Musings on the Universe.

I have some musings on the universe. How’s that for a topic, eh?

I’m one of those that likes to look at the stars and at least try to understand exactly how insignificant we really are. This came up on Astronomy Picture of the Day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKTu6B4Rgek

This puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?

Then there is this. I didn’t like this one as much, but it is interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAVjF_7ensg

How they use redshift and calculate distance has always been iffy to me. It doesn’t seem to ring true, mathwise. It seems distance in the universe is always inconsistent. How can something be farther away than the size of the universe, or how we can look in any direction and see the formation of the universe. Space and time just don’t seem to make sense to me in that regard. For example, the idea that galaxies are fleeing from us at greater than the speed of light. The relativistic effects of that astound me, as well as the energy involved. How light can be determined to operate at those speeds, well, it appears to be beyond my pay-grade.

I once came upon a theory that red-shift isn’t a constant, but is quantized. If that is the case, then you can’t use redshift to determine distance. Distance wouldn’t be quantized. I read this on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift_quantization

If that is the case, that we are only seeing filaments and stars and galaxies within filaments…that makes some sense, but I’m still dubious. I guess I should be used to not understanding things by now.