(Paraphrased from: 5 Scientific Theories That Will Make Your Head Explode | Cracked.com)

This is the famous Hubble Ultra Deep Field image, the most massive photo ever taken (the original is a 6200x6200, 60MB image, available here: http://zebu.uoregon.edu/hudf/):

<a href="http://s61.photobucket.com/albums/h48/andymilleville/?action=view&current=hudf.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h48/andymilleville/hudf.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

Right now, on your computer screen, are approximately 10,000 galaxies. Each of those galaxies contains anywhere from ten million to one trillion stars.

This photo covers about 1/13,000,000th (one thirteen-millionth) of the sky.

Think the universe is big? You don't even know the half of it.

Since we can only observe stellar bodies that have had some effect on us (usually bombarding us with light), there is an outer limit to what we can see of the universe. Hence, the “observable universe.” What about the rest? Well, according to some math we have no interest in going into, the size of the “actual” universe is so large that if the universe we just described (the impossibly, mind-bogglingly large one) were the size of a quarter, the actual universe would be the size of the Earth.

Yikes. And we think we're *so* important.

 

That is pretty amazing. I remember on the Discovery channel show 'The Universe', one scientist stated that there are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on Earth. That blew my mind.

 

That starts to get a guy thinking, with so many stars out there, how many of them are similiar to our sun, and how many have planets, maybe even how many could have life?

 

Ya know, my first wife said that to me, once.

 

I reckon that means she never had a chance to say it twice....

 

As a former astronomy geek, and continuing science fiction geek, these are questions which I've been asking myself for decades......

 

[QUOTE=andym;6430269Yikes. And we think we're *so* important.[/QUOTE]From a poem I wrote long time back.

I'm a grain of sand in a desert,
A drop of rain in the sea.
When history at last is recorded,
There will be no mention of me.

 

Any spouse that says something like that affect is dumb.

 

Deep down I've always known that you had hidden redeeming qualities.

 

Started with Burroughs and Heinlein.....Lots of alternative sci-fi now.....(eric flint, harry turtledove, david weber).........Great stuff.

 

That there's funny, I don't care who you are.....

Pete

 

I love the Worlds of Honor series by David Weber!

I read 2-3 books a week, most sci fi and fantasy...a little clive cussler thrown in here and there!

if you think you are insignificant and noone would miss you if you were gone, try missing a couple truck payments...

 

anyone believe in aliens???i think in a movie i saw a long time ago someone said if you go 90 billion light years away...or whenever dinosuars were around you get could get a really strong telescope and look back at the earth and see dinosaurs or u could go 1 light year away and see what u were doing 1 year ago

 

you think maybe we are the aliens looking back on ourselves?

 

[QUOTE Yikes. And we think we're *so* important.[/QUOTE]

Yes we are important! We are very important. There isn't any intelligent life anywhere near us. If there were smarter, bigger, badder, or better beings anywhere near us, we would have been visited by them, or overheard their electronic signals by this time.

You can fantasize about the possibilities of an endless universe and the myriad of strange life forms that are out there somewhere, but the chances of meeting them are very slim.

We are very important, lets keep the human race going. The only way we will ever find our neighbors is if we keep the search going year after year, decade after decade, millenia after millenia. Unfortunately, civilized modern life on this planet may not last too much longer. We could be destroyed by a giant space rock, or we could destroy ourselves, the latter being more probable.

The distances between us and our neighbors are indeed mind boggling, the chances that any two civilizations simultaneously evolve and produce the sort of technology that is required to communicate are as numerically improbable as trying to calculate the actual size of the universe. Imagine that beings from some nearby star system in our galaxy had the ability to monitor our planet for electronic signals, and they were trying to communicate with us 40,000 years ago, or 5000 years ago, or even 250, years ago. But in 1796 their entire planet was destroyed after 100,000 years of civilization.
This is why we are so important! We are significant! We need to stay alive, and keep our radio dishes pointed to the skies. The only way to overcome the astronomically mind-boggling poor chances of communicating with another planet at the right time, using the right methods, is to keep the human race alive as long as possible.
Can anybody even imagine what we will be doing one million years from now?