If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space. -- Thomas Carlyle, looking at the underpants.

just nitpicking, i know, but the photo above took 3 months to capture. the bbc reported that it took 4 months. They began shooting the image in september last year, and wrapped it up in mid january. Wht strikes me is that this is a photo of "one" spot from within a 3D sphere, from our vantage point. i don't know the dimensions of the area photographed, but you have to consider that there is as much evidence of life in all of the other directions this could have been taken in. In 3 months, does all of the light coming from the furthest reaches of the universe show up on the film? Have we seen the outer edge of the universe now? can we then measure it? Does any one know what direction this camera was pointed? toward the center, out from center, laterally? I'm flabbergasted. Evidence of life from a purely overwhelming statistical stand point, I think. But, as Bruce says, it's all so goddamn far away that it doesn;t really matter.

For all intents and purposes, we are alone. Imagine our society in 2500 years, assuming we don;t destroy ourselves or collapse back to the stone age. the growth of technology is exponential. we've all imagined what is to come in the distant future, and first among them is star travel. it seems a relative certainty that some other civilzation would have acheived that level of technological acheivement. However, we are a relative needle in a haystack to them, and again....does it matter? would they have found us?? maybe there's intelligent life in MOST of the systems we can see in tis picture. Why would a civilization from so far away bother with us at all? There might be everything they are looking for in their local galaxy.

I think we will not be the first space faring people, but at the same time, I think we will stillhave to bootstrap ourselves out there. If there was a local starfaring people, we would already have been enslaved or colonized.

Since I doubt that I'll live long enough to see any of the marvels to come, I hope that reincarnation is true. I want to see what happens.

yeah! sez me!

did you ever think, as a kid, that you would be able to put your potato in a box, and cook it in 7 minutes?

stay tuned!

Mask
 

Does anyone else think that the top-right galaxy of the blowup looks like a masquerade mask with particularly evil eyes?

As far as life on other planets, I'd be amazed if it was aware of us no matter how technologically advanced it is; we've only been sending out radio signals for what, 100 years? And even at the speed of light how many stars are in that radius? Sure we've hit a few stars with classic big band, but do we transmit with enough power for it to be far enough above background radiation for them to even notice? Background from the sun is strong enough that it interfere with current broadcasts between satellites and cable TV viewers.

Great. Now I'm not going to be able to sleep at night knowing that thing is hanging over me ...

Thank you SOOOO much.

Masquerade!
Paper faces on parade . . .
Masquerade!
Hide your face,
so the world will
never find you!

Masquerade!
Every face a different shade . . .
Masquerade!
Look around -
there's another
mask behind you!

(with a tip o' the hat to Andrew LLoyd Webber)

Astronomy Picture of the Day
 

Oh yes, and speaking of Astronomy Picture of the Day, and sites that update once a day every day (like IotD here), I have a webpage a friend made for me a few years ago that will look at the cookies on your computer, see if you've been to that site today, and if not it sends you there. It's kind of cool; every time I open up my browser it makes sure I've seen today's pictures. If anyone's interested in something like that let me know and I'll send it along / post it. (I originally made it to make sure I went to the Hunger Site every day, but I didn't want that to be my homepage because, well, it's not so good as a portal).

And growing. I hear that these distant objects are not only still moving away but they are gaining speed. So the question becomes are they being pushed or pulled? Common sense would suggest they are being pulled since, if they were being pushed, the further they moved away from whatever was doing the pushing, the less "push" there would be so they would slow down. BUT to consider that they are being pulled is ... too difficult for me to fathom.

Anyway, I also wonder if everything is moving away at a faster speed or is it the further away the galaxy the faster it is moving which means that the separation between galaxies is increasing which kind of suggests that the universe will die a cold, lonely death at some point.

I wonder too, if all the galaxies are moving away from where the big bang happened, why hasn't someone plotted the reverse course of a few galaxies to see where the paths intersect to find the "center" of the universe. They could put up a Stuckey's there or something.

Hard to believe that all that stuff fit on the head of a pin at one point but that's what they say... Sometimes I think there is an equal but opposite universe and we just keep trading matter back and forth. But that just raises more questions. And I'm with Bruce - if there's life out there I don't think we'll ever know it.

Lastly, speaking of galaxies colliding, the Andromeda Galaxy is heading straight for the Milky Way Galaxy at well over one million miles per hour. But I think we're ok for another few billion years. Too bad we'll miss the fireworks. Then again, maybe we won't.

>Anyway, I also wonder if everything is moving away at a faster speed or is it the further away the galaxy the faster it is moving which means that the separation between galaxies is increasing which kind of suggests that the universe will die a cold, lonely death at some point.<

That's what they say what will happen. One day all the energy will have been transformed into head and the temperature will be the same in every point of the universe, and it won't be hot!

Just to give a bit of perspective
 

If you go along with modern big band theory, which makes pretty good sense to me, then this map gives you a decent idea how far back the light we are looking at was created. It's pretty close to the beginning/end of the universe, and really close to the distance where there would be any light to even be seen.

That's one theory. Another is that the so-called dark matter will eventually overtake everything and the universe will collapse in on itself and we start all over again.

To subscribe to the first theory (for which there is a lot of supporting evidence) is to accept the idea that the universe had a specific beginning and will have a specific end. And the end will be conclusive and final.

Without a shred of evidence to back it up, I submit that there seems to be a discord about everything within the universe being cyclical while the universe itself is not. My guess is that the universe is in some kind of never-ending loop.

The model I came up with is a vocano crater filled with water that is welling up slowly from a spring down deep. The water in the center is fairly stable while the water close to the edge is spilling over the edge of the crater and, hence is moving quickly. The water that spills over is somehow feeding the spring that is welling up inside the crater.

A goofy analogy perhaps but one that allows me to put things in some sort of context. I'm the first to admit that it raises questions that I'm neither equipped nor prepared to answer. I think its hard to understand something when there are forces influencing it that we are not even aware of.

u click the button, and the space shuttle whistles off.

Then it whistles back, and with pictures.

And then everybody sees those pictures.

And no one challenges those pics, since they've never been there.