Ever felt insignificant?

[Pabmusic]

This picture is new from the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright lights are not stars - they're galaxies. It is not unreasonable to assume that there's an average of 100 billion stars in each galaxy. There aren't the words to describe it.

Here's the original link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19728375

[Roehre]

This picture is new from the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright lights are not stars - they're galaxies. It is not unreasonable to assume that there's an average of 100 billion stars in each galaxy. There aren't the words to describe it.

Here's the original link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19728375

There are more stars within all these galaxies than there are grains of sand on earth, it has been calculated

[Thropplenoggin]

[/IMG]

This picture is new from the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright lights are not stars - they're galaxies. It is not unreasonable to assume that there's an average of 100 billion stars in each galaxy. There aren't the words to describe it.

Here's the original link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19728375

Furthermore, Pab, this captures the universe at 13.2 billion years old, a mere 500 million years after it began. How long until they delve back into even deeper space to Year Zero?

[MrGongGong]

This picture is new from the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright lights are not stars - they're galaxies. It is not unreasonable to assume that there's an average of 100 billion stars in each galaxy. There aren't the words to describe it.

Here's the original link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19728375

Get yourself Metasynth, Upic or (the free option !) Coagula and make some Xenakis out of it !
Awesome stuff indeed , who needs to invent god when we have this ?

[vinteuil]

... the amazing wonderfulness of how BIG the universe is - and ditto how SMALL the leetle subatomic particules are - is not what makes me feel 'insignificant'.

What makes me feel insignificant these days is - when walking the streets a beautiful young girl asks me for directions, it dawns on me that she has approached me because as as an old crumbly I no longer am seen as any kind of sexual threat...

Mme V has pointed out that our age ( lv in her case; lx in mine) we simply become invisible to most people below the age of thirty...

[Pabmusic]

Furthermore, Pab, this captures the universe at 13.2 billion years old, a mere 500 million years after it began. How long until they delve back into even deeper space to Year Zero?

Yes, the light from the most distant galaxies in this image is that old (the galaxies concerned might not exist now!). We can already identify the microwave radiation from the big bang (well, from a microsecond after it). About 1% of the static that used to dance around the TV screen before the picture appeared was from the big bang.

[Paul Sherratt]

Pabmusic,
Did the other 99% come from Party Political Conferences ?

[Pabmusic]

Pabmusic,
Did the other 99% come from Party Political Conferences ?

No. that would be hot air.

[scottycelt]

Get yourself Metasynth, Upic or (the free option !) Coagula and make some Xenakis out of it !
Awesome stuff indeed , who needs to invent god when we have this ?

Spot on, MrGG, absolutely no need to invent God, whatsoever ... 'awesome' is not the word for it, more like totally beyond the comprehension of tiny little human brains ... and when I ponder such huge mysteries it's a Bruckner or Messiaen for me!

[vinteuil]

absolutely no need to invent God, whatsoever ... !

JBS Haldane got it about right in his various quotes about stars and beetles -


[from wiki] -

'An inordinate fondness for beetles' A possibly apocryphal reply to theologians who inquired if there was anything that could be concluded about the Creator from the study of creation; as described in "Homage to Santa Rosalia, or why are there so many kinds of animals" by G. Evelyn Hutchinson in American Naturalist (May-June 1959); This alludes to the fact that there are more types of beetles than any other form of insect, and more insects than any other kind of animal.
Unsourced variants:
The Creator, if He exists, has "an inordinate fondness for beetles".
If one could conclude as to the nature of the Creator from a study of creation, it would appear that God has an inordinate fondness for stars and beetles.
The Creator, if He exists, has a special preference for beetles, and so we might be more likely to meet them than any other type of animal on a planet that would support life.
As discussed here, a slightly different wording can be found in Haldane's 1949 book What is Life? The Layman's View of Nature, p. 248:

The Creator would appear as endowed with a passion for stars, on the one hand, and for beetles on the other, for the simple reason that there are nearly 300,000 species of beetle known, and perhaps more, as compared with somewhat less than 9,000 species of birds and a little over 10,000 species of mammals. Beetles are actually more numerous than the species of any other insect order. That kind of thing is characteristic of nature.

Stephen Jay Gould also discussed the quote in the article "A Special Fondness for Beetles" in the January 1993 issue of Natural History (Issue 1, Volume 2), which was reprinted on p. 377 of his book Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History. Here he mentioned that Haldane had given a speech to the British Interplanetary Society in 1951, and that a report on the speech was included in Volume 10 of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society which says that "he concluded that the Creator, if he exists, has a special preference for beetles." Gould also says that in a letter to the August 1992 issue of The Linnean, a friend of Haldane's named Kenneth Kermack said that both he and his wife Doris remembered Haldane using the phrase "an inordinate fondness for beetles":

I have checked my memory with Doris, who also knew Haldane well, and what he actually said was: "God has an inordinate fondness for beetles." J.B.S.H. himself had an inordinate fondness for the statement: he repeated it frequently. More often than not it had the addition: "God has an inordinate fondness for stars and beetles." . . . Haldane was making a theological point: God is most likely to take trouble over reproducing his own image, and his 400,000 attempts at the perfect beetle contrast with his slipshod creation of man. When we meet the Almighty face to face he will resemble a beetle (or a star) and not the Archbishop of Canterbury."

[Sydney Grew]

. . . the universe . . . after it began. How long until they delve back into even deeper space to Year Zero?

I fear this "beginning of the universe" is a mere mathematical myth propagated by certain shallowish moderns. Truly thoughtful and imaginative people, to whom everything remains a mystery, have never been able to bring themselves to believe in it.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Thropplenoggin,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

[gurnemanz]

Last night I got around to watching a Horizon programme called "How Small is the Universe?" which I recorded a few weeks ago. We were told that each of us contains 7 billion billion billion atoms, which is more than the number of stars in the entire universe. These atoms contain even smaller particles called quarks which they are now trying to smash. The question was posed as to whether the quest for the ultimately smallest particle could ever end - you would just have to keep on splitting and splitting into ever smaller bits.
The whole thing is complicated by the fact that gravity, though appearing strong, is actually a million, million, million times weaker than other forces. The possible presence of a fourth dimension into which large chunks of our gravity are leaking might explain this discrepancy.

More cosmic insignificance in this recent thread: http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...hlight=voyager

[johncorrigan]

This picture is new from the Hubble Space Telescope. The bright lights are not stars - they're galaxies. It is not unreasonable to assume that there's an average of 100 billion stars in each galaxy. There aren't the words to describe it.

In answer to the question, I'm not sure insignificant but about thirty years back I sat in a grove of giant redwoods just out of Santa Cruz, California - put me in my place - awesome!

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

such sights do not make me feel that i am insignificant .... but do fill me with awe and wondrous joy

on t'other hand a wrong look from she who must be obeyed has me feeling like the cube root of nowt in milliseconds

[Serial_Apologist]

In one of his books, Alan Watts contemplated on how strange it was that western science has always elected to go for the smallest details in finding explanations for origins and basics, suggesting that this was in unconscious response to the religious position that God created the universe, rather as a potter creates a pot - a viewpoint markedly at odds he points out with oriental spiritual traditions such as Hindiusm, Buddhism and Taoism that see the world as emerging from within and then grown, as a plant emerges and grows from a seed and a creature from an embryo. He goes as far as to suggest that this might well be the explanation for Science As She Is having emerged in the west, rather than the east. Eastern traditions tend to concentrate on connections and interrelations rather than origins and building blocks. The latter accords more closely with ecology, and, of course, I wouldn't be writing this if my synapses weren't working, inadequately as they are...