Awe and wonder

One of the wonderful things about reading astronomy articles is how they can make you feel like an infitesimal speck in a vast uncaring universe.

Take, for example, this bit from an article about an event that transpired on March 19th, where scientists observed the brightest object they’d seen:

“The optical afterglow was 2.5 million times more luminous than the most luminous supernova ever recorded, making it the most intrinsically bright object ever observed by humans in the universe. It was so bright that immediately after the blast, Swift’s UltraViolet and Optical Telescope and X-Ray Telescope indicated they were effectively blinded, originally leading researchers to think something had gone wrong.

“For a few precious seconds, the luminosity was a million times that of the whole galaxy,” explains Dieter Hartmann, a Professor at Clemson University.

…

The explosion, which took place halfway across the universe, was so far away that it took its light 7.5 billion years to reach the Earth. In fact, the explosion took place so long ago that neither the Earth nor the Sun had come into existence.”