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.
3 Responses to “Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3-D”
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Ya really think about that and it’s enough to make your head explode. Imagine trying to catalog all the aircraft designs in THAT mess.
Imagine just trying to catalog all the spacefaring *civilizations* in that mess. Even if we were magically gifted with starships that would reliably jump from here to there in the blink of an eye… it would take mankind billions of years to do a decent basic catalog. By which point a second edition would be in order.
>Deep Field views are by far more important and meaningful images than any bit of religious imagery
Amen (ahem). Or to cite Scripture:
“And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also.”
Idiots.
Are you familiar with James Blish’s novel “A Case of Conscience,” in which a Jesuit priest is troubled by the discovery of a species without original sin (whose existence challenges religious orthodoxy)? My contrarian imagination envisions a satiric novel whose aliens’ “holy books” are marked by creation stories which all relate (in poetic and allegorical terms) details IN ACCORD WITH science. This satire would of course be lost on those against whom it would be directed (who of course would never read it…).