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Awesome!

Entry 424, on 2006-11-10 at 13:48:45 (Rating 3, Science)

Continuing the astronomical theme from yesterday, I wanted to comment on how awesome it can be to really appreciate science, and astronomy in particular. When I get involved in science versus religion and other similar debates I often get accused of being isolated from the awe and glory of belief in a supernatural creator. Apart from the fact that belief in a fantasy is impossible for me there is also the point that, when you really understand it, science can be more awesome than any religion.

A few weeks back my family bought be a large format book with many beautiful pictures of space taken from the Hubble Space Telescope. Apart from being magnificent to look at, even without really understanding what you are seeing, the images are even more truly amazing to someone who really understands the deeper scientific significance of them.

The best example for me was the photo displayed with this blog entry. It shows a field of small smudges, taken with the Hubble advanced camera for surveys, using a total exposure of over 11 days! Practically all of those dots and smudges are galaxies. They look insignificant, but a galaxy is (typically) a huge collection of gas and dust about half a billion trillion kilometers across and containing half a trillion stars. There are almost 10 thousand of them visible in the original of this picture.

But here's the truly awesome fact. In an area of the sky the size of a single dot on your screen (at usual viewing distance) the HST can detect 3,000 of these galaxies. Imagine how many there are in the total observable Universe. We currently estimate there are 70 billion trillion stars in total, but stars only make up a few percent of the total mass of the Universe.

What religion can possibly beat that? God created the Earth and the Sun, oh and a few stars too, isn't that glorious? No, its pathetic. No creation myth can touch the glory of reality. If people truly want a religious experience they should study science!

I've just noticed that this positive entry about the wonders of science has turned into an anti-religion rant! Oh well, I can accept that. That's blogging for you!

Comment 1 (278) by Aristotle on 2006-11-19 at 22:20:22:

Thanks for describing the way some of us feel about the world so well. You are so right when you say that the truth is more awesome than fiction. The problem is that science isn't exciting to people, usually because of bad experiences at school!

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