"My God, its full of stars!"

reply to post by blueorder


Well my friend we are all made of stardust. Everything that you can see around you everything inside your body was once part of star that died a cruel and violent death that seeded the universe with building blocks for life. Everyone is stardust, so in a sense we are all related in that common way.

An then to know that study shows that there may be billions of habitable planets
in our own milky way.

Milky way

reply to post by Presidente


No, what I mean is I take no comfort in that if that is all there is, and we are nothing more than physical beings with no spiritual identity of standalone consciousness.


Though I believe we do exist beyond the physical

reply to post by blueorder


Ah yes. I see what you mean. I do believe that there is another existence beyond the physical realm for our consciousness. After-all, time is just an illusion created by our brains to comprehend the physical world in an orderly fashion.

Originally posted by blueorder
reply to post by spacekc929

 

I take no comfort in thinking that my son may be nothing more than dust.

sad but true story bro

reply to post by Presidente


"good thread minus all the religious/non-religious talk"

its inevitable ...religion is the main reason why we are all still stuck here on this planet

the church used to burn alive people promoting the truth about up there

Giordano Bruno

and now its the time for us to push..and set humanity free

Man I absolutely adored that movie.

that and 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

Awesome thread, not only for the movie reference, but for the content as well. Very enlightening.

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

Sorry but for me its the total opposite!!!!!!

Originally posted by IEtherianSoul9
reply to post by HomerinNC

 

All the stars in the expanding universe are comparable to all the grains of sand on the Earth!

S&F

i think it is galaxy's compared to grains of sand ...and that was thought of YEARS ago. in reality its more like looking at a pin head size object and thats how many galaxy's are "magnified" into the field of view.

i don't believe in the whole "big bang", they have elaborated the existence of it all!
there are galaxy's in which there "walls of clusters" cant be built in 13.6 billion years...no way in freaking hell it would take minimal of HUNDREDS of years....and i absolutely emphasize hundreds as a minimal. its just ridiculous to comprehend the size of these "walls". literally theres no way *YOU* can comprehend them, its like trying to imagine infinity, even with computer generated videos they only "sample" the unimaginable .

when you drop what your doing and look at this at a base level, and really get into it... its quite scary but so beautiful. be thankful you get to experience consciousness at such an intelligent level.

Looks as though humans are still INFANTS in the scheme of things.......

While your picture of the ONE galaxy is "nice", what really blows your mind:

Google the "Hubble Deep Field" or "Hubble Ultra Deep Field"



What is the Hubble Deep Field?

In the picture above you see approx 5000-8000 (!) Galaxies. Galaxies like the ONE you posted as example.

What is mind boggling is that the image is from an extremely narrow point of the sky, it covers only a very tiny spot of the night sky which is equal to if someone would look through a "8ft long straw" with 5000-8000 GALAXIES in this small, narrow piece of sky. (Of course, each galaxy itself could have anywhere from 10 million to 100 trillion (!) stars...which each single star from the millions/billions IN EACH GALAXY a possibility that it has a planet system with several planets. NOTE: Recently, scientific findings suggest there are indeed more planets than stars!)

Now you can imagine how many Galaxies are there in total, how many stars are there in total, and possible how many planets. I don't think that any of those numbers is even humanly "comprehendable"...

As for galaxies in general, the majority of galaxies are actually so called "barred spiral galaxies".
In the past, there was the assumption that our own Milky Way should look similar to the Andromeda galaxy, with the typical oval and flat shape.

But recent findings suggest that the Milky Way is actually also a Barred Spiral Galaxy, looking more like:

Our own galaxy is a large disk-shaped barred-spiral galaxy about 30 kiloparsecs in diameter and a kiloparsec in thickness. It contains about two hundred billion (2×1011) stars and has a total mass of about six hundred billion (6×1011) times the mass of the Sun.

I think i read that this shape is a result of the gravitational forces involved.

Conclusion:

Looking at the Hubble pictures and some pictures of galaxies, i have an analogy:

Saying that our planet Earth is very unique and life is very unique is as silly as picking one random grain of sand from one beach somewhere on Earth...and saying that this particular grain of sand is VERY unique and it cannot be that other grains of sand are similar in size and form. While this one, randomly picked grain of sand is only one of trillions of grains
I mean, for me it's a given that the universe is full with life since the math alone doesn't allow another conclusion.

The bigger difficulty here is:

The involved distances...and the fact that stars/planets can be billions of years old. That means that if we look at at a planet...there is a likelihood that a given moment life or civilization has not evolved YET...or is already gone.

Therefore this adds the difficulty that if two civilizations would want to meet - it also means that the two planets must be in the same state of evolution when they have life and have created an "intelligent" civilization..and this could happen in a very tiny window compared to the total life of a planet/planet system.

reply to post by HomerinNC


Anything and everything is possible!

Imagine the infinite space, galaxy's, solar systems, stars, planets, beings, and scenarios

When you think about it, i think the meaning becomes quite easy to understand. This entire existence is here to learn, to play out new possibilities!

So yes, i agree with you 100%! Somewhere out there a civilization survived long enough and advanced far enough to understand how to travel the stars.

Thanks for the great pictures, they never get old

Love the quote too

One small correction to the OP.

That is a picture of The Pinwheel galaxy, aka. Messier object # 101. But yea in a nut shell, our universe is amazing and it is hard to believe we are the only, dare I say it, "intelligent" life in it.

reply to post by randomname


Yep, completely agree.

Just look at the hubble telescope pics!

"...forget jesus. The stars died so you could be here today.""

reply to post by flexy123


I understand your "window" theory.

But don't you think once a civilization leaps into space and learns how to travel to other stars, that their existence as a civilization has a much larger chance to survive for huge amounts of time?

I think that once they figure out how to traverse the universe and not fall victim to light years ( by instead using wormholes, "bridges", teleportation) they will come into contact with many other civilizations, very shortly.

But yea, i'm right on with you.

reply to post by IEtherianSoul9


and thats just the visible part of the universe

reply to post by flexy123


Wow!

great reply.

It's just amazing..

Seems to me like LIFE is what the Universe is aiming for!

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

I can...

IRM