Things that make you feel humble...

There's a wonderful website sponsored by NASA that each day publishes magnificent photographs of the universe, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories. You can find the site at http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html.

This is one of the very few websites I visit every day without fail, because it stirs a feeling of awe and wonder at the majesty of the universe, and a sense of just how small and unimportant each of us is in the inconceivably vast sweep of the cosmos. Tens of billions of galaxies, each with tens of billions of stars, most of them so far away that we can only see them as they looked when dinosaurs ruled the earth, when their light started its lonely journey across the void. It staggers the imagination.

Is there anyone else out there? I don't know. But it surely seems as if there's no shortage of possible places for them to be. Maybe there's someone out there, peering up at his night sky through his six eyes, typing in his blog with the digits at the ends of his tentacles, and wondering the same thing. It's nice to think we may someday know.

Have a good day, and check out the astropix website. I think you'll like it.

Bilbo