Ever Wondered???

[danrhodes]

Have you ever looked at the stars and wondered if we're alone or not?

 

If so, then check this out, although we think we are rather important in this universe it kind of shows that actually, we don't really matter given the scale of things out there!

 

http://www.saveitwith.us/storage/planets.jpg

 

Do you feel small now? I know I do!

 

D

Edited March 23, 2010 by witch

[powdarrmonkey]

Not really. Start is what I click to shut my machine down. I gaze at the stars, though.

 

This image is so old.

[beeswax]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXU18fIm1xc]YouTube- Astronomical Adventures in Tenerife - March 2009[/ame]

 

Last November we were lucky enough to have an astronomer as a guide one evening when we were in Tenerife. We stood on the side of the volcano Teide above the clouds and watched the sun go down. The video above gives you as flavour of what you can see with the naked eye.

[laserblazer]

We went on an astronomy night in the Kruger National Park last year. Drove out to the middle of nowhere and set up a socking great telescope to look at the stars. Being the southern hemisphere the skies are very different. The Milky Way was milky. It was fantastic looking at Saturn's rings with hippos honking in the river just below us and a couple of armed rangers keeping a watchful eye.

[beeswax]

You do feel very small in these situations.

[Little-Miss]

Altogether now...

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk]YouTube- Galaxy Song[/ame]

[Robot]

It does make me very small. I'm getting really interested in space. I worked out from an iPhone app last night which twinkle in the sky was Mars and I got all excited. Planning on getting a telescope soon

[Pete10141748]

I really don't know why we bother looking into space, everything we see is millions of years old already and for all we know the universe could well be largely empty at this point with nothing but the aeons-old light from stars travelling around it's emptiness.

 

And if there does happen to be another intelligence out there watching our planet, they're so far away that from their perspective we humans don't even exist yet; by the time they do 'see' us, chances are we or maybe even the whole Earth will be long gone anyway!

[Haptic]

My brother takes great pleasure in sporadically enlightening me with various images from Hubble and other telescopes. Crab Nebulai in particular highlight just how little we can ever know.

 

A fascinating subject, especially when fused with imagination....an example was the (in my opinion superb) film K-PAX, and the theories of light travel explored by Prof Hawkins.

As humans our minds only flaw is limited comprehension, usually our sole barrier to progress...and remembering where our keys are