Does the size of the universe help?

[Noonling]

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.   

Does it help?

[buttgammon]

It's a pale blue dot - we won't have any of your leftie crap and kindness and compassion here.

[idunnosomename]

No because are fucking destroying the thin sliver of chemistry that clings to the surface of this rock that keeps us alive

[Sin Agog]

The universe only has a finite amount of heat energy, and what with all the expanding its been doing, we're now expected to share our heat with them newcomers who did nothing to earn it.  Not having it.  Everything was so much better when the universe was the size of a pin prick.  No one was asking for hand-outs back then.

[greenman]

Brian Cox knew he was lying even at the time due to the the second law of thermodynamics.

[Blue Jam]

https://youtu.be/0fKBhvDjuy0

Brrrrrr.

[Ray Travez]

obvious things you've only just realised- that's almost certainly where Douglas Adams got the idea for the Total Perspective Vortex.

[Blue Jam]

RONALADO survive Total Perspective Vortex.

Powers Of Ten has been lovingly ripped off quite a lot. I like Cyriak's take the best:

https://youtu.be/5AeJqyECyiw

[Mister Six]

Ha! I love that.

[Dex Sawash]

[Ambient Sheep]

obvious things you've only just realised- that's almost certainly where Douglas Adams got the idea for the Total Perspective Vortex.

I'm afraid not.  The Total Perspective Vortex first appeared in January 1980, predating "Pale Blue Dot" by ten years...


EDIT: Oh you probably meant Powers of Ten.  Yeah, maybe.

[Ray Travez]

The film that was posted was 'Powers of ten,' from 1977, predating the Total Perspective Vortex by three years ;)

[Ambient Sheep]

The film that was posted was 'Powers of ten,' from 1977, predating the Total Perspective Vortex by three years ;)

Crossed in the post.  Yeah, I posted first and then clicked the link later... until then I thought you were talking about the OP rather than the preceding YouTube link.

However now I'm really confused, as I thought I was shown Powers of Ten at junior school... which I left in July 1976, so no.

I remember seeing demonstrations of the vastness of space before that though... stuff like if this beachball is the Sun, and this marble a foot away is the Earth, then Jupiter is five feet away, Pluto is 40 feet away, and the nearest star is 50 miles away...

But admittedly Powers of Ten does it far more effectively.  It may well have been the inspiration, or part of it, but not necessarily exclusively.

[Sony Walkman Prophecies]

This is why I don't believe reality is a simulation: the universe is massively overdetermined. There's too much of it that's surplus to requirements.

Unless that's what they want us to think. Ahhh.

[Ambient Sheep]

They only have to render the bits we're looking at at any one time.

Which interestingly ties in quite well with some interpretations of quantum theory.

[H-O-W-L]

No, it doesn't, because it means that in all that infinite space there is absolutely nothing out there that has managed to surpass us, meaning the only way further is down. If you believe in infinity then you have to acknowledge that the infinite possibilities of time differences, evolutionary scale, everything -- fucking everything -- means that there has to logically be a species that has surpassed us in technological and transit advancement, and none of them have managed to make a single fucking dent in our known solar system or what we can observe beyond it. We are fucked.

[QDRPHNC]

You ever have one of those dreams that happen briefly right before you wake up? And they feel more real for how brief and intense they are. Had one of those a number of months ago that for a few seconds I was far away from our universe, looking at it from the outside.

It moved like a blob of water in an astronaut demonstration, but much slower. The surface was all grey and mottled, like veiny old skin.

Then much later I was reading about hyperspace and "the bulk" and came across an illustration of what looking at our universe in the bulk might look like, and it was almost identical, except the artist had made it colourful. Freaked me right out.

[Voltan (Man of Steel)]

When the Creator was designing the universe He apparently went for the same colour my mother used for our hall, stairs and landing back in the 70s (but she called it magnolia).

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091101.html

[gib]

Wait a sec, I thought we'd established that Springfield was in Washington state or nearby?

[Twit 2]

The universal view melts things into a blur.

I draw the curtains, and I wait. Actually, I am not waiting for
anything, I am merely making myself absent. Scoured, if only for
a few minutes, of the impurities which dim and clog the mind, I
accede to a state of consciousness from which the self is
evacuated, and I am as soothed as if I were resting outside the
universe.

[DistressedArea]

Earth viewed from an orbit around Saturn.

[Replies From View]

There's a point where they look like CGI to me.  Couldn't you add some film grain to it?

[Blumf]

There's a point where they look like CGI to me.  Couldn't you add some film grain to it?

All space probes are fitted with teal and orange filters. Probes from the 90s also use field-removed video.

[touchingcloth]

I fucking love the Pale Blue Dot pic & quotation. Always meant to get it printed out and hung somewhere, maybe I'll do that now. If I can be arsed, which I think is what Sagan was saying: life's short; squander it.

[Cerys]

I still live in hope of finding the locust mosaic sequence I remember seeing when I was a kid.

[Ambient Sheep]

EDIT: Arrrggghhh, didn't realise this was an old thread that had been bumped.  Apologies, especially to Blue Jam, for the semi-redundantness of the below.

I still live in hope of finding the locust mosaic sequence I remember seeing when I was a kid.

I'm not quite sure if I've understood you correctly, but do you perchance mean Cosmic Zoom (1968), which features a mosquito?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgfwCrKe_Fk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Zoom


See also the mosquito-less Powers of Ten (1968 prototype)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f5x_dRKIF4

and Powers of Ten (1977 final version)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Ten_(film)


All inspired by the 1957 book Cosmic View.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_View


If not, then sorry for wasting all our times. :-)

[Ambient Sheep]

By the way, my previous post explains this:

However now I'm really confused, as I thought I was shown Powers of Ten at junior school... which I left in July 1976, so no.

Because it was Cosmic Zoom that I was shown at junior school.


<sub><sup>(After being confused in this thread about it last December, I spent ages trying to work out what it was I'd been shown as a kid.  I found the older version of Powers of Ten and thought "Nope, not that", and THEN I found Cosmic Zoom, and went "A-ha!".  Like (maybe) Cerys did, I too remembered the mosquito on the boy's hand.

I then, inexplicably, didn't come back to the thread to say so.  Until now.)</sup></sub>

[Ambient Sheep]

In case anyone wonders, the Comet Neowise posts are now over here:

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,81434.0.html

:-)

[Alberon]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyGpoI1Gb2A

[Cerys]

I'm not quite sure if I've understood you correctly, but do you perchance mean Cosmic Zoom (1968), which features a mosquito?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgfwCrKe_Fk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Zoom

I have a quandary now.  The piece I remember involved moving further and further out, with the focal point becoming increasingly larger, until the view ended up being contained in the eye of a locust in a Romanesque mosaic that also depicted human figures.  The memory of this was an iconic moment of my very early childhood - I can't have been older than about four.  Looking at that part with the mosquito, I can see how my mind could easily have interpreted skin cells as mosaic tiles, and so the rational adult Cerys wants to give you a massive hug for solving the mystery.  And yet - and yet the concept of the Universe being contained in the eye of a mosaic locust is such an integral part of my psyche that finding it to be a trick of memory is heartwrenchingly disappointing.