Utterly Thought-Stoppingly Awesome.
Watch this. Just watch it.
First, doesn’t that just make you proud of humanity? That we could technologically do that, that we would be interested in doing it, and that we can try to understand what it means? I have to hold on to things like this when politics makes me despair for humanity. We’re gutter monkeys, but we’re literally gutter monkeys that are looking at the stars.
Second, does the overall significance of what is found really hit home for you? I have, over the years, pretty deeply internalized the notion that I live in a tiny, remote corner of the universe, and that in the larger sense nothing that I do, that my nation does, that my species does, nothing that happens in my galaxy, has any larger significance to the universe–significance is something we bring, not something we find. I’m prepared to extend Lazlo’s Chinese Relativity Axiom to a galactic scale. I get that “Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way“, and I can deal with that. And still, even with that, I find this humbling. How big is everything? So big that there’s a ridiculously large–and probably functionally infinite–amount of stuff in the places we thought were empty. It’s like a whole other aleph order of infinite bigness1. While that might make us feel smaller, relatively, it’s also an opportunity to get excited about how far there is to go.
Third, how can anyone–and I mean anyone–look at something like that and think our world, our species, is something special? When you’re literally looking at a picture of uncountable galaxies full of uncountable worlds, when you are faced with the reality of a universe that is for all intents and purposes infinite in all directions2, how can you be so arrogant as to think that your world, much less your species, much less your tribe or cult, has some special significance to the universe? I could theoretically understand the idea of an omnipotent Creator, I guess, as much as any cocky atheist could, with the “not a sparrow falls” thing, but extended to be “not a sparrow or any thing on any world”, but I just can’t get my head around anyone thinking things like “created in his image” or about being “chosen people”, or any other model that grants special significance to our little speck. Hell, the notion of existential dread in the face of the inherent disinterest of the universe being manifested as monster stories makes more sense to me than that stuff.
Anyway, cheers to Tony Darnell for making the video, and you can pop over to his site to see more info and discussion around the Deep Field images, how they can be used to figure a lower bound on the size of the universe, and to download a high resolution copy of a slightly more triumphal video about the Deep Field images.
- I know I’m being mathematically sloppy here–but work with me, I’m being metaphorical.(back)
- Like Dyson, I’m not talking about “directions” as distance measures along an axis, but about something a lot more flexible. Even without that caveat though, I’m pretty comfortable with “effectively infinite” in these cases: 100s of billions of galaxies would yield a countable number of stars, strictly speaking, but I wouldn’t want to have to count them. The universe is probably finite in size–we know it’s at least a certain size–but again, the number is big enough that I think we can treat it as effectively infinite. I certainly wouldn’t want to walk it.(back)
Tags: atheist,cosmology,embed,recommended,religion,science,something great,space,things to watch,visualization,youtube
Lachlan O’Dea
Someone with a Voice
Trish
Richard B.
October 28th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
My dad has commented about the casual use of the word in the 21st century, but in this case it’s apt – “awesome” indeed. I will show it to my classes sometime this week.
October 28th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Very cool, thanks. I agree, the idea that the particulars of human existence are special, and this is all for our benefit, simply cannot be taken seriously in light of scientific discoveries. On the other hand, we do appear to be a very special “phenomenon” in the universe. Who knows what kind of interesting things could be hiding in all those galaxies? But so far the most interesting thing we’ve found in this vast space is ourselves. I think it’s fair for us to take some pride in that ☺
October 28th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
Kevin–yeah, I chose that word carefully. There isn’t really a single word that captures “made me stop in place and take in the import and significance / majesty of something” that hasn’t been diluted over the years.
Let me know what the reaction is from your class.
Lachlan–I have no problem with us being proud that we’re the most interesting thing we’ve found yet. Where I lose it is the assumption that isn’t anything more interesting out there in all that (or the religious ones about us being the sole special case). You might be interested in some previous posts on the Drake Equation and Bostrom’s Great Filter though, for help explaining our apparent special phenomenon status. (It’s worth bearing in mind that 100 billion galaxies means a number of planets big enough to dominate any equation that doesn’t contain some terms with very large negative exponents–the old idea that even if a one-in-a-million thing happens to you in New York, it’s probably also happening to 18 other people at the same time extended out to the universal scale.)
December 10th, 2009 at 12:51 am
[...] may recall that I was pretty seriously geeked a while back by the implications of the Hubble Ultra Deep [...]