"Science, however, gives me the feeling of steady progress: I am convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., about space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics), and it has taught us new methods of thinking (complementarity) which are applicable far beyond physics." -Max Born
The Dark Side Of The Universe: A Live-Blog Event (Synopsis) scienceblogs.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from scienceblogs.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.” -Edgar Allan Poe
No matter where you look in the night sky, a powerful enough telescope appears to reveal points of light. Even if you find a region with no stars in the Milky Way, you’re likely to find thousands of galaxies in the deep sky beyond, as the Hubble Deep Field and successor images demonstrated. However, it wasn’t until 2010 and the WFC3 that we were able to get deep, wide-field views simultaneously.
Farnsworth: "There is it. The edge of the Universe!"
Fry: "Far out. So there's an infinite number of parallel Universes?"
Farnsworth: "No, just the two."
Fry: "Oh, well, I'm sure that's enough."
Bender: "I'm sick of parallel Bender lording his cowboy hat over me!" -Futurama
Our existence here in this Universe is something that we know is rare, special, beautiful, and full of wonder.
"On a cosmic scale, our life is insignificant, yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise." -Paul Ricoeur
Ask anyone who's looked up at a dark sky on a clear, moonless night, and you'll immediately hear tales about how incomprehensibly vast the Universe is.