Anthony Doerr lives in Boise, Idaho and has written a delightful story about the Visible Universe as photographed by the Hubble Deep Field Telescope in 2003. Published in the July/August 2007 Issue of Orion Magazine the article is titled, Window of Possibility -"Why the Hubble Ultra Deep Field is the most incredible photograph ever taken."Doerr's humerous numerical and comparative analysis should provide us with a much needed perspective of our importance and place in the universe. Please read the whole article. Below are a few quotes to whet your interest.
"Earth is a clump of iron and magnesium and nickel, smeared with a thin layer of organic matter, and sleeved in vapor. It whirls along in a nearly circular orbit around a minor star we call the sun."
"The sun comprises 99.9 percent of all the mass in the solar system. Which means Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, etc., all fit into that little 0.1 percent."
"But, truly, our sun is exceedingly minor. Almost incomprehensibly minor."
"We call our galaxy the Milky Way. There are at least 100 billion stars in it and our sun is one of those."
"There very well may be more galaxies in the universe than there are stars in the Milky Way."
What the Ultra Deep Field image ultimately offers is a singular glimpse at ourselves. Like Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, it resets our understanding of who and what we are."
"The Hubble Ultra Deep Field image should be in every classroom in the world. It should be on the president’s desk. It should probably be in every church, too."
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