Guest guest Posted October 22, 2000 Report Share Posted October 22, 2000 My interest in astronomy and the Hubble pictures can hardly be called a truly scientific one. What drives me and allures me is more akin to the hunger of a thrillseeker, just to be there alters the inner landscape of my being in ways indescribable. So one place we went on our recent trip to New York, was the new planetarium. It is one thing to talk about light-years in the millions, which frankly is so mind boggling as to be incomprehensible, in the sense of having no frame of reference with which to imagine what is meant. It is quite another to be given the visual and kinesthetic sense of travelling such vast distances and seeing the universe, not just from the earth view, but from "out there" looking back, towards where our entire galaxy is a tiny star among millions of others. This view of the entire universe startles, in that unlike our usual view of a star filled sky, it is not homogeneous in appearance. Three dimensionally, picture a foam of bubbles, with the "stars" seen being actually myriads of galaxies containing stars, and these forming a loosely connected skin around the bubble surfaces with vast, dark empty spaces between them. It is an image reminding one of a net, perhaps that of Indra's net of jewels. Still stunned by the visual impact of seeing such vast space, one emerges to take a walk thru time. Only on this walkway, one step is approximately 75 million years. So with your 360 steps, you cover the events of a 13 billion year evolution of the universe. At the end, all of known human existence till now is the width of.... one human hair. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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