Hubble Ultra Deep Field Gives Perspective

 

We have Hubble to thank for a view into our universe that sheds a lot of light on the significance of Humanity, let alone the significance we have as individuals.

Video showing Hubble Ultra Deep Field and a 3D construction of same.

Even if you aren't an astronomy geek, watch this. The narrator's presentation is simple and he has a good voice for narration. The facts presented are staggering. 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe. 100,000,000 stars in each. If I do my zeros right, that's 1E19 stars out there. 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 suns.

Carl Sagan was right. The probability of intelligent life out there other than us must be 1 (aka 100%). I cannot conceive of us being that special. Special, yes. That special, no.

Of course, that does not mean we'll ever meet these other intelligent species.

Some of those galaxies are receding from us faster than the speed of light now. That's also a hard concept to grasp. As is 47, 000, 000, 000 light years away (the distance of the furthest galaxy). That's 47 billion years at the speed of light, 3 x 10E8 m/s.

We collectively, as humans, are small sands on the beach that would be our own world. We think ourselves small as 1 in 6,000,000,000. We certainly are, by that standard. And yet, our sun is one of ten quintillion other stars. As rare as we are individually in the sea of Humanity, our sun is a smaller part of the total count of suns in the universe by a factor of 1.66 billion times.

The numbers involved here are celestial and literally incomprehensible in any direct way by the human mind. Our concept of scale just can't really process this. The universe is breathtakingly vast. Our little sun is a grain of sand's grain of sand on one very big beach. And we are then as inconsequential as a grain of sand upon that beach.

Think about that for a second. If this doesn't give you a sense of true awe at the magnificence of the entirety of our universe, then you have no poetry in your soul.

I'm reminded of something once said by a famous and humourous man:

"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." -- The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams, Chapter 8

 
 

Douglas Adams had no idea how right he was. And this we know because we invest in projects that don't reap an immediate Earthly benefit such as our space program. We understand our place in the universe and the vastness of Creation because of the window into that which the Hubble Space Telescope grants. Think about that next time someone debates with you the value of the space program.