This is the deepest visible-light image of the cosmos. Just let it soak in a bit. There are nearly 10,000 galaxies here. That's about 800 trillion stars. Each one of those little discs is a galaxy. Each galaxy contains billions of stars. Has one picture ever contained such things? The Earth orbits a star in a galaxy similar to some of those galaxies, but the light from that star would hardly be visible in such a panorama of suns and space. Its light would add nothing to the display of 10,000 galactic ensembles. God help us from looking into that void. I can hardly bear it. "Pulvis et umbra sumus": We are but dust and shadow...
The photo and thought of the sheer vastness of the universe is overwhelming. One question. If we are but dust and shadow, what compelled you to marvel at the wonder and beauty of the cosmos?
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ReplyDeleteJob 38:31-33a
"Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades? Can you loose the cords of Orion? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs? Do you know the laws of the heavens?
Eccless. 3:18-20; 6:12
I also thought, "As for men, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. For who knows what is good for a man in life, during the few and meaningless days he passes through like a shadow? Who can tell him what will happen under the sun after he is gone?"
I claim it is our very marvelling at the cosmos that leads us to this conclusion: we are but dust and shadow. It is in the face of such an immensity, of such vast spaces and cosmic structures that like Job in the face of the whirlwind one must say: "I am unworthy." We live a naive existence in which we are ignorant of our relative size and place in the universe. Anyone who has taken the time to gaze through a telescope into space has experienced at least a glimmer of this. This, I contend, is the proper attitude to these cosmic realities: fear and trembling.
The stars, trillions & trillions of stars later, having forgotten what they were doing, once stopped, looked up at themselves, and thought, "What is this substance here? What but a speck in this immensity, what but the dust of a shadow..?" And who was there to tell them otherwise?
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