[Peter]

Brain = constantly blown. I have got to stop studying physics or I'm not going to sleep for another decade.

http://lunarscience.nasa.gov/article...egrasse-tyson/

I don't get it. The heavier elements we are made of were created in very high mass stars that aren't around anymore. And this somehow makes you feel small?

You´re in luck. Space is expanding which means that the visible universe is getting smaller. So you'll be bigger compared to the visible universe. So every day you can feel a little less small.




This video started ok, but it ended really bad. I have no problem with emotions when you realize the size of the universe and all that's happening within it, but this video was intended to make you feel this way. It was made to promote Neil Degrasse Tyson.

[Perhaps]

What's... "sleep?"

I've always found the fact that we're both everything and nearly nothing vaguely comforting. It's also very zen. It removes all self-imposed sense of obligation and egotism. I like that I'm unimportant beyond my own very narrow field of perception.

[JackParrish]

I don't get it. The heavier elements we are made of were created in very high mass stars that aren't around anymore. And this somehow makes you feel small?

You´re in luck. Space is expanding which means that the visible universe is getting smaller. So you'll be bigger compared to the visible universe. So every day you can feel a little less small.


This video started ok, but it ended really bad. I have no problem with emotions when you realize the size of the universe and all that's happening within it, but this video was intended to make you feel this way. It was made to promote Neil Degrasse Tyson.

More of a factual statement. We are this tiny delicate life form floating on a small outpost planet in a small outpost solar system in an unimportant universe that may be one among many. The infiniteness of space makes my pretty damn small. I don't mind it at all. I don't need confirmation that I matter out to the far reaches of the cosmos. Not a bit. It's just that it's mind blowing. There are too many threads to trace, too many branches to take that are all interesting as hell when we think of the implications.

It is both inspiring and haunting.

[Peter]

That video is even worse than the first one. But alright, I agree that when you start to grasp the hugeness of the universe and all the things that are happening, and how it all works together, then that can get mind blowing.

Actually what's mind blowing is the awareness of it all, The first time you become (at least partially) aware of these things, it's mind blowing. It's the experience of the "ahah" moment that makes it mind blowing. (You can be sure that this is true because once you know, and there's no "ahah" moment anymore, the mind blowingness is gone too. And then you´re going to go after the next thing you want to figure out.)

[Mountainshepherd]

Why does it matter? All things are large or small depending on perspective.

An ant who comes to understand his insignificance in the face of the world of man should not stop being an ant simply for knowing something larger exists.

Something much smaller exists as well and in many ways that which is small and that which is large are but the same things playing themselves over and over again in scale.

Why does it matter? Importance itself is a narrow conceit that by scale of our universe is rendered meaningless.

[Abraxas]

The very fact that we are so small and insignificant in the greater design of nature is what gives our lives relative importance.

Were I so huge, so powerful, and so great that I moved every star in Heaven, I would scarcely give a thought to this Earth.

And how much beauty and magnificence would I thus come to miss that would exist right before my eyes?

Perhaps we can actually have it both ways. For today, we live in an age where I can walk outside and marvel at the machine called "mankind", and with the advanced technology we have now, I can also gaze upwards and marvel at the machine called "cosmos".

The bottom line, really, is that we have quite a lot to be thankful for. Perhaps that is what is truly mind-blowing after all.

[Lawrence]

Inifinity is pretty kewl too. You can take anything and halve it and then take the half and have it forever, or you can go the other way and double things.

I sometimes talk to people about aliens and how they're probably just slightly different humans from slightly different planets to Earth. They look as me like I've lost my mind. If you consider the size of the universe and still think we're all alone you've lost your mind.

[luemb]

As a young child I had recurring dreams about everything else expanding and myself shrinking to nothing, but maybe that was just a byproduct of my brain shutting off and falling asleep.

The size of the universe is really hard to grasp, especially since we are right in the middle, between the smallest things we can study and the vast emptiness of space. I can imagine that I can see it all in my mind, shift to all those different scales, but sometimes it is just amazing to sit back and think about it and realize the sense of physical size of everything. I don't know, sometimes I have moments where I'm suddenly hyper-aware of my own physical existence and a sense of the physical size and shape of objects around me and it's always a "wow" feeling.