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The Omega Point
By kevinleedrum
780 Favourites95 Comments29K Views
Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth.
Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever lived, in this Universe there shines a star.
But every one of those stars is a sun, often far more brilliant and glorious than the small, nearby star we call the Sun. And many--perhaps most--of those alien suns have planets circling them. So almost certainly there is enough land in the sky to give every member of the human species, back to the first ape-man, his own private, world-sized heaven--or hell.
How many of those potential heavens and hells are now inhabited, and by what manner of creatures, we have no way of guessing; the very nearest is a million times farther away than Mars or Venus, those still remote goals of the next generation. But the barriers of distance are crumbling; one day we shall meet our equals, or our masters, among the stars.
--Arthur C. Clarke (Foreword to 2001: A Space Odyssey)
Sources:
planet texture 1 by

5K stock 2 by

nasa astronaut statue stock by

pirate skull 4 by


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© 2010 - 2021 kevinleedrum
Comments95
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Wow. Just wow. This is a poignant piece of art. Looking for a minute I didn't really understand what you were trying to convey, but you convey it perfectly. Once I read your comments, I was totally floored at the ideas this piece and your words are putting across. I love the 'umbilical cord' and how he has his own orbit of debris. I love the money falling away representing sans worth. I love the blazing red halo that is this beings star. And I love the pavement-like texture occupying space, it really hones in on matter vs. black matter. You have done an excellent job!



Yes and no: [link] . A discussion about space mummification is partly what first sparked this piece actually, though I didn't go to great lengths to make this piece entirely realistic. And thanks for the compliment 

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