A joke that I love, and in a sense believe to be just a little bit true is; "Aliens are here, watching us right now. When they stop laughing at us, they will land and say, "Hi"!

Battlestarlet

I'm lost

May 2005

JUN 28, 2007 04:27 PM

have you seen the new picture of earth taken from saturn? here's a link in case. amazing.

/science nerd
//sagan fan

smock_b

Monroe, MI

April 2007

JUN 28, 2007 07:23 PM

Great job Wil !! For anyone who's interested here's the article on Star Trek.com

Where are you in LA that you can actually see the damn stars?

Favorite star anecdote:

Living in India, in the middle of Delhi. Huge crowded city, lights on 24/7. Tons of air pollution. Totally black night skies...

..until the lights go out. Then it's all a vast, glittering and brilliant Indra's-Net-Of-Jewels.

The electricity is so bad that entire sections of city will go out at once, several times a night. Those were my favorite times of night. I would run up onto the roof and stargaze. The entire city suddenly becoming engulfed in total blackness, before the generators kicked in, was always a surreal experience.

Oh and once I spent an entire acid trip staring at the North Star, trying to dissolve my sense of separation from it.

So yeah, stars rule.

punk

Phoenix, AZ

January 2004

JUN 29, 2007 06:04 AM

Every now and then I take a minute to think about how vast the Universe is; that it potentially goes on forever without stopping. For a person whose mind operates on the limits of a terrestrial existence, I get a strange feeling when I think about space going on forever with limitless possibilities.

I love that feeling.

perec

Madison, WI

November 2006

JUN 30, 2007 07:57 AM

Wonderful article Mr. Wheaton. The Sagan quote made me cry a little.

Metaverse

USA

March 2005

JUL 02, 2007 03:38 PM

I have always loved those perfectly clear nights where you can see every star in the sky. I always look at them with amazement. I have also always looked and thought about how much I'd love to travel around the stars visiting them all. I have my dad to thank for my nerdiness, makes me happy.

geekgurl

Philadelphia, PA

June 2003

JUL 03, 2007 05:00 AM

Do you ever feel the warmth of the Sun on your face and think, "Holy shit, man, that's coming from a star that's just 93 million miles away"?

And that's why it looks so small!

Sorry, I couldn't help it.

Dr_Zoidberg

Raymore, MO

June 2004

JUL 04, 2007 07:35 AM

I could feed you abstract numbers all day on Universal scale VS human scale, but the numbers melt together after awhile and simply become too large to comprehend. Here's a small excercise for you. Sit for a few minutes and just think about the following: 1 light year = 5.87849981 × 10^12 miles. Current estimates put the Universe at a diameter of 26 billion light years. That is 2.6 x 10^10 light years. This puts the Universe at a diameter of 1.52840995 × 10^131 miles, or 8.07000454 × 10^134 FEET in dameter.

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Portland, OR

October 2002

JUN 28, 2007 12:30 PM

Calgary, AB

March 2004

JUN 28, 2007 03:57 PM