This image chills me to my core. It actually scares the heck out of me

[M40]

12 hours ago, Sabalias said:

As far as life in the Universe is concerned, I find that Brian Cox has said it best – there is probably life out there somewhere but it is unlikely to be complex.

Brian Cox is great but sometimes he just comes across as completely closed mind and this is another instance. How can you look at that picture and say there is no complex life out there? The only thing I find scary about that picture is knowing that there is definitely something out there that wants to eat my brain 🤪

[Paul M]

1 hour ago, M40 said:

The only thing I find scary about that picture is knowing that there is definitely something out there that wants to eat my brain

Yes, but by the time they've read the menu, got a taxi and found the place, not only will you be gone but the Earth will be too, maybe even the Sun would be gone. And the great, great, great, great, [ x 10,000] grandchild of the original diner can't remember what was on the menu or why they came.

Space = Time. We see an alien signal and it will likely be the orphan signal from a long gone civilisation.

Those are the concepts that interfered with my education. Teacher would be talking about simultaneous equations while my head was turned looking through the window, contemplating the natural world. Teachers could no more answer my questions than I could theirs...

 

[ollypenrice]

I'm mesmerized, though not alarmed, by the vastness of space but I was talking, years ago, to our baker's wife about what I did and invited her and her family to come up for a look through a telescope. She instantly declined, saying she couldn't look up at the clear night sky without panicking. She found herself overwhelmed by the vastness of it all and had the feeling that she might fall out into space and be unable to get back to Earth. 

Olly

[powerlord]

they do that here in Suffolk - tie themselves to trees on clear nights, in case they fall into space. And the noise of howling during full moons can be heard as far  away as Essex.

[M40]

23 minutes ago, powerlord said:

they do that here in Suffolk - tie themselves to trees on clear nights, in case they fall into space. And the noise of howling during full moons can be heard as far  away as Essex.

Oh so that's where it's coming from 🤣

[dweller25]

On 05/07/2021 at 23:07, MKHACHFE said:

Hi guys, i know everyone on this board has seen the Hubble deep field images, i've known about them since they came out. But its only recently that i properly looked them and pondered their implication. 

Its almost impossible for someone to grasp the size of the universe, but i believe that studying and understanding the deep field images are a pretty decent way to get a pretty decent idea, that on can (importantly) understand. 

When you slowly put the puzzle together, understand what a small portion of the sky this shows, understand that each one of those is a galaxy, then look at the distances that they are from each other in terms of galaxy widths, then realise that we have never even left our solar system, then realise how big our galaxy is, how many AMAZING deep space objects there are, that each of those galaxies must have a wealth of spectacular nebula, globular clusters etc...slowly add these pieces together so as not be be overwhelmed and then it will hit you, maybe just for a second, maybe more, maybe less, but one will grasp the size of the universe...before that understanding disappears. 

 

And here is what is my only point (i bet you guys didn't think i had one). When i do reach that moment of nirvana/understanding, it doesn't fill me with a sense of wonder. I do that every night looking up and looking at Hubble images. No, this makes my blood run ice cold. ICE cold. It terrifies me beyond belief to grasp for a split second how many trillions of life forms are out there, how we will almost certainly never leave our own galaxy, let alone go to another. Its a horrible realisation in my opinion and makes me very sad and very scared. The only thing i can think of that has a  scarier implication is that we are the only life out there (i don't believe that). If that were true, then life is so precious and rare that the reality would be impossible to grasp. 

No, i wont ever believe we are alone, but grasping the size of the universe (or thinking i do) isn't a nice feeling for me personally.

How do you guy feel? Anyone feel the same/do the same as me? Thanks for reading my ramblings

Awesome photo 🙂

I’m sure there is some form of life out there somewhere but nature in it’s infinite wisdom keeps us very far apart 👍

[bish]

That image is mind blowing. I think it's the most incredible image ever taken. The one thing (astronomical) I would really want in my life time is evidence of past or current life somewhere, however basic. It may not happen, but maybe a solar system mission will  turn something up.

[Macavity]

My emotional reaction to such things varies! Sometimes, my "That's nice (dear)?" may
even disgust those who (apparently) see... (Scientific) "Wunderz" all around them?!? 🥳

That said, I once slid back my obsy roof, did my check on the "limiting magnitudes"...
TWO HOURS later I had forgotten to set up my (Video) imaging setup... So *LOST*
was in the simple beauty of the (unenhanced) night sky. 😎 (Just not every time! lol)

I think it really GREAT when people are excited by (science) things!
But sometimes when I hear the "I'm so small" litany, I start thinking:

And I'm so tall, I'm so tall
You raise me and then you let me fall
And I'm so small, I'm so small
Wrap me around your finger, see me fall

🤡

Maybe my transcendentalism(?) is obscured by this Blancmange (sic!) stuff? lol
I would like to stress [IMO] ALL such reactions/experiences are *fine* by me! 🙂

Edited July 7, 2021 by Macavity

[Peter Drew]

I find the image awe inspiring, it doesn't frighten me, I feel privileged to be part of it.  The most frightening notion of all is immortality!      🤔

[AstroMuni]

On 05/07/2021 at 23:07, MKHACHFE said:

It terrifies me beyond belief to grasp for a split second how many trillions of life forms are out there, how we will almost certainly never leave our own galaxy, let alone go to another. Its a horrible realisation in my opinion and makes me very sad and very scared.

Its not a scary thought for me...its just a humbling one and one of awe that we are but a small critter on a grain of sand. Its a bit like the scene in the Dr Seuss movie 'Horton hears a Who!' when the critters on a dust spec shout to be heard 🙂

Edited July 7, 2021 by AstroMuni

[Macavity]

9 minutes ago, Peter Drew said:

The most frightening notion of all is immortality!      🤔

Immortality or (personal) mortality? lol. But I do e.g. lament not seeing "anticipated" stuff in my lifetime". 😐
<Thinks> One of the things I DO enjoy... "Control Room moments" - When they "fixed" the Hubble scope?
I appreciate the JOY, when stuff you made, 10 years ago, LANDS (does not crash!) a few 100M miles away! 😎

But then a few bods, staring at an oscilloscope trace, in the wee small hours (to avoid the "tourists". lol)
can also be QUITE fun. Not quite as much "Fist Pumping" and "Manly (mostly!) Hugging"... But still... 🥳

[Peter Drew]

Yes, personal immortality.  The good bits sound attractive, but once you ponder a little deeper the frightening ramifications start to dial in.     😱 

[UKDiver]

On 06/07/2021 at 10:30, City9Town0 said:

“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 Total Perspective Vortex came to my mind.

[City9Town0]

There's a bit of the book version of Zaphod in many of us...

[JamesF]

2 minutes ago, City9Town0 said:

There's a bit of the book version of Zaphod in many of us...

This is so true.  People often look at me as if I have two heads.

James

[Highburymark]

15 hours ago, tomato said:

And how about that all of this immensity has only existed for a finite amount of time (only 13.8 billion years), and, even more mind blowing, we know this…

I find this Apollo 11 image very humbling, with the comment that all of humanity, less one, was in front of the camera.

Agree - To me the 13.8 billion year age of the Universe, the one figure that we can grasp, is just as extraordinary as the scale. Relatively speaking, its age is tiny. And so much of what we can see around us has existed for a significant part of that brief amount of time. It feels like the whole experiment has only just begun - the Universe has only existed just long enough for intelligent life to have evolved in one place.

[Tiny Clanger]

Can't not think of Carl Sagan's famous words on the image of Earth taken by Voyager1 as it left our little Solar System 30 years ago

"We succeeded in taking that picture , 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."

[Rusted]

I have always felt rather small when staring up at the night sky.

But at least SGL no longer calls me a "Brown Dwarf!"

[wulfrun]

I can't say I find the image chilling. Humbling, yes. Mind-boggling, yes. Fascinating, yes. Chilling? Nope. I think you can't infer much about inter-galactic distances either, beyond "a long way". The universe is dynamic and light is (relatively) slow. A lot has happened since the light recorded in the image left its origin points. Some of those galaxies may not even exist right now and it's guaranteed they don't look the same and aren't in the same places.

As for whether there's other life out there, we can only speculate. It might be common but simple in form only, it might be common and advanced. It might be rare or even non-existent. We have, at present, no hard evidence for or against. And we may never be in a position to know. Personally, I think probability indicates it's not unique to Earth but probability is just what that word means.

[Zermelo]

I sometimes had this image as my Windows background, swapped occasionally for others of galaxy clusters where you could make out a bit more detail in one or two of the larger ones.
I like them aesthetically, but they have also served as grounding aids when the stresses of work (or life) were high. However big that issue seemed at the time, just studying all those dots - and realizing what they were, realizing that this was just a small fraction of the sky, showing just the observable part of a universe that might be unbounded, and might be one of many others - it always made any issue disappear into insignificance.
I do understand (à la Total Perspective Vortex) how a sense of perspective might also inspire a more negative reaction, but not in my case.  Awe yes, fear never.

[Stu1smartcookie]

6 hours ago, Macavity said:

And I'm so tall, I'm so tall
You raise me and then you let me fall
And I'm so small, I'm so small
Wrap me around your finger, see me fall

Blancmange ...that takes me back 

[Stu1smartcookie]

3 hours ago, Tiny Clanger said:

Can't not think of Carl Sagan's famous words on the image of Earth taken by Voyager1 as it left our little Solar System 30 years ago

"We succeeded in taking that picture , 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."

The longer it  looks  and the further it  goes  away from earth  the less people it  sees  ... until  the dot is seen as an uninhabited sphere ... maybe humanity can start again 

[Tiny Clanger]

For anyone interested in how Voyager1 & 2 are doing :

https://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status/

 

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

Not chilling, although pics like this are a reminder I'm wholly insignificant in size and life span.

The vastness of space and time is as fascinating as it is incomprehensible. Even our solar system is so huge it's quite hard to fathom. I take great delight in explaining to buggles they're standing on a rock spinning at 1037mph, orbiting the sun at 67000mph while the sun drags us around the galaxy at 450000mph. Even those numbers related to our little corner of space are mind boggling.

I'd say when viewing space pics or even when looking up at those DSOs, be thankful you have the opportunity to do so. Most previous human generations were clueless and if we evolved later, universal expansion would reduce what we can observe.

 

Edited July 7, 2021 by ScouseSpaceCadet
Speeling

[maw lod qan]

When I look at that image, or into what I can see in the vast night sky there is nothing there I see that I fear.

There is NOTHING we here can do to change anything out there, so why suffer with any fear or anxiety?

I take a bit of pride in what we are. A lifeform that has developed in its place in all of that.

If there is other life out there in all of the possible worlds, there is a 50/50 chance they might not be developed as far as we are.

If that's the case, I take a lot of pride in what we are.

Maybe not in the things we have done to get here.