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Kinda makes me feel...insignificant
If you were standing on the surface of mars, on a clear night. You might get lucky and see a faint star in the night sky.....A faded light blue dot on the black canvas of frigid midnight.....and everyone you have ever known is on it.
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimed...s_to_Earth.jpg |
A definite reality check.
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I love it!
I am used to seeing the orange dot in the sky that is Mars... it's very cool to see the reverse angle. |
As a kid, one of the things that got me interested in astronomy was the idea that we are so large here on earth, yet pale in insignificance in relation to the rest of the universe. It was this dichotomy that caught my attention. I'd love to be able to turn a telescope on us from that distance.
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no wonder i feel so crowded all the time... and so claustrophobic...
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"For when you are put into the Total Perspective Vortex you are given just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation, and somewhere in it a tiny little marker, a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot, which says "You are here.""
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Quote:
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I'm pretty sure Giant Hamburger is just to the left of the blue dot (it says so on his profile). And everyone ELSE I've ever known is ON the blue dot.
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Looking home from a new world - can't help but wonder what that will be like to do it in person.
Or even more so - going so far out into the void that the Sun itself fades into the night. That will REALLY be leaving home. I wonder if anyone will ever get to experience that? |
Quote:
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Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour, That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned, A sun that is the source of all our power. The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see Are moving at a million miles a day In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour, Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'. Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars. It's a hundred thousand light years side to side. It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick, But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide. We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point. We go 'round every two hundred million years, And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions In this amazing and expanding universe. The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding In all of the directions it can whizz As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know, Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is. So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure, How amazingly unlikely is your birth, And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth. |
I was once wrapped up in a truly hideous job, one that consumed my life. I took a three week vacation in a country where nobody spoke English or knew anything about my company or what it did. Or would have cared if they had. It straightened my head.
Pictures like this don't make me feel insignificant. They help me remember that all the dreary things that impinge on our lives and proclaim their own impotance -- are insignificant. |
Thanks tecoyah, now I'm going to be pondering the whole philosophical implications of this thread for like two hours...........this topic always stirs my mind.
But I got things to do!!!!!! |
Tec... you really know how to make a guy feel special.
Really though, I'd love to see a shot from so far away as to have to use a Hubble-like instrument. Maybe that'd convince people we're not as important as we think we are. |
I also love this picture: sunset on Mars. The sun is so small!
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...20050610a.html |
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