Forgotten By The Stars

12 сент. 2025 г. Forgotten By The Stars In a far corner of the Milky Way it floats, seemingly endlessly in space, a little planet, the third planet in a middling solar system, forgotten by the stars for four billion years. It circles its parent sun like a pilgrim on an unending journey, faithful to a path that leads nowhere, never once suspecting that the galaxy at large has more pressing affairs. Civilisations flare and gutter out on worlds ten thousand light years away, yet Earth waits, unnoticed, its people convinced they are the centre of everything. The cosmos does not answer their radio calls. No starship casts a shadow over their skies. To Earth’s inhabitants, this silence becomes a puzzle, a wound to their pride. Surely, they tell themselves, intelligence cannot be so rare. But the truth, if truth can ever be claimed in a universe this large, is more ordinary. Earth is simply too far, too quiet, too provincial. The galaxy is busy elsewhere, and the blue planet spins on in its isolation, as if the stars themselves had chosen to forget it. It is not malice that keeps the stars silent, nor conspiracy, nor some celestial embargo. The answer is simpler: indifference. The universe is vast beyond human measure, and the affairs of one small species matter to it no more than a grain of dust matters to a desert. That lesson stings, for it denies the hope of special status. Yet the silence remains, and perhaps always will, until humanity earns the right to be remembered....