Hubble and the grain of sand.

[RC]

3000 galaxies that we did not know existed, covered up by that grain of sand. That Hubble picture is my wall paper on my computer at work and on this computer.
The Hubble telescope was pointed at that same dark nothingness and set for wide open, to gather all the light it could for 10 days.
It is amazing what one can find just by looking beyond our finger tips.
How much more intelligent life is out there among all those countless Brazilians of galaxies?
We quibble over and turn red with our life force, little patches of real nothingness on the only world we can ever experience, as if something here were somehow important. This whole planet we call Earth is nothing more than a dust mote on the edge of a mediocre, run of the mill galaxy with many trillions of suns in it. And yet so many of us think we are the center of something. That we are somehow important in the grand scheme of things.
We are, as a species, nothing but delusional in our arrogant self importance, as we diligently work to kill off all life within reach. A reach that does not even extend to our own finger tips.

[opihimoimoi]

1. MEism is so pervasive....mind boggling

[Possumpoint]

2. First I've Heard of This

Fascinating! To all those who think we are the only life in the Universe, Phhhhhhht!

Yeah, I know, there is no proof otherwise. Yet in my mind there is no other logical conclusion.

[Fire Walk With Me]

5. Google "deep field".

Those who believe in God must answer why God would create so very much, and we the only life. It doesn't jibe. Speaking of me-ism. Even those with the slightest scientific interest might wonder about the possibility of other life in such vastness, across such time.

And we've only known about other galaxies for something less than a hundred years, since 1923 to be fairly precise. We've been able to "fly" only slightly longer. The world was flat to western science only several hundred years ago.

http://www.seds.org/messier/galaxy.html

[Kazak]

7. I don't even debate god asserters any more...

Anyone who still purports to speak for god, considering our great advances in understanding withing the previous century, gets put on permanent ignore.

[Fire Walk With Me]

9. Wow, even the science-minded? Who is responding with the open mind in this instance?

I certainly do NOT purport to speak for God. I'm just trying to get to the heart of things, and after much research into the spiritual, have found many things to be true, and being repeatable, have added them to my worldview.

I know that the G-word is off-putting to many, I myself didn't seek it actively for many years, but alcoholism forced it back upon me, and it has shown total validity. Like it or not.

I'm not even asking for a debate, just an open mind. Sorry if I've forced something upon you that you didn't desire.

Edit for spelling.

[Kazak]

12. "have found many things to be true, and being repeatable" - "has shown total validity"

You have evidence then, don't keep it to yourself, present it! I certainly do leave the door open for the possibility of the presentation of new evidence. Mostly I'm just talking about the ridiculous insertion of god into every ever shrinking gap within our knowledge by the simple minded that is still all too prevalent. After all of the multitudinous number of things have turned out to be not-god afterall, and by that I really mean not-supernatural in origin, people are still far too willing to attach god to those things still left mysterious (for my liking, mind...).

[Fire Walk With Me]

13. Thank you for not immediately ignoring me, or more specifically, the topic.

I have two topics to share if you are interested. This first one can easily be tested for truth.

If you've ever attempted to remain still, or to enjoy stillness, you may find your mind wandering or a sense craving randomly appearing. The senses demand continuous fulfillment, and although we all find ourselves wanting things that we know aren't good for us, where do these things come from, and what to do if the desires become impossible to ignore? It's the senses, including the mind, which needs to be entertained or it will create entertainment, craving more and more motion. More energy.

How often does the thought of sex pop into your mind?

Try the simple experiment of sitting completely still for fifteen minutes, with your attention within the body, the feelings. Can you do this without going nuts, or at minimum, moving at all? How soon does your attention move without your wishing it to? Truly try this for fifteen minutes. Use a clock (and consider looking around the room or at the clock every few minutes to be just more of the restlessness described.)

There are quantifiable methods to solve this problem. The easiest practice involves sitting with the attention upon the body/feelings, and while inhaling and exhaling, mentally speaking certain phrases, such as, "Breathing in, I experience the body", "Breathing out, I experience the body" and "Breathing in, I experience joy/steady the mind" etc.

If attention is kept upon the body and feelings, they -will- respond. You will see that they can be trained, especially out of craving drama and moods, into positive experiences. You can have positive inner experience at will.

I do this because I have found it to be true, and repeatable. It builds like muscles do when exercising. It becomes easier and easier to enter the state of silence and the positive when you sit and begin the technique.

Now consider that much of our society pursue energetic stimulation in the form of film and televised drama, loud music, sensationalist media, conflict, and sense fulfillment (sugar, drugs, sexing, etc.) Most do not have difficulty and do not over-do it, but still, there is no finding peace in this direction. And greater peace really is that simple to find.

It's just not popular.

The sixteen-step mindful breathing technique can be found here, in the second section:

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.118.than.html

This second part is on something unquantifiable, that may make no sense to you (although it is both functional and imperative for myself).

As an alcoholic, I suffer from an obsession of the mind to fulfill an allergy of the body. A true alcoholic will die of this condition, guaranteed. There is yet no scientific treatment for this condition. I have used the 12-Step programs and found them to function exactly as stated, in proportion to honest effort involved in doing so.

As well as how they stop working when you stop working them. It's easy to detect, both internally and externally. This is also an experience that I would not wish upon anyone else, regardless of how far they've gone to damage me.

Suffice to say, there is a functionality present, it is repeatable, it is remarkable, it is not in the current scientific literature, and I'd like to see some genuine scientific interest in it.

It of course cannot be quantified by anyone who has not experienced it either first-hand, or second-hand through the recovery of an otherwise doomed loved one. It works, and it does not yet have a scientific explanation. I welcome one as I seek to increase my own understanding, and to share something that truly works.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to respond. I fully understand your instant rejection of charlatanism and blind faith. I have dislike of televangelists and their ilk as well. And there of course is more to me than these two things, so thank you for not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[Kazak]

21. Barking up the wrong tree.

I do not deny that higher states of conscience can be achieved both through various meditation techniques (mantras seem to be one of the easier and more successful techniques) and by the use of drugs. I have reached them myself using both methods! I do, however, fail to see how this has anything to do with the existence or nonexistence of a supernatural realm, or how this in any way suggests the existence of a god. :shrug:

[Fire Walk With Me]

26. The second example does. As does the first, when you take it into complete inner silence.

There is more, of course, but right now, I'm going walkies.

[hootinholler]

3. Kicking this! n/t

[SammyWinstonJack]

4. K&R

[Peace Patriot]

6. Hey, thanks! I didn't know about the grain of sand--that is was that small

an aperture that Hubble looked at--producing that amazing photo of so many swirling, spiraling, globulating, firey, colorful, puzzling, interacting galaxies!

A grain of sand, huh? Wow! Double-wow!

But we ARE the center of it, from our point of view. And, for all we know--given the unfrackingbelievable IMMENDSE distances and times involved--we may be the last bit of conscious matter left, or the first. Odds are folks are drawing cartoons and building telescopes and suffering under stupid, greedy, malicious, murderous political leadership, elsewhere in the galaxy, and hoping for better--just like us. But we don't know. And the universe is so-o-o-o-o very strange, it may be that we can't even guess what's really going on.

Based on past history, though, we tend to not want to absorb the next level of our understanding of the immensity of the cosmos. It's too scary--although many of us do yearn for and seek MORE understanding, and an ever-expanding viewpoint. The fact that we are beginning to understand the unimaginable size of the cosmos, and to glimpse its mysteries, and to gain perspective on our tiny selves, is encouraging, however. And there may be more than one unimaginably immense cosmos. There may be many. Have pity on us poor little, body-bound, time-bound humans, reaching for the stars, and then running back into the cave for hot chocolate. Both things are reality. Both things are true--the tiny and the immense. The Hobbit and the Wizard. And us poor weak little critters--like ants tossed on the ocean--are at least as important as neutrinos and viruses, as to building up the big objects and holding it all together. Maybe our consciousness has that purpose. Maybe it's a component of gravity. Or maybe it's a virus that infects everything we see with....more consciousness. Looking back, into our own history, as well as we can, it APPEARS that nature had no conscious creatures at one time, here on earth. Then it evolved consciousness. Why? And what makes us yearn for more...for others?

[IDemo]

8. The 3000 galaxy image was the Hubble "Deep Field".

Then came the "Ultra-Deep Field" image, taken over an 11 day period after improvements to Hubble. It yielded over 10,000 galaxies.

A great video to put yourself in perspective: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcBV-cXVWFw

[corkhead]

11. The "deep field" is my computer wallpaper, but I hadn't seen that video before

thanks for posting it.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

10. Those galaxies were there a thousand years ago.

But are they still?

:scared:

[piedmont]

14. Those galaxies are MUCH farther than 1,000 light years away!

Not that it helps with the --> :scared:

[jgraz]

15. Yes, closer to 10 billion

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

16. As much as 12 billion LY.

As the universe expands, more distant objects recede from the Earth faster, in what is called the Hubble Flow. The light from very distant galaxies is significantly affected by the cosmological redshift. While quasars with high redshifts were known, very few galaxies with redshifts greater than 1 were known before the HDF images were produced. The HDF, however, contained many galaxies with redshifts as high as 6, corresponding to distances of about 12 billion light years <2>. (Due to redshift the most distant objects in the HDF are not actually visible in the Hubble images; they can only be detected in images of the HDF taken at longer wavelengths by ground-based telescopes.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Deep_Field


Roughly 70 trillion miles away. :scared:

[karlrschneider]

25. Uh, 70 trillion miles is only about 10 light years...the HDF galaxies are

1,000,000,000 times that many miles away: 70,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles. :P

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

27. A light year is 5,878,625,373,183.61 statute miles or 5.9T miles.

5.9T * 12LY = 70.8T miles.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/question94.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_year

:P


Edit to add: I'm a dumbshit. Not 12LY. 12B LY!!! :cry:


Never mind, asshole. :D

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. We think that we're important only because we are fond of telling ourselves we are.

But, we are the only (known) animal to have invented a God. Of course, we made him look like us.

[RC]

24. Tell that to the Spaghetti Monster

:P

[Johonny]

18. I believe

we built the Hubble to take pictures so I could read self important people use the pictures to bash mankind.

[Elspeth]

19. Thanks for the reminder of things larger than our world

I'll remember this one.

[alfredo]

20. Yep, it's turtles all the way down.

[Stephanie]

22. Link to the picture, please.

TY! :hi:

[RC]

23. Links.

For the picture I used here: rc.smugmug.com/photos/247395831-O.jpg
Be sure to check out: rc.smugmug.com and keygoods.smugmug.com/gallery/3686784#210947198


For the link of any graphic in DU, just left click on it and select properties.

Links for Opus. Delete the space between the : & //
However the cartoon I posted here is long gone.
http: //seattletimes.nwsource.com/comics/opus.html
http: //www.uclick.com/client/spt/wpopu/

Just remember it is not nice to Hot Link to to most graphic sources. You can Hot Link to sites such as Smugmug and Photobucket, etc. That is part of their purpose.

Hot linking explanation
http://altlab.com/hotlinking.html

[Stephanie]

30. thanks, I am actually already pretty good at posting pictures

:)

[RC]

28. Or maybe you wanted this?

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1996/01/image/c/

[Stephanie]

29. that's what I wanted, thank you

:hi:

[Bright Eyes]

31. The vastness of the Universe makes humanity seem insignificant.

In the grand scheme of things, we are.

[Norrin Radd]

33. The vastness makes me feel how precious life here is.

[krispos42]

32. And the people of a trillion planets look up at the sky...

and wonder "are we alone?"

Thus is the vastness of the universe.



Often times I do wonder if Arthur C. Clarke had it right... the universe is so big and old, and even near-light-speed travel so slow, that at any given time there is only one intelligent, scientific civilization in any one particular galaxy. And that one civilization spreads wings, moves among the stars, spreading colonies across planet surfaces and sending explorers and probes across the light-years.

They look endlessly for signs of intelligent life for millenia, and never find it. At some point, they fade away do to complacency or war or disease or, perhaps, move beyond the physical realm to some higher plane of existance. Their works deteriorate and crumble into the elements from which they are forged as time inexorably erases their existance.

One day, a hundred million or a billion years later some other lonely civilization may colonize the very same planet, never realizing they shared the same vistas as a long-lost civilization.

Even the radio waves put out my such a civilation would be long-gone, fading to background static over the course of a billion years.