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The universe is big. This big.
- andys627 15y agoAsk a scientist: Can you see black hole lens effect in this?
- lloeki 15y agoThis [0] IMHO gives more perspective (don't be taken aback by the flashy images, the good stuff comes after, ~2:50 mark) When watching, remember this is when looking at the absolute darkest spot of our sky. [0] Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAVjF_7ensg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAVjF_7ensg PS: Inevitably, the title reminded me of this: Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- acdanger 15y ago"The universe is a big place. Perhaps the biggest" - Kilgore Trout
- rokhayakebe 15y agoWhat did the author mean by "Perhaps?"
- dsr_ 15y agoKilgore Trout is a fictional character. You could ask Kurt Vonnegut, who invented him, but he's dead. You can certainly assume that it's meant to be humorous.
- njharman 15y agoHe meant to entertain the reader with a clever turn of phrase. Something good authors are apt to do.
- batista 15y agoFor one, it's a clever, humorous phrase, since the conventional wisdom is that the universe IS the biggest place, so there would be no reason for "perhaps". Second, it also entertains some doubt: perhaps the universe IS NOT the biggest place. Maybe the conventional wisdom is wrong. Maybe other places exists, from the mythical and spiritual domain (like paradise and hell and Valhala etc), to the scientific domain (multiverses, many worlds interpretation of QM, etc).
- wladimir 15y agoInteresting thought. I wonder, though, what makes those places separate from the universe? The universe including those other places, metaphysical and scientific, would be even bigger and more mind-boggling.
- batista 15y agoWell, you have to define the universe at some point, and the most common definition on people's minds it's "this thing which our galaxy is in". I would presume that common perceptions don't include such notions as "separate reality split-universes" and sets of multi-verses, and what have you.
- mortenjorck 15y agoI still remember the time I saw the first Hubble Deep Field. The idea that the researchers could point this massive telescope at an empty part of the starfield, run a long exposure, and come back with a plate full of galaxies full of solar systems full of planets, while we've yet to get too far beyond the surface of our own. A lot of people's first reaction always seems to be "we're so insignificant!" And yet, most fascinating to me is trying to reconcile the vast complexities of our planet and of humans with our physical near-nonexistence in the universe. We have infinite complexity in approximately zero space. Kind of a strange thing to consider.
- grannyg00se 15y ago"A lot of people's first reaction always seems to be "we're so insignificant!" " Neil deGrasse Tyson often counters this reaction by pointing out that while the universe is vast, we are made of it. So we are not simply small separate objects in a large universe, we are actually part of the physical elements that make it up and come from the same "stuff". At least that's what I gather when he says this: "Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOzkEwaMnaE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOzkEwaMnaE http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/12855.Neil_deGrasse_Tyson http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/12855.Neil_deGrasse_T...
- JonnieCache 15y agoFeynman countered this by saying we're extremely large compared to atoms and fundamental particles, so we can "sit in the middle and enjoy everything both ways." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmzHQljJ4bc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmzHQljJ4bc
- zeteo 15y agoAstronomical numbers may be large but in e.g. computational science people have been dealing with even larger numbers for quite a while now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number
- JonnieCache 15y agoNot wishing to be rude but that's peanuts. Try http://www.xamuel.com/busy-beaver-numbers/ http://www.xamuel.com/busy-beaver-numbers/ If anyone can come up with any larger numbers I'd like to hear them. EDIT: Oh and if you think the universe is big and hard to imagine, try considering the phase space of the entire universe! That's the set of all possible configurations of all the particles. Bananas. I encourage you to watch this lecture from Roger Penrose, Aeons Before the Big Bang, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OutKE3tyG94 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OutKE3tyG94 ...if only for the fantastic hand-drawn overhead transparencies in all the colours of the rainbow. They are a delight and I want to see hipster programmers using them at conferences. BTW also watch it for the crazy physics.
- zeteo 15y agoYes, I know Shannon's number is "small". The point was that it's been around for a while, and that with the right mathematical tools one can deal with such numbers without having their mind boggled.
- JonnieCache 15y agoFair enough. I clicked on the link expecting to get something like graham's number or TREE(3) or some other monstrosity, and felt kind of cheated when it was only 10^43 ;) Do those mathematical methods really allow us to comprehend these numbers though? They only really allow use to express them as configurations of other numbers don't they? Even if you understand hyperoperations and stuff you're not really gazing upon what those figures really entail. I suppose all mathematics involves notation in the end.
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- asmithmd1 15y agoThe tip of your little finger held at arms length would about cover this image.
- st0p 15y agoMakes me feel very small.
- Synthetase 15y agoI'm surprised someone hasn't converted the large image over to something like the Google Maps navigation UI for better viewing. I guess I'll be attempting that when I get home from work.
- geuis 15y agoJust had the same idea. Downloading the full image now.
- dmd 15y agoI would hope that this data would soon be integrated into http://www.google.com/sky/ http://www.google.com/sky/
- maaku 15y agoWorld Wide Telescope: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/wwt/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/wwt/
- jlynn 15y agoCheck out http://zoom.it/VGFr http://zoom.it/VGFr
- username3 15y agoAmazing. All those galaxies and Earth is the only one with life.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- twiceaday 15y ago*Citation needed.
- rhygar 15y agoFixed: Earth is the only known planet to have life.
- qq66 15y agoFixed: Earth is the only planet known by Earth to have life.
- Zakuzaa 15y agoFixed: Earth is the only planet known by humans on Earth to have life.
- prawn 15y agoHate to continue the chain, but on the off-chance government organisations know more than they're letting on, we might need to extend that to "most humans". Though, in that case, it might have to be "thought by most humans"? Just speculating for the hell of it. e.g., Fixed: Earth is known by most humans as the only planet to have life.
- rhygar 15y agoFixed: Earth is known by most humans as the only planet to have Earth-like life.
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- DanBC 15y agoI love that image. It's very hard for me to begin to comprehend the numbers involved. See also "animated scale of the Universe" from NASA. (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html)
- thechrisj 15y agothis is awesome.
- boyter 15y agoThat is pretty impressive. I wish there was something like this that showed travel between two points, say earth and Alpha Centauri, but at lightspeed or faster with a timer in years at the bottom like an odometer. I imagine that would impart a greater sense of scale for myself.
- Jun8 15y agoTotally unrelated to the universe (but maybe not): To me the "Ye. Gads" moment came after this quote: "There’s a long jet of material apparently coming from that bloated galaxy on the left (I increased the brightness and contrast of this picture to make it more obvious; it was subtle in the original image but I have a lot of practice picking out things like this)." I am once again totally stupified at the level of image processing a trained brain paired with a good visual system can do. One day, instead of developing complicated image processing algorithms, we will have it done by a brain-in-a-vat & computer implant combo, using different animal brains and visual systems for different applications, e.g. an owl or eagle for detecting pinpoints of light in a large image of the universe.
- geuis 15y agoHow many galaxies are in the observable universe? Quick numbers check: Author estimates over 200k galaxies in the image. Image covers 0.004% of the sky. 200000/0.00004 = 5,000,000,000 galaxies. (edited, thanks to % help from commenters below) Finding somewhat standardized values for this rather standard question is frustratingly vague. Estimates range from a few billion to a trillion, though the most frequently quoted number I could find was about 100 billion. The standard for measurement in the last 10 years or so have been the Hubble Deep Field Survey images. In the last one done, there were about 10k galaxies shown. The HDFS had a square arcminute resolution of 11.5. It would require 12,913,983 HDFS-type images to cover the entire side. (ref: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=720 http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=720) Using these numbers: 12913983 * 10000 = 129,139,830,000 galaxies. So why the vast difference between the two numbers? My supposition is the new ESO image isn't as deep as the HDFS. I would argue the larger number, ~129.134 billion galaxies is a bit more accurate. Damn, 129 billion galaxies. Someone else has to be out there.
- AlisdairO 15y agoI think your calculated number needs to be multiplied by 100, if I'm not mistaken.
- geuis 15y agoCan you reference which sets of numbers? I made reference to a couple and want to make sure I understand.
- piotrSikora 15y ago0.004% is 0.00004, not 0.004, so the result is 50 billion galaxies.
- geuis 15y agoI don't think that's right. The author clearly states its 0.004% of the sky, not 0.00004%. Simply adding a percent sign doesn't change the number.
- jeremyarussell 15y agoWith all this out there it leaves one to wonder, when will the aliens finally get here? But really, if we evolved from chaos and minerals (so far that's the best explanation anyone's given me.) Then somewhere on some of these other planets are sentient creatures looking up going, "I wonder if there are other sentient creatures out there?"
- swalkergibson 15y agoNo doubt! It is exceedingly egotistical to think that we are the only life-forms in this vast expanse. Also, this image seems like a good use of the iPad 3 retina display...
- EREFUNDO 15y agoI still remember when I learned that the Sun was a star. I was six years old when my uncle told me about it. I actually asked him what the Sun was and his answer pretty much shocked me to the core. I already knew the Earth revolved around the Sun so learning that the Sun is just one of little tiny bright lights at night was a true eye opener. That night I looked up the sky again and wondered if there are other people up there.....
- sliverstorm 15y agowas a star? :)
- EREFUNDO 15y agoOops misstype! We still have 5 billion years before we could refer to it as "was a star".....lol I just type what comes to mind and rarely do editing.....
- mortenjorck 15y agoActually, in narrative writing, as you were doing, you should use consistent tense. So you were correct to use "was," as the sun was a star back then, independent of the fact that it also is now.
- EREFUNDO 15y agoThat's probably why it just came naturally to me because I do read quite a bit and may have seen this word arrangement many times before. My subconscious mind were just spitting out words as I write them. English is only my second language though, I am so much better in Filipino.....lol
- sethbannon 15y agoThe world needs more images like this to inspire the scientists and adventurers of tomorrow.
- InclinedPlane 15y agoInterestingly we don't actually know how big our Universe is, perhaps even within a great many orders of magnitude. This is because the visible Universe has expanded at sub-light speeds over its history, but in the very, very early Universe there was a period called inflation in which space-time expanded at speeds much faster than light.
- kamaal 15y ago>>very early Universe there was a period called inflation in which space-time expanded at speeds much faster than light. References for this?
- InclinedPlane 15y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)
- jlynn 15y agoLooks like the image has been added to zoom.it. You can browse the full resolution image without downloading all of it: http://zoom.it/VGFr http://zoom.it/VGFr
- jrockway 15y ago"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," is beginning to sound a lot more plausible. How could there not be a few Death Stars inhabited by English-speaking humans somewhere in one of those galaxies?
- paraschopra 15y agoWhat I find interesting about this question is that it is at once fascinating and silly. Fascinating because it would be incredibly cool to have someone like us somewhere out there. Silly because the distances involved are mind boggling, so it is highly unlikely they would ever be able to contact us. So is there any real difference between they not existing at all and they existing and we (probably) never been able to know that they exist? All we can hope is to hopelessly theorize and write science fiction stories about them.
- losvedir 15y ago> How could there not be a few Death Stars inhabited by English-speaking humans somewhere in one of those galaxies? I know this is just a tongue in cheek comment, but I actually thought it somewhat reasonable until recently when I spent a moment with the numbers and saw its impossibility. Basically, there's only ~100 billion galaxies with ~100 billion stars each (to an approximation of several orders of magnitude...), while the space of possible societies, languages, histories, etc, grows exponentially. Even if there were 10^100 stars, log_2(10^100) is still only about 330. This means all those stars can only accomodate 330 forks in history where it could have gone one way or the other with equal probability. Or, in computer science terminology, all those stars can only encode 330 bits of information. And describing English alone takes far, far more than 330 bits. (Depending on how inevitable language of a certain type is.)
- squarecat 15y agoComposite of the ESO image with Blue Marble 2012: http://flic.kr/p/btoRfL http://flic.kr/p/btoRfL
- zrgiu_ 15y agoHow can you NOT want to travel the universe when you see such a wonderful photo ? Imagine going closer and closer to a perfectly spiral shaped galaxy, effectively discovering a new world, all-so-different yet similar to ours... I get goosebumps just thinking about this.. I know I'm very probably not gonna get to leave Earth in my lifetime, but I genuinely hope that my children or grandchildren will. This opens so many possibilities...
- BCM43 15y agoTorrent of the large jpg file: http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7134685/The_universe_(JPG) http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7134685/The_universe_(JPG)
- tuacker 15y agoIf you want a more interactive look at the universe go here http://htwins.net/scale/ http://htwins.net/scale/ (Flash but so so worth it)
- grn 15y agoYou may also look at an alternative version at http://htwins.net/scale2/ http://htwins.net/scale2/
- batista 15y agoReading into the article I got a huge urge to re-read the Foundation series (and maybe get into that prequel I never got into).
- losvedir 15y agoTo put this image in further perspective, take a look at this link[1]. It blew my mind as I had the universe and observable universe all mixed up conceptually. For instance, the universe was not a point at the big bang: only the observable universe was. [1] http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/infpoint.html http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/infpoint.html
- Porter_423 15y agoPhil, just thought I’d drop a note here about the venerable T1. We have one at my office. It’s 1.5 megaBITS per second. That means 192 kB/s max download speed. Which means it’s going to take upwards of 30 minutes to download this image. My cable modem at home is actually over 10 times faster!
- ajays 15y agoI don't understand one thing: how can they keep the telescope stable and focused so accurately on one spot in the sky, without any jitter? The Earth is rotating at 360 degrees/24 hours, which is about 0.25 degrees per minute. This 17000 pixel image covers 1.2 degrees, which means the light is sweeping across this sensor at 60 pixels/second as the earth spins. How can they move the telescope so accurately that a sensor pixel picks up light from the exact same spot in the sky for an extended duration of time?
- analyst74 15y agoI think you just answered that, right before asking it.
- ajays 15y agoSo you're saying that we have the ability to make sure that a pixel on the sensor is collecting light from the exact same spot in the sky for an extended amount of time? Taking into account (among other things) the rotation of the earth, the shaking of the ground, the wind, the changes in the atmosphere's temperature and humidity and god knows what else? That's pretty f'in awesome!