
Yup, We're All Pretty Small [Photo] - jasonlbaptiste
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/2706/spaceb.jpg
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tsally
"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at
it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you
ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The
aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions,
ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and
coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant,
every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father,
every 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 in
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 the dot
on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. 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. It is up to us. It's been said that
astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To
my mind, 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 and compassionately with one another and to
preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

\--Carl Sagan

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buugs
When you see things like these you have to think that we are not the only life
in the entire existence and it is highly doubtful we are the only
'intelligent' life in existence just by probability alone.

~~~
Batsu
It's a shame we'll probably never come across intelligent life, unless some
incredible developments are made in traveling space.

The Drake Equation ( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation> ) estimates
between 1 and 10 intelligent life forms in our galaxy. The unmanned probe
Voyager 1 is the furthest Earth born object that we have radio contact with
(probably without, as well) and was launched in late 1977. It has traveled
less than 2 thousandths of a light year. The nearest star (other than the sun)
is over 4 light years away, and our galaxy is something crazy like 100,000
light years across. The nearest similar galaxy is the Andromeda galaxy which
is 25,000,000 light years away.

In other news, I just recently finished an astronomy course.

~~~
andreyf
I never understood how exactly one figures out these three:

f_l = the fraction of the above which actually go on to develop life

f_i = the fraction of the above which actually go on to develop intelligent
life

f_c = the fraction of the above which are willing and able to communicate

For f_l, we've got a sample size of one. For all we know, life as we know it
might be a fluke which has an infinitesimal probability of occurring.

~~~
eru
Yes, but I guess, either we meet the aliens, or we will make our own.
(Assuming we do not go extinct.)

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chaosmachine
perhaps my favorite image of all time is this one:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UGC_10214HST.jpg>

the tadpole galaxy. just looking at all the other galaxies in the background
is mind blowing. for best effect, check out the extra huge original:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/UGC_10214...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/UGC_10214HST.jpg)

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csomar
I believe that there are other people living somewhere in the space, very very
very far from here...

View the distance, I see like it's impossible to reach them, but if we just
create a high precision telescope that can capture photos from these places...
I'll create a program that automatically capture them and try to detect an
aslike earth photo and we'll may be see those other people

this will be imaginary!!!

~~~
dchest
Don't forget about time. What you'll see in imaginary high-precision telescope
is "past."

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theblackbox
A FASCINATING point that runs contrary to this whole awe-yourself-in-front-of-
the-omniverse-bullshit is the curious mathematical abstraction that a single
human brain contains more _potential_ structural architecture than there are
atoms in the universe. This always felt like a big "fuck you" to that
"humbling" sense of insignificance the universe seems intent on drilling into
my skull....

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fourstar
I recommend: <http://www.hulu.com/watch/23946/cosmic-voyage>

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bitwize
Welcome to the Galaxy!

