A Universe in an Egg Mass in a Universe

There’s a lot going on (understatement alert; track my X/Twitter output for a taste). But that reinforces the importance of pulling back each day to breath and reflect.

I’ve always been irresistably attracted to microcosms. As a kid in Rhode Island I’d spend what seemed like hours lying on a floating dock with my head hanging down over the edge and a hand blocking the sun, marveling at my upsidedown view of tiny shrimp grazing on algae amid lumpy assemblages of tunicates.

As a late-middle-aged man, I can spend almost as much time mesmerized by the tangled ecosystems of mosses, fungi, plants and lichens in the forests here in Maine.

This morning, strolling with our dog along a boardwalk at Jesup Path in Acadia National Park, I saw one of the early egg masses laid by the amphibians belatedly stirring in the still-chilly spring Downeast. I shot some images and began to muse on the patterns that surround us at every scale - even as humans look ever further outward, and back in time, through powerful telescopes.

Here’s the trail.

Here’s what I saw in a pool.

Zoom in a bit….

And a bit more..

I began to think about some of the extraordinary imagery of distant galaxies being harvested by the Hubble and James Webb telescopes.

Just today, NASA had posted a fresh image for “Hubble Friday”:

Here’s the caption:

“See the bar of stars going through the galaxy NGC 2217? The bar in this #HubbleFriday image helps funnel gas from the galaxy's disk into the middle of the galaxy. Then, it's formed into new stars or fed to the black hole at the galaxy's center: https://go.nasa.gov/3vZRla5

Pull back via this Hubble image:

And let’s pull back from deep space toward the home planet.

And Jesup Path in Acadia National Park…

And back to those eggs…

After I posted a version of this sequence on X/Twitter, the science editor, writer, podcaster

Corey S Powell

replied:

I love this deep perspective! Inspired me to revisit the classic Powers of Ten.

He included a link to the 1977 film “Powers of Ten,” created by Charles and Ray Eames, which zooms outward from a Chicago picnic in steps scaled by powers of ten, then dives inward the same way:

What microcosms get you dreaming big?

Have a safe and fruitful weekend.