Rei is an astronomy otaku, and she also believes that We Are Probably Not Alone. But I definitely can’t see Rei as some kind of hippy conspiracy theorist, you know, the kind that sees UFOs everywhere and stuff… no, her belief could be described more as “the universe is SO complex that there is a higher probability of some other life existing than of no other life existing.”

Because of that, and of course because of the plot of Joyride in general, sometimes I have to do a lot of astronomy, astrophysics, and general Outer Space Stuff research. It can cause serious brain hemorrhaging.

Anyway, if I recall correctly, Hubble Ultra Deep Field by NASA was actually one of the famous space images which inspired that detail in Rei’s personality. Because when I saw those images, I easily understood how anyone could think as Rei does! :U

For this photo, NASA took a tiny, tiny patch of black night sky… so tiny, it was the size of a 1mm x 1mm peice of paper held 1 meter away. So black, human eyes can’t detect a single star in it during the night.

They pointed the Hubble telescope at that tiny, black speck of space. And this is what they saw:

OH SNAP 8U

Look at all those galaxies, and remember each has its own system of stars. Our own galaxy, for example, has 200 ~ 400 billion stars inside it alone. All this in a “starless” (to our eyes) patch of the night sky smaller than your pinky fingernail. So yeah it’s pretty amazing :B

Detail:

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