The Known Universe

Sadik B

Well-known member
There is the thread Kier started about the Scale of the Universe. This is a video which takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum,was part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.

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That was an amazing video. It really allows you to see the great distance between objects in space and how much "space" there really is. Little ole' Earth isn't even a blip.
 
Pale_Blue_Dot.webp

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, 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.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
 
Want to feel even more insignificant? This only looked out our universe. If Dark Flow theory holds, then we could have the first evidence of a universe other than our own.

Consider the implications of that. Imagine our universe as a balloon. As time passes front he big bang, the balloon expands. Within the confines of this ballon is our universe, our space-time continuum, where our laws of physics apply.

External to our universe is the multiverse fabric, where other balloons are also expanding and exerting these dark flow influences on each other according to the laws of physics that apply to the multiverse - and could be radically different from our own.

So what happens when the balloons expand into each other? Who knows, but we could hazard a guess by observing what happens when galaxies collide - it isn't pretty. And those are objects which obey the same laws of physics. What happens when two universes with different physical laws collide?

What makes astrophysics so damned exciting is that science does't limit our imagination, it fuels it.
 
Want to feel even more insignificant? This only looked out our universe. If Dark Flow theory holds, then we could have the first evidence of a universe other than our own.

Consider the implications of that. Imagine our universe as a balloon. As time passes front he big bang, the balloon expands. Within the confines of this ballon is our universe, our space-time continuum, where our laws of physics apply.

External to our universe is the multiverse fabric, where other balloons are also expanding and exerting these dark flow influences on each other according to the laws of physics that apply to the multiverse - and could be radically different from our own.

So what happens when the balloons expand into each other? Who knows, but we could hazard a guess by observing what happens when galaxies collide - it isn't pretty. And those are objects which obey the same laws of physics. What happens when two universes with different physical laws collide?

What makes astrophysics so damned exciting is that science does't limit our imagination, it fuels it.
Science channel has a special that talked just about this. It was quite fascinating.
 
Want to feel even more insignificant? This only looked out our universe. If Dark Flow theory holds, then we could have the first evidence of a universe other than our own.

Consider the implications of that. Imagine our universe as a balloon. As time passes front he big bang, the balloon expands. Within the confines of this ballon is our universe, our space-time continuum, where our laws of physics apply.

External to our universe is the multiverse fabric, where other balloons are also expanding and exerting these dark flow influences on each other according to the laws of physics that apply to the multiverse - and could be radically different from our own.

So what happens when the balloons expand into each other? Who knows, but we could hazard a guess by observing what happens when galaxies collide - it isn't pretty. And those are objects which obey the same laws of physics. What happens when two universes with different physical laws collide?

What makes astrophysics so damned exciting is that science does't limit our imagination, it fuels it.
If we could somehow have the ability to go between the two in the future, it would be very interesting.

Not sure of the implications of alternate universes though. Isn't it a rule or something that you shouldn't cross (like going back in time)? :cautious:
Its funny to think that the size of our egos are bigger than the universe :D
There are some people out there that surprise me and think just that. o_O
 
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