This is a beautiful pic, OP!!

I am FASCINATED with the cosmos....I can get lost into the stars when I look up at night. I wish everyone had a more accurate understanding of the vastness of space, and the size of the universe.

Only then would people gain a more accurate understanding of their perspective place in the universe.

Simply trying to grasp the enormity of our own galaxy is mind boggling. The milky way is probably home to more alien races then we could even imagine.

As for the entire universe, well, I dont think any of us are even equiped to think on that kind of scale.

Then if you think outside the box and take into account other dimensions who will probably have their own zillions of planets....

We are sooooooooooo very very small.

The vastness of the Cosmos stirs us. To imagine the billions of points of light out there as islands of possible life in a limitless black sea stirs strong emotions in me. I weep tears of joy and amazement at the scope and scale of the universe.

Life out there? I totally and absolutely stake my life on it. Did a god do it? No.

Originally posted by NuminousCosmos
The vastness of the Cosmos stirs us. To imagine the billions of points of light out there as islands of possible life in a limitless black sea stirs strong emotions in me. I weep tears of joy and amazement at the scope and scale of the universe.

Life out there? I totally and absolutely stake my life on it. Did a god do it? No.

Yes indeed!!

As Carl Sagan pointed out to us, "There are more stars than there are grains of sand on every beach of Earth....."

wow

The universe is MAGNIFICENT!!

And no, a 'god' did not do it.

Thanks for the responses guys!
Anyhow, there is one picture that really stirred my imagination many many years ago, to show you how lonely our universe is


for some reason, the Derelict from Alien really makes me think that out there there ARe other civilizations, ruins, derelicts etc

Originally posted by ButterCookie

Originally posted by randomname
you can't look at these pictures and not believe in God.

Actually, its quite the opposite.

How can a person think that the same thing that created all the stars, galaxies, etc. be the same person that cannot heal the sick, stop wars, and defeat the 'devil'?

edit on 22-1-2012 by ButterCookie because: (no reason given)

Who told you it is the job of God to to present Itself so that we interpret It as either good or not? Why would you think God would cherry pick events to intervene in and other events to not intervene? Why do humans think we need to tell God how to conduct Its business? Ego may need some rachetting back. We're not that important.

lets stick to the topic on hand please
Thank you

Originally posted by HomerinNC
lets stick to the topic on hand please
Thank you

I agree.

I remember finding out the distance to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. Other than our sun, Proxima Centauri is the closest star to our solar system. I read that if we could travel at light speed (186,000 miles per second) htis very long trip would still take 4.2 years.

But, without the speed of light, using our current mode of space travel, this journey would take 50-70 THOUSAND years!!!!

Then my daughter asked me how large the Milky Way Galaxy is. At the time I didn't know, so we looked it up together (100,000 light years across). At first, i didn't understand what that meant.....then I read about light years and the speed of light (186,000 miles per second).

When I put 2 and 2 together, I was forever blown away about the cosmos!!

Basically, this means that if I had the ability to travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) and went from one end of the Milky Way Galaxy to the other, it would take 100,000 years!!!!

Then I learned that it takes 2.3 million LIGHT YEARS to reach our next-door- neighbor galaxy, Andromeda.

We are truly insignificant in the grand scheme of things....we are only important to ourselves. Not saying that to be pessimistic, but just analyzing our 'place' in the universe.

My famous saying is We are not the center of the universe, neither physically nor figuratively.

Originally posted by HomerinNC
Here is another pic of a galactic cluster taken by the Hubble

looks like those are all closeby, when in reality theyre probably MILLIONS of light years apart.
They also look small in the picture, but think: some of these can possibly be larger then the Messier Galaxy.
IMMENSE galaxies, just TEEMING with life.
It simply boggles my mind.

think of the cells that make up the human body, there are spaces between them, but as a whole entity, they function in unison, which leaves me with a question...

what do the galaxies form? and perhaps we can only seem them move really slowly, the speed of light, but perhaps they are making up a bigger form?

It really starts making my head hurt to see things like this. Not in a "I am going to stop thinking about this" kind of way, but in that, "Holy s**t, I may and likely will never understand anything about existence" kind of way. I will never know what it's like in the Messier Galaxy, or even the rest of our own galaxy. The sheer vastness of the Universe is humbling beyond the extreme. And it really makes me want to cry, tears of sadness, that I am so small, and that I, though my mind compels me to ask, "Why are we here? Why does life exist?" I will probably never know. But maybe with time the human race will figure it out. Or maybe we'll continue annihilating ourselves, the latter is a likelier possibility. Or maybe it's simply not possible to know.

But even if there's no God, even if there's no afterlife, there is a small comfort in the fact that our bodies are made of stardust, and to the stars we will return someday. In billions of years, when the Sun dies and the Earth dissipates, all of the material of Earth will be recycled through the Universe again and we'll become a comet, or an asteroid, or another star, or a black hole, or something else that we've never even heard of. Matter is neither created nor destroyed. Our physical forms will be recycled, and even if our souls and minds are simply complex physical processes, then at least a bit of our physicality lives on.

God, this makes me want to cry, so so much. The Bible says something about God paying attention even to the tiniest sparrow. If there is a God, we must look the size of electrons to Her. Smaller, even. Quarks, smaller than quarks. It's really hard to believe that there is a God who loves you when you realize that you're nothing compared to Her. You are literally a speck of dust, a fraction of a piece of sand floating in an endless ocean.

Originally posted by yourmaker

Originally posted by HomerinNC
Here is another pic of a galactic cluster taken by the Hubble

looks like those are all closeby, when in reality theyre probably MILLIONS of light years apart.
They also look small in the picture, but think: some of these can possibly be larger then the Messier Galaxy.
IMMENSE galaxies, just TEEMING with life.
It simply boggles my mind.

think of the cells that make up the human body, there are spaces between them, but as a whole entity, they function in unison, which leaves me with a question...

what do the galaxies form? and perhaps we can only seem them move really slowly, the speed of light, but perhaps they are making up a bigger form?

That is VERY deep!!!

I think of the same thing when I consider the eye that galaxies make, the blackness in black holes just like the same as the blackness of our eyes

Originally posted by randomname
you can't look at these pictures and not believe in God.

Thank you!
I am glad u see like me

Originally posted by randomname
you can't look at these pictures and not believe in God.

Well for me the universe and its existence is God so I can agree with you. The universe is at least as intelligent as what we know it has created (us). This of course would make our sun the Sun of God and it too had a second hand part in creating us and it saves us every day by providing heat and light so we may continue to exist on it's creationt the earth. There may be addition intelligence of and in the universe. Someday I hope we find out.

It would be really cool if the universe some how has direct inteligence and that somehow after death that we continue but I doubt it for now. We shall see. For now only the dead know the truth.

Thank you OP!

The size of the Universe is indeed astounding.

Last I checked, I think the estimate was something like 400,000,000,000 galaxies are in the universe, with an average of about 300,000,000,000 - 550,000,000,000 stars in each galaxy.

Numbers like that, averaging our own galaxy at about 400,000,000,000 stars, if you could travel to every single star in our galaxy in the blink of an eye, and spend just one SECOND at each star, it would still take over 12,000 years to visit every star in just our one single galaxy.

That's just one galaxy out of how many?

It's a crazy perspective, and quite astounding.