Our place in the universe.

down_vote_magnet · 1 year

It's kind of frustrating, but I know that my brain is not capable of actually putting into perspective just how fucking big that shit is.

And mind still blown.

evenheaded · 1 year

There must be life over here!

RentalCanoe · 1 year

The universe contains more stars than all the grains of sand in all the deserts and on all the beaches on Earth. The current estimate is 70 sextillion (70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) stars.

Whoa.

Sinkemlow · 1 year

Always a mindfuck.

SJLD · 1 year

Right in the center, of course!

ttustudent · 1 year

I can see my house!

TeedleJay · 1 year

"I'M SIGNIFICAAAAAANT!"

FableForge · 1 year

What amazes me the most is that we have managed to know this. How the hell did we creatures on such tiny mote of dust were able to cognitively know that so much exists so far away from here?

And how many other motes of dust elsewhere have managed to gain that same knowledge, and just stare at it like we do? We have that much in common.

WisconsinPlatt · 1 year

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.

wasrackart · 1 year

man, I got such a weird feeling from the last frame! Awesome.

thanks a bunch for posting.

this_barb · 1 year

What is this‽ A universe for ants‽

HerrUggla · 1 year

How did they take that last picture? They must have been outside the universe to capture the whole universe. Why don't they just rotate the camera 180 degrees and take another picture so we now whats outside.

People make science harder than it needs to be.

ani625 · 1 year

My God, it's full of stars!

ShortFuse · 1 year

And I still feel fat

HIPPOisSKEPTICAL · 1 year

I had no idea our milky way galaxy was so big. Not compared to alot of other galaxies, but I always imagined it having only a couple handfuls of solar systems.

In terms of how big space really is, I think the last picture wasn't great at depicting it. I think this one does a much better job http://twistedsifter.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/size-of-the-earth-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-universe-space-planets-stars.jpg

thatoneguydunno · 1 year

(spoiler alert)

But unluckily a little animalcule was there in a square cap, who silenced all the other philosophical mites, saying that he knew the whole secret, that it was all to be found in the "Summa" of St. Thomas Aquinas; he scanned the pair of celestial visitors from top to toe, and maintained that they and all their kind, their suns and stars, were made solely for man's benefit. (Voltaire, Micromegas)

Talking_Hair · 1 year

Serious Question: In the TV Show Star Trek, how far was Voyager if it were to be placed on such a map?

Skwiggity · 1 year

Why did we name all the other galaxies and suns badass names, but name our Galaxy the "Milky Way" and name our Sun.... "Sun"?

forlornhope · 1 year

[deleted]

disrespected_opinion · 1 year

god was obviously photoshopped out of this

anon1821 · 1 year

The Reapers Are COMING !

absolutmenk · 1 year

Grants amazing perspective. Thank you.

foomp · 1 year

FORNAX VOID

nueve · 1 year

does this make anyone else want to quit their jobs?

defenestrationist · 1 year

It's when I look at amazing pictures like this that I just cannot understand why the idea of religion based around our planet and our planet alone can make any sense at all. How can anyone who is a believer look at this and still call their religion justified.

[deleted] · 1 year

Another reason to feel insignificant: the elements we are made out of, the elements that compose our world and solar system, may not even be the principle stuff of the universe. Only 4% is the stuff that we can see or that we can detect; the rest of the 96% is "dark matter" which does not even reflect light.

Dark1000 · 1 year

Does anyone really doubt that there are other intelligent lifeforms out there? Just look at it! How many planets just like Earth are out there?

[deleted] · 1 year

You should really convert to spherical coordinates.

cjdyal · 1 year

It was crazy when I played Mass Effect for the first time and had to zoom out over and over in order to see the galaxy map, so I could travel somewhere.

jmoriarty · 1 year

I want to get a shirt that says "Virgo Superclusters". Maybe add in "Eastside" if I wanted to get Galactic Gangster on it.

femo1170 · 1 year

So remind me again why I'm stressing about a term paper? I forgot.

fuckinggoogleit · 1 year

I tried to understand it, I even googled it. My mind is still so blown and can't comprehend just how fucking awesome this is.

G-Creature · 1 year

Reminds me of this!

joemangle · 1 year

i think it was carl sagan who said something like "human beings are the universe's way of understanding itself," which is a very attractive idea, even if the universe's reaction to getting sense of the size of itself (possibly infinite in size) could only be a doom-laden intergalactic "WTF"

PhillipMacrotch · 1 year

Anyone that says or thinks we are alone in this universe is full of shit. There is no way we are the only living beings out there.

swiftthrills · 1 year

Why are we here?

tellahoohooo · 1 year

Don't forget...we're the only life in all of that ;)

edit (clearly the downvoters have missed the implied sarcasm of the above statement...)

[deleted] · 1 year

Sent to my roommate who is currently being petty about ridiculous shit.

alecjay4 · 1 year

I love space.

minerman · 1 year

I always thought that if there is "life after death", it involves space being infinite and my soul being transported millions of light years away to some place completely mindfuckingly different.

WetHotAmerican · 1 year

My brain just froze, had to restart.

dranojunkie · 1 year

Does anyone else find themselves going back and forth between pictures, trying to slowly comprehend the size and space but find that their brain can't handle the idea of something that large?

athe-physic-ist · 1 year

When you look at this, you feel insignificant. This is where religion comes in and tries to give you purpose. It says your purpose is to serve God. Yet what people do not realize is that you are insignificant in religion. You are just another servant, kneeling before your master hoping to spend eternity with him/her. You are nothing more than a servant. When you look up at the night sky, or see a picture such as this, you may feel insignificant. It is understandable, but then you should step back and think. The light from each of these stars has traveled hundreds, thousands, or millions of light years to interact with your retina. The elements in the cores of these stars are the same that make up your existence. You are not insignificant, you are part of the universe. You are the universe, just as each and every person, planet, star, and black hole are. Insignificance does not exist, we all exist as equal. You are a servant to no God. How can anyone say that this view makes you feel insignificant. You should tremble in awe at how amazing the universe is...at how amazing you are.

Whiskey-Trot · 1 year

Do you guys ever feel like your starting to understand this realm and where we are in the universe, but then the thought flies away and im back to thinking about food and sex.

Rockyn · 1 year

I am nothing.

Just_another_man · 1 year

Yeah, there's probably aliens somewhere. Too bad we'll most likely never see them.

Tanalius · 1 year

Just looking at that makes it hard for me to deny that there must be tons of life out there.

youknowsomeguy · 1 year

Right in the center. WHERE WE BELONG!!!

NothingReallyEnds · 1 year

I'm sure that I have some influence on the objects directly next to me and that those objects have some influence on the objects next to them etc. Thus, by induction, I'M THE RULER OF THE UNIVERSE! And don't you come back recursively to me! And when there are no objects next to some objects, then tough luck for them: I don't care that I have no control over non-objects.

ordinaryrendition · 1 year

Isn't it great? And I'm the king of the whole thing! I'm important!

[deleted] · 1 year

The total perspective vortex (redux)

Anyone else feel like a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot

[deleted] · 1 year

Inaccurate, the Milky Way is a bar spiral galaxy.

old_skool · 1 year

Serious question - is there any particular reason that these are represented as cylinders? Or is it just happenstance that the creator of the image has some strange fixation on canned food and sees our universe as an extrapolation of that?

lowrads · 1 year

TIL the universe is the perfect shape to fit inside a test tube.

Master_Rux · 1 year

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, 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 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 this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, 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.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. 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 with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

-Carl Sagan

Mookchook · 1 year

This: http://primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe/

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