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Feeling Small
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
These pictures came in the mail the other day. They have nothing to do with the Fourth of July, Alan Greenspan, economics, or financial markets, but they do demonstrate just how insignificant fireworks and money really are in the grand scheme of things.
There are similar cases to be made for time and space, a small book atop the Empire State building representing man's time on earth serving well for the former, the latter being nearly impossible for any human to comprehend - too few individuals have a proper appreciation for any of this.
Click on any of the pictures to enlarge.
UPDATE: Sept. 7, 2006 - 9:15 PM PST
As stated in the original post, these images came in the mail. No source was cited by the sender. Now that someone has indentified their origin, I'm happy to provide the link at Rense, lest anyone remain under the mistaken impression that I photographed these myself.
32 comments:
Simply beautiful!
But then, we are still getting pretty good mileage out of it, no?
I hear there is a lot of oil on Antares.
Betelgeuse, Betelgeuse, Betel...
It's a great big universe, and we're all really puny....
Amazing that humans can be so small and yet still be the most important thing in the Universe.
Aristotle said: Of all the spectacles in the universe, the greatest is Man.
Yes, we are little compared to other planets and objects in the universe, but we are a working planet. Our planet has the perfect temperatures to sustain life. Glad I live on the earth and not the moon, mars, or the sun. Thanks for the analogy.
A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
-Stephen Crane
Lucy Stern said...
Our planet has the perfect temperatures to sustain life. Glad I live on the earth and not the moon, mars, or the sun.
Well, so am I, but I find the logic of that statement far from taught if one attempts to extrapolate to all life. The earth has the perfect environment for all of the life that we are able to observe. So what? We can't reach any significant distance to observe anything else - these images begin to hint at illustrating that.
What we are able to observe, it seems, is that life tends to find incredible ways to adapt to it's environment. It's very difficult to sepeculate what might or might not be possible or actual outside of our own planet, but it's a very self-centered assumption, IMO, that the Earth has 'the right' conditions for life.
Just look at some of the life in our own oceans... when one considers the vastness of the universe and the infinity(?) of time, the potential for life to exist in forms utterly unimaginable to us seems almost inevitable - to me, at least.
Phew, all this talk of infinity. I feel like I'm at sixth-form college (senior high or so, in American terms?) again ;-)
care to elaborate?
Is there any chance that someone could make a long poster with all of those pictures on it? I'd by several of them and post them up everywhere.
Is there any chance that someone could make a long poster with all of those pictures on it? I'd by several of them and post them up everywhere.
I'd say there's a finite improbability of that.
Where can I get higher resolution versions of these pictures?
The pictures are very illuminating. Its all a matter of perspective. Man considers himself to be the center of the universe and just cant comprehend things beyond a certain size or complexity. So he considers everything within his realm of perception as the be-all and end-all of existence.
Its like an ant would consider his universe to be a small garden patch. Do you think an ant even begin to accept the fact that such a thing as an Empire State Building exists?
My aunt works in the Empire State Building - that's weird!
you've left out two more pictures - the one with the blue giant and the one with the red giant.. a bad case of link jacking
We are here! We are here! We are here!
A person's a person, no matter how small.
The images came from:
http://www.rense.com/general72/size.htm
Please, oh please, abide by convention and cite your sources. Where did the pictures come from?
Thanks
"...you've left out two more pictures - the one with the blue giant and the one with the red giant.. a bad case of link jacking"
The pictures you are referring to were not part of the original but were added later by and ill-informed joker and posted during a "bad case of link jacking." The two added pictures were quite simply wrong.
I bet you could put all that on one poster, but then you'd have to hang the poster off the side of a building for you to be able to see the earth in any clarity.... I think it would be cool if the pictures had the actual scale values underneath them, to get a true understanding of the awesome sizes.
Why is everything in the universe round like a ball?
In my Father house is many mansion,
Re: Why is everything in the universe round like a ball?
September 08, 2006 6:35 AM
Because, what Da Vinci postulated turns out to be true. 200 years before Newton, he anticipated the theory of gravity: "Every weight tends to falll towards its center by the shortest possible way" and "Every heavy substance presses downward, and cannot be upheld perpetually, the whole earth must become spherical." And so on, into the history of what we know about the planets and other celestial bodies, and celestial mechanics.
Re: Why is everything in the universe round like a ball?
September 08, 2006 6:35 AM
Because, what Leonardo da Vinci postulated turns out to be true:
200 years befoe Newron, he anticipated the theory of gravitation:
"Every weight tends to fall toward the center by the shortest way possible."
and
"Every heavy substance presses downward, and cannot be upheld perpetually, the whole earth must become spherical."
(How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, Seven Steps to Genius Every Day, Michael Gelb, Page 45, Dell Publishing, 1998.)
And so on, into the history of how we came to know about our Earth, the planets, celestial bodies, and clestial mechanics.
What's also amazing is that we have calculated the size of these objects to begin with, in addition to the fact that we've sent telescopes that have taken pictures of them.
Christina said...
What's also amazing is that we have calculated the size of these objects to begin with, in addition to the fact that we've sent telescopes that have taken pictures of them.
The size of stars is somewhat arbitrary using geometry to calculate distances based on the radiant intensity... but to get accurate figures - astronomers employ some serious number crunching to take in all sorts of factors like gravitation pull and magnetic fields around these giant bodies. So... yes sizes we CAN estimate, but telescopic photos? Umm.. I'm afraid not! (Computer rendered depictions only).
How about sending a copy to George B. and co.,USA.
Although I doubt the point would come across.
Can we have some numbers, please? Like just how big is Antares.
http://www.astronomynotes.com/starprop/s11.htm
I'm not sure if the methods are intact, but maybe someone who knows math a lot better could tell.
in refernce to someone mentioning why is everything round like a ball.....i learnt an interesting fact, if you were to take a squash ball, an extremely, or at least seeminlgy smooth ball, and blow it up to the size of the earth, it would have mountains and caverns hundereds of times taller, deeper, wider etc than the earth....so in theory if u shrunk the earth to a squash ball size, youd end up with a ball that is immeasureably smooth...
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