“We have found that scientific laws pervade all of nature, that the same rules that apply on Earth as in the skies, that we can find a resonance, a harmony, between the way we think and the way the world works.” − Carl Sagan
“How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, ‘This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant?’ Instead they say, ‘No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.’ A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the Universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths.” – Carl Sagan
Our galaxy (200,000 light years across) contains about 300 billion stars.
These images show the gas patterns of Jupiter’s southern hemisphere and south pole, as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Multiple images were combined to show all areas in daylight, enhanced color, and stereographic projection. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/B
All stars are born from collapsing clouds of gas and dust called nebulae. Shown above, the Carina Nebula (7,500 light years away) contains some of the youngest and most luminous stars known in the Milky Way. Photo by NASA/ESA‘s Hubble Space Telescope.
UY Scuti (9,500 light years away) is the largest known star in the Milky Way. If placed at the center of the Solar System, this red supergiant would engulf the orbit of Jupiter. Its core is expected to collapse in a supernova explosion.
“The atoms that comprise life on earth, the atoms that make up the human body, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high-mass stars…
…these stars went unstable in their later years, exploding their guts into the galaxy and enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars…
…We are made of starstuff.” – Carl Sagan
“We are part of this universe. We are in this universe. But perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the Universe is in us…
…When I reflect on that fact, I look up. Many people feel small, because they’re small and the Universe is big. But I feel big, because my atoms came from those stars. There is a level of connectivity.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson
Carl Sagan: “There is a [world] with four suns in the sky; two of them are so close together that they touch. [There is] a sun the size of the Earth—and made of diamond. There are atomic nuclei a few miles across which rotate thirty times a second. There are turbulent plasmas writhing with X- and gamma-rays from mighty stellar explosions. The universe is vast and awesome, and for the first time we are becoming a part of it.”
The Andromeda Galaxy is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way. This structure is 2.5 million light years away and contains about 1 trillion stars. It is expected to collide with the Milky Way in 3.5 billion years.
IC 1101 (1 billion light-years away) is a supergiant elliptical galaxy, one of the largest known galaxies. It spans 6 million light-years and contains about 100 trillion stars. Image Credit: David A. Aguilar (CfA)
It’s thought that almost every large galaxy, including the Milky Way, has a supermassive black hole at its center. The image above shows Galaxy NGC 1068, whose core (inset) contains a supermassive black hole.
The Event Horizon Telescope’s (EHT) image of the black hole at the center of Messier 87 (M87), a large galaxy in the Virgo cluster. This black hole resides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the sun. Credit: Event Horizon Telescope collaboration et al.
The quasar TON 618 (10.4 billion light-years away) has the largest blackhole known to man. It has a mass of 66 billion suns and spans 2600 astronomical units, or 65 times the distance of Pluto from the sun. Image source: Interstellar
The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field is an image of a region of space that is just one thirteen-millionth of the total area of the sky (smaller than a 1 mm by 1 mm square held 1 meter away). An estimated 10,000 galaxies are visible. Image source.
In a computer simulation of the cosmic web, galaxies form from gas (orange) that cluster along filaments of dark matter (blue). The region in this image spans about 350 million light-years.
The location of our own galaxy (red dot) on the fringes of the Laniakea Supercluster, our filament of the cosmic web. Along its major axis, this supercluster spans 520 million light-years.
“We are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically… That’s really what you want in life. You want to feel connected, you want to feel relevant.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson
When you think about it, there is nothing more absurd than the fact that we exist. On the atomic scale, we are 99.999999999999% empty space. On the cosmic scale, we’re just an expanding field of energy.
Somehow, this energy has assembled itself into an entity capable of pondering its very existence.
Somehow, the Universe has become aware of itself.
“We humans have seen the atoms which constitute all of nature and the forces that sculpted this work. And we, who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the Cosmos, have begun to wonder about our origins. [We are] starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at last, consciousness arose. We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself.” – Carl Sagan
“Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.” – Albert Einstein
if truth exists 