Here's a little wake up call to help keep everything in perspective.

[Tyler Durden]

http://pr.caltech.edu/media/Press-Releases/PR12492.html

I geek out on this stuff, so I'll spare everyone the gory details.

The farthest object in the universe yet sighted has been located at 13 billion light years away. This puts the light coming from it starting out about 750 million years after the "bang" as we currently figure it, which is once again open to debate.

It's a galaxy, behind the Abell 2218 cluster, sighted by Hubble. The "lensing" of space caused by the gravity of Abell 2218 makes it visible to Hubbel; it looks like a faint hot dog because the image has been stretched.

13 billion light years is 74,373,811,200,000,000,000,000 miles (that's roughly 74.3 Sextillion miles). The Solar System wasn't even an accretion disk when light left this galaxy for here. The Sun had about 5 billion years before it would light off, and Earth wouldn't even be a hot ball of liquid rock for 6-8 billion years.

So when we start taking ourselves a little too seriously, maybe some perspective is in order. Not that I don't want to see Bush/Cheney et al in Leavenworth, but hey, maybe we should all spend a little more of our very short time with the wife, kids and the dogs, right?

[Jacobin]

1. This is all wrong.

The earth is only 6,465 years old. I know that's true because AWOL's favorite preacher on tv told me so.

Stop spreading all those liberal rumours. Before you know it, with thinking like that, people will be having pre-marital sex and stuff.

Thank you and god bless

[Gadave]

3. Next he is going to say we came from monkies

Let's string em up.

[Tyler Durden]

5. No, Bubblegum Rock came from the "Monkees"

You spelled it wrong.

[Gadave]

6. No matter

Lets get to stringin'

[Tyler Durden]

4. "raspberry noise"

Yeah I heard they got that number from counting the "generations after Adam" in the Old Testament.

I used to live next to a guy who said God put fossils in the ground to test our "FAITH."

I got to go with Bill Hicks: the idea of a Supreme Being who gets off on practical jokes is very disturbing.

[DarkPhenyx]

11. I like Robin Williams' when he said...

"Someone once said there is no Devil. It's just God when he's drunk. Well, if God drinks does he do drugs too? Look at a platypus. I think so."

[drdigi420]

14. if someone drinks, they do drugs

alcohol is a drug

drinkers are drug users

alcoholics are junkies

language is important

pretending that alcohol is not a drug is how the govt gets away with its incredible hypocrisy of outlawing safe drugs like pot while dangerous drugs like booze remain legal

[DarkPhenyx]

17. ooooooooooooooooooooo-k.

little off thread but thank you.

[tjwash]

22. If you REALLY want to PO a creationist....

...do a starting population of eight individuals,and a starting time of around 4360 years ago. That coincides with the time of the biblical flood. Now, creating a simple formula using today's population of around 6 billion, and figure in the starting population, and the starting time, we get an annual growth rate of about 0.0047. Doing the math, if we go back to the time that the Jews were expelled from Egypt, we get a world population of only 340 people. Also, by this logic, 2300 years ago were only about 10 people on Earth. That means there was the pharaoh, and 9 other people to build the pyramids!

[Tyler Durden]

23. LOVE it.

I love it when their eyes get glassy.

Welcome, in case no one else has said so yet.

[waylon]

2. I try but the wife and kids are too busy star gazing to pay me any mind!

The dogs still around though, somewhere!

[Gadave]

7. The further they look the farther they see

Anyone have the thought that maybe the Universe curves back in on itself and we are just looking back at us 14 billion years ago. (Well not exactly us, but say a galaxy that is closer to us in another direction).

[On the Road]

8. Thanks for Posting

I saw the pic at Scientific American yesterday:



That gravity lensing is amazing. It said the gravity of the intervening galaxy made it 25 times as big. I didn't know it could have that large an effect.

[Tyler Durden]

19. Gravity lensing is pretty neat.

Science Fiction writers have been riffing on it since the 50's.

I picture gravity lenses for telescopy, like set one up above the ecliptic and reach for the "Big Bang."

[SpaceCatMeetsMars]

9. They found a hot dog out in space?

Wow, that's weird.

[hang a left]

12. Let's hope they find some mustard too.

n/t

[DarkPhenyx]

13. They found a giant diamond t'other day.

I am begining to think this lends credance to the religion of the great traveler. The entirety of existance is the inside of a sack carried by giant. The starts are holes in the bag, all the dirt and water is bits of his provisions, and we are just mold growing on it. You don't pray to this god as you do not want to attract his attention on the chance he might clean out his pack bringing about the end of existance.

[Skittles]

10. I can't get that link to work

pls verify

[Cleita]

15. Spending time with the wife, the kids and the dog is meaningless

if you can't feed the dog, or get medical care for the wife and kids, or even a roof over their heads because you lost your job and have to take one that pays a third of the one that went to Asia.

[DarkPhenyx]

18. It isn't meaningless.

In fact, when life is going to hell, it can be one of the most important thing you do with your family.

[Tyler Durden]

20. Hey, GOD is just DOG spelled backwards.

And I'd rather spend an hour with my dogs than a millenium with God.

"If dogs don't go to Heaven, I want to go where they go." Will Rogers

[Wapsie B]

16. Exactly.

In the universal scheme of things, we're just dust in the wind.

[Jose Diablo]

25. Hey, Kansas said that too n/t

[Tyler Durden]

21. Link won't work and I can't edit anymore: try this.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/1997/25/

Pretty pictures and a little more laymanish article.

You need the last slash, I think, and it doesn't link.

[radfringe]

24. can we set a national goal

to be completed by oct 31,2004 that would send a ship to Abell 2218 cluster with bush* Inc on it?

:evilgrin:

[9215]

28. Mars would be good enough for me. Bush already said he wanted

to go. :)

[Maeve]

26. As Eric Idle and John Du Prez put it

<snip>
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.


http://www.wilken.freeserve.co.uk/Montypython/Songs/song18.htm

[9215]

27. If you had the technological capability

to observe and magnify the light coming from the earth and you were on a distant star thousands of light years away you could actually see events unfolding in our past as they happened.

That sure would solve alot of mysteries wouldn't it, hee, hee. :bounce: