(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) IT WAS THE Ancient Greeks, including Aristotle, who thought that the solar system was geocentric - that all the planets and stars revolved around the earth.
Perhaps this factual error did not so much reflect the ignorance of the ancient sages and astronomers as it did their self-involvement and hubris. It's true that a lot has changed since then - not only did human beings discover that the solar system is heliocentric (it moves around the sun), they have also gone on to physically discover the moon and are now busy investigating the surface of Mars via robotic technology.
Even though we have reached out to discover what lies in the vast expanse of the universe, human beings rarely take a break from their personal concerns and look beyond the confines of their busy world. But one look at the picture taken from the Hubble Space Telescope will reveal how insignificant our concerns and how infinitesimal our existence is amidst the supremely vast universe.
The image of Hubble's deepest-ever view of the universe - recently released via Reuters - is truly amazing. It shows a patchwork of luminous, multicoloured objects â€" spiral-shaped galaxies and murky red spots caused by collisions between galaxies-speckled across the dark heavens.
Taken over a period of 500 hundred hours, the picture, called the Extreme Deep Field (XDF), combines more than 2,000 images of the same field of space. Interestingly, such a lengthy observation was necessary to accumulate enough light to show objects that are over a million times too faint to be seen a human eye.
Another very fascinating fact is that the XDF has captured a view of the universe as it was billions of years ago. Since many of the galaxies are very far away from the earth, it has taken billions of years for their light to reach the Hubble. Thus, the view helps us look into the distant past and shows us how the universe looked eons ago.
This intimate peak into an epoch predating the very existence of planet Earth is not just utterly fascinating, it also quite humbling. Gazing at the constellation of innumerable galaxies, we realise how small our worries and concerns really are. Scottish satirist Thomas Carlyle said, "I don't pretend to understand the Universe - it's much bigger than I am."
It's true; we can't really understand the mysteries of the universe, but it's important to realise that the stretch of heavens is infinitely grander than our existence. Perhaps, it will stop us from taking ourselves so seriously all the time!
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