How small are we?
 

This is fairly old, but I came across it again recently and decided to post it.

That... pretty much blew my mind. I'm not even being sarcastic here; while reading that, my jaw verrry slowly dropped.

Its so strange to think that no matter how vain, uppity and self-important humans are, in the grand scheme of things, we're smaller than the smallest electron of the smallest atom of the smallest speck of dust..... far less than a quadrillionth of a pixel in a picture of a tiny, tiny part of the universe.

Humanity is so insignificant...

oh good lord that is so depressing.

and yet we still feel like a ant sometimes, imagine how they feel in this scheme of things

I love seeing this kind of thing, it blew my mind so much when I first realised how insignificant we are that I decided to do Physics at university so I could find out more. Odd reason, but yes.

on the bright side, while we may be tiny compared to all those stars; their size means they'll burn out really quickly, whereas our sun will last for another 5 billion years. So while humans are insignificant, we have staying power. kind of like ants, you squash a few dozen, there are still thousands more crawling around.

Usually when I'm feeling down it's this stuff that I'm thinking of all the time. Then I have some beer. None of those stars have beer, so they can just suck it. This is where it's at.

WOW! That's so exciting :D

Thanks for sharing.

:shocked: that is really amazing and interesting, i love things like that. Geez we are small!

How is it possible that we're the only thing out there? In that size - it's mind-blowing.

It just puts things in perspective a little.

But Jo, we're not.

That's awesome!!!!

Like... I mean even on earth stuff like that can happen... the entire mass of europe would fit inside Australia... it's fascinating!

Well, I'd like to think we weren't.
It's just, when you see that, how can people argue that we are?

Uranus *snicker*

Seriously though...
This reinforces my belief in aliens (:

That's insane

There's potentially 10,000,000,000,000,000 planets in that little bit o.o

where:
N is the number of cvilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible; and
R* is the average rate of star formation in our galaxy
fp is the fraction of those stars that have planetsne is the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets
fℓ is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point
fi is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life
fc is the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
L is the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

The total number of stars in the milky way is around 400 billion.
The fraction of stars that have stars that have planets is lossely estimated to be a quarter.
Therefore, the number of planetary systems is around 100 billion.
If each system has 10 planets, that makes 1 trillion planets.
If around 1/5 of those can support life, that makes 200 billion planets capable of supporting life.
Of course no one knows as we have nothing to compare but if you take the fraction of those planets on which life does arrise as a half, that makes 100 billion planets with some form of life at some point in the planet's life.
The reat gets more difficult.
If you take fi andfc to each be a tenth, that makes 1 billion planets on which civilizations have orizon at least once.

However, if you were gaining hope that that seems a large number, there's one other factor. Consider that in the lifetime of our star, we have only had advanced civilization for a few decades. Also with advanced technology comes the idea that we could all destroy each other tomorrow. Taking earth as an example, as a proportion of the life of a planet, the window of time where civilizations might actually arise is probably only of the order of 1/100million. Therefore, the number of planets with civilized life that we may communicate with at any moment is around 10.

Ten planets in a galaxy the size of the milky wayis s near as make no difference, nothing.

However, you could also take the view that some civilizations might learn to live with advanced technology without destroying themselves and continue to co-exist and evolve for a time comparable to that of a planet. If instead of 1/100million, if 1% of civilizations do this, the equation then becomes of the order of millions.

The sky could very well be humming with messages sent out by civilizations much older and wiser than ourselves.


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M&feature=related"]YouTube - Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot[/ame]

The pale blue dot in question was from a photo taken by Voyager 1 after it had completed it's mission was going to leave radio contact just past Saturn. It turned round to take one last picture of Earth and the astronomers were startled at first because they couldn't find it. Then they looked a bit closer and where Earth should have been was a tiny blue pixel.

wow that just blows your mind

I love this stuff, it's great. I think its really good that people realise just how small we are.

And the Hubble view is amazing, I love stuff like that. Which is why I'm doing a bit of studying in cosmology. Its brill.

Loz

It took several attempts but I understand everything you said :cool:

Gravity..is the key to it all...if there was no gravity...and we grew up in a planet of no gravity we probly be shorter then how we are in gravity...

in some way gravity allows our body to produce oxygen and carbon dixoid and with those we survie when we breath in and out we are taking in Oyxgen and when we exhale we are releasing the carbon...and if our bodies didnt release the carbon...we probly wouldnt surive...long..

and earth is probly the only planet so far that is known to allow our species...and no one knows if there is another planet somewhere that has our species and if there is ...there is no answer to how to get there safely

that is the most bloody awesome thing I have ever seen!!

My boyfriend tells me on a regular basis how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things, but it makes so much more sense to see it.

Totally mind boggling, amazing, jaw dropping stuff!