Apparently the Insane Clown Posse came out a few years ago as a Christian Rap Group. I had no idea this had ever happened. As the story goes, their Dark Carnival Mythology was really a ploy to bring all the juggalo fans to God. It doesn't quite come as a surprise that they are born again Christians, what with their history of homophobic lyrics. Well anyway, here is the culmination of all of this Insane Christian Clown Posse business.
Showing posts with label Cosmic Perspective. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cosmic Perspective. Show all posts
14 April 2010
12 February 2010
Pale Blue Dot
Today is the 20th Anniversary of this photo. That tiny dot is our planet taken from a view no human has ever seen. When the Voyager Spacecraft turned around to take the photo, a reflection on the space craft caused what looks like a ray of sunlight to bath the planet. I think Carl Sagan summed it up best.
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
20 January 2010
The Known Universe
NASA has this wonderful little blog called Astronomy Picture of the Day. The think the name explains the concept pretty straight forward, every day they feature a new Astronomy Picture. Today's is one that I found particularly interesting.
30 November 2009
The Symphony of Science
I think these are the greatest thing done with Autotuning outside of Autotune the News.
You can see the collection of the Symphony of Science here.
You can see the collection of the Symphony of Science here.
24 November 2009
The Solar System to Scale
This is a really radical scale model of the Solar System; gives you an idea of just how massive our own backyard is.
05 November 2009
The Cosmic Perspective
"We are made of star stuff. For the most part, atoms heavier than hydrogen were created in the interiors of stars and then expelled into space to be incorporated into later stars. The Sun is probably a third generation star." - Carl Sagan
The idea of the Cosmic Perspective is the idea of where you fit among the cosmos, the entirety of the universe on a whole. To even begin to think about the size and mass of everything leaves one almost in a state of shock, the vast majority of reality is nothing but cold, dark nothing. The richness of light and life and warmth in our tiny corner of existence is the exception. How is this comforting? Why should we rejoice in the fact our life times are a flash, a blink of the eye in the cosmic time line.
To first get an idea of this prespective, you need to go back, far back, to the beginning. Through our understanding of Einstien's General Realivity and Edwin Hubble's discovery that neighboring Galaxies distance is directly proportional to their Redshift. Basically, what this means, is through observations the human race has concluded that our universe began some finite time ago, believed to be around 13.7 Billion years. Everything you know, everyone you've meet, every event in history, all of it came from this primeval atom that exploded at a speed faster than light. The idea that our reality can be extrapolated back to a singularity, where our understanding of physics breaks down, stretches our imaginations to the fullest.
So, we now we've begun to imagine where this all came from, how the cosmic clock was set in motion. Let's go back to the quote at the beginning, the idea that we are from star stuff. All matter and energy in the universe formed within the first few seconds of the big bang (don't worry, I can say it, but it still is hard to comprehend). So, since then this matter has been expanding out into the void, and as it is doing this, it begins to clump together. Fine particles of hydrogen started pack themselves together, denser and denser, until we got nuclear fusion. Nuclear Fusion is a fancy way of saying sunlight, it is the process of hydrogen being burned into helium. So, for billions of years (our sun is about middle aged at 5 billion years) hydrogen is burned into helium, eventually, this hydrogen is burned up. Once this happens, a star similar to our sun will start to expand becoming a red giant, in this process it will burn helium into heavier elements. So in essences all matter outside of Hydrogen are the direct result of the birth and deaths of stars. This means that the Earth, Mars, the Orion Nebula, the Great Galaxy in Andromeda, everything is made from the same thing. We are interconnected on a level so basic and vast it leaves me in awe.
Alright, so we sort of understand how the Universe came into existence, and in that same vain how our sun and planets were formed. So to get an idea of ourselves in all of this, the Earth forms and cools over the course of about a billion years. We start to get some strange chemical reactions, this results in organic molecules springing into microble life. Over the course of the next 3 billion years these mirobes mutate and evolve. These mutations result in us, and our ability to imagine and reason. We began to understand how to create tools, leading to greater and greater wealth of knowledge and ability to survive. Like Carl Sagan has said the understanding of the concept of the number one is such an intellictual feat.
So now we've developed tools to observe and record the natural occuring universe. We have begun to understand the complex language of mathimatics, the inner workings of the clock work of the universe.
So where does that put us, we are a phonemena that allows the cosmos to turn back on itself and understand itself. The pursuit of this knowledge should be at the for front of civilazation and should not be taken lightly. We are gifted mutations in all the cosmos, there are only one specices of humans and we should consider this a blessing.
So let me ask you, what is your Cosmic Perspective?
The idea of the Cosmic Perspective is the idea of where you fit among the cosmos, the entirety of the universe on a whole. To even begin to think about the size and mass of everything leaves one almost in a state of shock, the vast majority of reality is nothing but cold, dark nothing. The richness of light and life and warmth in our tiny corner of existence is the exception. How is this comforting? Why should we rejoice in the fact our life times are a flash, a blink of the eye in the cosmic time line.
To first get an idea of this prespective, you need to go back, far back, to the beginning. Through our understanding of Einstien's General Realivity and Edwin Hubble's discovery that neighboring Galaxies distance is directly proportional to their Redshift. Basically, what this means, is through observations the human race has concluded that our universe began some finite time ago, believed to be around 13.7 Billion years. Everything you know, everyone you've meet, every event in history, all of it came from this primeval atom that exploded at a speed faster than light. The idea that our reality can be extrapolated back to a singularity, where our understanding of physics breaks down, stretches our imaginations to the fullest.
So, we now we've begun to imagine where this all came from, how the cosmic clock was set in motion. Let's go back to the quote at the beginning, the idea that we are from star stuff. All matter and energy in the universe formed within the first few seconds of the big bang (don't worry, I can say it, but it still is hard to comprehend). So, since then this matter has been expanding out into the void, and as it is doing this, it begins to clump together. Fine particles of hydrogen started pack themselves together, denser and denser, until we got nuclear fusion. Nuclear Fusion is a fancy way of saying sunlight, it is the process of hydrogen being burned into helium. So, for billions of years (our sun is about middle aged at 5 billion years) hydrogen is burned into helium, eventually, this hydrogen is burned up. Once this happens, a star similar to our sun will start to expand becoming a red giant, in this process it will burn helium into heavier elements. So in essences all matter outside of Hydrogen are the direct result of the birth and deaths of stars. This means that the Earth, Mars, the Orion Nebula, the Great Galaxy in Andromeda, everything is made from the same thing. We are interconnected on a level so basic and vast it leaves me in awe.
Alright, so we sort of understand how the Universe came into existence, and in that same vain how our sun and planets were formed. So to get an idea of ourselves in all of this, the Earth forms and cools over the course of about a billion years. We start to get some strange chemical reactions, this results in organic molecules springing into microble life. Over the course of the next 3 billion years these mirobes mutate and evolve. These mutations result in us, and our ability to imagine and reason. We began to understand how to create tools, leading to greater and greater wealth of knowledge and ability to survive. Like Carl Sagan has said the understanding of the concept of the number one is such an intellictual feat.
So now we've developed tools to observe and record the natural occuring universe. We have begun to understand the complex language of mathimatics, the inner workings of the clock work of the universe.
So where does that put us, we are a phonemena that allows the cosmos to turn back on itself and understand itself. The pursuit of this knowledge should be at the for front of civilazation and should not be taken lightly. We are gifted mutations in all the cosmos, there are only one specices of humans and we should consider this a blessing.
So let me ask you, what is your Cosmic Perspective?
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