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entity14 t1_it93ex8 wrote

Distant worlds completely different from Earth.

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wwarnout t1_it9o2f3 wrote

...and the possibility that life might exist on some of them - life that might be so different from what we know, that it might be hard to recognize it as living.

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Wregdam OP t1_it93nw1 wrote

Thats a good one for me it is probably the distances or stars

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entity14 t1_it971t2 wrote

Yeah it's hard for my tiny human brain to visualize those extreme distances. And it's a bit depressing for space exploration tbh.

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[deleted] t1_it94cph wrote

The seemingly infinite expanse. How insignificant my existence is compared to it. The beautiful chaos as stars/planets/etc are born, die and then get reborn.

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undeterred_turtle t1_it94s14 wrote

That only 5% of the cosmos are baryonic particles. I want to learn what dark matter/energy really is and why there's so much more of it

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dramignophyte t1_itay9be wrote

Dark matter is my favorite subject but I hate talking about it because everyone assumes you're being edgy or they go off on spirituality rants. Or the last most common one is everyone goes "so they think they are smart?..." And go into takedown mode without bothering to actually talk to you. On rare occasions that people attempt to discuss it, they question literally every point but not as curiosity but as a "did you personally prove time slows down the faster you go? How do you know space time curves?" And its like "okay yes... There is room for those to be wrong but if you make me prove every single step this wont be a conversation, it will be a class, can we just work off some other people stuff at face value just for this conversation?

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undeterred_turtle t1_itb4wfj wrote

I hope my comment didn't come off as pseudo-intelligence... I'm just genuinely curious. I don't know much about dark matter/energy but I'd love to learn more.

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[deleted] t1_it98130 wrote

The sheer vastness of it. The human brain can't even accurately comprehend the distance from the Earth to the Moon, nevermind to Alpha Centauri.

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pompanoJ t1_it9bmdz wrote

This is a massive inspiration and source of wonder for me. It also is a major failing of our education. Even highly educated people have no real grasp of the scale of things.

I have this conversation every few years with religious and non religious folk. Both completely miss the scale of the universe and the implications of this scale.

One of the greatest achievements of mankind is the Voyager probes. They are the first manmade objects to ever be sent out of our solar system. Just a few years ago they reached the heliopause... touted as "leaving the solar system" in a myriad of articles. After 45 years as the fastest vehicle ever launched, Voyager 2 is some 130 times farther from the sun than we are. It has traveled far beyond Pluto.

And it is still maybe 300 years from reaching the sphere of comets that surrounds the Sun known as the Oort cloud. And that is just a small fraction of the way to the nearest star.

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Freespirit2023 t1_itcn1is wrote

My old Chevy S-10 had enough miles on it to go to the moon and back... but yeah, much farther than that is pretty hard to comprehend!

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XO-3b t1_it99c1r wrote

The level of diversity on this planet alone is just absolutely mind bending. Apply that diversity to potential infinity and you can't even begin to imagine what's out there.

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Pqrxz t1_it9496w wrote

Nebulae are really cool. Would love to just drift through one.

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Slackimus t1_it9davl wrote

If not for exploding stars we wouldn't be here.

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Ambitious-Cod9682 t1_it9b52z wrote

Is every other planet full of asshats or just this one?

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TA_faq43 t1_it964hs wrote

The possibility that future generations will have a chance to live in different star systems.

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jameszenpaladin011- t1_it9785b wrote

Space is weird but real. Ultimately if you want to know what's going on in the general sense. The answer is space.

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pompanoJ t1_it9alrw wrote

That it is the final frontier.....

Yeah, I quoted Roddenberry.

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Svokric t1_ita4b7j wrote

If the universe is expanding what it is expanding to. What is past the edge. Second one is if we are in this universe only species capable of space travel.

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nicuramar t1_itbbfz5 wrote

Things don’t need to expand into anything. It’s just distances between objects that become larger.

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usrdef t1_itaki1b wrote

The ultimate question. What was before our Universe. How did "infinite space" become a thing even before the big-bang. How is it "just there".

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nicuramar t1_itbbkaf wrote

Maybe there wasn’t a “before the universe”, but it depends on how you define these terms. We also don’t know, of course. We don’t know if the universe is infinite, but it’s the simplest model.

The universe we’ll ever have to care or know about us finite, though. Not that this helps explaining much :)

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gorn_of_your_dreams t1_itao5fe wrote

The fact that Elon is still trapped in Earth's gravity well, so he's not out there screwing it up.

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kevlehn t1_itavsqu wrote

Satellites and space stations around the world and maybe around the solar system in the future?

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francyhacker345 t1_itbioxl wrote

Time dilatation and space shrinkage i guess. Very strange the universe that we live in, uh?

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Freespirit2023 t1_itcjuhr wrote

Without a doubt, the existence of other intelligent life.

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ExcitingStill t1_itf66pg wrote

That in the end all of our concerns and worries about our own life and the human race is worthles compared to how vast and exciting space is. I also love learning things bigger than us.

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Hustler-1 t1_it94d09 wrote

Planetary science. Alien worlds not in lifeforms, but in composition.

The moon IO for instance. It's typography changes as fast as our weather. Mind blowing.

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Edible_karma t1_it96vv4 wrote

The fact that it’s infinite and everything we ever do will amount to nothing, and that in due time…we are forgotten…that keeps me awake at night. The fact that we’re so small. And so in-advanced. that a meteor could kill us at any time. And we would have amounted to nothing. there is no hope. We all die in the end. And life is pointless. God isn’t real. And there is no after life…happy Friday…

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Wregdam OP t1_itat4kn wrote

Now you gave me existential crisis

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OnlyMortal666 t1_it98fvo wrote

The possibility of finding technological life other than our own.

I’d expect life itself is common and, although that’d be a Nobel prize, it’s hardly in the same ball park as detecting a civilisation we may be able to converse with.

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gwardotnet t1_it9b0yq wrote

I believe its uncommon. Too many coincidences and perfect timing all have to happen.

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OnlyMortal666 t1_itbfctg wrote

Well, the Earth/Moon system and our gas giant may appear to be unusual, based on what our technology can deduce of other star systems. That might be important for complex life.

I do think the likes of bacteria will be common elsewhere. Essentially, a soap bubble needed to start the whole process.

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Poopy_Paws t1_ita09rk wrote

There's so much of it no human can properly comprehend it

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CrustaceanCreation t1_itacaev wrote

The fact that we, or at least our matter, are former stars. Its freaky looking at my hand and knowing that it and I were burning at millions of billions of degrees.

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New-Swordfish-4719 t1_itae32f wrote

That if technological civilizations are super rare…just one in a hundred billion stars….that Space is so vast that it still means there are a trillion of them in the observable Universe.

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carrotwax t1_itahdav wrote

How infinitesimally small wave functions can make such a big difference in what happens inside a huge star.

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Oreo259 t1_itamxk2 wrote

The incomprehensible vastness of it and the near-endless possibilities that lie within.

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The_Light_12 t1_itans3w wrote

The fact that there are billions and billions of galaxies maybe with life maybe not with different exotic planets one more twisted and/or exotic than the other. How we haven't even left our own galaxy! What will we see if we did? Will humanity even reach a point like that. Everything man everything!!

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Wregdam OP t1_itatfp0 wrote

Yeah i remember when i was kid i tought that we were in another galaxies and we still didnt found aliens but now i know the real distances well...

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Bipogram t1_itaungg wrote

Near-unlimited resources and power. Just scant hundred km away, and no more than 10km/s away once you're in LEO.

<Cosmos (1st series), Clarke, and O'Neill raised me - and thankfully I got to work on Rosetta, Cassini/Huygens, and Beagle2>

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thegoodtimelord t1_itayc2n wrote

That out there somewhere is the answer to all our science questions

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EricHunting t1_itaz6sa wrote

The creative potential, sadly much neglected today. The potential to freely explore interesting new ways to make and build in a very different environment.

The space agencies and the Willy Wonka oligarchs look to space mostly for prestige and glory. The racket of state and corporate spectacle with some Big Science thrown in so it doesn't seem like a complete waste of time that, in the end, never actually delivers on its perpetual promise of opening space to society.

Space enthusiasts tend to be motivated by a somewhat erroneous sense of adventure and thrills, as so long promised by science fiction. Remote sensing has given us a good picture of what's on offer in our immediate cosmic neighborhood and it's all pretty-much Iceland or Greenland with less air --beautiful in its primeval ruggedness, but there ain't much going on over a Saturday night. There is much to learn and discover, but we're probably not stumbling onto the world of Avatar in an overlooked crater somewhere. Alas, we will have to wait for the means to reach other stars for any prospect of that --SciFi moved on long ago. In truth, it's mostly the sorts of things that excite the likes of geologists. Important, sure, but they generally don't need humans around to do. Nothing in space really does, in an era of robotics and AI. Suited astronauts can't actually do a hell of a lot. So all they really add is cost and risk, usually for the sake of that spectacle. It doesn't matter how cheap the seats on the rocket if all you can do on arrival is stare out a porthole. Without a practical means to make and build in the space environment, it might as well be the submarine ride at Disneyland.

And then there are those motivated by weltschmerz. World-weariness. The compulsion to get away from the noise, hassle, and oppression of a far-too-big society on an ever-shrinking world to a place where everything isn't owned by someone else with a compulsion to lord it over the rest of us. As Robert Zubrin once famously and half-jokingly said; we go to Mars because that's now how far you have to go to get away from the cops. Bruce Sterling suggested this would be the primary motivation of space colonization, and I tend to agree. Richard Proenneke was more space colonist material than Elon Musk will ever be.

But I see space as the ultimate form of Minecraft. A vast neglected backyard waiting to be made into something interesting, like a garden. We tend to think of space in a context of what we can take away from it. I'm more interested in what we might make out of it. To be a playfully artistic demiurge wandering the cosmos, bringing it to life.

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craigontour t1_itb0akv wrote

The totally mind-blowing distance/size of gas cloud and galaxy clusters.

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TheLastDandyOnEarth t1_itb2jxy wrote

Not really any one thing about space but watching interstellar for the first time really lit the spark for me. I think as a film it is so much more than the sum of its parts. Really gets the imagination running wild and hopefully inspires the next generation of scientists and cosmonauts.

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HeraldOfTheChange t1_itb2ybf wrote

Trying to figure out how we’re going to get at all of that trash floating in our orbit.

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HitchlikersGuide t1_itbdj2f wrote

The thing about space is it’s big… really big. It might seem like a long way down the road to the shop but that’s just peanuts to space.

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DirtyBottomsPottery t1_itbgi1a wrote

The prospect of getting as far away from other Homo Sapiens as possible. Really, I hate my species. Maybe it's just because I live in America. But yeah, I'm tired of this talking disease that I have the misfortune of calling my own species.

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SaltThroneHeir t1_itbilc1 wrote

The infinity, the sheer beauty, distant worlds and alien life

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the6thReplicant t1_itbo56k wrote

As a civilization, we need to “grow up”. Now I’m not 100% sure space exploration is the way but it wouldn’t hurt.

I mean if you met someone at a party and they said this is the first time they left their bedroom you wouldn’t expect too much wisdom from them.

Same with humanity.

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OSFrog2023 t1_itc8bom wrote

I Have a pretty strong animus toward time, so I'm hoping space can keep it in check

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Easilyingnored t1_itdh68d wrote

Things like Magnetars. Quick example. SGR 1806-20, a magnetron 50k light years away-half way across our galaxy- threw a temper tantrum that affected our planet and satellites. Ionizing part of the atmosphere and blinding some satellite sensors. 50... thousand... light years...

And also the vasteness...

Very cool link here⬇️

https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

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Muzle84 t1_it9hkvf wrote

The fact that universe will be at some point a giant soup with no lumps.

Then it will contract again, and it will explode again.

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MacJeff2018 t1_itd6s8e wrote

I grew up during the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs. Even the unmanned probes (Ranger, Mariner) were front-page news in the 60s. It was all very new and exciting. National moments of curiosity and pride.

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mightytree_8 t1_itdbloe wrote

Black holes... how? My simple human mind cannot fathom how there's infinitesimal point with infinite density.

Also the Big Bang: how can a whole universe, infinitely big, come from a infinitesimally small singularity? Can such singularity IN our universe do this? And is it a cycle? Like the big bounce instead?

Perhaps I'm just slow, but still hard to wrap my head around.

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Infamousravager t1_itdsh6m wrote

I'd say the unknown, that's really what interests me about it. There's so much we don't know, so much to learn and explore.

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Bigdoder t1_itf9huo wrote

For me it’s probably something called a supernova it’s when two stars collide, btw this also happens millions of years before but us little humans on earth are only just starting to see it as it took how ever many light years it took for us to see it

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