The Universe is Like a Big Sponge
The Deep Field Image changed my View of the Universe
Deep Field Hubble / NASA
Mind Altering Photographs
The image which Hubble took (a postage stamp sized area of space at arms length) revealed a dense array of Galaxies on the other side of the Universe. It was for me the image of my lifetime, much as the Blue Marble must have been for the previous generation. The first photo of Planet Earth from space. (At this point flat-earthers aka The Luddites) will tell you it's just a joke, but Neil De Grasse Tyson and Tim Peake knows, the joke's on them.
Blue Marble NASA
Great Leaps
I've witnessed some great firsts in my short lifetime. Cosmology has advanced considerably since the 1970's but this image (below) of a simulation of the structure of the Universe does it for me. It's like a huge brain. I always felt like our reality was like fragments of dreams within a superscale mind. Forget the Matrix, I always imagined us like atoms in a giant lifeform. What a life, what a mind, what potential, what an environment. This image was almost too good to be true. The conglomerations of Galaxies are the light parts, which resemble intergalactic neurons with their connections in every direction. I find the dark spaces in the middle (the holes in the sponge) almost terrifyingly beautiful in their epic, cosmic emptiness. Light years upon light years of nothing much at all. It also got me wondering, if the Universe looks like a big sponge, in order to travel across it (or more correctly through it, sub directional) you have to squeeze the sponge and bring the places nearer to each other. I will leave you with that tantalising thought. Not just solar travel or Interstellar travel but Intergalactic, not just next door but to the other side of beyond and back. Out there, I can feel it, everything is the same but different.
I mean there's so much nature it would hurt your eyes to see it. A gazillion places just like Earth but different, a quadrillion people just like us but from different root species, some communal insects, others Cephalopod, Reptilian and doubtless some plant based people too.
Komodo Squid wikipedia
There will be energy derivation principles and chemical compositions beyond our wildest imagination, some which will render our own metabolism simplistic, limited and primitive, yet on other worlds our own seemingly primitive technology will seem like utter fantastic magic. We are one among many. We are the dreams of an unseen scheme so large it escapes our notice. I love the fact that we are beginning to finally realise we know so very little about the basics. It's a great platform to begin to learn again. Like a child, we can relearn to have no preconception. The limits of our imagination, the only limit to possibility. I would dearly like to travel the Galaxies, alas it may be something our Great Great Great Grandchildren, Silicon Primates may achieve
Have A Good Weekend. Relatively speaking, it will be just another sub atomic click in the Universe's Master Clock
The problem is how to squeeze a sponge millions of light years in size and the incredible amount of energy this would take. It's a job only a god can undertake, we are still small ants, we have just barely visited our moon 50 years ago... Star traveling aliens would laugh at us...
quite correct. But what is the difference between (ants) humans and (ants) actual GOD like ants which may have evolved in a similar curve to us with individual consciousness but far more advanced technology. 500 years ? 5,000 years or is it 50,000 - 500,000 years, 5 - 50 million years ? or maybe more.
Ants have been around on our planet for about 140m years, splitting off from the wasp family to become city building, ranch farming agriculturists way before we were even a blink in nature's eye. My guess is that advanced communal insectoid cultures out there in their splendour, would laugh at our silly pontificating (they might not do humour though) as they effortlessly bend space time and bring the sponge holes together.
Here's a thought. what if Bees evolved and were still interested in pollination. But with advanced technology they traveled the stars pollinating & cross pollinating planets with genetic diversity to produce f2 cultures as they collect and distribute samples of not just fruit and vegetables. I mean, even ET was a botanist collecting samples when he got unexpectedly left behind in the story. What better vocation could you have as an interstellar / intergalactic biologist. What fantastic layers of knowledge lies unfolded for our Grandchildren !?
mind blowing photography...keep it up.
Totally mindblowing. Thank you
happy customers :) that's what we like to see, empty plates !!
Leaves us feeling rather small compared to the larger scheme of things. When you consider just how huge the universe is, you're humbled.
I love being the feeling of being that humbled. Because if we're that small and our lives are still so full of meaning and impression, just think how incredible the scheme of nature to which we belong actually is. It's so phenomenal it's indescribable. And that, I believe keeps minds evolving towards complexity and a notional perfection right across the universe, quadrillions of times forever. I once had a dream, I was quite young, perhaps 12 or 13 and I awoke with the answer to the meaning of Life, The Universe and Everything. It wasn't 42.. and it was so simple, I couldn't fathom how we'd ever missed it. As I grasped to write it to memory, the answer escaped down the plughole of consciousness. I could feel it draining away and it was frustrating. My waking mind was not meant to know. I often think about the simplicity of what it could be and it probably really is ! One day, I'll remember.
Wow, no words
if you ever have that dream.. write it down !
That's great.. i love this part "I love the fact that we are beginning to finally realise we know so very little about the basics. It's a great platform to begin to learn again. Like a child, we can relearn to have no preconception."
thanks @idaagstna. every generation re-writes history for it's own needs. I would love to read the next 5 generation's versions. I guess it wouldn't make much sense to us ! which is kind of the point. what does amuse me is the Jungian idea of the collective conscious. I feel like this meta-pool of accumulated knowledge drives us forward and once we contribute an original thought, idea, expression, like the internet it becomes available. I think the 100th Monkey principle is one of the keys to our future and one that once explained fully, will liberate us from the self doubt and seemingly rudderless direction we are headed. We are not, we just need to learn to navigate by the stars, (metaphorically speaking).
Amazing