Images and video to make you feel small

jetsetter

jetsetter

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I just wanted to post these in the hope to change people's perspective just a bit. Perhaps make some things seem bigger and others seem smaller.

First the video:
[YOUTUBE]mcBV-cXVWFw[/YOUTUBE]

And now images. Remeber that each speck of light you see is a galaxy. And why is that you say? At these ranges (millions of lightyears) all you can see are the galaxies. (All images by NASA)
Hubble's longest exposures are like a core sample of the universe, recording galaxies at many different distances. This is one of the deepest core samples ever taken. It shows a few nearby stars in our Milky Way galaxy. The rest of the objects are distant galaxies, extending from 1 billion to over 10 billion light-years away.
Click to expand...

http://img300.imageshack.**/img300/8632/fulljpgxa1.jpg
http://img180.imageshack.**/img180/42/fulljpggk7.jpg
http://img300.imageshack.**/img300/3971/fulljpgtc4.jpg
http://img300.imageshack.**/img300/8079/fulljpgoo5.jpg
http://img300.imageshack.**/img300/1039/fulljpgxq5.jpg
http://img300.imageshack.**/img300/5555/fulljpgsw2.jpg
 
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Wow... every time I see one of these explanations of how big the galaxy is it just blows me away and leaves me speechless.

The Universe FTW.
 
Makes you feel pretty insignificant
btw what was that song that kid was lip synching to?
 
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and i'm all alone in this great big universe.......

fark those photos are bloody amazing.
 
I'm actually reading a book that's very interesting that kind of goes along these same lines, except it explores the ideas of String Theory. It's crazy that in String Theory, our universe is just one of infinitely many universes.

The book is "Imagining the Tenth Dimension" by Rob Bryanton. Granted he isn't a physicist, but the book is well researched and presented so that a layman has some hope of actually understanding some of the concepts. I've found it to be a very interesting read.
 
Wow that is incredible, it really makes you realise how stupid it is to think we are alone.
 
hokiethang said:
I'm actually reading a book that's very interesting that kind of goes along these same lines, except it explores the ideas of String Theory. It's crazy that in String Theory, our universe is just one of infinitely many universes.

The book is "Imagining the Tenth Dimension" by Rob Bryanton. Granted he isn't a physicist, but the book is well researched and presented so that a layman has some hope of actually understanding some of the concepts. I've found it to be a very interesting read.
Click to expand...

I also recommend "the elegant universe" and "Hyperspace" pretty much anything by Michio Kaku(sp?) and "Briane Grene"
 
wooflepoof said:
I also recommend "the elegant universe" and "Hyperspace" pretty much anything by Michio Kaku(sp?) and "Briane Grene"
Click to expand...

Yea Hyperspace is an awesome book. I'm reading a book called "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson right now that i find very interesting. It doesnt focus on one specific subject, but it does a great job of covering just about everything. Unlike "Hyperspace", which is written by Michio Kaku (co-founder of String Field Theory), which starts out easy to understand but gets challenging to most half-way through. Bryson is not a scientist and can make everything simple to understand.

oh and where did you get these pictures Jetsetter? are they in they in the multimedia section of the NASA site?
 
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Seeing stuff like this just gets me so excited about space travel. If you think about it, where we are is really the boondocks of the galaxy. Our solar system is far out in one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way, where stars are far apart. Imagine what it could be like living near the center, where the stars are much closer. What if two neighboring star systems in the center of the Milky Way were less than a light-year apart and both had life-supporting planets (with 500 billion stars, it's possible)? What if they started to communicate with each other? What if they traveled to the other species's planet? What if it were more than just two planets?

I like to think that the center of a galaxy is teeming with civilizations interacting with each other, and I want to go there. I want to see how others have gone about making civilizations, I want to see how they deal with their differences, I want to see what the night sky looks like from a planet outside the solar system. I wonder what our first contact with a species from another planet will be like? Will it be through radio communications? Will we visit their planet, our will they visit us first? Maybe they already know about us, but haven't made contact due to something like the Prime Directive, and the first time we travel to another star they'll come out of hiding to greet us?
 
^ you do realize that it would take 500 years for a signal to be sent (at the speed of light no less) to a planet 500 light year away. As much as id love to think that deep space travel is on the distant horizon or that we'll have alien buddy's to lend us their help in an intergalactic conflict, i dont think it'll happen.

Most people dont realize just how HUGE our little solar system is.

http://www.panoptikum.net/sonnensystem/solarsystem.htm
go there and click the "show solar system true to scale link" in the red box, it'll open a pop-up window with a scrollbar on the side.
But thats only half the story, because our solar system just doesnt get cut off where Pluto ends. There is the Oort Cloud (though not directly proven i dont think) that extends beyond pluto for another 1.9x10^13 miles.
 
I say get into the Total Perspective Vortex(HHG2TG) and let Zaarkwon handle the physics. :lol:
 
i must not think to hard about subjects like the greatness of the universe and how it came to be, or else i get serious motion sickness.:blink:
 
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I love Astronomy and everything related.

Got a telescope with the loads of reward points my dad collected a year ago...I gaze almost every night :D. Wonderful pictures, and good video. If me going to school for game design fails, I would love to go to school for astronomy, or try to work for observatory.
 
here's a couple things to make you feel small and insignificant:

chuck_norris_1.jpg

Former-Baywatch-Star-David-Hasselhoff-Will-Appear-on-Australian-Idol-2.jpg
 
...One of eight planets in our system. We'll miss you pluto.
Click to expand...

:lmao:

Anyways, I tend not to think about the size of the universe in great detail. The numbers are big, I understand, but at the moment, not of any significance to me. Let's just get to Mars first...

Blayde said:
I say get into the Total Perspective Vortex(HHG2TG) and let Zaarkwon handle the physics. :lol:
Click to expand...

It told me that I was the most important person in the universe.
 
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bartboy9891 said:
^ you do realize that it would take 500 years for a signal to be sent (at the speed of light no less) to a planet 500 light year away. As much as id love to think that deep space travel is on the distant horizon or that we'll have alien buddy's to lend us their help in an intergalactic conflict, i dont think it'll happen.

Most people dont realize just how HUGE our little solar system is.

http://www.panoptikum.net/sonnensystem/solarsystem.htm
go there and click the "show solar system true to scale link" in the red box, it'll open a pop-up window with a scrollbar on the side.
But thats only half the story, because our solar system just doesnt get cut off where Pluto ends. There is the Oort Cloud (though not directly proven i dont think) that extends beyond pluto for another 1.9x10^13 miles.
Click to expand...

Oh I'm aware of that, I was just romanticizing. :p What I think is even crazier is that when we look at these far away stars and galaxies, we're looking into the past. The ones that are really far away (>10 billion light-years) might not even be around anymore.

YF19pilot said:
Blayde said:
I say get into the Total Perspective Vortex(HHG2TG) and let Zaarkwon handle the physics. :lol:
Click to expand...

It told me that I was the most important person in the universe.
Click to expand...

*Hands YF19pilot some fairy cake*
 
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