Surounded by practical infinities

From the Neoproterozoic Era

I awaked each morning in a fever, sometimes frantically trying to verify or discredit such information as fell within the range of modern human knowledge. Traditional facts took on new and doubtful aspects, and I marvelled at the dream-fancy which could invent such surprising addenda to history and science. I shivered at the mysteries the past may conceal, and trembled at the menaces the future may bring forth. What was hinted in the speech of post-human entities of the fate of mankind produced such an effect on me that I will not set it down here.

H.P Lovecraft, The Shadow Out of Time

Vistas of reality

The galaxy I Zwicky 18, originally thought to be a young galaxy, actually seems to have formed around the same time as most other galaxies. The bluish-white knots in the heart of the galaxy are two major star-forming regions.

Nasa / Hubble - image here, more here

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

H. P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu [full text]