The universe is big - [IMAGE]

The universe is beyond our imagination.

Time is an elegant thing, to think that distance is a measurement, only to know it's technically as close as our reach, it's part of time, when you travel in time, and not physical distance, you don't really go anywhere at all, because you're already everywhere at once.

Complex in nature and beyond the understanding of science, do you really fuel a machine and lift off to go to another planet? Or do you just find time, dig a nice hole, and slip through it as though nothing happened..

"I'll tell you one thing about the universe, though. The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us... seems like an awful waste of space. Right?" -Jodie Foster(Contact)

s&f from me, the hubble deep field is an image i think every one should see its absolutely mind blowing. to the op great work in spreading this info

Thanks for the images. Yes, amazing isn't it?

I'm a science illustrator and have had to deal with explaining such things in visual illustrations to kids and people who never even look up it seems.

The ratios are so great you cannot show in one image the scale of stars let alone nebula and galaxy clusters and superclusters of galaxies. Even when you know intellectually it is unfathomable.

In the other direction I have also done illustration for subatomic realms that have similar visual scaling problems. It goes to infinity in every direction!

To see the scale of our local cluster of galaxies, here is an illustration I did a few years back. Remember, all the galaxies you see are next door. There are billions more farther out than we can see with our best optics.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/03e89ce8db53.jpg[/atsimg]

Some more handy images for science.

Here is a piece I did for an on-line science site. All the galaxies are illustrated.

Deep Field

Galactic Cluster

Milky Way

But even with hundreds of hours of astronomy, and books on cosmology and space science you still only get a hint of how incredible the universe is. And that is just what we can imagine.

I have hundreds more illustrations, but they all pale in comparison to what we can see with Hubble.

"The universe is not only greater than we imagine, but greater than we CAN imagine." Einstein

ZG

The universe is infinitely huge and infinitely small. There is no end I'm sure.

On the universal scale, we exist in the realm of invisibility. Yet in a seemingly black patch of nothingness, zoomed in a million billion times, you'll find earth and it's billions of living things made up of infinitely smaller things.

That the universe went through all of this trouble to be so huge and so microscopic, while not missing one iota of detail in it's perfect design of life is truly incomprehensible.

You have to ask yourself why.




[edit on 14-4-2009 by PhotonEffect]

And people say we are the only ones in the whole universe...

It's funny to see how dumb people still are.

reply to post by _damon


The only reason I use parasite is because I can not think of a single thing we do that isn't harmful in someway on the grand scale of things. I guess we make great fertilizer but really whats the point of living, if that is the only reason we would have very short life spans I assume.

Most things in our body if not all have and serve some type of purpose such as repair, fighting off illnesses etc. So I really can't think of anything more in that sense. But I do believe in life after death so I also believe there is a purpose for us being here it's just not scientifically apparent at this stage of the process.

So all I'm left with is the matrix guy calling us an infestation reproducing and gobbling up resources to a point one day we may no longer be able to survive. Hopefully by that time something intervenes. At the rate were going living on other planets is a long way off. So hence the parasite comment lol.

i officially feel smaller than nanoscopic! subatomic even! its incredible to comprehend the shear vastness of space.... and they say we're the only ones out here.......if so....WHAT A WASTE OF SPACE!

reply to post by spitefulgod


spiteful, great find....I've seen the longer version as part of a lecture...but the 8-minute clip is easier to view, and the Pink Floyd helps too!

In the 'dry' version we hear from the lecturer about how what we are seeing is the large-scale representation of the distribution of galaxies, as observed and catalogued by the HST.

The also mentioned that it took a series of about one thousand processors working three years to render the 3-D portions....

I think the OP's point would have been even further impressed by posting a picture of Hubble Ultra Deep Field. VY Canis Majoris is only a small fry compared to what's out there. Remember, it's thought that the center of galaxies are super-massive black holes. The universe didn't form galaxies when it was young, it formed super-massive stars the size of galaxies which collapsed. The heavier elements formed in their cores and cast out at their death is what created the stellar nebula, planetary nebula, etc, and is what created the galaxies that we know. The process repeats on much smaller scales to this day.

Big? Huge? Gargantuan? Super-massive?

There are no words in any language at any time to do justice of the size of the universe. Words to describe it's size are meaningless and inapplicable. The closest we can get are numbers such as Googlplex and concepts such as Infinity. Neither of which can truly be visualized or comprehended.

Starred and flagged - excellent thread, loverd the image!!!

Looks like we really are insignificant after all!!

WOW! What a post! This is the best post I have seen on ATS!

I am absolutely amazed. This information gives me somewhat of a perspective as to just how small we are compared to the Universe. Absolutely amazing! It really opened my eyes.

Thank you so much for this GREAT post!

[edit on 14-4-2009 by octaviameister]

This is only what we can see of the known universe.

But as a matter of fact we actually have proof that there is more beyond the known universe, and beyond that there are most probably multiverses, just like galaxies are found in clusters, Universes are found in clusters, what is beyond that, we might never know.

The so called Big Bag was never the beginning, it was just a step in an infinite cycle of steps which the Universe, and all multiverses goes through.

Only mankind with our limited minds could conceive a beginning, and an end, but the Universe, and the multiverss are not confined by man's mind.

Just like the cycles of life, death, rebirth, life, death, rebirth, etc, in an never ending cycle so does the Universe, and the multiverses go through similar cycles.

Anyway, without further due, here is what we have found so far from beyond the known Universe.

Mysterious New 'Dark Flow' Discovered in Space

As if the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy weren't vexing enough, another baffling cosmic puzzle has been discovered.

Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can't be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon "dark flow."

The stuff that's pulling this matter must be outside the observable universe, researchers conclude.

When scientists talk about the observable universe, they don't just mean as far out as the eye, or even the most powerful telescope, can see. In fact there's a fundamental limit to how much of the universe we could ever observe, no matter how advanced our visual instruments. The universe is thought to have formed about 13.7 billion years ago. So even if light started travelling toward us immediately after the Big Bang, the farthest it could ever get is 13.7 billion light-years in distance. There may be parts of the universe that are farther away (we can't know how big the whole universe is), but we can't see farther than light could travel over the entire age of the universe.

www.space.com...

Originally posted by TailoredVagabond
Starred and flagged - excellent thread, loverd the image!!!

Looks like we really are insignificant after all!!

Insignificant? Not at all. It may certainly appear that way upon first blush, but how do you really gauge which is more significant - a super-massive star within a super-massive universe... or the fact that universe has, through the rise of intelligent life, become self-aware and has come to know itself. Even if we are but one in a billion advanced civilizations, does that really make the event any less significant? There are millions of births a year - but is each individual one no less miraculous (even if a bit messy and slimy)?



As the video says at the end. We can recognize our own insignificance, and that fact alone renders our insignificance, insignificant.

[edit on 14-4-2009 by Lasheic]

Nothing less of absolutely amazing. When you try to think about it its just....crazy. Thanks so much for posting! =]

reply to post by JohnD


Nice.

I'm not affiliated with any religions, but I've always been fond of a placard that JFK kept on his desk.

"O' Lord, thy sea is so great, and my boat is so small."

I've known the scale of these things for years and compared to what's out there we (Solar system & Earth) are just a spec of dust on a beach. that's why it's hard to me to understand what's all the fuss about killing each other in the name of religion, land, money or other such insignificant things. life is the most precious thing we have and we should treasure each beautiful moment because once it's gone it never comes back.

We're a very stupid close-minded self-centered species and that's why in the long run we will have zero impact on the universe (other than blasting Earth apart, if that matters for anything).

Very cool....
It's never boring to look at this sort of stuff yet another time around....it's just so hard to wrap my head around how vast it is out there.
I forget, when I see the sky at night, that some of those tiniest dots are unbelievably large galaxies, or clusters of them.

Originally posted by ElectricUniverse
This is only what we can see of the known universe.

But as a matter of fact we actually have proof that there is more beyond the known universe, and beyond that there are most probably multiverses, just like galaxies are found in clusters, Universes are found in clusters, what is beyond that, we might never know.

When scientists talk about the observable universe, they don't just mean as far out as the eye, or even the most powerful telescope, can see. In fact there's a fundamental limit to how much of the universe we could ever observe, no matter how advanced our visual instruments. The universe is thought to have formed about 13.7 billion years ago. So even if light started travelling toward us immediately after the Big Bang, the farthest it could ever get is 13.7 billion light-years in distance. There may be parts of the universe that are farther away (we can't know how big the whole universe is), but we can't see farther than light could travel over the entire age of the universe.

www.space.com...

the universe is infinite. we can only see 13.7 bil light years away (around us in a sphere) with our imaging techniques. however assuming there is a planet with intelligent life just like us observing the universe on the outer limits of those 13.7 bil light years, they would see another sphere 13.7 bil light years around them, and then on any egde of that sphere another civilization will see another sphere that's 13.7 bil light years in diameter.

it's probably hard to understand for those who read this for the first time but you can imagine it like circles touching each other in each direction of space forever and ever. which makes the universe a very very big place.

Originally posted by AlwaysQuestion
How big is the universe? Well, according to this image then we are very, very small and the universe is in reality incomprehensible...

LINK TO IMAGE

This is a large and very long image.....start at the top and carry on down, hopefully getting that 'wow' feeling.

I know there are many videos similar to this but sometimes it's nice to have a picture.

Apologies if this has been previously posted.

enjoy

Hmph. I guess God really likes variety eh?

Originally posted by DarkSecret

the universe is infinite. we can only see 13.7 bil light years away (around us in a sphere) with our imaging techniques. however assuming there is a planet with intelligent life just like us observing the universe on the outer limits of those 13.7 bil light years, they would see another sphere 13.7 bil light years around them, and then on any egde of that sphere another civilization will see another sphere that's 13.7 bil light years in diameter.

it's probably hard to understand for those who read this for the first time but you can imagine it like circles touching each other in each direction of space forever and ever. which makes the universe a very very big place.

Ah but you see, as above, so is below. In the same manner that molecules have atoms, and atoms are culsters of neutrons, electrons, and protons, and just as Solar systems are found in clusters/groups, and just like galaxies are found in groups, whenever we find what is beyond the known universe, sooner or later we will find that it is also found in clusters of Universes, a multiverse throughout the infinite.

"As above, so it is below".