I am not writing about the universe as a metaphor for life, I mean the literal universe. It is huge ridiculous, gigantic, enormous and if I dare say a bit obscene. I think of obscene because it is generally not polite to bring large mind shattering philosophical topics at a casual lunch. If I started talking about how ridiculously gigantic the universe is it could be considered rude.
I have been wrangling galaxies into classifications on the galaxy zoo website and I am up to about 1,500. I can not really wrap my head around the idea of billions and there are hundreds of billions of stars in each galaxy and a star is more massive than anything I have ever seen close up enough to get a real sense of it's giganticness. Then it gets really big, there are billions of galaxies, I just looked up an estimate, 500 billion galaxies. Quite frankly at this point I think the whole affair is just getting a bit silly.
Let me review: we start with a star, which I can't imagine how big that is, then we have a galaxy with hundreds of billions of stars, I can't really understand a billion and I can't understand the size of a star so now it is clear I have no chance of understanding how big a galaxy is. My head is starting to hurt. Add on top of that the 500 billion galaxies, of which I don't understand a billion, I don't understand the size of a galaxy, which is full of billions of stars which I can't understand how large they are.
All of these concepts are way into the abstract, but awe inspiring.
-Nick
Monday, February 18, 2008
the universe
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2 comments:
So, our galaxy has 1 star, right? Our sun? So, are we on the small side of what most galaxies are? Do many galaxies really have billions of stars in each one?
People who believe in extra terestrial life are often scorned...but I think with so much space and potential and diversity...wouldn't it be a waste to not have life anywhere else?
I would think with your logic, it would be statistically improbable that there isn't life somewhere else.
Out solar system only has one star, the sun. Our galaxy is the Milky Way and has around 200 billion stars.
I love the SETI projects, it seems like there would be intelligent life out there. I don't think there has been any compelling proof that we have made contact.
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