The Power of Perspective

One Perspective

Two Perspectives

A group of scientists approached God with the
declaration that He was no longer needed in
the process of human creation since they had
recently uncovered His secret code to life.
He graciously accepted the pronouncement,
but He requested that they demonstrate
to Him their new found technology, first.
Then, just as the lead scientist bent down
to pick up some dirt for the demonstration,
God said, 'Oh no! Get your own dirt!

Multiple Perspectives

Slowly scroll back and forth all
the way down for better perspective.

Antares is the 15th brightest star in the sky. And
there's 400 billion stars (suns) in just our Milky Way galaxy alone.
And our galaxy is just one of several thousand billions of galaxies,
so far as we have been able to determine, as of the present time.

These are just some of OUR neighboring galaxies.
Courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope.

And these are just some of THEIR neighboring galaxies.
Courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope.

This is a photo of space representing 40 light years across.

The Universe is by definition everything that physically exists in space and time. It originated in the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. The radius of the Universe is at least 78 billion light years. That is the distance to the point from which a photon of light originated which is now reaching us after traveling for 13.7 billion years (see Universe Measured). However the Universe could be far larger. There is no limit to the speed at which space itself may expand, so the Universe may stretch far beyond the Hubble horizon expanding away from us faster than the speed of light. It is also conjectured that our Universe may be only one of 10500 (that's right, 10 followed by 500 zeroes) other universes which may have totally different laws of nature and which are collectively called a multiverse.

"So between black and white, there is a whole range of colors,
between thunder and silence, the whole scale of tones, and
between something and nothing, between a smashing fist on
on the face, and trying to touch air, there are all the textures
of feeling; burning, throbbing, pushing, hugging, fondling,
tickling, kissing, brushing, and light wind on the skin.

Your world is all these elements of light and sound;
of tastes, smell and touch, woven together in many
dimensions on the fabulous loom of your brain. Your
brain ... the most complicated thing in the world, which
you, YOURSELF GREW, without even thinking about it."
Alan Watts

And lest we lose our focus, and forget our real place in the
Cosmos, let's fixate on these few interesting tidbits of data.

There are many more stars than
all the grains of sand on Earth.

A grain of sand held at arms length covers a
unit of outer space containing 2000 galaxies.

If the Earth were scaled to the size of a marble,
the nearest star would be a distance of 270 miles.

Barnard's Galaxy is one of Milky Way Galaxy's
closest neighbors. It contains about 10 million stars.
Our Milky Way Galaxy contains about 400 billion stars.

What's your perspective, now?

More perspectives is next.