In 1995, astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to make a series of images of planetary nebulae, including the one above: the Hourglass Nebula. Advances in astronomy and physics have given us windows through which to view not only our own marvelous universe, but the many parallel universes that may exist alongside it.
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A long-exposure Hubble Space Telescope image shows a majestic face-on spiral galaxy located deep within the Coma Cluster of galaxies, 320 million light-years away in the northern constellation Coma Berenices.
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Dr. Edwin Hubble, noted astronomer, examines the photographic plate on which a supernova was found in June 1936. Hubble's telescope allowed us to see farther into space than ever before, but we still don't know the full extent of the universe -- or even whether it has a finite end. Some suggest that an infinite universe would necessarily imply infinite worlds, effectively creating parallel universes separated only by distance.
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Professor Albert Einstein is shown a few days before his 70th birthday celebration in his home in Princeton, N.J., in March 1949. Einstein tried but never succeeded at discovering an all-encompassing "Theory of Everything" to explain the physical universe, but subsequent researchers have proposed such theories. Some of these, like string theory, for instance, have implied parallel universes.
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Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was an English physicist who, according to legend, began contemplating his theories on gravity after seeing an apple fall in his orchard. His Law of Gravitation explained that all objects had a force of attraction between them, which was directly proportional to their mass, and this helped us understand why the moon orbits around the Earth. He was also known for his studies of astronomy, planetary motion, optics and chemistry.
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In this photo provided by NASA, Dr. Stephen Hawking, a professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge, delivers a lecture. Hawking is among cosmology's modern-day titans. Hawking's work on black holes has helped us understand some of the strangest possibilities about gravity and space-time.
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This image provided by NASA shows the Hubble Space Telescope after its release from the Space Shuttle Atlantis on Tuesday, May 19, 2009.
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NASA released the best "baby picture" of the universe ever taken, capturing the afterglow of the big bang in the form of cosmic microwave background radiation. It was captured by scientists using NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).
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The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics offers one theory of parallel universes. In this model, every time a quantum experiment occurs, new worlds are created to account for all possible outcomes. In this universe, the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit provided us on Earth with this photo of Mars. In parallel universes, however, the rover could have crashed and become inoperable, or the photos could have showed green dust instead of red.
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The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004, and as of January 2012, the rover was still exploring the planet. Over the past eight years, Opportunity has discovered evidence of wet and dry environments, as well as other scientific information that helps us understand our neighboring planet.
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An image from a computer monitor shows the screen display of The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at Home (SETI@home) program, which combines the idle processing power of thousands of personal computers on the Internet. This program helps humans search for evidence of otherworldly intelligence.
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This image from the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope's "GLIMPSE360" survey shows two extremely bright stars that illuminate a greenish mist. The hydrogen and carbon molecules in the mist help astronomers visualize the edges of gas clouds and study their structures.
Image Credit: Image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/2MASS/SSI/University of Wisconsin
Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, remains the most mysterious of the solar system's inner planets. Hiding in the sun's glare, it is a difficult target for Earth-bound observers to see.
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The disk of our Milky Way galaxy is home to hot nebulae, cold dust and billions of stars. This disk can be seen from a dark location on Earth as a band of diffuse light across the sky.
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A finger from the body of Galileo was detached when his remains were moved in 1737. It eventually became the property of Italy's Museo di Storia del la Scienza. Galileo's work on telescopy and endorsement of Copernican heliocentrism caused one of the greatest paradigm shifts in the history of astronomy, but proof of parallel universes could be even more groundbreaking.
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In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus proposed his heliocentric theory, which suggested that the sun was the center of the universe, not the Earth. The theory helped astronomers predict the motions and position of the planets much more accurately. The idea of a heliocentric universe was controversial at the time, but now, most accept Copernicus' theory as the beginning of modern astronomy.
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The sun was captured in 1973 throwing one of its largest eruptive prominences ever recorded. Our sun is a normal star that formed about five billion years ago, and it will last about another five billion years.
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This is an artist's concept of a probe orbiting the Earth to measure space-time, a four-dimensional description of the universe that includes height, width, length and time. We have Einstein to thank for our awareness of space-time.
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In 1884, the asteroid Ida was discovered. More than a century later, NASA scientist Ann Harch analyzed data returned by the Jupiter-bound probe Galileo and discovered Dactyl, which was the first observed moon of an asteroid.
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Once a planet but now demoted, here is Pluto, along with its moon Charon, just below it, right of center, shining brightly. Two other moons appear more faintly to the right of the pair. If the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics proves true, there may be a parallel universe in which Earthlings still consider Pluto a planet.
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Above is one of Galileo's first telescopes, which was designed initially as a simple curio. Galileo realized he could use the instrument to peer farther into the night sky than anyone thought possible. Of course, he couldn't have known that the scientists of the future would be trying to understand not only the depths of our universe, but the nature of others beyond it.
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This illustration shows Galileo Galilei using one of his first telescopes around 1620. Among many other important discoveries, Galileo used his telescopes to find that Jupiter has moons, our moon has mountains and Venus experiences different phases.
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The Hale Telescope, shown here in October 2008, resides on Palomar Mountain in California and has been in use for more than 60 years. One of the newest additions to Hale is an optics laser that can shoot about 56 miles (90 kilometers) upward to help the telescope create sharper and more detailed views of galaxies and quasars.
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Telescopes have come a long way since Galileo's first model, and today's super telescopes can produce amazing images. At NASA's Advanced Supercomputing facility in California, the hyperwall-2 shows colorized red and green nebulae spanning a vast region of our galaxy over 128 monitors. The system is connected to a supercomputer named Columbia, and it helps astronomers view and analyze massive amounts of data from telescopes.
Image Credit: Photo by Joe McNally/Getty Images
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