Humbling

Velvet Vocals

Check out the attached pics.... not sure if they've been posted before, but I just thought they were great!




It's even more humbling when we realize that our sun is but one star in "the Milky Way" (our galaxy)

There are over 150 billion more stars similar to our sun in "the Milky Way" galaxy.

And if that isn't enough, there are over 200 billion galaxies in the Universe...and our "Milky Way" is only average in size.

To help comprehend such big numbers, there are more stars in our Universe than there are grains of sand on the Earth.

The latest astrophysical theory (String Theory) postulates there are more universes...perhaps about eleven.

This should help put our selves, issues, and concerns in perspective.

Velvet Vocals

Oops, attachments didn't work first time?... anyway here they are

spacetweek

Saint Something wrote:

Oops, attachments didn't work first time?... anyway here they are

Thanks for that Saint, those pictures are awesome.

coffee_cake

Wouldn't it be so cool if earth was the size of Jupiter...

Seanie M

bluewolf wrote:

Wouldn't it be so cool if earth was the size of Jupiter...

Not really... I'd hate the prospect of a trans-trans-trans-trans Atlantic flight to Toronto on that planet!!!

fatherdougalmag

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/

And if the sun was one meter across, we'd be about 100 meters away from it and poor old Pluto would be over 4km's away!!

Seanie M

And to add to all your ponderment...

If Earth was a grape:
- the Moon would be a pea 16 inches away (representing almost 260,000 miles)
- the Sun would be a 4 ft in diameter beachball, 490 feet away (representing 93 million
miles – 1AU)
- Jupiter would be a grapefruit just under ½ mile away (representing 400 million miles
away – its closest to Earth)
- Proxima Centauri, our closest star, would be 24,000 miles away (representing 4.3Ly
away)
- Deneb in Cygnus would be about 1 billion miles away (representing 1,800Ly away)
- The Milky Way would be 55 billion miles wide (representing 100,000Ly distance)

1 Light year = 5,878,612,843,200 miles.

Seanie.

mike65

What did The Book say? "Space is big, really big...!"

Mike.

Gobán Saor

or as Dan Quayle said:

Space is almost infinite. As a matter of fact we think it is infinite.
-- Dan Quayle, quoted from Encarta Book of Quotations

........the only Republican politician that makes George look intelligent.

Some other Quayle gems.......

Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle addressing the 20th anniversary celebration of the moon landing, 7/20/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

Mars is essentially in the same orbit... Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, 8/11/89 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

Matt Holck

Monty Python wrote:

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.

.........................................