Food and water we need

In Primary School was a smart boy who asked his friends:
“How far can you see? And a margin of error of one kilometer is tolerated.”

Many boys would think hard and harder and eventually come up with an answer like: 10 kilometers on a clear day.
The smart boy would then laugh and say:
“Can you see the moon and the stars?
They are much more far away than 10 kilometers!!”

There is always a smart boy who misuses his intelligence to make other boys feel stupid.
But next time the smart boy can be more precise.
Because a new galaxy has been discovered that is the most far away object we humans have ever seen.
Seen by the Hubble Space Telescope, the galaxy called UDFy-38135539 is some 13 billion light years away.

According to Bishop James Ussher (1581-1656) though, God created the universe on October 23, 4004 BC.
That would make the universe 6023 years old in 2010 AD.
James Ussher was an Irish Archbishop whose chronology of Biblical history was widely accepted throughout Christianity.

But this time we are not fooled.
It is a scientific discovery made with hardware and no God of any Church has been involved.

By itself, the discovery of galaxy UDFy-38135539 is of no extraordinary significance.
There are over 100 million galaxies in the cosmos.
It is just that this one is the most far away we have ever seen.

And this makes us speculate about another thing.
The majority of the scientists believe that the “Big Bang”, the point in time when the universe was coming into existence, is roughly 13,6 billion years ago.
Now we are able to see the light of a galaxy that was shining 13,1 billion years ago.
(Distance is time, remember)
If we can improve our telescopes we may manage to look back in time to the moment of 13,6 billion years ago and see our own moment of creation!

This is not absurd or impossible.
These days scientists and engineers are building the “European Extremely Large Telescope” that will be ready the end of this decade.
This revolutionary new ground-based telescope will be 42 meters in diameter and will be the world's biggest eye on the sky.

But Dutch ex-astronaut Wubbo Ockels says it will be impossible to see the Big Bang, no matter how big we make our telescopes.
He claims that there are different realities.
One is a reality we have in our thinking that is created by being based on earth.
But according to Mr. Ockels, in space a totally different reality exists.
Where questions we have now do not have answers.

This is in line with the own attitude in life.
For a long time it is accepted that there are fundamental questions we humans have but that one can also learn to be satisfied with accepting there are no answers.
To let things are simply the way they are.
And to not get lost in a search for answers.

This way of thinking makes those telescopes of course a waste of money.
And they are.
The money could better be spend on improving the life on earth.
Let that become the big bang.

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To learn more about the discovery of the most far away galaxy ever, click on:

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-10/hubble-glimpses-most-distant-object-ever-seen-galaxy-13-billion-light-years-away?page=

To learn more about the new European telescope, click on:

http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/e-elt.html




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