Posted on 07/21/2012 12:57:15 AM PDT by LibWhacker
The Universe pisses me off.
I don’t believe in physical matter. We are all imagining this together within the confines of God’s laws.
Not big enough for Obama, Michelle and myself. I think they should leave.
This photo shouldn't be possible. By all rights it should be all black or at best a foggy glow. The density of the Universe must be set to a knife edge in order to see any visible structure across 10 billion light years. Yet we see spectacular galaxies more than halfway across the Universe.
It's as if God wants us to see his creation and marvel at it.
When i was in high school, our science teacher told the class that space has no end.. The girl next to me stood up and said, “ thats impossible for space to have no end, there has to be a wall out there..” -— I looked at the girl and said, “ well, whats on the other side of the wall?”.. ——I guess the human mind can’t process something thats eternal and has no end..
It’s a great big universe
And we’re all really puny
We’re just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
(Animaniacs)
Thinking about what’s beyond that wall freaks me out more than anything else.
Ha Ha — i know when you think about it - it gets freaky.. something that doesnt end is strange to us because we have a beginning and a end— Only God has stated he had no beginning and has no end— God wasnt born, he was always there— thats stange to the human mind, and hard to process—lol
"It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination. ---Douglas Adams
How are astrophysicists supposed to maintain any dignity if it turns out the universe is shaped like a donut?
Yes it is truly awesome to comprehend the incredible scope of the heavens but remember this......those heavens themselves comprehend nothing.
Whatever size the universe is, it’s not enough.
Thanks martin_fierro. I think this has been the best couple of weeks for the X-Planets and String Theory lists in quite some time.
Thanks martin_fierro. I think this has been the best couple of weeks for the X-Planets and String Theory lists in quite some time.
· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · " target="x" title="post a new topic">post new topic · subscribe · | ||
Google news searches: exoplanet · exosolar · extrasolar · | ||
|
|
GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
Thanks martin_fierro. |
|
|
The introduction begins like this:
Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-boggling big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen and so on.
(After awhile the style settles down a bit and it begins to tell you things you really need to know, like the fact that the fabulously beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative erosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete while on the planet is surgically removed from your body weight when you leave: so every time you go to the lavatory there it is vitally important to get a receipt.)
To be fair though, when confronted by the sheer enormity of the 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.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination.
Even light, which travels so fast that it takes most races thousands of years to realize that it travels at all, takes time to journey between the stars. It takes eight minutes to journey from the star Sol to the place where the Earth used to be, and four years more to arrive at Sol's nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Proxima.
For light to reach the other side of the Galaxy, for it to reach Damogran, for instance, takes rather longer: five hundred thousand years.
The record for hitchhiking this distance is just under five years, but you don't get to see much on the way.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says that if you hold a lungful of air you can survive in the total vacuum of space for about thirty seconds. However, it does go on to say that what with space being the mind-boggling size it is the chances of getting picked up by another ship within those thirty seconds are two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand, seven hundred and nine to one against.
-Douglas Adams
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.