I'm Feeling Really Small Today, And I Still Don't See God.

[Solitary]

    http://interestingengineering.com/25-images-that-will-change-your-perspective-on-your-existence/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+interestingengineering%2FrCTa+%28Interesting+Engineering%29

[stromboli]

Cool, Sol. Thanks.

[Green Bottle]

Excellent stuff Solitary, fkn amazing pics..............

[GrinningYMIR]

Excellent Excellent, thanks Solitary

[ApostateLois]

I especially like Earth with rings.

[doorknob]

me too^^

[SGOS]

The most dumbfounding one for me was Picture #21.  I would have thought we could see much more of our galaxy than that, at least some of the really huge stars on the other side of the galaxy.  Nope, not even close.  So if we can't see that far, how come we can actually see that band of stars we call the milky way?  Isn't that because we are looking toward the edge of the galaxy?  What the graphic shows is that the Earth just happens to be located close to a swirling arm of the galaxy, so close that we are actually part of the swirling arm. 

That faint band of stars called the milky way is just a teensy part of a great swirly arm inside the galaxy.  If we were between the more inner swirling arm and the one we actually see, we couldn't see either one, and that band in the sky we call the Milky Way would be beyond our vision.  I'm guessing if we were closer to the center of the galaxy, say midway between the two arms, where the galaxy is much less dense, we would only see 5% of the stars that we now see with our naked eye.

This doesn't make me feel any smaller, but it sure makes me realize how far away everything in the sky is.

I find that mind boggling, just absolutely mind boggling.