Saturday, July 24, 2010

Inter-galactica

This one is not by me. It is real:


(Source: Blaine Hubble Photos pps received by email)

To my brother Bhupen in Chicago, who sends me great and amazing pictures and cosmos-related material, written or spoken,  which does not cease to fascinate me:

The pictures which you send to me from NASA and other such agencies, satellites, Hubble, or any other telescopic or astronomical source, are a treasure for me; but then, they are so impossibly distant that no matter how hard I try they have ceased to make any sense to me.

Ridiculously as well as ludicrously, they resemble my pictures of possible aliens or inter-galactic occurrences and the cosmos. It has become increasingly difficult to tell the difference between my close-up desk-top pictures and the real ones, apart from the more important aspect of it, being that at a trillion and more light-years away (one light-year is 6 trillion miles at the speed of more than 186,000 miles per second) the distances are staggeringly beyond grasp, comprehension, utility or any enhancement or expanding of understanding to help any current situation into which man has put himself on his own planet, which up to now is his only home.

The galactic explosions, eruptions, birth or death of stars, at these distances, would mean, for one very important thing, that at the moment they are not even there, because what is seen existed that many trillion light-years ago. So, as well as I am fascinated, I am also baffled and skeptical about how man in his unavoidably limited life-span, can use this information.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bhai,
It is simply, as, you put it, fascinating and that is the purpose of sharing. It is out there and we all can visualise it. It is a treasure for you and your writing about it, philosohically, is a treasure of words. It makes perfect sense that those distances do not make any sense.
Bhupen

Ramesh Gandhi said...

Bhupen:

I loved the cute way you put in your words and ensconced them in shared love.

Bhai