{"id":1102,"date":"2010-07-06T09:20:31","date_gmt":"2010-07-06T14:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=1102"},"modified":"2010-07-06T09:26:01","modified_gmt":"2010-07-06T14:26:01","slug":"the-vastness-of-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dangeroustalk.net\/?p=1102","title":{"rendered":"The Vastness of Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

I hope everyone had a happy 4th of July weekend. I celebrated my independence from gods<\/a> by taking the family on vacation to Carl Sagan<\/a>\u2019s old stomping groups in Ithaca New York. There we took the Sagan Planet Walk and Paced the Space.<\/p>\n

We walked from the Sun marker to the marker of the Earth (probably about 50 to 100 feet) in the scaled down solar system (one-fifth billions of the actual size). When I walked back over to the Sun marker, I read that in this scaled model, our neighboring star Alpha Centauri<\/a> would be located somewhere in Hawaii. So while our solar system is scaled down to \u00be of a mile, the next nearest star would be nearly 5000 miles away.<\/p>\n

I can almost hear Carl Sagan\u2019s voice informing me about the vast emptiness of space and how humbling it is, reminding us that the Universe was not created for us, but rather we are simply a part of a great big Universe so immense that our nearest neighbor would take multiple lifetimes to reach.<\/p>\n

Religious people often talk about how God made the Universe for human beings. But a glance through a telescope shows just how ridiculous such beliefs really are. Why would a God create our closest star (aside from the Sun) so far out of our reach? What does that tell us about the vastness of the rest of the Galaxy or even the vastness of the entire Universe as we know it through science?<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"Pace<\/p>\n


\n\"Bookmark<\/a>