Hubble Ultra Deep Field – a sense of proportion

As Douglas Adams put, humans really can’t deal with having a sense of proportion.  We aren’t capable.  But we can stretch for it…

(I can touch my toes, but I can’t bend further over… but I should try to)

Take 5 minutes and read this fantastic piece on an image from Hubble Ultra Deep Field.  It’s a great reminder of what we know about space and a few tools to help you start to realize that you can’t ever come close to grasping a true sense of proportion.

In many ways, I find this liberating and beautiful.  We are an infinitesimal part of something much, much bigger. Now, with pictures…

Here’s a way of looking at it: there are enough stars in the universe that if everybody on Earth were charged with naming his or her share, we’d each get to name a trillion and a half of them. Even that number is still impossibly hard to comprehend – if you named a star every time your heart beat for your whole life, you’d have to live about 375 lifetimes to name your share.

…

What the Ultra Deep Field image ultimately offers is a singular glimpse at ourselves. Like Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, it resets our understanding of who and what we are.