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Highlights The Deep Mystery of Space Starbirth in M33 Filter your Future: View All Posts   Origins View All Posts The Deep Mystery of Space Jun 29, 2006 // // Origins The Deep Mystery of God By Michael McCauley The Hubble telescope recently peered as deep into space as humans have ever looked. Officials of the Space Telescope Science Institute traced light that has been speeding toward the space we now occupy for 13 billion years, to “within a stone’s throw of the beginning of the universe.” In order to penetrate to this distance Hubble had to narrow its view to a field that astronomers likened to our looking at the sky through an eight-foot soda straw. The opening on the eye-side is small enough, but projected eight feet out, it narrows to little more than a pinhole. In this minute field of view a speck of the whole dome of the sky, Hubble saw 10,000 galaxies like our own vast Milky Way. From a human point of view the enormity of these dimensions of time and space is bewildering, almost absurd. Five hundred years ago we postured ourselves at the center of the universe; now we cling precariously to a remote speck of cosmic dust. Our life-dominant sun is one mediocre star among the myriad that, by the late Carl Sagan’s estimate, outnumber the grains of sand on all the beaches of the world. View the Most Recent Blog Entries About • Religion and Space Other Futures: * Roy Scarfo • SpaceMatters