Do you realize the expanse of the universe?

[Flail]

In April of this year astronomers discovered the existence of a solar system and planet that has potential to be similar to earth and to support intelligent life and it is relatively close, being only 20 light years from earth. The known universe is at 28 billion light years in diameter.

In 1978 the United States launched it's deep space probe Voyager I...in over 35 years of travel at 40,000 miles per hour it is just now reaching the outer limits of our solar system and entering deep space and is about 1/2 light day from earth. At the speed of Voyager !(40,000 MPH) it would take us over 500,000 years to get to this planet 20 light years from earth...think how long it would take to go 28 Billion light years....

We havn't begun to discover even the basic elemental things about the universe or the God that created it, when put in this perspective...which makes our various Religions that we judge and kill over, somewhat irrelevant and facile...don't you think.

[Chimp]

Kind of hard to disagree...of course, petty disputes pale when juxtaposed with
the vastness of the universe, or even the moon. That same ball of dirt has
witnessed all our stupidity (as in collective mankind).

[k-nug]

If we can survive long enough without self-nuclear-annihilation the universe will shrink, in the same way earth has gotten 'smaller'. If humans have been around for 130k years, we've advanced pretty far in that relatively short amount of time. The next 130k should be interesting.

[Onorc]

I think it is nearly impossible to take into consideration how large our universe really is. To us (being humans), Earth is extremely large. Looking from a universal perspective Earth is just a "Pale Blue Dot" as Carl Sagen describes.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M A very interesting video if you take the time to watch it. Really puts a perspective on how small the world we live in really is.

[achilles12604]

Moved to a discussion forum.