First Post

For my first post, I want to share a little information about our universe. Honestly, I'm not sure what topic to post first, and astronomy was the first idea sprung to my mind :-P

I loved astronomy since I was a little boy, and I'm fortunate to have parents to support all my interests. My dad would print out, and buy books, encyclopaedias and the like related to astronomy for my reading pleasure.

Over the years, I came across many astronomy experts, including George Fitzgerald Smoot - Nobel Prize in Physics (2006) winner. Meeting these people gave me an idea about the process taken by the scientists to determine what our universe is all about.

One thing boggles me though. Science if filled with assumptions and theories. Scientists need to have assumptions to proof something (refer Isaac Asimov's statement). All these are based on observation, via our imperfect senses. Since high school, i was thought to just accept a certain theory (imaginary number 'i' is one example) to understand a certain topic. Anyways, more about this in the future...

I think the best introduction about astronomy would be; establishing just how minute are we in this universe (rough graphical representation).

The 'planets' from slide 4 to 6 are stars.

Here's a link showing an approximate structure of the universe. For your info, 1 light year is 9.4605284 x 10^15 meters.

Still think you're the center of your universe? Well, it did smash my ego... haha


update 28.5.11


Here, check out this video. Graphic representation in terms of video is better than plain words anyways.