OK, point your web browser to Youtube HERE. Click to view it in HD. Hit pause, wait for it to load up, then sit back and watch. It’s frakkin’ *awesome.* In short, someone took the Ultra Deep Field image taken by the Hubble and applied the redshift values to each of the thousands of galaxies shown in the image, then animated a flight amongst ’em.
Hubble Deep Field shots have shown three things:
1) The glories of the natural world
2) The wonders of the scientific method
3) That mankind can by a damned impressive species at times. As the video said, we built and incredibly powerful and expensive telescope, and used it for ten very costly days to stare at *nothing,* simply because we were curious. And as a result of that, our view of the universe was made far more grand than it was before.
Go here to download ridiculously high-rez versions of the Ultra Deep Field.
The Deep Field views are by far more important and meaningful images than any bit of religious imagery you’d care to name. No painting, no sculpture, no poem, parable, icon or stained glass window can come close to matching the awe and majesty of a photograph of a blank spot in the night sky that reveals that the universe is full to overflowing with more galaxies than can be realistically counted or even reliably computed. When you consider that each galaxy probably averages a hundred billion stars, and trillions of planets, the likelihood of intelligent species out there goes from “high” to”What are you, kidding?” And even if we never meet them – and with distances involved measured in dozens of billions of lightyears, it’s a reasonably safe assumption that mankind will likely not get everywhere in the universe – just the knowledge that out there are more worlds than we can ever visit, should fill intelligent people with a sense of wonder and the thrill of adventure.
