Ultra Deep

Some may ask why I used a picture of some bright dots in the sky in my first blog entry. This picture is actually called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field and is a composition of images taken by the telescope. To begin with, here is an extremely high resolution example of the image (you can continue reading while it loads)...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Hubble_ultra_deep_field_high_rez_edit1.jpg
There are many stunning realizations that this picture has caused in me, one of which is how big the universe is, and another, more important, one is how small and insignificant I am. The reason for this? Well lets take a look at the picture... While this may look like a nice pretty picture of the night sky taken from Earth, in actuality it is the deepest look into our universe ever taken. Each of the large or insignificantly small dots of light in this image represents a galaxy, over 10,000 in all. And each of these galaxies has hundreds of billions of stars, each just like or likely larger than our own sun. The amount of matter that these galaxies represent in comparison to even the entire Earth is just unfathomable. So how much of the sky are we looking at here? You see the few bright white dots that have a cross pattern on them? (Look about one third to the left of the very top right and a little to the lower right of the very center for a couple) Those are only a few of the billions of stars in our own galaxy. The Hubble is looking out of our own galaxy, so a small area with only a few stars was chosen to look through. This view of the sky is so small that holding a piece of paper 1mm x 1mm at 1m away would just barely cover it. To be exact, it is one thirteen millionth of what we perceive as the sky.
So yeah, there's a lot of stuff out there. But whats really amazing about this image is that it's not just a look at what's out there, it's really a look into the past, a history of the universe itself. Light travels astoundingly fast at our level of existence, but when it comes to the scope of the universe, light moves extremely slow. The photons of light from the galaxies in these pictures actually left them billions of years ago and are just now reaching us around the Earth. Because of this, the image actually represents a time span of billions of years, from the largest galaxies in the image at an age close to that of our own, about 13.2 billion years, to those that are just specs of light at only a a few hundred million years old. This image represents how insignificant not only our size is in the universe, but also the length of our time in it. I mean, accounting for the speed information can travel throughout the universe, at 22 years old less than one nonillionth (that's 1 followed by 30 zeros, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, whichever has the greatest effect) of the universe could even possible know that I exist.
The amount of time the universe has been around coupled with how massive it is also brings into focus the possibility of life forming out there somewhere. Now I don't really believe in intelligent life so much, but it seems naive to think that in the huge expanse of the universe the same conditions as on Earth have never been present such that some form of extra-terrestrial life could form similarly to how ours did. There is a great debate among scientists on whether the conditions of the Earth are extremely rare or not, but for it to have only happened once the probability of it occurring would be one in one sextillion (one followed by 21 zeros/ 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000). I think this even goes above and beyond the definition of extremely rare. Though I believe it exists, you may wonder why I don't think intelligent life exists out there. That can be easily explained by my definition of "intelligence," which I believe God bestowed on the human race at the same moment he infused a soul into our person. Because of my belief that humans are the only beings with souls in this universe, I don't believe that there could be any intelligent life out there. For that matter, I don't believe that the existence of life outside of Earth will have a bearing on human existence, and am doubtful that it will ever occur, because it is not a part of the purpose for which I believe God made the universe. I believe that God made the universe as an unsolvable mystery for humans, but something that human nature drives us to fully understand. I mean, think about it if our universe were only as big as the sky above us and beyond that was just an impenetrable wall. Although seemingly oxymoronic, it would make me feel pretty claustrophobic. As humans, I believe our minds need to be able to imagine a limitless "out there," and the size of our current universe provides pretty much that. It is my belief that God made the universe just big and complicated enough that humans would never be able to understand it fully. I also apply this to our understanding of the tiniest forms of matter, which go just as far in the expansion of how big we are compared the constituents of which we are made, and which we are no closer to fully understanding (are you getting a feel for why I like physics so much?). But I also believe that God will grant us this knowledge on the day he welcomes us into the knowledge of Himself. For now I will just have to imagine the amazing things that the creation of this universe has entailed, most of which humans on this plane of existence will never know, but which I hope someday to finally discover...