Behold! Earth, our Moon, and wayyy at the bottom, the mighty Jupiter! As viewed from the surface of Mars. Cosmicly stunning. (it’s a long photo…and space is HUGE…keep scrolling )
Pretty rad no? We can see our house! jk. It’s truly a humble reminder of how very itty bitty we are in this big S P A C E. go to gizmodo for the full breadth, and breathtaking photo.
Speaking of spaciness and being small, Monty Python had a reunion last night in NY (we were there!) to premiere their new documentary Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer’s Cut) . Following the movie, we were all delighted by a Q+A session with the reunited cast and a sing-along rendition of Eric Idle’s “The Galaxy Song” from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (if you’re a fan you can watch the Q+A video at IFC ). It was a great close to the night so we thought it only suiting that we post the tune to close the week on this rainy Friday afternoon. (lyrics after the jump if you’re curious)
And all this talk of the galaxy and celestial beings always reminds us of our favorite far out rockers The Flaming Lips. Enjoy a live version of “In the Morning of the Magicians.” Have a infinitely sublime weekend! Do some moon poses and inversions.. are you right side up or upside down? It’s all relative.
“The Galaxy Song” lyrics
Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And you feel that you’ve had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough
Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power
The sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It’s a hundred thousand light-years side to side
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light-years thick
But out by us it’s just three thousand light-years wide
We’re thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point
We go ’round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that’s the fastest speed thereis
So remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth
Great videos. You might be interested in checking out four of the surviving members of Monty Python on one of those late night talk shows a couple days ago–it’s hilarious (if rather painful to see Jimmy Fallon floundering as he realizes how blatantly out of his league he is in sharing a stage with these guys): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/15/the-monty-python-crew-tak_n_322126.html
Thanks so much for these clips, particularly the Monty Python, which I watched religiously in its heydey.
Related thoughts about cosmic Yogic wonder (one of my favorite themes) from http://YogaDemystified.com:
“The wonder of a galaxy is obvious. Think about its hundreds of millions of stars rotating around a central axis, and the whole galaxy itself barreling at an incredible speed through space. And then think about the fact that there are millions and millions of galaxies!
What about a paper clip? In many ways a paper clip is as wondrous as a galaxy.
To begin with, like the galaxy, a paper clip consists of millions and millions of things (molecules, atoms, and the even smaller quarks) interacting with each other in complex ways. Then consider what happens to all these tiny elements and how they have to interact with each other. They’re not spinning around an axis like the stars in a galaxy, but, then again, a galaxy can’t bend and spring back into shape like a paper clip can. If you were small enough to stand on the nucleus of an atom within a paper clip, it would be a lot like standing on earth surrounded by stars.”
Bob Weisenberg
http://YogaDemystified.com
Couldn’t resist plugging this on my Yoga Journal Community blog:
http://community.yogajournal.com/_Dont-Miss-This-YogaDork-Post/blog/1282917/25925.html
Bob
very cool pic! when I’m at the Kumbh Mela in February in Haridwar at the foot of the Himalayas, there are so many people that you can see that mass of humanity in satellite photos….
Gotta love the cosmos!