On one hand, we humans have shrunk the Earth so much, that sitting in India all the way across the planet, I can read this post at the click of a mouse.

On the other hand, we shrink into complete insignificance before the Cosmos, lost in the face of infinity and eternity.

Amazing, terrifying, and yet strangely consoling.

If a human could defeat death and live forever, could our mind hold the vastness before us? Or perhaps we would grow in some measure to contain it all? Would we become gods or angels (or worse)?

I feel rather small just now.

If you look at the bottom right hand corner there are four(ish) stars marked by the tan circle. If you go to the one nearest the bottom there’s a red streak to the left of it. To the left of that I think I see some galactic cannibalism going on

IOW: yeah. Wot Carl, Christiaan, and Dr P sed.

Somebody got a whole bunch of quad paper, and whenever we had some free time we would take a piece of paper and draw an ‘X’ in each box. We’d give the paper along with the count of X’s on the page to the teacher, and somebody or other added them all up. It took several weeks with the whole school involved, and generated a *lot* of pieces of paper. But it put the number “million” in some sort of perspective.

I look at the photo above, and the description, and started wondering how many elementary schools there are in the country, and how many years would be needed …

When it comes to big numbers, I prefer using subtend, as in wow subtend 4,,,
(means wow to the power of itself four times,,,)

24. Alec

Ah, just round it off and call it 12 sextillion miles.

GAry 7

wow²!

Funny. But it is actually (wow²⁾² or wow⁴, you know. On account of being a slice of 4D space-time.

He awaited, marshaling his thoughts and brooded over his still untested powers. For though he was master of the world, he was not quite sure what to pounce next.

But he would think of something.

So we’re looking at quadrillions of stars, yes? Or is it closer to quintillions?

Maybe THIS is what Dave Bowman saw when he uttered his famous line…

Nice quote.

Awe-inspiring, splendid image & good philosophical write-up – thanks BA.

@ 11. DrFlimmer :

If a few more people would look up at night, gazing at stars and slow their pace — maybe a little more rest and a little more peace is gained in this far too restless world!
Sometimes these stars just want to tell us: “Relax, dude!” There are things that are more important than all this rushing……….

I’ll second that. Very true.

@ 29. Tavi Greiner Says:

Awesome post! Just to give us all an idea of where in the sky this is, the Abell 315 cluster is located in the constellation Cetus, between Cetus’ “Mira” and Pisces’ “Alrescha”. Unfortunately, Cetus and Pisces currently rise with the Sun, but they’ll be rising before morning twilight within about two months. While we won’t be able to see what the ESO image reveals, we can certainly look in that direction and think about what we’ve seen here.

That too – thanks Tavi.

But this one :

@ 20. Naked Bunny with a Whip Says:

*sigh* It’s gonna take some work to find Waldo.

Wins the thread for me! I laughed.

(Even if “Waldo” is actually called Wally over here in Oz.)

———————————————————–

Here’s Five more quotes (hopefully thought-provoking & pertinent ones) for y’all :

‘Night hides the world but reveals a universe.’
- Russian proverb.

“…about 40 supernovae are exploding somewhere in the universe every second. However, light from most of these events won’t reach Earth for billions of years, if ever.”
- Page 73, “Ask Astro” in ‘Astronomy’ magazine October 2008.

“If you put three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, that cathedral will be more densely packed with grains of sand than stars are found apart in space.”
- Sir James Jeans, British astronomer, quoted on page 28, ‘Skywatching’, David H. Levy, Ken Fin Books, 1995.

“Cosmology also tells us that there are perhaps 100 billion galaxies in the universe and that each contains roughly 100 billion stars. By a curious co-incidence, 100 billion is also the approximate number of cells in a human brain.”
- Page 237, ‘StarGazer’, Dr Fred Watson, Allen & Unwin, 2004.

“Yet here we are with our eyes and our minds and our curiosity, six billion passengers aboard a tiny blue boat, bobbing and wheeling our way around one vast Catherine wheel among many.”
- P.246, Tim Ferris, ‘Seeing in the Dark’, Simon & Schuster, 2002.

“How vast those orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the theatre upon which all our mighty designs, all our navigations, and all our wars are transacted, is when compared to them. A very fit consideration, and matter of reflection, for those kings and princes who sacrifice the lives of so many people, only to flatter their ambition in being masters of some pitiful corner of this small spot.”
Christiaan Huygens, New Conjectures Concerning the Planetary Worlds, their Inhabitants and Productions, c. 1690.

I blinked.

@The Chemist: Thank you for that image, I just saved it to my collection of AWESOME internet images.

Wat he sed.

Gazing into the depths of space, plummeting into the environs of a hundred quadrillion suns… that’s where true perspective can be found.

Careful Phil, don’t look too hard. Only one man has survived the
Total Perspective Vortex!

Certainly none more weird than us!