From One Speck of Sand to Another

I was downloading some Hubble photos last night (one of the last things I enjoy doing on the Net) and came across this, one of my favorites. This picture is known as the "Hubble Deep Field North". I won't go into the whole techno babble of it all but this essentially represents a pinhole photograph of a spec in our sky, millions of light years deep. According to NASA, there are over 100 galaxies just in this photo. Remember, this is a single pinhole in the curtain of the sky.

The estimates are that every galaxy contains roughly 100 Million stars, each with an average of 10 planets around them.

I like to stare at this picture when I'm depressed. I try to draw myself into the existential feeling of infinity. I truly think that somewhere in that exercise, the mind shuts down in self-defense as we cannot possibly ponder the depths of "endlessness" from the closed confines our short life spans. On the other side of that coin, is thinking of how infinitely small we truly are.

Think of it this way. When we die a house mourns. A street supports. A city denotes. A state records. A nation tallies. A world goes on. The universe...what? If the Earth and the entire civilization of mankind disappeared, would anything anywhere notice? Stare at this picture long enough, and I think the answer is clear.