The Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, which uses something called "drift scanning" to document the vastness of the sky, has been snapping pictures of the heavens for twelve years as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The Survey's findings have been compiled into a 3D map of space, picturing 200 million galaxies and "7 billion years worth of cosmic movement." The map will get bigger, soon.
I don't know about you, but watching this full screen (and happening to be listening to one of the Doctor Who soundtracks when I first viewed it) almost brought me to tears. Keep in mind that each of those blobs of lights aren't stars—they're entire galaxies. How can anyone seriously believe we are the only sentient life in such vastness? The thought that there is so much life teeming in the darkness gives me chills. The Universe is so incredibly huge, even if reincarnation were a reality and we "visited" only a single world during each lifetime, we could never experience it all.
I am humbled by the immensity of it all, and makes the fact that the a group of clever apes on a grain of sand orbiting an insignificant speck of light are arguing over who they can love even sadder, doesn't it?
Put on some music that inspires you (preferably through headphones) and watch (be sure to expand to full screen):
In space no one can hear you scream. Or hear music. And watching the video with no sound was just as illuminating.
I really wish extra terrestrials would stop avoiding our backwater little world.
Beethoven's Ode to Joy, the last movement of his Symphony #9, would do it for me.
But then too would Carl Orff's Carmina Burana, in a very perverse kind of way!
The obvious The Planets by Gustav Holst would not do it to the extent the above two would.
Thanks for sharing!!!