Putting things in perspective

Paul B

XenForo moderator
Staff member
Carl Sagan; astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist and author, persuaded NASA to spin Voyager 1 when it was 4 billion miles away.
It took this picture.

PaleBlueDot.webp


That tiny speck is Earth.


If you're still in any doubt as to how insignificant our planet is...

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Space1.webp Space2.webp Space3.webp Space4.webp
 
No I haven't Jo, I don't get to watch much TV these days, unsurprisingly :D

Thanks for the heads up though, I'll try and catch that from now on and also check for old episodes on iPlayer.

Np :) You've only missed one episode so far. :) It's pretty good stuff.
 
Cracking topic.

The F word was created especially to describe how big some of those big ones are. Unbelieveable. You just can't image the size of them on a scale that big. o_O

I'm reminded of the time I read Marcus Chown's book about the Big Bang - Afterglow of Creation - he was describing things on a scale you just couldn't relate to in any way, shape, or form.

That there universe is MAAAASSSSSSIIIIIIVVVVVEEEEEE!!!
 
That tiny speck is Earth.
Imagine a picture taken 10-13 billion light years away from Earth pointing at us. Our galaxy, Milky Way, would probably look like a super tiny speck on a micron level. I don't even know how to refer to our planet on that scale.
 
Yeah if you think about the scales etc. and try to make any kind of understandable sense out of them, you'll get in a mind-boggled mess. I've just learned to accept that the stuff out there is flipping big... lol and get a kick out of how awesome it all is. (I'm a bit passionate about astrophysics)
 
You mean we aren't the center of the universe? I thought we were the biggest thing ever. :p

It is crazy to realize how small our planet it, and yet I can't actually realize how small our planet really is because no one has seen any of the planets up close. I'm sure when we are able to (or at least future generations), the first explorers in space will have their minds blown.
 
Yeah if you think about the scales etc. and try to make any kind of understandable sense out of them, you'll get in a mind-boggled mess. I've just learned to accept that the stuff out there is flipping big... lol and get a kick out of how awesome it all is. (I'm a bit passionate about astrophysics)
You know you can experience this kind of vastness by meditating. Once you master reaching your subconsciousness through autogenic training, you become the universe itself. It's hard to explain it in a sane way. The only way to know it is to experience it.
 
I'm watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos on DVD again since first viewing it years ago (unfortunately no HD version). It's still of such a high quality and beauty compared to anything I've seen recently. Highly recommended if you haven't watched it already.

The size of the universe is just ridiculous; the idea that it takes the fastest thing in the universe, light, 100,000 years just to travel through our own galaxy. This galaxy being only one 'tiny' place in the universe on itself.

The computer simulated image below continues the story told in the OP, showing an even larger scale of the universe. What you see are clusters with thousands of galaxies, being hold together by gravity:
clusters_xray.webp
 
The size of the universe is just ridiculous; the idea that it takes the fastest thing in the universe, light, 100,000 years just to travel through our own galaxy. This galaxy being only one 'tiny' place in the universe on itself.
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Another image the hubble ultra deep field image when the telescope was pointed to what seemed a tiny blank part of space for 9 or so days (each point of light being a galaxy).

hudf.webp
 
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