Thursday, July 4, 2013

Feeling Small

I was just compiling a folder with all of the hubby's latest finds on the internet. I was looking through some stuff and stumbled over this gem of astronomy:

Size chart of the solar system and selected stars
Looking at charts like that, videos, and documentaries about the vastness, the wonders, and the forces of the space makes me feel humble and small. There is so much out there we cannot even start to understand, to begin with the endlessness of space. One of the brightest stars on our night sky, Betelgeuse, is most likely to go supernova during the next one million earth years. The supernova will outshine the moon during the night and be clearly visible by day over a period of two to three weeks. How will the world look at this point? Will our decendents be able to witness this epic stellar event or will life be extinct by then?

The hubby and I love to watch "The Universe" series, and the girls are already hooked as well. There's so much yet to be learned and discovered. Do I think there is life out there? I definitely do. There are billions of stars, with their very own solar system just in our galaxy. And there are billions of galaxies out there; to me, it simply seems to be more likely that there is life somewhere out there than that we are unique there. Are thos life forms sentient? Maybe. Do they form civilizations like us? Possibly. Are they coming for us? Less likely, just taking the distances into account. It is physically not possible to achieve the speed of light, and it will take many, many generations of ingenious scientists to achieve speed close to light. And even then it would take still take years to reach the closest star in the Centauri system.

Enjoy the view!

Source

8 comments:

  1. Wow that is really amazing! I love it.

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    1. Isn't it? looking at pictures of the universe just makes me want to cry of amazement. It's so beautiful and mysterious..

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  2. Astronomy is so fascinating to me! It's crazy to think about how huge the universe is!

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    1. Isn't it? It's still so crazy even thinking about it. Talked "The Universe" with a colleague at work today. He pointed out that the speed of light is nearly 300,000km per SECOND. wow..

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  3. I wish I could watch "The Universe" series. Perhaps it will come on Netflix (or is it already?) or some other online site. I've always been fascinated by the Universe and Astronomy.

    I've never really understood how people can't believe their being life beyond ourselves (most of this is likely from a religious standpoint maybe?), when we are still to this day learning about new species in our very own back yard. I feel it to be quite obtuse.

    Oh, really there is a new species of frog discovered in the remote unexplored jungles we just happened across? Well to hell if there could be anything living out in the vast [humanly] unexplored universe! Just doesn't make sense to me.

    Jak at The Cryton Chronicles & Dreams in the Shade of Ink

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    1. Definitely check if it's on Netflix or YouTube. We love this show!

      As bad as my math is, even I can calculate that it's much more probable that there is extra-terrestrial life than that there's none.

      Did you hear that they only recently found a huge underground sweet water lake that contains many, many new bacterial and multi-cell life forms. Even that is so exciting to me ;-)

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  4. It's so hard to find a spot where you can really see all the stars in the sky, since city lights make it so much harder. But when you do find it, it's absolutely breath taking and awe inspiring. We really are just ants on the head of a pin.

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    1. I agree! The hubby managed to show a few constellations, and we once watched a meteor shower. How old have those little pieces of rock been and how far have they traveled before dying in such a beautiful spectacle? Who knows..

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