It's SOOOOO BIG!!!

It is a wonderful time to be alive. There have been such amazing advances in science that it is difficult to know what to talk about. This blog will be about one of my favorite advances. The Hubble Space Telescope has been circling the Earth for the past 25 years. This is going to be about a few images that remind me every time I look at them how insignificant my problems and concerns are.

This is one of the pictures from the Hubble Deep Field. Essentially it is like looking through a keyhole into the deep reaches of our universe. The picture above is from an area about 1/30th of the diameter of the moon in the night sky. The most distant galaxies in the picture are of the 30th magnitude of brightness. In terms I understand that is 4 billion times fainter than the human eye is capable of seeing. The picture above represents 25% of the total image taken by the Hubble. How was this done. From December 18 to December 28, 1995 the Hubble was pointed toward this small area of the sky. The picture is considered representative of distribution of galaxies in the universe. So if you pointed the Hubble in any direction you would expect a similar picture.

This picture gives you some idea of how the image was obtained, where the Hubble was pointed and what was in the picture. The average galaxy contains 200 million stars. This picture shows a minimum of 5,000 galaxies. Do the math. That's a lot of stars. Throw in some planets around each star.

The picture above is a representation of the area examined by the third deep field view by the Hubble. The Hubble Deep Field was followed in 2004 by a deeper view called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The last view if the XDF or Hubble Extreme Deep Field taken in 2012. The picture above is 1 degree of the 360 degrees that comprise the night sky. If you were to look at the entire night sky in the manner these tiny areas have been viewed you would have to repeat the process 24 million times.

This is the night sky the Hubble sees. The universe is full of light and quite likely life.

The caption with this final picture says everything I have to say about religion. If believing gives you comfort that is good. It is unfortunate, in my mind, that there are folks like Ken Ham. He is the operator of the Creation Museum in Kentucky. He believes that the universe is 6,000 or so years old based on dates in the Bible. That men and dinosaurs coexisted on Earth after the flood of Noah. He believes that evolution is a myth. I, however, choose science. The earth is billions of years old. The universe is billions of years older than the earth. Just as the sun is not the center of our solar system, our solar system is not the center of our galaxy. Our galaxy is not the center of the universe. We are a spec of dust off in the corner wasting our time fighting wars over little bits of territory and which imaginary being we should worship. When we have been relegated to the scrap heap of the universe's evolution it will go on as if we never existed. Go out some night away from the lights of the city. Out where it is quiet and dark. Look up at the sky and ponder how important you are in what is going on in the vast unknown.