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NASA: Fill in a name, and you can have an exclusive coordinate in the universe
- rbanffy 1mo agoIt’d be nice if we could see the pixel in an image preview. We have images for every pixel assignable, some even as sharp as the ones the telescope will get.
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- kuratkull 1mo agoBut which one is mine? :S
- teekert 1mo agoLater on you can hover over the image, and the tooltip will pop up the address. It will be a great resource for contacting interesting people! /s
- lucascacho 1mo agoWhat a great way to harvest an email list lol
- HelloUsername 1mo agoJust use a temp email (if they allow it) and screenshot the email you'll receive?
- philipwhiuk 1mo agoIt's much like their previous stuff - e.g. send your name to the Moon. And there's definitely cheaper approaches than sending a $2.7b telescope to L2.
- rbanffy 1mo agoThey do that for pretty much everything. It’s a nice way to involve the public. It’s mostly harmless (you won’t use an address you consider sensitive).
- 8cvor6j844qw_d6 1mo agoIs this an NFT without the block chain? Sounds like it from a quick skim.
- swiftcoder 1mo agoThe idea of personalised pixels goes back way before NFTs, such as The Million Dollar Homepage[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Million_Dollar_Homepage
- 4thguy 1mo agoJeez, that takes me back. I could have sworn that it was earlier than 2005 though
- LelouBil 1mo agoSo, simply a *centralized* database? Like a plain old database ? "NFT without the Blockchain" is a weird thing to say
- ben_w 1mo agoIn fairness, nothing about the initials "non fungible token" ever really required a blockchain. Though I suppose the only things which I'm aware of which actually benefit from a blockchain was version control systems like git. (I heard there's some cases where self-executing contractual obligations are a money saver versus proving you're not engaged in unlawful collusion with the counterparty, but as this didn't come from a lawyer I don't even know if that was true).
- pixelesque 1mo agoTitle doesn't match submission: it's not really a "coordinate" in 3D space, you "adopt" a pixel from the early imagery taken by the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Maybe that can be reverse-projected back to something like a coordinate (if you know the distance), but it's not the same thing.
- SiempreViernes 1mo agoIt's a coordinate on the celestial sphere, which is just as good a coordinate as anything else. Now, if the title had said something like "place" you might have a case that the expectation is that a specific spacetime point is being defined.
- darthoctopus 1mo agothat's only true if Roman were to do a continuous stare. However, it (as with any telescope) has to re-point from time to time in order to look at different targets.
- pixelesque 1mo agoIt's not even that though if we are going to be nit-picky: it's a coordinate (not quite sure what the pixel extent would subtend to solid-angle-wise, but...) based off the coordinate frame of where the space telescope will be when the image is taken in spherical coordinates. That's not "exclusive". The "pixel" is the exclusive bit.
- SiempreViernes 1mo agoWith much charity I can imagine you meant: "but what if Roman points at the same bit twice and they assign the same patch of sky to different people?". Well, in that case they probably messed up because to me it seems clear they intend to assign each patch of sky to a distinct identity. However, as written it sounds like you are essentially objecting that an address along Central Park (in New York city) is "not exclusive" because there are other "Central Park"s in the USA.
- 1mo ago
- ButlerianJihad 1mo agoOK, I adopted Pixel 00150921. It has some nice divisors including 9. Hit me up.
- andrewstuart 1mo agoI wish to be named Emperor of One Thousand Galaxies.
- Bluestein 1mo agoPlease see: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton
- andrewstuart 1mo agoYes, I would wear that little emperors hat too.
- Bluestein 1mo ago(And, the sword. The sword is a must ... ... poor sap: The sword was amongst the very few possessions found in his rented room when he died, suddenly and peniless.-
- andrewstuart 1mo agoYou sir shall be my loyal adviser and Master of Assassins.
- Bluestein 1mo ago(!)
- andrewstuart 1mo agoIt’s something of a pity NASA doesn’t offer that chance to crush 1,000 independent peace loving democratic galaxies in my brutal rise to power as my soldier fanatics sweep the universe. I’d pay for that. More exciting than owning a pixel. Imagine the headlines NASA To Sell the Universe.
- 1mo ago
- vharuck 1mo agoI'm happily surprised they didn't ask for money.
- _joel 1mo agoThey do this reachout all the time. I've got my (and family members) names on a usb stick held inside it and Mars lander (the non-mobile seismograph, whose name escapes me)
- jvanderbot 1mo agophoenix
- phwak 1mo agowhose*
- _joel 1mo agothanks
- PowerElectronix 1mo agoGood try, federal agency, good try.
- walrus01 1mo agoMaybe we could map a discrete GUID to some amount of cubic volume of the universe and say that you 'own' that GUID and cubic volume of space. Referencing how many possible GUID can exist: The total number of theoretically possible GUIDs (Globally Unique Identifiers) is 2¹²⁸, which equals exactly 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456. This is approximately 3.4 × 10³⁸ (340 undecillion) unique values a really quick calculation says that if you assigned every cubic area of the universe (ignoring that it's spherical?!) to a single GUID, each GUID would 'own' a cube of space about 680 AU on each side. So there's not really that many GUID.
- exe34 1mo agoThis reminds me of xkcd/865.
- ninju 1mo agohttps://xkcd.com/865 https://xkcd.com/865
- antonvs 1mo agoThis is a complete tangent, but how would you identify which cubic volume you own? Would it: 1. Somehow remain static as stars and planets moved through it? 2. Be relative to some coordinate system that we define? 3. Follow some object like an asteroid or planet? Option (1) is literally impossible. We tend to think of space on Earth as something you can reliably divide up statically, e.g. you can divide the space inside a box up into cubic segments, and that works fine. But in that case, you've defined a coordinate system relative to the box, which is of course moving through space relative to everything else. You eliminate the motion issue by making everything relative to the box. We can't meaningfully do anything similar for the space between astronomical objects. Everything is moving relative to everything else, and there's no way to "stick a pin" in space. In a very real sense, there is no such thing as a fixed, static volume of space - space is relational, it's what exists between separated objects, it's not an object that can be divided up statically. All the relevant physical theories - special and general relativity, and quantum physics - confirm this. For option (2), we can try to define a box - a coordinate system relative to Earth, or the Sun, or the Milky Way galaxy, or the Local Group of galaxies, or the Laniekea supercluster, etc. But those are all moving relative to everything else, so any location we identify with coordinates based on that will similarly be moving. One day you might own a piece of space on one side of the Andromeda galaxy, the next day it would be out in intergalactic space (because at those distances, radial coordinates move fast!) You might think that perhaps we can define coordinates relative to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) rest frame - the reference frame in which the CMB radiation looks uniform and identical in every direction, i.e. not redshifted or blueshifted. In a certain cosmological sense, this is a good candidate for the rest frame of the universe. But the problem is, how do you assign coordinate values to that? You're left with the same basic problem - any point you pick either can't be reliably identified, or is moving along with some chosen object. Option (3) ends up being the most sensible, for the relational reason I mentioned: we can, in many cases, reliably identify a particular object in space. Now we're back to the "star registry" kinds of scenarios, where you "own" a star. Owning a piece of space can't really work.
- kotaKat 1mo agoIf I adopt a coordinate, does that make me a Space Lord or Space Baron?
- swader999 1mo agoIs lake Michigan taken?
- analog31 1mo agoNot any more. The governor of Wisconsin just renamed it.
- mhalikosen 1mo agoThe generated image has an em dash in it.
- nashashmi 1mo agoI got to say that while i had heard about jwst every week or so on how it was getting delayed and being overrun with costs, I didnt hear anything about Nancy grace. They were similar in price too.
- baggachipz 1mo agoJoke's on them, I already own a star from the International Star Registry 8)
- NoGravitas 1mo agoMy exclusive coordinates are whatever space I currently occupy.
- ChrisArchitect 1mo agoTitle closer to original: Adopt a Pixel on one of the first images from NASA Nancy Grace Roman Telescope
- librasteve 1mo agohere is a product preview .
- lurn_mor 1mo agoI love the official certificate! Well worth my email address!
- BearBest 1mo agoFair correction: this is a pixel in Roman’s detector and its corresponding image data, not a permanently owned 3D location in the universe.