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Thread: Putting us into perspective

  1. 14-Apr-2009 #1
    Neil
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    Putting us into perspective

    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. [click for more]
    -Carl Sagan
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  2. 14-Apr-2009 #2
    DawnGirl27
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    Wow - that's amazing! I've never really seen something so comprehensive like this before. Thanks for sharing!
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  3. 14-Apr-2009 #3
    Neil
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    My p**** seems particularly small now
    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. [click for more]
    -Carl Sagan
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  4. 14-Apr-2009 #4
    krakenslayer
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    Quote Originally Posted by Neil View Post
    My p**** seems particularly small now
    But Uranus is fucking massive!

    Sorry, had to,
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  5. 14-Apr-2009 #5
    MinionZombie
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    Quote Originally Posted by krakenslayer View Post
    But Uranus is fucking massive!

    Sorry, had to,


    Neil, Kraken - both of you - classics.

    ...

    Also - that picture is effin' EPIC. I mean seriously mind blowing ... put that in your creationist pipe and smoke it.

    Anyway, it does speak to what I often say about life, the universe and everything - it's so preposterously impossible to understand that it's literally unexplainable and that the common theme of religions is far too simple a way to explain it - that's my view anyway.

    I've saved that picture, must show it to my folks - it's just so crazy-crazy mind blowing - that bit about the galaxy that's 8 times the size of the Milky Way being something that 'shouldn't technically exist' (because of current theories) is just epic on it's own, nevermind all that.

    ...

    It would be awesome if, when you die, you get to find out about all this shit ... ... that doesn't happen most probably, but in some 'end of a movie' type way, that'd be awesome.
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  6. 14-Apr-2009 #6
    MaximusIncredulous
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    All I can say is... wow.
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  7. 15-Apr-2009 #7
    clanglee
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    "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."
    - Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy


    also I love this little quote

    in an infinite universe the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.
    "When the dead walk, we must stop the killing, or lose the war."
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  8. 15-Apr-2009 #8
    Mike70
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    that is an awesome pic and the perspective that it offers is kinda eerie when you think about.

    hell, in our own solar system the sun contains 99.8% of the matter and jupiter is most of the rest.

    to put VV Cephei in context: it is 2.4 BILLION km across and about 500,000 times as luminous as the sun. if placed in our solar system it would extend out almost to the orbit of saturn.

    "there are more things in heaven and earth, horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy..."
    Last edited by Mike70; 15-Apr-2009 at 05:17 AM.
    "The bumps you feel are asteroids smashing into the hull."
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