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First images from Euclid are in

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727 points mooreds | 1 comments | 21 Oct 24 20:15 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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gorgoiler ◴[22 Oct 24 03:57 UTC] No.41911053[source]▶
A fun thing I like to do every so often is to try to break away from the natural notion that space has a horizon and that instead force myself to feel that it continues equally in all directions.

We’re naturally inclined to be ok with giant distances on the horizon. It’s natural to put more emphasis on that part of the world. Hold up your thumb to the horizon and notice how many things fit alongside it compared to your thumb help downwards against the ground.

On the surface of our planet the up direction isn’t usually interesting and the down direction isn’t even there. It is therefore quite horrifying (“fun”) to imagine space going down forever.

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beAbU ◴[22 Oct 24 07:05 UTC] No.41911906[source]▶
Many years ago I read some sci-fi novel, and in it was a sub-plot of a warring alien species that started destroying anything and everything they came across in their travels.

The story went that their local system was in some sort of a dust cloud, so they had no stars visible from their planet. At some point, that cloud somehow dissipated. On the planet, one of the inhabitants bothered to look up one night, and it hated everything it saw. So the race developed a space program to go out there and destroy it all.

For some reason I think it was Adams' H2G2, but the tone of my recollection does not quite feel on-brand for those stories. Not sure.

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1. murrayhenson ◴[22 Oct 24 08:54 UTC] No.41912433{3}[source]▶
The end of Chapter 12 from Douglas Adams' Life, the Universe, and Everything.

The darkness of the cloud buffeted at the ship. Inside was the silence of history. Their historic mission was to find out if there was anything or anywhere on the other side of the sky, from which the wrecked spaceship could have come, another world maybe, strange and incomprehensible though this thought was to the enclosed minds of those who had lived beneath the sky of Krikkit.

History was gathering itself to deliver another blow.

Still the darkness thrummed at them, the blank enclosing darkness. It seemed closer and closer, thicker and thicker, heavier and heavier. And suddenly it was gone.

They flew out of the cloud.

They saw the staggering jewels of the night in their infinite dust and their minds sang with fear.

For a while they flew on, motionless against the starry sweep of the Galaxy, itself motionless against the infinite sweep of the Universe. And then they turned around.

"It'll have to go," the men of Krikkit said as they headed back for home.

On the way back, they sang a number of tuneful and reflective songs on the subjects of peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms.