. So really, unless you've got your finger on the big red button that says "launch", what you do will probably mean nothing whatsoever in the grand scheme of things. Now, I've not told you this to bring everyone on a downer, I'd rather tell you how awesome your hair looks today. However, there's something that I hear occasionally that has led me to the aforementioned explanation. It's the phrase "No I couldn't. I'm too scared". Scared of what? A bear attack? It's normally something that could be fun or exciting, like going skydiving or bungee-jumping. Chances are you'll be fine, so why so scared? Even if you landed on the big red button and caused worldwide nuclear annihilation, the world will still spin, the sun will still burn, the galaxy will continue being all pretty and round. Even if you manage to kill everyone and everything, the universe is so big that it won't even notice. As whatever it is that you're going to do is unlikely to cause a mass extinction, why are you so worried?

Don't just apply this to fun things like jumping out of a plane. Apply it to life itself! I know I've blogged about it before, but why waste your mere 70 years doing something boring when you could make a career out of something you love? For example, take a random short guy in New York called Ray. His full name is Ray William Johnson, and he's a student. Now, he could have done the usual thing of getting a rubbish office job for a couple of years before working as an official lackey in a filming studio. Instead, he decided to film himself talking about videos on YouTube. He clearly loves it, and others clearly enjoy watching it (including me). I know this, as he happens to be the most subscribed channel on YouTube with nearly 4 million subscribers. His videos tend to get somewhere in the region of 5 million views each time. I don't know what he earns, but as YouTube pay something in the region of 25c for every 1000 views for his videos, I bet he's doing very well out of it.

So why don't you take the step to do something that you enjoy for a living? Sure, it'll take time and effort to research it, to make sure that you've got enough resources to cover it etc, but if you can, why aren't you? Are you scared? Well I don't blame you, but I don't understand why you wouldn't. Even the worst case scenario isn't going to blot out the sun, and isn't going to ripple through history. It probably won't even be remembered in 10 years time, and the potential upside is that you spend your measly and quick 70 years on this little lump of rock in space having an absolute ball! Then, you can go parachuting like the fearless person you are.

But if you do, don't think about all that molten stuff swirling around in the Earth's core. That's the last thing you want to think of while you descend from a plane jump. You'll freak out, someone will film it, and it'll end up on YouTube.

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