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It still blows my mind when I come across images brimming with galaxies. How insignificant are we in the vast universe? Even our entire solar system, it’s likel

It still blows my mind when I come across images brimming with galaxies. How insignificant are we in the vast universe? Even our entire solar system, it’s likely not even a blip in the cosmic scheme. Just wow…

dhosek 2y ago
Ever hear Monty Python’s Galaxy Song (from The Meaning of Life)?
aeve890 2y ago
I could look at deep field images for hours and I can't even begin to describe what it makes me feel. Some kind of existencial dizziness, spiritual reverence, fear, awe, insignificance of course. It sigkills my executive function. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deep_fields https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deep_fields
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  And that’s simply the part of the cosmos that is not obscured by our own galaxy. we are seemingly quite lucky to be positioned where we are in it
Telemakhos 2y ago
> How insignificant are we in the vast universe? That's one way to put it, but a negative way. The other might be more humbling: how significant are we? Or, as a statement instead of a question, we are the only significant thing of which we know. We can theorize about life elsewhere, and we can write space-opera fiction about life on other worlds, but, to the best of our knowledge, we are the only ones who can. We know there is other life on our world, but not as rational as we. We do not know for a fact that there is any equivalent, rational species in all that vast universe that we can see, let alone any more advanced than we are. Asking the question that way makes me, at least, wonder if we comport ourselves in accordance with our knowledge of our exceptionalism. If we are the most advanced form of life that we know and can prove to exist, do we behave like it?
- cdetrio 2y ago
  "Some people become depressed at the scale of the universe, because it makes them feel insignificant. Other people are relieved to feel insignificant, which is even worse. But, in any case, those are mistakes. Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow. Or a herd of cows. The universe is not there to overwhelm us; it is our home, and our resource. The bigger the better." -- David Deutsch
  - jajko 2y ago
    I wouldn't attack people's emotions like that, the approach of 'my opinion is better than yours and your emotions are wrong' ain't the best. Its just one of those concepts or facts of life like our (im)mortality that each of us has to handle on their own terms since each of us is wired in pretty unique ways. Its perfectly fine to be in awe or even stunned by it, it means one actually started to grasp vastness of that topic and the fact we don't have it all figured out and during our lifetime this won't change. Every time I look at starry night sky and realize those distances, thermonuclear furnaces glowing across vast distances in absolute cold (or their massive groups looking similarly yet being vastly further), I am in awe. It puts my efforts and happiness in my life in a good perspective, in similar fashion spending my time with my kids does. And I look at stars every night I can, its a beautiful calming sight for me.
    - pseudocomposer 2y ago
      Emotions are like waves; we can’t choose which ones appear, but we can choose which one to surf. The person you’re replying to (well, really, the person they quoted) didn’t really seem to be “attacking” anyone’s emotions to me. It seemed pretty gently advising the reader not to spend all their time riding the emotional waves that lead to depression or nihilism. I do believe we all must face these emotions to become aware. But the depression/nihilism trap is very real for many people (myself included), and learning to walk that line and stay curious is part of our emotional/psychological development.
- bjelkeman-again 2y ago
fmbb 2y ago
I saw a YouTube video by some astronomy nerd seemingly specializing in simulation or special effects. Sorry I cannot recall the channel name. He pointed out to the viewers that the amount of void in between stars that is visible is a bit misleading in all these super high res photos we see of our universe. The video ended with some special effects/simulations of the night sky as seen from the South Pole. If the light pollution was literally zero, and you had eyes (or a camera) that could somehow see _all_ stars regardless of how far away they are, the night sky would basically look like a still picture of the color noise on an old analog TV. Hardly any black void anywhere, it’s just all stars. It was mind-boggling (and I hope true, not a scam video).
- consp 2y ago
  The CMB is uniform, so if you go back far enough that is true (and apply a blueshift). Amospheric disturbances would smear out a lot of it though, so no points like in analogue thermal noise.
- raattgift 2y ago
  You probably found a video discussing Olbers's paradox <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27s_paradox>.
jiggawatts 2y ago
Astronomy is one of the few sciences that I've studied that has given me existential dread. In particular, the scale of the universe just hurts my brain: If you were to scale down the Sun to the size of a coarse grain of sand (1 mm), then the orbit of the Earth would be about 20 cm across, with the planet itself being microscopic at this scale (10 micrometers). Jupiter would be a barely visible speck 55cm from the Sun. At this incredibly tiny scale, the next nearest star in the galaxy is about 30 kilometers (18 miles) away! That's roughly the same as a trip across a typical city, but our Voyager probes at this scale have gone only 15 meters over a period of 45 years! That's comparable to the rate at which hair grows (1 mm/day). Hence, a good mental model for thinking about the scale of our galaxy is: Stars are grains of sand separated by tens of kilometers on average across a circular space the size of the orbit of the Moon.
- miyuru 2y ago
  Are you describing a video by codyslabs by any chance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk
  - jiggawatts 2y ago
    There are many good solar system scale model videos including that one! You get a feel for different aspects at the various scales, I’m aiming for grokking galactic scale factors. The “Sun is a beach ball” is great for solar system understanding, etc…
- prezjordan 2y ago
  Strangely enough the analogies that scale earth's orbit to ~centimeters and nearby stars to ~kilometers actually makes me think we're not that far from other stars! Once you scale it back up and start thinking about travel times measured in ~generations I'm humbled again.
dostick 2y ago
On the contrary, we are way too significant, look at recursive universe theory. Any atom in your body could contain a smaller than we can detect yet, universe of its own. And our universe could be just inside of an atom in some larger universe. There’s no limit how deep in or outward you can go. There’s no law of physics that prevents that in theory. Not only universe is infinite in space but also infinite in intro or outward recursion. And with that, it’s possible that our universe is on collision course with another, but because it’s on physics level of “outside” universe, the speeds relative to size there are millions of times faster. And if collision occurs our universe will cease to exist in a moment. We will not know it happened.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
layer8 2y ago
Another perspective is that there are more orders of magnitude (35 to Planck length) below us than above us (26 to the size of the observable universe). So we are relatively already giants.

dhosek 2y ago

Ever hear Monty Python’s Galaxy Song (from The Meaning of Life)?

aeve890 2y ago

I could look at deep field images for hours and I can't even begin to describe what it makes me feel. Some kind of existencial dizziness, spiritual reverence, fear, awe, insignificance of course. It sigkills my executive function. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deep_fields https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deep_fields

JohnMakin 2y ago
And that’s simply the part of the cosmos that is not obscured by our own galaxy. we are seemingly quite lucky to be positioned where we are in it

Telemakhos 2y ago

> How insignificant are we in the vast universe? That's one way to put it, but a negative way. The other might be more humbling: how significant are we? Or, as a statement instead of a question, we are the only significant thing of which we know. We can theorize about life elsewhere, and we can write space-opera fiction about life on other worlds, but, to the best of our knowledge, we are the only ones who can. We know there is other life on our world, but not as rational as we. We do not know for a fact that there is any equivalent, rational species in all that vast universe that we can see, let alone any more advanced than we are. Asking the question that way makes me, at least, wonder if we comport ourselves in accordance with our knowledge of our exceptionalism. If we are the most advanced form of life that we know and can prove to exist, do we behave like it?

cdetrio 2y ago
"Some people become depressed at the scale of the universe, because it makes them feel insignificant. Other people are relieved to feel insignificant, which is even worse. But, in any case, those are mistakes. Feeling insignificant because the universe is large has exactly the same logic as feeling inadequate for not being a cow. Or a herd of cows. The universe is not there to overwhelm us; it is our home, and our resource. The bigger the better." -- David Deutsch
- jajko 2y ago
  I wouldn't attack people's emotions like that, the approach of 'my opinion is better than yours and your emotions are wrong' ain't the best. Its just one of those concepts or facts of life like our (im)mortality that each of us has to handle on their own terms since each of us is wired in pretty unique ways. Its perfectly fine to be in awe or even stunned by it, it means one actually started to grasp vastness of that topic and the fact we don't have it all figured out and during our lifetime this won't change. Every time I look at starry night sky and realize those distances, thermonuclear furnaces glowing across vast distances in absolute cold (or their massive groups looking similarly yet being vastly further), I am in awe. It puts my efforts and happiness in my life in a good perspective, in similar fashion spending my time with my kids does. And I look at stars every night I can, its a beautiful calming sight for me.
  - pseudocomposer 2y ago
    Emotions are like waves; we can’t choose which ones appear, but we can choose which one to surf. The person you’re replying to (well, really, the person they quoted) didn’t really seem to be “attacking” anyone’s emotions to me. It seemed pretty gently advising the reader not to spend all their time riding the emotional waves that lead to depression or nihilism. I do believe we all must face these emotions to become aware. But the depression/nihilism trap is very real for many people (myself included), and learning to walk that line and stay curious is part of our emotional/psychological development.
bjelkeman-again 2y ago

fmbb 2y ago

I saw a YouTube video by some astronomy nerd seemingly specializing in simulation or special effects. Sorry I cannot recall the channel name. He pointed out to the viewers that the amount of void in between stars that is visible is a bit misleading in all these super high res photos we see of our universe. The video ended with some special effects/simulations of the night sky as seen from the South Pole. If the light pollution was literally zero, and you had eyes (or a camera) that could somehow see _all_ stars regardless of how far away they are, the night sky would basically look like a still picture of the color noise on an old analog TV. Hardly any black void anywhere, it’s just all stars. It was mind-boggling (and I hope true, not a scam video).

consp 2y ago
The CMB is uniform, so if you go back far enough that is true (and apply a blueshift). Amospheric disturbances would smear out a lot of it though, so no points like in analogue thermal noise.
raattgift 2y ago
You probably found a video discussing Olbers's paradox <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27s_paradox>.

jiggawatts 2y ago

Astronomy is one of the few sciences that I've studied that has given me existential dread. In particular, the scale of the universe just hurts my brain: If you were to scale down the Sun to the size of a coarse grain of sand (1 mm), then the orbit of the Earth would be about 20 cm across, with the planet itself being microscopic at this scale (10 micrometers). Jupiter would be a barely visible speck 55cm from the Sun. At this incredibly tiny scale, the next nearest star in the galaxy is about 30 kilometers (18 miles) away! That's roughly the same as a trip across a typical city, but our Voyager probes at this scale have gone only 15 meters over a period of 45 years! That's comparable to the rate at which hair grows (1 mm/day). Hence, a good mental model for thinking about the scale of our galaxy is: Stars are grains of sand separated by tens of kilometers on average across a circular space the size of the orbit of the Moon.

miyuru 2y ago
Are you describing a video by codyslabs by any chance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk
- jiggawatts 2y ago
  There are many good solar system scale model videos including that one! You get a feel for different aspects at the various scales, I’m aiming for grokking galactic scale factors. The “Sun is a beach ball” is great for solar system understanding, etc…
prezjordan 2y ago
Strangely enough the analogies that scale earth's orbit to ~centimeters and nearby stars to ~kilometers actually makes me think we're not that far from other stars! Once you scale it back up and start thinking about travel times measured in ~generations I'm humbled again.

dostick 2y ago

On the contrary, we are way too significant, look at recursive universe theory. Any atom in your body could contain a smaller than we can detect yet, universe of its own. And our universe could be just inside of an atom in some larger universe. There’s no limit how deep in or outward you can go. There’s no law of physics that prevents that in theory. Not only universe is infinite in space but also infinite in intro or outward recursion. And with that, it’s possible that our universe is on collision course with another, but because it’s on physics level of “outside” universe, the speeds relative to size there are millions of times faster. And if collision occurs our universe will cease to exist in a moment. We will not know it happened.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

layer8 2y ago

Another perspective is that there are more orders of magnitude (35 to Planck length) below us than above us (26 to the size of the observable universe). So we are relatively already giants.