
From one photo, we know there are at least one hundred billion galaxies - Flemlord
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/08/hell_yeah_hubble.php?utm_source=selectfeed&utm_medium=rss
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mcantor
Can you imagine being there when these images were first compiled and
revealed? I would have gaped in disbelief, and then wept. From a minuscule
patch of nothingness, bottomless infinity has been glimpsed. It's
unfathomable. And it's out there, right now, part of our existence. How
awesome and thrilling.

~~~
jacquesm
How humbling.

And this is where religion gets it all wrong, the claim that all that was made
just for us is so totally off the wall that I find it hard to believe that
religion is changing so slowly to reflect the reality as we know it today.

~~~
biotech
_And this is where religion gets it all wrong, the claim that all that was
made just for us...._

Are you thinking about some particular religion, or religion in general?

~~~
jacquesm
Most western religions, judeo-christians + splinter groups up front.

Their continued over simplification of the cosmic truths that are literally
staring us in the face make it difficult to engage in reasoned debate.

~~~
robg
Have you read Thomas Aquinas in the original? Or even Maimonides?

There's a reason some minds stand the test of centuries, if not more. Those on
the TV today are mere flickering quarks. Those whose names we still utter are
galaxies of thought.

I think it's a mistake to dismiss, out-of-hand, the thoughts that lie at the
foundations of Western civilization. Religious organizations have always been
run by humans. Yet those structures also sheltered and promoted the arts and
sciences for hundreds of years without a democracy in sight.

Consider: Your last statement is an example of itself.

Rejecting religion doesn't mean rejecting the religious.

~~~
jacquesm
Excellent point Robg, I take that back.

Thanks for the insight, seriously.

What I think is great about religion is its ability to inspire people to go
over and beyond their normal view of the world and to use it as scaffolding to
reach higher planes of thought or art. I think JS Bach is a great example of
that, but there are plenty more, in just about all fields of human endeavor,
including science.

What gets me though is the bigotry and the use of fear and other cheap and
demeaning tactics that use religion as a control instrument for large numbers
of people.

This is where I have a real problem with religion, my feelings are that if
everybody would stop for a little while to pander to the humans that claim to
have a wire to their variation on the 'invisible man in the sky' that we might
be able to concentrate on the real problems at hand.

Imagine the amazing stuff that could happen if a truly enlightened man became
a religious leader (say, a Pope in the spirit of the Dalai Lama or something
to that effect).

A lot of damage has been done, now it is time to go fix things, and fix them
without being shackled down by the past, but carrying along the lessons from
that past.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
"a truly enlightened man", IMO Jesus was that man (and more) - but I know what
response that will get here.

The point is not that a great leader come forward but that we choose to follow
and imitate the greatest goodness, wisdom, kindness, self-control and love
that we encounter.

~~~
jacquesm
I'm fairly sure that if Jesus Christ would walk the earth today that he would
not be one to make it very high in the ranks of the various churches in his
name.

I don't doubt your word that he was an enlightened man but for some reason
those tend to get wielded out at a pretty early stage, they'd upset too many
holy applecarts.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
He wasn't exactly best friends with the sanhedrin (sp?, the powerful self-
serving hypocritical religious leaders) in His day either; they turned him
over to the Romans to be crucified after all. Upsetting holy applecarts was
pretty much his thing ...

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alex_c
I still think Douglas Adams explained it best.

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big
it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's,
but that's just peanuts to space."

In a strange way, I think it gets the point across better than a precise
description like "one hundred billion galaxies" ever could.

~~~
FiveFiftyOne
This was the one for me: "To be fair though, when confronted by the sheer
enormity of distances between the stars, better minds than the one responsible
for the Guide's introduction have faltered. Some invite you to consider for a
moment a peanut in reading and a small walnut in Johannesburg, and other such
dizzying concepts."

Like TP, he had an amazing penchant for explaining the unexplainable :)

~~~
jacquesm
TP ?

~~~
AndrewDucker
I'd guess Terry Pratchett.

~~~
jacquesm
Ah, ok, I was thinking along the lines of Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan or
Stephen Hawking...

Terry Pratchett is entertaining but he can't hold a candle to Douglas Adams.
It's more like he's found a formula and markets the hell out of it (he's a
good businessman though!).

~~~
FiveFiftyOne
Terry Pratchett is correct. The man has created an imaginary universe,
interlinked and interweaved across dozens of stories. His definitions on
quantum and time are interesting and amusing at the same time. His frustration
at the limitation of language with regard to these subjects too: "It is very
difficult to explain quantum in a language designed to tell other monkeys
where the ripe fruit is". Apologies for the OT post :)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
If our language (I'm thinking English, I'd be interested to hear of
variations) is for telling people where the ripe fruit is, how come we don't
have specific [common] words for so-unripe-it-will-give-you-indigestion, not-
quite-ripe, ripe-enough, still-needs-to-ripen and so-ripe-you-can't-pick-it -
they'd be very useful in foraging situations?

I guess /auf Deutsch/ they'd all just be compound words?

~~~
eru
I could make some up in German. But that's not fundamentally different from
placing adjectives in front of your words in English.

------
fuzzmeister
After thinking about it for quite some time, I've decided that, in my opinion,
the Hubble Ultra Deep Field is the most important picture ever taken. While
many argue that non-repeatable and awe-inspiring human events should be the
root of "the most important picture," the HUDF shows that no matter how
significant those pictures might seem, they are absolutely nothing on the
scale of what really exists out there. A grain of sand on an infinite beach. I
have never encountered any other picture that comes close to inspiring the
simultaneous fear, awe, and wonder that this picture inspires. Thoughts?

~~~
aerique
> Thoughts?

Why does it inspire fear?

~~~
Hexstream
Because there are far more terrorists than originally estimated, of course!
And many more children to be thought of.

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randomwalker
Based on my (limited) understanding of cosmology, this is only the number of
galaxies in the observable Universe . The number of galaxies "outside" this
region is effectively unknowable. Could someone who knows better clarify?

~~~
DropkickM16
I don't necessarily know any better, but I think that we can probably estimate
the number of galaxies in the entire (observable and unobservable) universe
given the assumptions that the composition of the universe is generally
homogeneous and that the big bang theory is correct. If this is the case, we
can calculate an approximate number of galaxies from the combination of
observed galaxy density and the extrapolated size of the universe based on the
time since the big bang.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'm not sure if you could find any larger assumptions?

Perhaps baryonic assymetry is only a local feature creating completely
different structures in the observable universe. Perhaps past expansion is far
accelerated or the acceleration increase and decrease over time. Perhaps "c"
is not a constant.

The work of Barrett et al. "Undermining the cosmological principle:[...]"
shows that minimal fluctuations in CDM does not necessarily show isotropy and
homogeneity.

Add to this that observable matter is postulated to be < 5% of the universe
and we don't really have a handle on dark matter. We don't even know for sure
how many dimensions there are ... we're pretty clueless really.

------
naz
Makes intelligent life seem quite likely

~~~
cglee
Perhaps, but the likelihood of a sufficiently advanced civilization who could
travel through space/time to interact with us becomes much smaller when you
consider our civilization as a whole is only a flash in the pan.

~~~
chrischen
Yes but technology does not progress linearly. So to us it may seem so
impossible by methods we possess, but it may be closer than we think to travel
throughout the universe.

So a flash in the pan may be moot depending on the right technology.

For example captain Jack sparrow trying to locate a ship in the ocean may seem
like a huge task, and today it would be too if we use the same method back
then. But if that ship had a GPS tracker on it completely changes the way we
look for the ship.

We/or they just have to discover the right trick.

~~~
mbenjaminsmith
I agree.

Imagine gathering the hundreds of people that worked on the Apollo missions
and fitting them in the room that housed the project's main computers. They
might all fit. Then tell them before most of them were dead they would be able
to put all of those computers in their pocket.

Ok. Now imagine that we don't kill ourselves for the next thousand years. What
are going to be able to do? What about ten thousand?

I'm going to state this, on behalf of all of humanity:

1) We're not alone. The universe is teeming with life much like this planet
is.

2) What's technologically possible is bound only by the extent of our future
imagination.

3) The planet will eventually be controlled by mild-mannered nerds like the
ones reading HN. The internet planted the seed that will grow the tree whose
fruits will destroy tyranny.

So it is written.

~~~
gjm11
You're free to state it, of course. But

1\. While indeed we're likely not alone, I see no reason to think that the
density of life in the universe is anything like as big as the density of life
on earth.

2\. What's technologically possible is clearly limited by the laws of nature,
whatever they turn out to be. It could very well be that there simply is no
way to travel faster than light, for instance.

3\. I would be interested to know your evidence that the planet will
eventually be controlled by mild-mannered nerds. (And: given your (1) and (2),
isn't control of _this planet_ rather a feeble goal anyway?)

Perhaps I'm just too much of a nerd, but I think it's important to believe
things on the basis of evidence and reasoning, not on the basis of whether
they feel good.

~~~
chrischen
Travelling faster than light may not be the only way of getting around though.

~~~
mseebach
In "A Breif History of Time" Stephen Hawkins states that time travel isn't
impossible. If you can travel in time, you can go faster than light -- in the
sense that temporal relations (such as "faster") lose their absolute meaning.
If I need to go 100 lightyears (and can travel at c), I'll transport myself
back 100 years and hit start. To a by stander, I'd have gone there in zero
time.

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ashleyw
One thing I've always wondered about Hubble — if it's orbiting earth, scooping
up protons for long periods of time, doesn't that mean it'll create a photo
made up of the captures from every part of that small area....in the entire
orbit? So two galaxies next to each other on the photo could be on the
opposite sides of us really?

I really fail at cosmology…

~~~
pronoiac
Parallax isn't going to cause much error here. We're about 8 light-minutes
from the sun, but the telescope was trained on galaxies millions (edit:
billions) of light-years away.

Edit: Proportionally, it's about the difference of the view between your two
eyes, of the sun.

