INSIGNIFICANT...that's what you are...

“Subject: Impressive



Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida has created a very interesting page. It begins as a view of the Milky Way Galaxy viewed from a distance of 10 million light years and then zooms in towards Earth in powers of ten.



Ten million, to one million, to 100,000 light years until you finally reach a large Oak tree. If ever there was a witness to creation, these folks have captured it for our viewing pleasure!

Once you Click on the site, the software does all the work. Sit back and imagine how perfect our World is. You can play it forward and backward to be amazed over and over. At the end it says AUTO.... Click on that and review the process in reverse. Enjoy!


http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index.html”

“Damn Andromeda is close! How long do we have??????”

“"dust in the wind...all we are is dust in the wind"~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

personally...to realize that is very liberating! gotta be reminded every once in a while when my sails are caught by the winds of earthly matters~~~~~~~~~~~~~”

“Note - The vast majority of galaxies and their star systems are in great gravitional conflict

aren't you glad we are in a remote location of a remote galaxy?”

“If you want to know what it feels like when galaxies collide ... you're experiencing it now. Thank God for our insignificant size relative to the universe!”

“The Andromeda Galaxy can be seen with the naked eye on a clear night if you know where to look, just a fuzzy spot in the night sky, about 10 times are far away as it is wide,

and its distinctly sperate from the Milky Way or at least they are not interlocking.
last edited: 1/17/06 6:57:47 PM”

“yet”

“lonesurveyor -

look up "Sagittarius Dwarf"”

“also - "Canis Major dwarf"

Astronomers believe that the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy is in the process of being pulled apart by the gravitational field of the more massive Milky Way galaxy. (wiki)

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060109_milkyway_warp.html
last edited: 1/17/06 7:07:56 PM”

“This is quite impressive!”

“Even when two galaxies "collide" nearly zero physical contact is made. They just glide right through each other. However, the massive gravitational pulls can cause large areas of disruption. Here's one example from I visit daily and this just happens to be up today: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060118.html”

“Here's another comment on our insignificantness from Carl Sagan
http://obs.nineplanets.org/psc/pbd.html




We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], 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.

---Carl Sagan”

“I think everything exists because I do.”