I mean, I know as big as the universe is there's bound to be random patterns.. but as far as a Creator goes, do the stars ever make you wonder?

They just don't seem too random to me.

Tonight's a clear night with a full moon where I'm at. I was outside letting my dog pee and I happen to look up at the Big Dipper and realized that there's no fu**in way that thing just popped up there.

you realize those stars aren't really lined up like that right? i mean they're nowhere near each other. it only looks that way from where we are. given the number of stars in the sky, it seems probable that there would be some notable constellations no matter where we were in the universe.

Also, the Big Dipper, or The Plough as it's called here, wasn't always there.

Watch Cosmos, Erf. You'll like it.

It doesn't seem too surprising to me. If you poured alphabet cereal into a bowl of milk a few billion times you'll probably end up spelling a lot of words.

It doesn't seem unreasonable to think that a group of stars managed to look like a wire frame of an object we can associate it to.

Yes, way. Way.
As in Milky way.

Wow.

Even more amazing.

Stars are very interesting phenomena to study and learn about. Humans make up patterns out of stars in the night sky, but it is all ephemeral.

http://www.astronexus.com/node/81

From above link:


"The Big Dipper is one of the most widely recognized groups of stars, containing seven bright stars that seem to be close together in space. Of the seven, five actually are close together in space -- an actual clump of stars moving through the Galaxy, almost as if in formation. However, the other two stars, Dubhe (at the end of the bowl) and Alkaid (at the end of the handle) are outside this group, and move separately.

Over the next hundred thousand years or so, the different motions of these stars will gradually change the familiar Dipper shape. In fact, the "bowl" will flatten out, and the "handle" will bend even more, so that after nearly 100,000 years the Dipper will have turned upside down and backwards! Additionally, after 100,000 years there will be an eighth star in the "Dipper". This bright interloper is the star Zeta Herculis, now very far away from the Big Dipper in the constellation Hercules."


-Zeno

Well done. It looks like the change from watching your dog take a piss to tilting your head back is the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe. You deserve a gold star for this one.

[IMG]http://www.hayabusa.org/forum/attachments/riding-gear/151325d1248488774-buying-800-helmet-******-prize.jpg[/IMG]

You should be a scientist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfqht0LEOWQ

Two points:

1. Random often doesn't seem random.
2. The positioning of stars in the galaxy isn't random, but it isn't supernatural either. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_..._and_evolution

Bonus link:

Milky Way Panorama

The link to the 'interactive zoom version' is worth clicking as well.

RGT forum

<-----That way.

Stars are vertices, constellations are graphs.

but how many hamiltonian cycles exist among the stars??

42

How many Euler cycles?

tree fiddy

I often feel a sense of awe or wonder when I look up at the night sky. It puts me in a funny mood, makes my mind wander, and start to think about all kinds of crazy science fictiony things.

In much the same way looking at antiques or ancient ruins put me in a funny state of mind and get me fantasizing about the past, the people who were there before me, what they did, how they lived and died.

Sometimes it makes me feel very small, and life as we know it very insignificant. And puzzling. And the realization that I am just a pile of stuff, the same as everything eles in the universe, thinking these thoughts and reflecting these reflections is fractally mind blowing.

I wonder if my experience is anything like the experiences of the earliest humans, or proto-humans, looking up at the sky and feeling something visceral, before generation after generation of organized philosophy and religion nudged people to equate these raw feelings with notions of creators or other kinds of magical thinking.

But then again, I'm not stoned all the time, so maybe me and the OP are on entirely different wave lengths.

Ironic, since many Christians (like you?) think that's exactly how it happened. God just made everything pop into place.

So you know where matter came from?

We are all star children..

Not really. But saying "God did it" doesn't really help, either. In fact, now I have to explain where God came from, too.

Same answer: God!

Geez.

Only if you are limiting God and the universe to four dimensions.

(Big Bang Theory) + (Relativity) + (String Theory) = ????

Do you see the problem here?

All theories about what happened before mass are equally valid and equally absurd. So I think that originallt two wormholes, and from those wormhole came two large sexless masses called worms, and from those worms came the instict to procreation, and from procreation came rubbing, and from rubbing came sparking, and from sparking came... some dude who had a bad cold and layed the law that [(matter) + (gravity) + (string thoery)]/ (relativity) must always equal 42.