Universe Picture that took 4 months to take!

reply to post by srslyguyz

in reality its impossible to really understand how small we really are

Conversely, it's impossible to really understand just how large we really are. Remember, the universe scales down from our size too. We inhabit the "Middle World" between the atomic and the galactic scale of the universe.

reply to post by Ghost in the Machine

This truely puts into perspective how small our solar system is.

While awe inspiring, utterly deserving of the title "Most important image humanity has ever taken", it sadly puts nothing of the universe's true scale into perspective. Only a phantom of a glimpse of that perspective. The picture only shows a very small fraction of the total sky, and only from a relatively small fraction of the total universe which we call the "visible universe". Some of the galaxies in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field are now beyond the visible threshold, and we will never see them - as the space between them and us is expanding faster than the speed of light. Further, we are blind and deaf to the vast majority of our Universe's operation.

And ultimately... everything you see in that image consists of matter, which is 99% empty space, and constitutes only a very meager trace 2~3% of the total makeup of the universe.




[edit on 5-11-2009 by Lasheic]

reply to post by Snarf

And there are millions of people who believe we are alone. Thank God for ATS and images like this one

Ironically, it's been my experience that only the religious (and rather few of them, confined mostly to the fundamentalists) are the ones who still believe we are alone in the Universe. Most everyone, regardless of their academic field, which I have heard lecture speak about the musings of a universe overflowing with life - more prolific than our wildest expectations, confined by our ability to conceptualize. As Richard Dawkins once said "The Universe is not only far queerer than we imagine; it is far queerer than we CAN imagine." As research into our planetary neighbors and their past (such as Mars, and possibly Venus) continues to advance; As our research into extrasolar planets and planetary formation continues to gain ever greater resolution; as our understanding of Abiogenesis continues to show the basic building blocks of life self-arrange at different levels under both specific and broad circumstances... it has become near impossible to claim that we are alone in the universe.

The only stumbling block to announcing as fact that we are not alone, is the thus far inability to provide evidence in nature. Acknowledging life's (even intelligent life) existence in the Universe is only an increasingly "safer bet", but from what we can verify and demonstrate to be true, within the confines of logic and the scientific method - cannot yet lend any sort of support for the claims of the UFOology community's version of life in the universe based on currently available evidence. Even if the universe is overflowing with life as many suspect, even intelligent life, the hurdles of society (Type 0 to Type1 civ) and technology have yet to be shown adequate enough to overcome the barriers of time, space, biology and the unknown extent to which they can be bent or manipulated.

Those who utterly reject the idea of life in the universe tend to be those with more "geocentric" views of god, creation, and our place/ role in the universe. Holy scriptures written by men who believed the stars were affixed to the underside of a crystalline dome, that could be shaken loose and fall to earth by the wrath of god, were limited by their utter blindness to the world beyond the tips of their noses and cultures.

Originally posted by Movhisattva
Nice

We are stardust indeed... This reminds me of Carl Sagan's 'pale blue dot' image, Earth photographed from 4 billion miles away by Voyager I:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b690d8cda0ad.jpg[/atsimg]

"We succeeded in taking that picture and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam".
Carl Sagan

link

There are some nice pale blue dot threads around already. Looking at Earth from that perspective always confonts me with... well, more or less everything I live in, live for, live with and live by. In one dot.

[edit on 5/11/09 by Movhisattva]

Wow! That pic is awesome too. I'd never seen that one before either. Thanks for sharing it with us.

reply to post by Lasheic


I know what you mean. Are we honestly supposed to believe that in our own little spot in the universe that we are the only planet that God was interested enough in to place life upon? Why waste his time creating all the other millions or billions of stars and planets to not do anything with them? That would be like having a cosmos junkyard. What would be the point?


[edit on 5-11-2009 by gazerstar]

S&F makes you think how one can possibly think where alone in the universe

Originally posted by poling2482


A really neat picture of our universe. If you click on it once it will zoom in and then just scroll down. After looking at this it boggles my mind! I mean really, how in the world can our brains absorb all that information. The universe is to big to ever understand completely. I like the part that said modern physics would not allow the galaxy to exist.

img19.imageshack.us
(visit the link for the full news article)

Because modern physics doesn't include consciousness. In one night you and I can dream up a whole new world and go in a second to wherever you/I please. And this can feel like ours of fun but in reality(?) the dream only lasted a view seconds!

Einstein said: "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

reply to post by johndoeknows

Because modern physics doesn't include consciousness.

Physics will never say anything about consciousness. That's a field of Psychology. Ultimately, and at it's most reductionist form, physics does lie at the root of consciousness because it explains the rules chemistry follows - and chemistry is the basis for the explanation of how our cells operate and their interactions. Physics is the bottom level, and while it encompasses all fields above it - you cannot explain in meaningful dialog how it relates. It's obtuse and insuffient to explain biological operations, such as sexual reproduction, by it's physics alone. By the interactions of subatomic particles. Our reality is non-linear, and the sum of the parts is exceeded by the scale of the whole. It's called emergence.

So we have to explain our world in "layers" of relevance. Consciousness (whether emergent or a force as-of-yet undetected) is no exception.

However, in psychology, the discoveries being made are not favorable. Philosophy has split the problem of consciousness into a "hard" and "easy" problem. There has been no progress at all made in answering the hard question. However, advances in cognitive and neuroscience have revealed much about how we experience consciousness... how certain highly specific faculties commonly attributed to it's innate function and your concept of your consciousness... are not... and can be "knocked out", amplified, or otherwise manipulated.

The consciousness or "soul" which is left after the dissection of faculty and function tied to and dependent upon specific regions of the brain is little more than a passive observer unaffiliated with personal identity or any measure of who YOU are. The "soul" or "consciousness" in typical regards is as irrelevant to who you are as a fly on your shoulder. YOU are your brain.

While there is still much we don't know about the brain, we know enough to prompt many philosophers and scientists like Dan Dennett to suggest that the Easy Problem of consciousness is so richly explained even thus far that the Hard Problem, essentially, has been nulled and rendered meaningless. A question that will never be answered, because when it was asked - we didn't yet know enough about the brain and consciousness to know what questions to ask.

And if Cognitive and Neuroscience are somehow utterly wrong, and physicists discover a "consciousness energy" we all tap into and isolate, it will still be up to the study of psychology to explain that energy as it applies to the brains of living organisms - predominantly humans, our behaviors, and our societies.

[edit on 6-11-2009 by Lasheic]

I'm convinced that the best way to get stars and flags, without any effort whatsoever, is to search ATS for a popular thread from over 3 monts ago and reproduce it.

Specifically, the threads that have a WOW factor, such as eye opening pictures.

I mean, I've probably seen this OP about 100 times now.

In any case, it really does put things into perspective. The picture, that is.

-Dev

The examples you have shown, being an infinitesimal amount of the known universe, is why I have such huge issues with humans and their ridiculous ego's.

Our life spans are insignificant and make no difference to grand scale of things. We are all literally star dust reformed into the human existence, for a split second in time. Then we're gone. Religions have tired, and failed, to put man above the universe in importance...yet, it is the universe that is beyond calculation, and measurement. It is age defiant, and seemly endless. It will, in all probable hood, exist forever and ever without end. ( how long will you be here?)
Thus, if you want to peer at the mind of the creator...look out into the night sky, and then look deep within at your own cosmos of existence. You are from there!
It is there, where you will return, to become something else at some point in time. Maybe a 500 foot tall purple mushroom on some distant planet, as of yet, not discovered. The possibilities are endless... Just don't get too attached to what you are now...it ain't gonna last!

Originally posted by nepafogo
These are my 2 favorite photos of the universe. You can spend hours looking through these.

home.exetel.com.au...

home.exetel.com.au...

[edit on 9-11-2009 by pixeljell]

reply to post by nepafogo


home.exetel.com.au...

Was viewing your image, and found this object?? Pretty much directly in the center. Scroll through the images, I have it zoom in on the object.

Trying to get link to work, what is missing is @N04 add that to the end.

www.flickr.com...@N04/

farm3.static.flickr.com...
[edit on 9-11-2009 by JohnParanorm]

[edit on 9-11-2009 by JohnParanorm]

[edit on 9-11-2009 by JohnParanorm]

[edit on 9-11-2009 by JohnParanorm]

That's a cool picture. It's been featured on Digg a couple of times. Really gives you a perspective into our universe. Just amazing.

Originally posted by BlubberyConspiracy
Nice illustration first the size of atoms thread made me feel big, now this makes me feel really small!

Just imagine all the possibilities yet to explore out there.

The real problem lies with TPTB and whether they will let us explore, or keep sending probes. Robots that allow them to control and filter the information. If they send real people to like say Mars, then a real person could go to the Face and see for first hand whether its a big mound of dirt or actually made by and intelligence. I'm not saying that the face is real, but the only way to know for sure is to send people there. Maybe send a team that has a geologist, and someone who is either an anthropologist or archaeologist. If it's a just one big mound of dirt then I want to know for sure, and I'm willing to consider the possibiltiy that it is. But if it isn't then that is something for which we need to send real people, real astronauts doing real tests. Not robots, not probes.