Effervescent Universe ...

A friend sent a link to this slide show of the best Hubble Space Telescope pix.

Gorgeous stuff. Though I never see pictures of splendiferous nebulae and imploding dust-clouds without thinking of a certain science fiction book, where humanity discovers, too late, that the reason we've never detected any radio signals from other civilizations is because our galaxy is actually a very dangerous place, and that our first radio and television broadcasts have already triggered an attack by the bad guys--they are now approaching us at sub-light speed and our doom is already sealed....