So, here we are.

The only problem is, where is here?

Now, imagine you had a little too much to drink – or if you don’t drink, perhaps someone stealthily slipped a little something into your more innocuous beverage of choice – and you wake up the next day in some completely foreign environment that is all strange, beautiful and new.

It also hurts. It hurts so much you cry. You have absolutely no recollection of how you got there or what you were doing beforehand. You finally compose yourself, still confused and speechless, and you find other people all around you.

They talk to you at great lengths, being the social creatures that they are, and give you lots of attention, given that you’re a new arrival. Some of them even tell you – with the utmost confidence – where you are, how you got there, why you’re there, etc. You trust them at first, being impressionable and disoriented, but as time goes on you realize the catch: None of them know anymore than you do.

Sound familiar?

Do me a favor: Search “Hubble Ultra Deep Field” (HUDF) on the Internet, and you should find one of the most remarkable photographs mankind has ever taken. In this picture, taken of a patch of sky about a tenth of the diameter of the moon, you’ll see roughly 10,000 galaxies, some of them dating back to 13 billion years, nearly the age of the universe itself (13.7 +/- .2 billion years old).

While looking at this photograph, consider the fact that it includes only 10,000 galaxies – nothing compared to the hundreds of billions within the observable universe. Also keep in the mind that everything you’re seeing – every single galaxy, each with hundreds of billions of stars, an incalculable quantity of planets, and an unfathomable amount of hot, radiant gas – is luminous baryonic matter: matter made up of atoms that emits and reflects light (i.e. everyday matter, such as our own bodies, our planet, and our star).

Baryonic matter, according to latest models, only makes up only about four percent of the entire cosmos – 3.6 percent of which is non-luminous, such as intergalactic gas and black holes. That leaves a measly 0.4 percent left to the matter that composes stars, planets, and living organisms like us.

So what makes up the other 96 percent of the universe? Well, some say 23 percent dark matter and 73 percent dark energy. Dark matter, which is supposed to include the majority of the universe’s mass, is believed to be non-baryonic matter that exerts a gravitational pull, but does not emit or absorb light, hence us not being able to see it and it being described as “dark.”

Dark energy, on the other hand, is an unidentified form of energy that makes up two-thirds of the universe’s density, counteracts gravity and causes the universe to expand at an accelerating rate. Some researchers suggest that dark matter and dark energy may be different manifestations of the same thing, just like conventional matter and energy. Others say that dark matter and dark energy are merely illusions, and all we need to do is revise our modern understanding of gravity and other laws. Either way, you won’t see dark matter or dark energy in the HUDF, even though they may make up the bulk of the cosmos.

To further complicate the situation, remember that we only perceive the HUDF with visible light through three dimensions, which leaves us with a very incomplete image when you consider the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum and certain variations of superstring and M-theories that postulate the existence of 10 or 11 total dimensions.

There’s also the idea that our entire universe is just one of an infinite amount of parallel-universes, all located within the hypothetical “multiverse” or “meta-universe,” which encompasses all of reality.

So here you have this already humbling photograph further enhanced by what it doesn’t show. What it actually shows is crazy and what it doesn’t show is even crazier.

And this is all stuff we’re thinking about now – just imagine what our descendents are going to be aware of in the future that we don’t have the slightest inkling of today. They’ll laugh at our concept of the universe in the way we laugh at the geocentric model of Aristotle and Ptolemy.

To put it further in perspective, consider that it wasn’t until 1925 that Edwin Hubble’s discovery of galaxies beyond our own was officially announced. That means that less than 100 years ago, people thought that the universe consisted entirely of the Milky Way Galaxy (not quite “billions and billions,” right?).

All of these realizations, findings, and ideas feed the notion that existence is overpoweringly mystifying, breathtakingly awesome and anything but mundane. Remember: Life is just one long, enigmatic hangover that you just kind of get used to experiencing. And as for where we are, how we got here, why we’re here: Don’t ask me – I don’t know any more than you do.

Daniel Mills is a UMass student.