The Universe Is Trying to Ghost Us

Or: Why Everything Is So Far Away and So Quiet It Feels Personal

🔓 This post is free to read — part of the Ritual North public journal

The Most Passive-Aggressive Universe Ever

You ever text someone and get no reply?

So you wait.

And wait.

And eventually you convince yourself they’re probably just… busy. Or asleep. Or in a tunnel. Or dead.
Anything to avoid the obvious truth: they’re just not replying.

That’s kind of what it feels like looking at the universe.

We keep sending signals.
Launching satellites.
Beaming “hello” into the dark like needy cosmic interns hoping for feedback.

And the universe?

Nothing.

Just static and silence and one extremely loud void that somehow manages to say absolutely nothing, forever.

We live inside what is, by all accounts, the biggest, oldest, most dramatic place ever discovered…
…and it’s acting like it doesn’t even know we exist.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t a minor case of being left on delivered.
This is 13.8 billion years of total ghosting.

And not even angry ghosting. Not even “I’m mad and I want you to know it” ghosting.
Just... the kind where the other person isn’t even thinking about you.
The worst kind.

So what is this place, exactly?
And why does it feel so cold, and so big, and so deliberately indifferent?

Let’s zoom out.

Because things are about to get weird.

Welcome to the Space Spiral™

Alright. You’ve had your coffee. You’re emotionally stable.
Time to ruin that.

Let’s begin with something comforting:

Earth.

That’s us. Round. Wet. Mostly harmless.
About 12,742 km wide.
Big enough to take a while to drive across, small enough to be obliterated by a rogue asteroid in under 90 seconds.

We live on this thing. We build houses. Write poems. Argue on the internet.
We feel like it’s… well, the place.
The stage.
The main event.

But zoom out a bit.

The Moon

Just over 1 light-second away.
Which means if you shine a light at the moon, it takes a full second to bounce back.
You’re already talking to the past.

Zoom out more.

The Solar System

You now need a new unit of measurement:
Light-minutes and light-hours.

Mars? 3 minutes away.
Jupiter? 40 minutes.
Pluto? 5 hours.
Still “local.” Still technically in the cosmic living room.

But zoom out again.

The Oort Cloud

A hypothetical shell of icy leftovers that surrounds the entire solar system.
It’s where old comets go to die.
It might stretch 3 light-years out.

Three.
Years.
For light to reach the edge of our own solar back garden.

That’s not even the universe yet.

That’s just us.

Now we change units again.
We leave light-years behind.
We start measuring in galactic WTFs.

The Milky Way

Home galaxy.
About 100,000 light-years across.
Contains roughly 100 billion stars.

Imagine standing on a beach with 100 billion grains of sand.
Now imagine each grain is a sun.
With planets.
And maybe, somewhere out there, a teenager making microwave noodles right now.

You’re one of those grains.

And you’re not even in the centre of the beach.

You’re somewhere in the suburbs.

Laniakea Supercluster

That’s our neighbourhood.
A big one.
Like “100,000 galaxies lumped together” big.

Imagine 100,000 Milky Ways.
Each one with billions of stars.
Each star with a shot at planets.
Each planet with a shot at… something.

We are now 500 million light-years across.
Still zooming.

The Observable Universe

Here’s where it gets rude.

93 billion light-years.
That’s the current best guess for how far light has reached us since the Big Bang.

It’s expanding.
We don’t know what’s beyond it.
We don’t even know if there is a beyond.

What we do know is this:

We’re in a void so large, our entire galaxy is a punctuation mark.

The Illusion of Centre

Here’s the other weird thing:

There is no centre.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

The universe has no “middle.”
No “top.”
No “starting square.”
It’s expanding in every direction from every point at once — like a balloon inflating everywhere.

So when you look up and think, “We must be somewhere important,”
the answer is: “We’re not.”

We’re not even a smudge in the suburbs of nowhere.
We’re a hiccup on a dust particle clinging to a rotating void.

Time Travel for Dummies

aka “Everything You’re Seeing Is Already Dead”

We like to think we’re seeing the world as it is.
Live. Real-time. Fresh off the cosmic press.

But here’s the truth:

Everything you see in the sky already happened.
And some of it… happened before your species even existed.

Let’s start small.

The Moon?

That’s 1.3 light‑seconds away.
So you’re always seeing it 1.3 seconds in the past.

The Sun?

Eight minutes.
That sunrise you’re watching? It’s already old news.
If the sun disappeared right now, you’d still have eight minutes of denial left.

Sirius?

Eight light‑years.
You’re seeing it as it looked when you were in primary school.

The Andromeda Galaxy?

2.5 million light‑years.
You’re seeing it as it looked before humans ever existed.

The deeper into space you look, the further into the past you go.
Your eyes are time machines.
But dumb ones.
Only able to see things that screamed hard enough across time.

We don’t observe the universe.
We observe its ghost.

Ancient Noise

Once upon a time, we thought the sky was loud.

The Babylonians thought the stars were gods.
The Egyptians mapped the heavens to talk to the dead.
Somewhere in between, we convinced ourselves the stars were watching us.

And now?

We point telescopes at them and say: “Oh. They’re dead.”

Sidebar: Real Messages We’ve Actually Sent to Aliens

• The Voyager Golden Record: Beethoven, greetings in 55 languages, whale songs, and Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode”
• The Arecibo Message: a pictographic binary beam showing DNA, human figures, and our solar system
• A Canadian guy once tried to beam "Nyan Cat" at Proxima Centauri. No response yet.

Space Is a Terrible Host

aka “Everything Is Trying to Kill You, and the WiFi Sucks”

Meanwhile, back on Earth, we’re arguing about parking spaces.
And somehow… we’re still here.

Which is strange—
Because the rest of the universe?
It’s not exactly rolling out the welcome mat.

Let’s review the amenities:

• Oxygen: 0/5
• Hospitality: 0/5
• Quiet: 5/5
• Views: 5/5
• Survival Rate: 😂

No air. No warmth. No mercy.
Everything is either exploding or freezing or trying to turn your organs into mist.

The Silent Treatment

aka “Why No One’s Texting Back and It’s Starting to Feel Personal”

This is the Fermi Paradox.

• The universe is huge.
• The universe is old.
• So… where the hell is everybody?

We should’ve been hit with at least one alien mixtape by now.

Theories:

• Great Filter – they were here. Then they weren’t.
• Zoo Hypothesis – they’re here. But they’re watching. And judging.
• Too Far – light takes too long.
• We’re First – lol good luck everyone else.

And yet…

We keep listening.
Tuning in.
Leaning into the static with massive ears and even bigger hope.

But Somehow, Toast

aka “The Absurd Miracle of Ordinary Life on a Floating Rock That Shouldn’t Be Here”

After all that—

The void,
The silence,
The entropy,
The time delay,
The boiling eyeballs,

There’s you.
In a kitchen.
Making toast.

Sidebar: Why Toast?
Toast is ordinary.
It’s the first food you learn to make.
And the last food you eat when you've stopped pretending to care.
It’s heat and bread.
Survival. Repetition. Hope, slightly crisped.

The Quiet Flicker

Maybe we’re not alone.
Or maybe this is it.
One planet.
One spark.
One noise in a hall of silence.

But even if we are alone, we are here.

Which makes this — this exact moment — not empty.
But full.

Now Stop Reading and Get to Bed

Enough wonder for one night.

Go to bed.
Wake up.
Make more toast.

But don’t forget:

The silence is yours to break.