11 ms·

From one photo, we know there are at least one hundred billion galaxies

58 points by Flemlord 17y ago

alex_c 17y ago
I still think Douglas Adams explained it best. "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." In a strange way, I think it gets the point across better than a precise description like "one hundred billion galaxies" ever could.
- FiveFiftyOne 17y ago
  This was the one for me: "To be fair though, when confronted by the sheer enormity of distances between the stars, better minds than the one responsible for the Guide's introduction have faltered. Some invite you to consider for a moment a peanut in reading and a small walnut in Johannesburg, and other such dizzying concepts." Like TP, he had an amazing penchant for explaining the unexplainable :)
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    TP ?
    - AndrewDucker 17y ago
      I'd guess Terry Pratchett.
      - jacquesm 17y ago
        Ah, ok, I was thinking along the lines of Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking... Terry Pratchett is entertaining but he can't hold a candle to Douglas Adams. It's more like he's found a formula and markets the hell out of it (he's a good businessman though!).
        FiveFiftyOne 17y ago
        Terry Pratchett is correct. The man has created an imaginary universe, interlinked and interweaved across dozens of stories. His definitions on quantum and time are interesting and amusing at the same time. His frustration at the limitation of language with regard to these subjects too: "It is very difficult to explain quantum in a language designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is". Apologies for the OT post :)
        pbhjpbhj 17y ago
        If our language (I'm thinking English, I'd be interested to hear of variations) is for telling people where the ripe fruit is, how come we don't have specific [common] words for so-unripe-it-will-give-you-indigestion, not-quite-ripe, ripe-enough, still-needs-to-ripen and so-ripe-you-can't-pick-it - they'd be very useful in foraging situations? I guess /auf Deutsch/ they'd all just be compound words?
        eru 17y ago
        I could make some up in German. But that's not fundamentally different from placing adjectives in front of your words in English.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
naz 17y ago
Makes intelligent life seem quite likely
- cglee 17y ago
  Perhaps, but the likelihood of a sufficiently advanced civilization who could travel through space/time to interact with us becomes much smaller when you consider our civilization as a whole is only a flash in the pan.
  - chrischen 17y ago
    Yes but technology does not progress linearly. So to us it may seem so impossible by methods we possess, but it may be closer than we think to travel throughout the universe. So a flash in the pan may be moot depending on the right technology. For example captain Jack sparrow trying to locate a ship in the ocean may seem like a huge task, and today it would be too if we use the same method back then. But if that ship had a GPS tracker on it completely changes the way we look for the ship. We/or they just have to discover the right trick.
    - mbenjaminsmith 17y ago
      I agree. Imagine gathering the hundreds of people that worked on the Apollo missions and fitting them in the room that housed the project's main computers. They might all fit. Then tell them before most of them were dead they would be able to put all of those computers in their pocket. Ok. Now imagine that we don't kill ourselves for the next thousand years. What are going to be able to do? What about ten thousand? I'm going to state this, on behalf of all of humanity: 1) We're not alone. The universe is teeming with life much like this planet is. 2) What's technologically possible is bound only by the extent of our future imagination. 3) The planet will eventually be controlled by mild-mannered nerds like the ones reading HN. The internet planted the seed that will grow the tree whose fruits will destroy tyranny. So it is written.
      - lyime 17y ago
randomwalker 17y ago
Based on my (limited) understanding of cosmology, this is only the number of galaxies in the observable Universe . The number of galaxies "outside" this region is effectively unknowable. Could someone who knows better clarify?
- DropkickM16 17y ago
  I don't necessarily know any better, but I think that we can probably estimate the number of galaxies in the entire (observable and unobservable) universe given the assumptions that the composition of the universe is generally homogeneous and that the big bang theory is correct. If this is the case, we can calculate an approximate number of galaxies from the combination of observed galaxy density and the extrapolated size of the universe based on the time since the big bang.
  - pbhjpbhj 17y ago
    I'm not sure if you could find any larger assumptions? Perhaps baryonic assymetry is only a local feature creating completely different structures in the observable universe. Perhaps past expansion is far accelerated or the acceleration increase and decrease over time. Perhaps "c" is not a constant. The work of Barrett et al. "Undermining the cosmological principle:[...]" shows that minimal fluctuations in CDM does not necessarily show isotropy and homogeneity. Add to this that observable matter is postulated to be < 5% of the universe and we don't really have a handle on dark matter. We don't even know for sure how many dimensions there are ... we're pretty clueless really.
mcantor 17y ago
Can you imagine being there when these images were first compiled and revealed? I would have gaped in disbelief, and then wept. From a minuscule patch of nothingness, bottomless infinity has been glimpsed. It's unfathomable. And it's out there, right now, part of our existence. How awesome and thrilling.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  How humbling. And this is where religion gets it all wrong, the claim that all that was made just for us is so totally off the wall that I find it hard to believe that religion is changing so slowly to reflect the reality as we know it today.
  - biotech 17y ago
    And this is where religion gets it all wrong, the claim that all that was made just for us.... Are you thinking about some particular religion, or religion in general?
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      Most western religions, judeo-christians + splinter groups up front. Their continued over simplification of the cosmic truths that are literally staring us in the face make it difficult to engage in reasoned debate.
      - robg 17y ago
        Have you read Thomas Aquinas in the original? Or even Maimonides? There's a reason some minds stand the test of centuries, if not more. Those on the TV today are mere flickering quarks. Those whose names we still utter are galaxies of thought. I think it's a mistake to dismiss, out-of-hand, the thoughts that lie at the foundations of Western civilization. Religious organizations have always been run by humans. Yet those structures also sheltered and promoted the arts and sciences for hundreds of years without a democracy in sight. Consider: Your last statement is an example of itself. Rejecting religion doesn't mean rejecting the religious.
fuzzmeister 17y ago
After thinking about it for quite some time, I've decided that, in my opinion, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field is the most important picture ever taken. While many argue that non-repeatable and awe-inspiring human events should be the root of "the most important picture," the HUDF shows that no matter how significant those pictures might seem, they are absolutely nothing on the scale of what really exists out there. A grain of sand on an infinite beach. I have never encountered any other picture that comes close to inspiring the simultaneous fear, awe, and wonder that this picture inspires. Thoughts?
- aerique 17y ago
  > Thoughts? Why does it inspire fear?
  - Hexstream 17y ago
    Because there are far more terrorists than originally estimated, of course! And many more children to be thought of.
  - fuzzmeister 17y ago
    Fear as in the flip-side of awe: the realization as to how insignificant you are, on some level.
- Leon 17y ago
  What about the WMAP? It studied the CMB radiation and gives us evidence of the big bang, a flat euclidean universe, the amount and type of matter in the universe, and even more! Sure, the ultra deep field is cool, but in importance the WMAP picture is waaay more important.
ashleyw 17y ago
One thing I've always wondered about Hubble — if it's orbiting earth, scooping up protons for long periods of time, doesn't that mean it'll create a photo made up of the captures from every part of that small area....in the entire orbit? So two galaxies next to each other on the photo could be on the opposite sides of us really? I really fail at cosmology…
- Luc 17y ago
  They keep the telescope pointed at the same area of the sky of course. Stars (except for our sun) are so far away that both their real motion and their parallax motion (apparent motion of the stars due to us moving around the sun) appear very tiny. Hence the term 'fixed stars' from antiquity (as opposed to the 'wandering stars', which turned out to actually be planets one we got telescopes).
- pronoiac 17y ago
  Parallax isn't going to cause much error here. We're about 8 light-minutes from the sun, but the telescope was trained on galaxies millions (edit: billions) of light-years away. Edit: Proportionally, it's about the difference of the view between your two eyes, of the sun.

58 points by Flemlord 17y ago

I still think Douglas Adams explained it best. "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." In a strange way, I think it gets the point across better than a precise description like "one hundred billion galaxies" ever could.

FiveFiftyOne 17y ago
This was the one for me: "To be fair though, when confronted by the sheer enormity of distances between the stars, better minds than the one responsible for the Guide's introduction have faltered. Some invite you to consider for a moment a peanut in reading and a small walnut in Johannesburg, and other such dizzying concepts." Like TP, he had an amazing penchant for explaining the unexplainable :)
- jacquesm 17y ago
  TP ?
  - AndrewDucker 17y ago
    I'd guess Terry Pratchett.
    - jacquesm 17y ago
      Ah, ok, I was thinking along the lines of Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking... Terry Pratchett is entertaining but he can't hold a candle to Douglas Adams. It's more like he's found a formula and markets the hell out of it (he's a good businessman though!).
      - FiveFiftyOne 17y ago
        Terry Pratchett is correct. The man has created an imaginary universe, interlinked and interweaved across dozens of stories. His definitions on quantum and time are interesting and amusing at the same time. His frustration at the limitation of language with regard to these subjects too: "It is very difficult to explain quantum in a language designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is". Apologies for the OT post :)
        pbhjpbhj 17y ago
        If our language (I'm thinking English, I'd be interested to hear of variations) is for telling people where the ripe fruit is, how come we don't have specific [common] words for so-unripe-it-will-give-you-indigestion, not-quite-ripe, ripe-enough, still-needs-to-ripen and so-ripe-you-can't-pick-it - they'd be very useful in foraging situations? I guess /auf Deutsch/ they'd all just be compound words?
        eru 17y ago
        I could make some up in German. But that's not fundamentally different from placing adjectives in front of your words in English.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]

naz 17y ago

Makes intelligent life seem quite likely

cglee 17y ago
Perhaps, but the likelihood of a sufficiently advanced civilization who could travel through space/time to interact with us becomes much smaller when you consider our civilization as a whole is only a flash in the pan.
- chrischen 17y ago
  Yes but technology does not progress linearly. So to us it may seem so impossible by methods we possess, but it may be closer than we think to travel throughout the universe. So a flash in the pan may be moot depending on the right technology. For example captain Jack sparrow trying to locate a ship in the ocean may seem like a huge task, and today it would be too if we use the same method back then. But if that ship had a GPS tracker on it completely changes the way we look for the ship. We/or they just have to discover the right trick.
  - mbenjaminsmith 17y ago
    I agree. Imagine gathering the hundreds of people that worked on the Apollo missions and fitting them in the room that housed the project's main computers. They might all fit. Then tell them before most of them were dead they would be able to put all of those computers in their pocket. Ok. Now imagine that we don't kill ourselves for the next thousand years. What are going to be able to do? What about ten thousand? I'm going to state this, on behalf of all of humanity: 1) We're not alone. The universe is teeming with life much like this planet is. 2) What's technologically possible is bound only by the extent of our future imagination. 3) The planet will eventually be controlled by mild-mannered nerds like the ones reading HN. The internet planted the seed that will grow the tree whose fruits will destroy tyranny. So it is written.
    - lyime 17y ago

randomwalker 17y ago

Based on my (limited) understanding of cosmology, this is only the number of galaxies in the observable Universe . The number of galaxies "outside" this region is effectively unknowable. Could someone who knows better clarify?

DropkickM16 17y ago
I don't necessarily know any better, but I think that we can probably estimate the number of galaxies in the entire (observable and unobservable) universe given the assumptions that the composition of the universe is generally homogeneous and that the big bang theory is correct. If this is the case, we can calculate an approximate number of galaxies from the combination of observed galaxy density and the extrapolated size of the universe based on the time since the big bang.
- pbhjpbhj 17y ago
  I'm not sure if you could find any larger assumptions? Perhaps baryonic assymetry is only a local feature creating completely different structures in the observable universe. Perhaps past expansion is far accelerated or the acceleration increase and decrease over time. Perhaps "c" is not a constant. The work of Barrett et al. "Undermining the cosmological principle:[...]" shows that minimal fluctuations in CDM does not necessarily show isotropy and homogeneity. Add to this that observable matter is postulated to be < 5% of the universe and we don't really have a handle on dark matter. We don't even know for sure how many dimensions there are ... we're pretty clueless really.

mcantor 17y ago

Can you imagine being there when these images were first compiled and revealed? I would have gaped in disbelief, and then wept. From a minuscule patch of nothingness, bottomless infinity has been glimpsed. It's unfathomable. And it's out there, right now, part of our existence. How awesome and thrilling.

jacquesm 17y ago
How humbling. And this is where religion gets it all wrong, the claim that all that was made just for us is so totally off the wall that I find it hard to believe that religion is changing so slowly to reflect the reality as we know it today.
- biotech 17y ago
  And this is where religion gets it all wrong, the claim that all that was made just for us.... Are you thinking about some particular religion, or religion in general?
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Most western religions, judeo-christians + splinter groups up front. Their continued over simplification of the cosmic truths that are literally staring us in the face make it difficult to engage in reasoned debate.
    - robg 17y ago
      Have you read Thomas Aquinas in the original? Or even Maimonides? There's a reason some minds stand the test of centuries, if not more. Those on the TV today are mere flickering quarks. Those whose names we still utter are galaxies of thought. I think it's a mistake to dismiss, out-of-hand, the thoughts that lie at the foundations of Western civilization. Religious organizations have always been run by humans. Yet those structures also sheltered and promoted the arts and sciences for hundreds of years without a democracy in sight. Consider: Your last statement is an example of itself. Rejecting religion doesn't mean rejecting the religious.

fuzzmeister 17y ago

After thinking about it for quite some time, I've decided that, in my opinion, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field is the most important picture ever taken. While many argue that non-repeatable and awe-inspiring human events should be the root of "the most important picture," the HUDF shows that no matter how significant those pictures might seem, they are absolutely nothing on the scale of what really exists out there. A grain of sand on an infinite beach. I have never encountered any other picture that comes close to inspiring the simultaneous fear, awe, and wonder that this picture inspires. Thoughts?

aerique 17y ago
> Thoughts? Why does it inspire fear?
- Hexstream 17y ago
  Because there are far more terrorists than originally estimated, of course! And many more children to be thought of.
- fuzzmeister 17y ago
  Fear as in the flip-side of awe: the realization as to how insignificant you are, on some level.
Leon 17y ago
What about the WMAP? It studied the CMB radiation and gives us evidence of the big bang, a flat euclidean universe, the amount and type of matter in the universe, and even more! Sure, the ultra deep field is cool, but in importance the WMAP picture is waaay more important.

ashleyw 17y ago

One thing I've always wondered about Hubble — if it's orbiting earth, scooping up protons for long periods of time, doesn't that mean it'll create a photo made up of the captures from every part of that small area....in the entire orbit? So two galaxies next to each other on the photo could be on the opposite sides of us really? I really fail at cosmology…

Luc 17y ago
They keep the telescope pointed at the same area of the sky of course. Stars (except for our sun) are so far away that both their real motion and their parallax motion (apparent motion of the stars due to us moving around the sun) appear very tiny. Hence the term 'fixed stars' from antiquity (as opposed to the 'wandering stars', which turned out to actually be planets one we got telescopes).
pronoiac 17y ago
Parallax isn't going to cause much error here. We're about 8 light-minutes from the sun, but the telescope was trained on galaxies millions (edit: billions) of light-years away. Edit: Proportionally, it's about the difference of the view between your two eyes, of the sun.