Mitch Cronin Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/1996/01/images/a/formats/800_wallpaper.jpg Fantastic! It's the furthest/deepest it's ever looked... an 11 and 1/2 day exposure that looks "back" about 13 billion years, to a time very soon after the big bang! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest thesheet Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 I have a problem when they say "looking to a time very soon after the big bang...." I figure it can't be this way. 1) Didn't we come from that "point in space?" so how could we be looking back 13 billion years to a point that we came from? 2) I understand that the astronomers equate distance away (or time) by measuring the red shift of an object. Greater red shift= greater distance away. but to say it the image is from the time of the big bang is strange. Perhaps they are looking at objects on the other side of the expanding bubble? Therefore the "big bang" could've occurred at some point between that object and us... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitch Cronin Posted March 10, 2004 Author Share Posted March 10, 2004 If that didn't give you a headache thinking of it, try this on for size... "the "big bang" could've occurred at some point between that object and us...," Where is any point, in the middle of nothing? Where was "us" then? :S:S I know what you're saying.... so they reckon the big bang took place just over 13 billion years ago... and they reckon what that image looks at took about 13 billion years for the light to travel this far.... yikes! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Hudson Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Quick example: The light seen by Hubble is "old" light. It left its origins 13 billion years ago. What we gaze at today, left its source that long ago and its all the information (in terms of light) we have. So, we're looking back in time in the sense that that's the way it was 13 billion years ago when the light we're seeing today left its source. What we see today are "reports" (of light) sent 13 billion years ago). Our "point in space" is 13 billion light-years away from the other "point in space", if you will. (That's 13 billion years X 186 million miles per second. Care to calculate the distance?) "Time" is not "one second" or one minute...those are local conventions based upon the perceived rotation of the earth. Even though my passengers may , I have absolutely no idea what time is but its not "clocks". Hawking is good on this as are some of the Relativity for Dummies books, (the title is misleading). Hope this helps. The most profound sensation one may have is looking at a photograph of our solar system from its edge, taken by "Pioneer" or some other craft. There the earth was...a tiny blue dot among a billion other dots. And there was no sign of a seniority list or an RJ anywhere in the photograph... (6) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Hudson Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Quick example: The light seen by Hubble is "old" light. It left its origins 13 billion years ago. What we gaze at today, left its source that long ago and its all the information (in terms of light) we have. So, we're looking back in time in the sense that that's the way it was 13 billion years ago. We can't see what hasn't "arrived". What we see today are "reports" (of light) first sent 13 billion years ago. Our "point in space" is 13 billion light-years away from the other "point in space", if you will. And all other points as well. (That's 13 billion years X 186 million miles per second. Anyone care to calculate the distance?) "Time" is not "one second" or one minute...those are local conventions based upon the perceived rotation of the earth combined with some mechanical/electronic devices created "locally". The terms "accuracy" or "precise" applied to atomic cezium clocks for example are quite meaningless when discussing what time really is. Time counts the "in-between". Even though my passengers may , I have absolutely no idea what time is but its not "clocks". Time could be "1", for all we know. Hawking is good on this as are some of the Relativity for Dummies books, (the title is misleading). Hope this helps. The most profound sensation one may have is looking at a photograph of our solar system from its edge, taken by "Pioneer" or some other craft. There the earth was...a tiny blue dot among a billion other dots. And there was no sign of a seniority list, a -500 or an RJ anywhere in the photograph... (6) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitch Cronin Posted March 10, 2004 Author Share Posted March 10, 2004 "(That's 13 billion years X 186 million miles per second. Anyone care to calculate the distance?)" Sure, 13 billion light years. "The most profound sensation one may have is looking at a photograph of our solar system from its edge, taken by "Pioneer" or some other craft. There the earth was...a tiny blue dot among a billion other dots." Don, I don't know what kind of youth you might have had, but some of us, from perhaps a somewhat loose generation, (or maybe just those of us who'se parents had abandoned us?)may have experienced something almost exactly that... I remember sitting on the top of a mountain on Saltspring Island, under the influence of some of Timothy Leary's favorite substance, looking down at the teeny little ferry boats... (I worked for the BC ferries at the time)... another galaxy away... it felt just like that. On space and time: One of my favorite quotes..."Sully, for shame!" Jonathan said in reproach, "and don't be foolish! What are we trying to practise every day? If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?" ...from Ricard Bach's "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" of course. Cheers, Mitch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Starman Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 It is quite a snapshot. You can actually see red shifted and blue shifted galaxies in the distance. One way to visualize what we are looking at is to draw a point on a piece of paper. This represents the original singularity of the big bang which included all matter including ourselves. Then draw a bunch of dots equal distance from the centre dot. This represents galaxies at the same space-time from the big bang. Now imagine looking out from our home toward these other galaxies. Draw a line representing our visual perseption of these galaxies. At each point the line must drop down below our time position toward the big bang. If you connect the dots you'll see that the curved line of perceived objects describes half of a circumference of the entire circle and for any direction this line must end at the big bang. If you then draw a straight line from the big bang point to our home point, you'll see that the apparent curved time line is much longer than the straight line from the origin. ie: if you draw the big bang as a dot in the middle of the page and the universe in our time as a ring around it, the apparent distance to the big bang is 1/2 pi R where R is the straight line distance from the dot to the ring. By visualizing things in this way, you'll also see that most of the universe is beyond an event horizon and we cannot obtain any information about it, at least not if we are restricted to 4 dimensional space. Or put another way by the elegant observations of popular music: She Bangs, She Bangs - Nothing From Nothing Leaves Nothing - All We Are is Dust In The Wind ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
inchman Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 One of the best "stats" I've ever heard is "There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on the Earth". When you see pictures like this with hundreds of galaxies that can't even be seen from the earth, in one small section of space , many with more stars than our own, whose own stars are so plentiful in areas that they are simply a cloudy whitish strip we call "Milky", it makes that statement really come true. Changes one's whole perspective when making a sand castle with the kids. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Par88 Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Ah dude......I thought my brain hurt from the MT mediation, now it just gone-n-blowed up!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitch Cronin Posted March 10, 2004 Author Share Posted March 10, 2004 It is somewhat mind boggling isn't it.. This image, for instance, including all those galaxies you see, is of a piece of the sky that you could see through the eye of a needle held at arms length! And some of think we might be alone in the universe??! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Innuendo Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Those distances and times are almost beyond comprehension, (they are for me), then consider the relative distances between the particles that make up an atom. Will we ever know how all this was created? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Starman Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 That's the great thing about that most profound question; no matter what the truth of it is, it is mindblowing in its importance... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Hudson Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Starman; Wonderful post. KCTS just finished a program in a series on quantum physics and began a discussion on string theory. It was a bit pedantic (and animated some strings which misleads, because "string" is about "relationship", not "thing"), but the fact that the program exists and is broadcast at all is delightfully encouraging. There is as much poetry in this as there is pure science. In fact, I just said to my youngest, that unless one is part poet/artist, part scientist, one can't see the whole. Lovely topic. One with real roots. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Hudson Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Mitch; Regarding your experience and our peculiar locus in time... The bits of matter (molecules) which make up our brains, (mind is another matter... ), are made of star stuff. When we "look" at the universe, we look at ourselves. Our primordial connections with the images from Hubble is profound and ordinary, all at once. But we busy ourselves with such life-long distraction that we fail to notice, and it is only in later life when solitude is so precious that we begin to truly "see". Einstein is viewed as more "positivist" than quantum theory now accepts. That was his fundamental disagreement with Bohr in Copenhagen but Hiesenberg (Uncertainty Principle) and Bohr (God does play dice) have given us new understandings. All were poets as well as observers. But...for all, none of this matters except the connections, however received. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitch Cronin Posted March 10, 2004 Author Share Posted March 10, 2004 Oi.... I started out drawing, as you suggested, looking again and again at what you'd written... and lost myself somewhere in the process.... Then I read again that last line... From another song: "I know I'm gonna die someday, but that's ok, 'cause it don't matter anyway" ...perspective changes everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Starman Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Yes I agree. And I wonder if the limits of physics today are more limitations of the mind than of experimental prediction. We try to create accurate theories to predict the behavior of our universe, but it is only the PERCEIVED behaviour which is being predicted. The future may bring new perceptions that increase the scope of our model of reality and give us greater understanding of the foundations of physics. In the search for a "Grand Unified Theory" the greatest breakthroughs may come from a re-unification of art, science, philosophy, and even religion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitch Cronin Posted March 10, 2004 Author Share Posted March 10, 2004 Nice thoughts... I don't think one who looks in that depth can help but be a poet... "profound and ordinary, all at once" ...Right on. And that's at least a part of what makes life so damned fascinating! All of this... all of those hundreds of galaxies you might see in an area the size of the head of a pin.... how insignificant our lives are... and yet, how untrue that can seem at times. Have you ever stood on the back of a ship plowing through the ocean at night, looking backward at the churned up phosphorescence?... What am I saying?... you fly for god sakes! .... We're less than grains of sand... and so much more! Sorry Don.... I don't mean to get ...uncomfortable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest HPT-TOUR Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Now that was funny............maybe you are starting to think like a Jazz pilot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitch Cronin Posted March 10, 2004 Author Share Posted March 10, 2004 Jazz pilot??? Man do you think you guys are the only ones tired of all that sh!t? Geez, that's exactly what I meant when I posted that silly bit about the airplane with all the mixed parts... but not a damn soul among you appreciated that.... sigh... the troubles with being a deep thinker before your time... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Hudson Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 HPT-TOUR; Re "............maybe you are starting to think like a Jazz pilot. " Or any other human being who quite naturally is just focussed inward. Gazing out and gazing in. Our choice in the micro-nanosecond we have. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest eights wild Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 We used to think the sun revolved around the earth, and that the earth was flat. Both perfectly understandable, till you get educated.. I think our perspective is off again, and the answers to the galactic questions will be simple Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Hudson Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Yes... The parcelling of human thought into areas called science, religion, etc is a peculiar and very human activity and likely has little to do with what's really going on. We could say that the notion of time and even "dimension" (as in three) is a unique "product" of a perceptual system which has evolved over 3 billion years and is only one variation in the Vast perceptual variations possible. So I would agree with your comment re the "limitations of the mind". The true magic behind the Hubble image is the stark relief provided, against which such activities may be seen, and again they are wonderfully connected yet absolutely foreign, all at once. The difference is in the "meaning-making" behaviours. Martin Heidegger has a lot to say here, about language, time, being, and meaning, all of which can be seen as uniquely human constructs of pattern-making, and more. I think that re-unification is entirely do-able, but not because the universe was ever not unified! So in that sense, re-unification is just "catching up" to what "is". :> (English is one of the few languages to have a word which expresses "be", and "is". Other languages assume, but do not confront the notion directly.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DEFCON Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 If one wasn't able to carry the experience of his mortal existence forward; could one have existed at all? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Par88 Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 Probability suggests that we couldn't possibly be alone......at least one of those grains of sand contains water. I remember a physics teacher once explaining that the spaces between molocules were so huge that if you combined all known mass (molocules without spaces) the universe as we know it would equal about the size of a walnut. Imagine how life on "our" molocules perceives the universe they look out into? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Skirt Posted March 10, 2004 Share Posted March 10, 2004 If you look real close, you can see Keith Richards' face... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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