Balm for your dark little soul

 Time for a little groove.

That's right, time to dig on some tasty tunes.  I've written and deleted this post about three times now to varying degrees, from deeply personal to just plain stupid.  But really what it comes down to is it's time to groove a little.  That's all I really wanted to say.  I don't claim to always have rainbows shooting out my ass and I don't expect the same in others.  We all have those times when we get stressed out.  If you find yourself in a dark mental place where hipster captioned photos seem like a good idea then its time to wrap something smooth around your soul.  Think of this as a:

--CHILL OUT.  THAT IS ALL--

 Let's all take the time to smell the roses. Let's sit back and watch the clouds go by for a few minutes. Let's listen to these songs and have that urge to desperately choke the crap out of someone evaporate.  After relaxing a little you can get back to life a little bit better of a person.

 

 And before I end this little love fest I'd like to give a big shout out to Venus and it's spectacular transit across the sun.  Check out the link below it includes some gorgeous NASA satellite video.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/nasa-provides-rare-images-transit-venus-144840865.html
 Because science is cool.

-Mick (I was looking for an excuse to play some music) Collins

An exercise in perspective using really big stuff

 In celebration of the massive magnetic storm thrown at us by the Sun today we are going to do a little space.  If you wondering what this whole 'magnetic storm' is all about I'll explain (especially for the juggaloes).  What happened was the Sun threw out a giant solar flare and the radiation came racing towards us.  Racing towards meaning that it happened Tuesday and we're just now feeling the effects.  Don't get me wrong, that still pretty fast considering the we're 93 million miles away.  The main brunt of it was supposed to hit tomorrow, but we're feeling it even today (Wednesday) as explained in this fresh off the press article from the Washington Post:

"The storm began with a massive solar flare early this week and grew as it came closer, expanding much like a giant soap bubble, scientists said. When it hits Earth, the particles will be moving at 4 million miles per hour.
And we’ll notice it. Radiation from the flare has already caused blackouts of high-frequency radio frequencies used by aircraft flying over the north and south poles, according to the center.  The flare is categorized in the X-5 class, and X is the strongest category on scientists’ scales."

Plus, for those who are up north, you'll probably get some really nifty Aurora Borealis going on.  
Shall we panic?  No.  

But because of the gigantic space dork  that I am, it does put me in mind of the sheer size of things.  For instance, this bubble of energy coming at us.  It's bigger than us.  Imagine that, something shrugged off the Sun like it ain't no thang is bigger than our entire planet.  

Let's contemplate this for a moment....

Let's think of something really big.  Maybe it's the Sears Tower in Chicago, or the USS Nimitz.  China is rather large.  These are terrestrial objects and we judge our perspective of big based on them because, let's face it, 99.9% of us aren't going to ever leave the this home we call Earth.  So its in most of our perspectives that the biggest practical object in our lives is the Earth.  And it is pretty big.  Especially if your car ever breaks down and you have to walk to work.  Then it seems practically endless.

But we know, academically at least, that this isn't the biggest thing around.  As far as planets go, about half the Solar System makes us feel a little insecure.  You can fit three Earths into the 'Big Red Spot' on Jupiter alone.  And of course the biggest thing in our family is the Sun.  Hundreds of our little home can fit inside.  Take a moment for that to soak in, in sheer size, the sun is a bit boggling in comparison.  
Once you've soaked that in take a look at this: 

Feeling insignificant yet?  No?  I'm not done yet.  These are all stars residing in our relative neighborhood, inside the galaxy.  These are the biggest we've found so far.  Some of the bigger ones are the size of our  entire solar system or bigger.  And to give you and idea of that size, the Voyager 1 satellite which launched in 1977 and took a (more or less) straight(ish) line out is just now reaching the end of the solar system.  It took 35 years to reach a distance of roughly 11 billion miles away going 3.6 AU a year. (I'm crappy at math and AU, or astronomical unit, is 93 million miles.  You figure out how fast its going.)  Data being sent back from the craft to earth takes about 16 hours travel time.  So yeah.  Kinda large.  
But wait, there's more.

Please Google 'Hubble Deep Field' and expand the image  for greater effect.  Void where prohibited.

This is the Hubble Deep Field.  It is the most awe-inspiring and fascinating thing I have ever seen.  This image will stop me in my tracks every time and fill me with incalculable wonder.  Astronomers  pointed the Hubble telescope at a blank section of sky that you could easily cover up with your thumb and watched it for 4 months.  This is our deepest look into the universe, 13.5 Billion light years away.  These are also the oldest objects we've ever seen.  As incredible as that is, consider that each point of light you see, every one of the 3000 objects in that image is a galaxy.  Millions to Billions of stars in each.  Thousands upon thousands of light-years in across. In a portion of night sky that we can blot just by raising our hand.  
The size and implication is the most mind boggling thing of all.  Our brains, or minds, are incapable of dealing with that type of mileage, so its easy to just dismiss it as academics.  But that image is real and in front of us and we can still appreciate what that sort of distance means.


Now are we feeling insignificant?  
Here is my point.  Perspective.  It's not that the universe is so large and its filled with things so much larger  than us that we are meaningless.  It is exactly the opposite.  We are part, even a tiny part, of this almost unfathomable wonder around us.  Our lives may be insignificant to the cosmos at large, but that just makes it more important to make it significant in our itty-bitty spec of dirt floating around a smallish star in a distant arm of a medium-sized galaxy.  This is all we have and we only have each other and we need to do our damnedest to make the best of it. 

So it doesn't hurt to keep this in mind when the petty crap that creeps into our lives starts to get us down and stress us out.  Remembering that not only are there things bigger than us, but practically everything is bigger than us, and it will help remind us that it may not be that big of a deal after all.  And if you're feeling small keep in mind that we are essentially all just space dust made from all those big beautiful objects in the sky which makes us part of them.  And if they aren't small, neither are we.

-Mick (Mostly Harmless) Collins