Carl Sagan's Pale blue dot image., page 4

reply to post by Lightworth

---

Can you not verbalise your internal dialogue into a coherent form of layman terminology?


[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

reply to post by darknovae

---

If we could launch a telescope from Earth that traveled faster than the speed of light, it would catch up to, and bypass the light that was reflected off of objects in the past. We could then look back at Earth and see what it looked like in the past.

Just like real life, if you look at a star, you are seeing light the star reflected 100's of years ago. The light a star is reflecting now, won't touch Earth for many years.

The further an object is from you, the further you are looking into the past.

Originally posted by Asmus
We are far from small or insignificant, your eyes betray you.

No, we're not insignificant -neither are these creatures in the photographs:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

I think Carl Sagan was more alluding to the arrogant,selfish 'delusion of self importance' that some human beings foster in thinking that the entire universe and everything in it was created specificaly just so they could exist -these same people usualy scoff at ideas of life elsewhere and suffer narrow minded superiority complexes towards others.

Ann Druyan suggest an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn't strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?

As for tolerance,I think a lot of countries (and religious organisations) could learn a lot by his example:

Every one of us is precious in the cosmic perspective. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
Carl Sagan

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

reply to post by Skyfloating

---

SF Thanks for the reply
Theres some amazing digitaly enhanced double exposure photographs coming out of the (non light polluted) state of Arizona which show how massively huge our night sky is.
When you think that we can only ever see just two galaxies from Earth (depending on which hemisphere we're standing in) its all a bit humbling.

NASA Archive image -Kofa Mountains,Arizona,2003:

files.abovetopsecret.com...

Sugar pine:

astrophoto.com...

Other:
Hubble Image of entire galaxies going about their business
(each galaxy containing 10 - 100 billion stars):




There are also some interesting quotes from various historical figures about life elsewhere in the universe:

To consider the earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet,only one grain will grow"
Methodorus.
Greek philosopher of the fourth century B.C.


"Heaven and earth are large,yet in the whole of space they are but as small as a grain of rice.......How unreasonable it would be to suppose that,besides the heaven and earth which we can see,there are no other heavens and no other earths"
Teng Mu.
Chinese philosopher of thirteenth century A.D.


"The universe is infinitely wide.
Its vastness holds innumerable atoms....
So it must be unthinkable that
Our sky and our round world are precious and unique....
Out beyond our world there are,elsewhere,
Other assemblages of matter making other worlds.
Ours is not the only one in air´s embrace"
Lucretius.
Roman philosopher of the first century B.C.


"Innumerable suns exist;innumerable earths revolve about these suns in a manner similar to the way the seven planets revolve around our sun.
Living beings inhabit these worlds"
Giordano Bruno.
Italian monk of the sixteenth century (also burnt at the stake for these views by religious bigots).


"Looking at the stars always makes me dream,as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map.
Why ,I ask myself,shouldn´t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?"
Vincent Van Gogh.


"Why may not every one of these stars or suns have as great a retinue as our sun of planets,with their moons,to wait on them?...They must have their plants and animals,nay and their rational creatures too,and those as great admirers,and as diligent observers of the heavens as ourselves...."
Christiaan Huygens.
Dutch physicist and astronomer of the seventeenth century.


"It is precisely because I believe theologically there is a being called God,and that He is infinite in intelligence,freedom, and power,that I cannot
take it upon myself to limit what He might have done.
Once He created the Big Bang.....He could have envisioned it going in billions of directions as it evolved,including billions of life-forms and billions of kinds of intelligent beings...
As a theologian,I would say that this proposed search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is also a search for knowing and understanding God through His works-especially those works that most reflect Him.Finding others than ourselves would mean knowing Him better"
Theodore M. Hesburgh ,C.S.C.,
University of Notre Dame

Articles:

Telegraph article about there being at least 40,000 'Goldilock's Zone' planets just in our galaxy alone (nevermind the other 5000 billion other galaxies in the universe):

Researchers have calculated that up to 37,964 worlds in our galaxy are hospitable enough to be home to creatures at least as intelligent as ourselves.

www.telegraph.co.uk...


Times article:

We are not alone: 'trillions' of planets could be supporting life:
Almost every star similar to the Sun probably has a life-harbouring planet like the Earth in orbit around it, a leading astronomer said yesterday.

The discovery of hundreds of planets around distant stars in our galaxy suggests that most solar systems have a world like ours that is capable of supporting life, and many of them are likely to have evolved it, according to Alan Boss, of the Carnegie Institution in Washington.
His expectation was that 85 per cent of Sun-like stars had one Earth-like planet, and that some could have many more. Given that there are 100 billion Sun-like stars in the galaxy, and 100 billion galaxies in the Universe, there may be 10 billion trillion planets that are good candidates for life. That is a one followed by 22 noughts.

www.timesonline.co.uk...

I think its safe to say your comments about the
abundance of stuff in this universe being outrageous
and 'above and beyond anything we've ever imagined up to now' are spot on.
Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

reply to post by karl 12

---

Good post Karl, I've always enjoyed the deep space images. We're looking billions of years back in time. Have you ever wondered what's there now? It's impossible for us to know at this time and maybe any other time in the future. Maybe there's nothing there but dead and collapsed stars and immense black holes



On the other hand, all those galaxies could have given birth to numerous civilizations before our galaxy had even formed it's spiral arms. The search for new worlds has just begun by us. It may have been started by other civilizations before our solar system was an accretion disc around an anonymous young star. If this is the 'cradle of humanity', we are now a child calling out into the darkness, "Is there anyone out there!?" Sooner or later the darkness will call back

There are about ten thousand billion billion habitable planets in the observable universe, and some of these Earth-like worlds could be found by a mission set to launch early next month, a leading planet-formation theorist now speculates.

Alan Boss, astrophysicist at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., and author of "The Crowded Universe" (Basic Books), published this month, came up with that rough number by estimating there is about one habitable planet around every sun-like star in the galaxy, of which there are about 10 billion, and multiplying that by the number of galaxies in the universe (about 100 billion).

This result is inexact of course, so give or take a power of ten or so, Boss said, which is standard for these types of estimates in astronomy. "Based on what we already know, the universe is going to turn out to be chock full of habitable planets (i.e. Earth-like worlds), and therefore life is likely to be widespread," said Boss, who discussed these estimates with a group of reporters last weekend in Chicago at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Source



Gas Pillars in the Eagle Nebula (M16): Pillars of Creation in a Star-Forming Region


Stellar Spire in the Eagle Nebula

This small piece of the Eagle Nebula is 57 trillion miles long (91.7 trillion km).

If I'm right...it would take us 90 years at the speed of light to travel top to bottom!


[edit on 20-3-2009 by Kandinsky]

reply to post by karl 12

---

Originally posted by karl 12
Its mindblowing to think just how big the Eagle Nebula (and the universe) actualy is
Cheers.

and conversely how minute we truly are... we exist at the quantum level on the universal scale, maybe even smaller. It's difficult to come to grips with sometimes. We're so small that we're invisible to the universe.... and look at what's happening in the realm invisibility.. pretty unreal

Great post man.

I had this sent through the NASA mailing list and couldn't think of a better place to share it It's an image of the Triangulum Galaxy (M33). There are better images of galaxies, but what makes this one interesting to me are the 'blue' stars...

NASA page

They are in the foreground of our own Milky Way and somehow the reference points lends perspective.

M33 is one of the few galaxies that is moving toward the Milky Way despite the fact that space itself is expanding, causing most galaxies in the universe to grow farther and farther apart.

When viewed with Spitzer's infrared eyes, this elegant spiral galaxy sparkles with color and detail. Stars appear as glistening blue gems (several of which are actually foreground stars in our own galaxy), while dust rich in organic molecules glows green. The diffuse orange-red glowing areas indicate star-forming regions, while small red flecks outside the spiral disk of M33 are most likely distant background galaxies. But not only is this new image beautiful, it also shows M33 to be surprising large – bigger than its visible-light appearance would suggest.

Source as above.

I did a little background reading and found that this galaxy was a co-star in a Star Trek Next Gen episode, 'Where No One Has Gone Before.' I dled and watched the episode and can definitively say that M33 is less one-dimensional than Whoopi Golberg

reply to post by Kandinsky

---

Amazing pic -truly humbling stuff

Theres some more impressive Hubble images at the link below - this one of a triple galaxy is just great:

The Hubble Space Telescope took a closer look at this triple galaxy group on April 1 and 2 after 140,000 people around the world voted on six potential targets. The areas have previously only been photographed by ground-based telescopes.

The Arp 274 galaxy group won the competition with more than 67,000 votes. Hubble's image suggests the galaxies may not be close enough together to interact as they appear to be in the image taken by the Palomar Observatory near San Diego.

The galaxies to the right and left show blueish lights, evidence of rapid star formation. Older stars are more yellow. The group is located in the constellation Virgo, 400 million light years away from Earth. The two bright stars at the right of the image are actually located in our own galaxy.

blog.wired.com...

Mammoth stars:
blog.wired.com...

Cheers.

Kozmic Hand of Fate?!

If you look at the wrist of the hand, you’ll see a brighter swirl of gas. In the center of that blob is a tiny object, a neutron star called B1509: an incredibly dense sphere of subatomic particles, leftover when a massive star goes supernova. While the outer layers of the star explode outwards, the core of the star collapses, cramming twice the mass of the Sun into a ball only a few kilometers across. This newly born neutron star — called that because the pressure is so great in the collapsed object that electrons and protons are rammed together to form neutrons — is basically the definition of the word incredible: it spins several times per second, has a surface gravity millions of times that of the Earth (if you were on the surface you’d be crushed flatter than a good science fiction program’s chances to be renewed on Fox), and has a magnetic field 30 trillion times that of the Earth’s.

Link

A graphic (GIF) version of a series of images posted earlier in the thread. The 'Sense of Awe 101'

Available to download from here

reply to post by Kandinsky

---

Wow - thats amazing


Apt quote:

The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home. In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends on how well we know this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.
Carl Sagan

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

Originally posted by karl 12
reply to post by Skyfloating

---

SF Thanks for the reply
Theres some amazing digitaly enhanced double exposure photographs coming out of the (non light polluted) state of Arizona which show how massively huge our night sky is.
When you think that we can only ever see just two galaxies from Earth (depending on which hemisphere we're standing in) its all a bit humbling.

NASA Archive image -Kofa Mountains,Arizona,2003:

files.abovetopsecret.com...

Sugar pine:

astrophoto.com...

Other:
Hubble Image of entire galaxies going about their business
(each galaxy containing 10 - 100 billion stars):

There are also some interesting quotes from various historical figures about life elsewhere in the universe:

To consider the earth as the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of millet,only one grain will grow"
Methodorus.
Greek philosopher of the fourth century B.C.


"Heaven and earth are large,yet in the whole of space they are but as small as a grain of rice.......How unreasonable it would be to suppose that,besides the heaven and earth which we can see,there are no other heavens and no other earths"
Teng Mu.
Chinese philosopher of thirteenth century A.D.


"The universe is infinitely wide.
Its vastness holds innumerable atoms....
So it must be unthinkable that
Our sky and our round world are precious and unique....
Out beyond our world there are,elsewhere,
Other assemblages of matter making other worlds.
Ours is not the only one in air´s embrace"
Lucretius.
Roman philosopher of the first century B.C.


"Innumerable suns exist;innumerable earths revolve about these suns in a manner similar to the way the seven planets revolve around our sun.
Living beings inhabit these worlds"
Giordano Bruno.
Italian monk of the sixteenth century (also burnt at the stake for these views by religious bigots).


"Looking at the stars always makes me dream,as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map.
Why ,I ask myself,shouldn´t the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?"
Vincent Van Gogh.


"Why may not every one of these stars or suns have as great a retinue as our sun of planets,with their moons,to wait on them?...They must have their plants and animals,nay and their rational creatures too,and those as great admirers,and as diligent observers of the heavens as ourselves...."
Christiaan Huygens.
Dutch physicist and astronomer of the seventeenth century.


"It is precisely because I believe theologically there is a being called God,and that He is infinite in intelligence,freedom, and power,that I cannot
take it upon myself to limit what He might have done.
Once He created the Big Bang.....He could have envisioned it going in billions of directions as it evolved,including billions of life-forms and billions of kinds of intelligent beings...
As a theologian,I would say that this proposed search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is also a search for knowing and understanding God through His works-especially those works that most reflect Him.Finding others than ourselves would mean knowing Him better"
Theodore M. Hesburgh ,C.S.C.,
University of Notre Dame

Articles:

Telegraph article about there being at least 40,000 'Goldilock's Zone' planets just in our galaxy alone (nevermind the other 5000 billion other galaxies in the universe):

Researchers have calculated that up to 37,964 worlds in our galaxy are hospitable enough to be home to creatures at least as intelligent as ourselves.

www.telegraph.co.uk...


Times article:

We are not alone: 'trillions' of planets could be supporting life:
Almost every star similar to the Sun probably has a life-harbouring planet like the Earth in orbit around it, a leading astronomer said yesterday.

The discovery of hundreds of planets around distant stars in our galaxy suggests that most solar systems have a world like ours that is capable of supporting life, and many of them are likely to have evolved it, according to Alan Boss, of the Carnegie Institution in Washington.
His expectation was that 85 per cent of Sun-like stars had one Earth-like planet, and that some could have many more. Given that there are 100 billion Sun-like stars in the galaxy, and 100 billion galaxies in the Universe, there may be 10 billion trillion planets that are good candidates for life. That is a one followed by 22 noughts.

www.timesonline.co.uk...

I think its safe to say your comments about the
abundance of stuff in this universe being outrageous
and 'above and beyond anything we've ever imagined up to now' are spot on.
Cheers.

[edit on 02/10/08 by karl 12]

These Images kind of make you feel insignificant don't they?

The loss of Carl Sagan is probably one of the greatest losses in this history of mankind. His insight was far ahead of his time and billions who saw him will agree with me. He is missed.

Only read this if you are quite young?
  Posted 9 days ago with 71 member flags

The World Is Waiting On You To Liberate Yourself From Ego!
  Posted 5 days ago with 36 member flags

Crazy Sufi Wisdom: The Moon Is More Valuable Than The Sun
  Posted 8 days ago with 25 member flags

The Messages of Animals
  Posted 19 days ago with 24 member flags

PEACE To attempt the impossible...
  Posted 4 days ago with 23 member flags

I looked at my cash and realized a few things just now...
  Posted 19 days ago with 20 member flags

Something I Learned from Looking at my dog in the eye.
  Posted 16 days ago with 17 member flags

Experiment: What would YOU do?
  Posted 15 days ago with 12 member flags

Newest topics, updated in real-time:

Newest topics getting flags, in real-time:

Newest topics getting replies, in real-time: