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that's a lot of stars

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  • rogue06
    replied
    Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
    I'm a couple years too young to remember the first moon landing, but i do recall my grandmother making me watch one of the later Apollo splashdowns. She had been born in 1896, before there were really any cars around to speak of, so it was a very similar thing for her.
    That was about when my grandmother was born.

    Leave a comment:


  • TheLurch
    replied
    Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
    My grandmother remembered hearing the news about the Wright bother's successful flight at Kitty Hawk. She was sitting besides me on the couch when Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon.

    It never ceases to amaze me that we went from achieving powered flight to landing on the moon in the space of just one life time.
    I'm a couple years too young to remember the first moon landing, but i do recall my grandmother making me watch one of the later Apollo splashdowns. She had been born in 1896, before there were really any cars around to speak of, so it was a very similar thing for her.

    Leave a comment:


  • Sparko
    replied
    What if we are the only ones in the universe and God created all those other worlds for us to explore and expand to since we will live forever?

    Leave a comment:


  • rogue06
    replied
    Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post

    I need to update my "in my lifetime I have witnessed..." chart.
    My grandmother remembered hearing the news about the Wright bother's successful flight at Kitty Hawk. She was sitting besides me on the couch when Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon.

    It never ceases to amaze me that we went from achieving powered flight to landing on the moon in the space of just one life time.

    Leave a comment:


  • Cow Poke
    replied
    Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
    With political and economic upheaval, a pandemic, and more making it seems like we're living through an unfortunate period in history, it's worth while stepping back nod and again and appreciating that we're also living in an amazing one. 30 years ago, the existence of a planet outside of our solar system was a theoretical abstraction. Now we have cataloged thousands of them. Same for the Higgs boson, gravitational waves, stem cells, gene editing, the genomes of humanity's closest extinct relatives, and more.

    I feel very lucky to have been here to see it all.
    I need to update my "in my lifetime I have witnessed..." chart.

    Leave a comment:


  • TheLurch
    replied
    Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
    add to that the realization that over the last 20 years it seems at least half the stars we look at closely have planets*.
    With political and economic upheaval, a pandemic, and more making it seems like we're living through an unfortunate period in history, it's worth while stepping back now and again and appreciating that we're also living in an amazing one. 30 years ago, the existence of a planet outside of our solar system was a theoretical abstraction. Now we have cataloged thousands of them. Same for the Higgs boson, gravitational waves, stem cells, gene editing, the genomes of humanity's closest extinct relatives, and more.

    I feel very lucky to have been here to see it all.
    Last edited by TheLurch; 10-01-2021, 10:03 AM.

    Leave a comment:


  • Cow Poke
    replied
    Welcome back, sir.

    I am so glad to be living "out in the country" away from city light pollution. And I still like to lay on my back on the picnic table and just stare up at the sky.

    As your eyes get used to the dark, the stars begin to emerge. It truly is spectacular, and "the stars at night are big and bright - deep in the heart of Texas".

    Leave a comment:


  • oxmixmudd
    started a topic that's a lot of stars

    that's a lot of stars

    I saw this today on Astronomy Picture of the Day and I remembered a particularly poignant moment out with my 10" telescope under a very dark sky scanning across the Milky Way. The number of stars visible in the scope was sorta like this picture - so, so many. Each little point of light a star. Some bigger, some smaller than our sun (actually, at that distance, most are bigger). And then to add to that the realization that over the last 20 years it seems at least half the stars we look at closely have planets*. And keeping in mind, the planets we can detect still tend to be big ones, not little rocky ones like our earth. So think in terms of some non-trivial fraction of these little tiny dots in this image has multiple planets orbiting it. All of these are places. Places that could be visited. Places with days, and suns that rise and set (well, if they are not tidally locked anyway). Mountains, valleys. Some of them have water on them, some of them are in the habitable zones for their stars with seas and atmospheres of one kind or another.

    Who knows how many are habitable, but all of them are places as diverse as the places that exist in our own solar system and that we have only just begun to visit and to understand.


    It is just amazing, and rather humbling. And it makes the idea that we are the only life God has created in this entire universe seem more than a bit silly. Especially understanding that the processes that formed this planet, our solar system, our sun, they have all happened trillions of times across this universe - across billions of years. The light of millions of stars captured in this one photo alone. In this photo we see that beginnings and the endings of those same processes. Great gas clouds waiting to be triggered into collapse, others right at the time the light left them forming stars and planets, and other - red giants - near the end of their life times, Some stars nearing their explosive ends getting ready to send new elements out into the void to make future planets and stars, or SN remnants or maybe even some white dwarfs. All in this one picture of one very, very small corner of a galaxy that is one of billions even trillions visible across our universe (with the appropriately sized telescope of course). More galaxies than stars countable in this image, almost all the visible ones with orders of magnitude more stars in them than are countable in this image.


    M8-Pipe_APOD_GabrielSantosSmall.jpg

    *if you do a search in 'number of stars with planets' you'll see many articles on the topic. Different estimates depending on the kind of planet you are asking about. But a conservative estimate for just having at least one planet is 50%, with the reality being that it is probably rarer for a star not to have planets than for it to have them.
    Last edited by oxmixmudd; 10-01-2021, 09:46 AM.

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