Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Far Away

Astronomers recently (April 23rd) identified a gamma ray burst that has captured the record for the most distant object in the universe. How distant, you ask? 13.035 billion light-years from Earth. Or perhaps you prefer miles? In that case, 76,254,048,000,000 miles. Sure, the burst's afterglow will aid in probing some of the earliest galaxies in the universe due to the burst's remote location, but mostly this discovery is just really cool. It's kind of just a reminder of how unimaginably humongous our universe is. There is so much unexplored territory, so many things to see, surely so many wonders that the human mind hasn't even conceived of. Whenever I see things in the news like this, a certain part of my imagination twinkles with wonderment at the infinite possibilities that dwell beyond our Earth. My dad has always talked about how he's going to be on the moon (or at least in space) before he dies, and he also reminds me every time I see him what requirements I need to fulfill in order to be the first on Mars. It's funny to think of a place like Mars as being far away though when its distance of 35 million miles is only 1/217,8687th the distance to this gamma ray burst. Gosh, we have a ways to go to see the deepest beauties of our universe.

Still, we lack a little bit of perspective, too. Carl Sagan provided deep insight upon seeing the below photo, which was taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 of Earth at a record distance of (nearly) 4 billion miles. 

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

This quote inspired me when I was much younger and gave me some crazy, altered perspective on our place in the universe. When you see this picture and process the notion that we exist on an infinitesimal dot in the vast space of the universe, it's very humbling, maybe even discouraging for some. But for me, it is inspirational. It conveys to me how much beyond there is, and inspires me to try and reach for it all. Science has a sort of way of doing this; revealing to us how many unknowns there are beyond both the realm of our Earth and and of our minds, thereby inciting further questioning, further exploration. Science is the almighty reaffirmer. I am humbled by the journey ahead, indeed, but I feel it is my duty to plod on. Cheers to the journey ahead!

If you're interested in seeing some other really cool objects in outer space, check out this really cool, nifty website.