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Space Science

Huge New Galaxy Cluster Found 128

Posted by Hemos from the et-phone-home dept.
Anonymous Squonk writes: "The new Subaru telescope on Mauna Kea, the world's largest telescope, is starting to produce big results. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reports that the latest find is a previously unknown cluster of over 1,000 galaxies over five billion light years away."
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Huge New Galaxy Cluster Found More

Huge New Galaxy Cluster Found

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  • The universe may well be closed and of finite volume yet still have no "edge" or "boundary". One of the galaxies in that cluster could be our own galaxy 5e9 years ago. Remember Land Of The Lost, when they see themselves in the distance from atop the highest mountain in the area?

  • naah (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    i bet it's just a fly that got squished on the lens of their telescope.

  • TROLL SUMMARY (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Content: 5/10 (anti-science trolls are quite ordinary)

    Subtlty: 7/10 (you cleverly avoided references to gods or jesuses which would have been too obvious)

    Followup: 6/10 (dutiful responses, but lower quality)

    Effectiveness: 7/10 (many slashbots responded, but a couple caught you as a troll)

    Overall: 6/10
  • Perhaps we are, in fact, small and insignificant.
  • Errr... Alpha Centauri is a star in our own galaxy (second closest to us, after Proxima Centauri). Most of the astrophysics being done concentrates on studies of our own galaxy (cause it's pretty easy to look at). Someone has to look at extragalactic objects.

    Eric
  • Something that I'm sure most people don't think of, when thinking about the topic of telescopes and of viewing anomolies and objects in space, is what we are actually experiencing.
    Sight is a matter of light. What we experience visually through our eyes are physically landing on our eyeballs. The nature of light; photon, particle, wave, etc.. is unimportant. In some fashion or another - light exists. It seems like a simple statement, but upon reflection of the nature of sight, is an amazing thing.
    When we peer at galaxies billions of light years away - we are actually experiencing an event that occured billions of years ago and units of distance away. When we see them, in some fashion or another, that event becomes a part of us. Whether it is in a philosophical or physical way, the light becomes part of us. This event collides with our eyes.
    I just think it is something amazing.
  • Outback is an aussie term, that we use to describe the interior of Australia, in reference to somewhere being really far away from civilisation.
    Maybe they got the name from an Aussie and not sponsorship?
  • Just wondering - this is the world's largest optical telescope, right? Aren't there Radio telescopes with effective dish radius in the Km's? Like the sliding dishes out at Parkes, Australia?

    Oh, side note - there may be a movie called "The Dish" coming to cinema's near you - It's about relaying the moon landing from the Parkes Radio Telescope to the rest of the world. Quite funny. Well worth seeing.
  • Put that joke back in 1986 where you found it.

    Or 1996 if you're British.
  • Subaru is *not* the biggest telescope, not even close -- it is only 4m in diameter vs. the two Keck telescopes' 10m. (and many other telescopes 6m and 8m). It is just able to take really wide-field images.

    There is a big difference.
  • Old light from a long time a go, in galexies far, far away...

    had to be said.

    Mr P.
  • Five billion light years? Wow, Subarus really can go anywhere!
  • Doug, you're a theorist in training... you're not supposed to know about mirrors! ;-)

    -Jer.
  • otoh, maybe some work done in producing some of the equipment astrophysicists use finds its way into commercial productions lines. kinda like how the space program gave us tang.
  • Subaru is Japanese for the Pleiades asterism.

    They named the car after the asterism. The logo
    is a simplified version of it.
  • t seems to me that the Copernican effect is running out of control. Every day, almost, scientists strive to convince us that we are small and insignificant as a civilisation. I would disagree with this, however. We, the human race, are the most important things we know of.

    "Copernican Effect"? Interesting. I was under the assumption that we're here to learn and explain...and it started WAY before Copernicus.

    However, both your points are valid. We are the most important things we know of. On our planet, we are clearly the species that's accomplished the most in culture and mass communication. We have a written history, and we've overcome great odds to get where we are today. As a species, we've done well.

    On the other side of the same coin, however, is the fact that we're an interesting, though microscopic, part of the universe. The universe is HUGE...much bigger, I believe, than any of us are really capable of comprehending. Science has nothing to do with making this so, it's always been. It just happens that we, as an interesting culture, have developed the method of discovering just how small we are. I think it's an important part of a culture or species to realize just how small they are in the Grand Scheme...it means we're advancing.

    The Good Reverend

  • If he had read Nietzsche, he would have said "ressentiment," not "guilt," and he would have said that environmentalists (whom he would have compared to Christians) are trying to convince the young, beautiful, and successful (whom he would have compared to either Greeks or Jews, depending on which Nietzsche book he'd last read) to destroy themselves (economically and bodily) on the altar of Nature (which he would remind the environmental-Christians is in fact an indifferent, wasteful, monstrous thing that, since they claim to worship it, they should be sacrificing themselves to willingly by refusing the "unnatural" advances of technology, etc.); he would describe the morality of the environmentalists as a vengeful "slave morality" that aims to rid the world of the "aesthetic" and "Dionysian" young, beautiful, and famous, because the very sight of "unnatural" beauty and youth makes the ugly, weak environmentalist feel jealous and shitty. And he would be right, pretty much.

    Is today "crappy philosophy reference day" on Slashdot, or what?

  • 'Important' is a subjective term, you see, and the only people we know of capable of applying it as an idea is Homo Sapiens Sapiens.
    Personally, I think what makes us really cool and significant is the fact that we want to learn more about everything, even if everything we learn reminds us how insignificant we are.

    Hold out both your arms as wide as you can. If your arm span represents the life of the earth, with the beginning at your left hand: multi-cellular life arose at your right wrist; dinosaurs appeared at the base of your fingers; and Homo sapiens - well, one flick with a nail file will remove the total time we've been around. But so what? Why should that affect how we feel about ourselves?

    Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
    You need to work on your sense of aesthetics. I see art and poetry in everything that we learn about our universe.

  • Anyone got one of these handy? I'd like to chuck this guy in and let him see just how significant he actually is.

    Thanks!

  • There are 6 that are much brighter than the rest. It's not really obvious which is the seventh brightest. Look at the constellation through a telescope, or even a good pair of binoculars, sometime.

    --Seen

  • This just came to my mind... :)

    Monty Python
    THE UNIVERSE SONG

    Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,
    And people are stupid, wicked, or daft,
    And you feel that you've had quite enouuuuuuuuuuuugh . . .

    Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
    And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour.
    It's orbiting at ninety miles a second, so it's reckoned,
    The sun that is the source of all our power.
    The sun and you and me, and all the stars that we can see
    Are moving at a million miles a day
    Through an outer spiral arm at forty thousand miles an hour
    Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.

    Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars,
    It's a hundred thousand lightyears side to side.
    It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand lightyears thick,
    But out by us it's just three thousand lightyears wide.
    We're thirty thousand lightyears from galactic central point,
    We go round every two hundred million years.
    And our galaxy is only one of millions and billions
    In this amazing and expanding universe.

    The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
    In all of the directions it can whiz.
    As fast as it can go, that's the speed of light, you know;
    Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
    So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure,
    How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
    And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space
    Cause there's bugger-all down here on earth!
  • From what I can remember, we think that the universe is about 6 billion or so years old and started in a central place. If what I just said is even remotely correct (please, correct me if I'm wrong), then how did these galaxies get so far away. Have we been traveling away from each other at some single digit factor of the speed of light since the conception of the universe? Can someone please explain this to me?
  • Still though, 6 billion would make the average speed slightly less than half that of light. Increasing this number by a couple of factors isn't going to change the magnitude of the required speed that much.

    Are we basing the age of the universe on the farthest things out there we can find and how long it would take them to get there?
  • So where does this fit in?

    If you had read the article in your link, you would know the answer is 13th.

    HTH

  • Even when people get their priorities correctly pointed at studying space, they still get it wrong.

    This new galaxy cluster was what? Five BILLION light years away?

    And we know the exact orbits of what percentage of astroids and commets that could potentialy threaten our only home?

    Doesn't it make sense to fully understand your own backyard before you start to study places we won't be going any time soon? I'm not saying it isn't worthwhile, just that there are other higher priority places to study...specificaly the system called Sol.

    NightHawk

    Tyranny =Gov. choosing how much power to give the People.



  • You have effectively made that challenging metamorphisis from an aquatic lifeform to a terrestial being stumbling around on nubs. Climb atop the tallest moss-covered rock and grunt your dominance in the toungue only known to you- "I am king of the retards!"


    Good troll, KTB. I especially like the sig. Covers any inefficiencies in your actual posts.



    Seth
  • Big Science... Another political target like Big Oil, Big Tobacco... ;)

    Is this something that will come up in the campaign finance wars? "This senator is a pawn of Big Science... He believes in such factors as gravity, inertia, and entropy. He is firmly in the lab coat pocket of this special interest... How much longer must the American people suffer?"

  • If there is life out there (and I'm sure there is), I wonder what they call our galaxy, etc.

    Science fiction teaches us that aliens will call us earthlings. Who's to say they havent already named our planet "Ass", and and would respectfully refer to us as "Assholes"?

    Oh well. I guess it's better than "McPeople".

  • Saw a Ford Galaxy whilst drivin' my Subaru Outback just the other day.

  • Actually, an astronomer at McDonald observatory in Texas went nuts about 20 years ago and fired a 45 caliber handgun several times into one of the big scopes there (the 102-inch, I think). It made a few chips in the mirror a couple inches across. They took some black construction paper and cut out little masks to cover the chips and taped them on. They covered less than 1% of the mirror, so it didn't make a big difference.

    Yeah, they'll be really upset at you, but you probably can't do that much actual damage to the mirror without something pretty substantial.
  • So my question is, if you're sitting on a planet orbiting a star at the edge of one of these galaxies, and you look up in the sky, do you see a whole lot of nothing if you look away from the center of the universe, and a whole lot of everything if you look towards the center of the universe?
  • The furthest thing you can see is the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation! 5 pts for Good Try.
  • Nice fnord Picture there, but fnord could that article have fnord mentioned the word fnord "Subaru" a little more? fnord

    +++++++++++++++++++++
  • You know, I was thinking the same thing... That was a GREAT Nova too.

    +++++++++++++++++++++
  • Has anyone read the book Rare Earth?

    It discusses and predicts that based on evidence we know of now, that life in the Universe may be fairly common. But sentient life might be an accident, and at the very least more complex life like plants and animals rare and that planets like our own just as rare.

    Most of the stars we study have many characteristics to them that make them inhospitable for life over the time scales required to produce sentient life.

    Or at the very least, with all of the things I see, and other scientists see through X-Ray telescopes, Infra Red Telescopes, Visible Light telescopes, spectragraphs, photometers, etc. the universe is a very hostile place over billions of year time scales.

    Asteroid impacts, Supernova's in a solar systems local neighborhood, vast dust and gas clouds which could reduce/block sunlight, Black holes neutron stars, to very nasty and large local disturbances which can reach out across vast distances and destroy whole solar systems.

    Is it any wonder we are here???

    They put forward in the book that our solar system configuration might be very very odd. They say in many different ways we owe a lot to Jupitor the largest planet in our solar system.

    Jupitor is large enough to take the big impacts that can take out life on our world and is good gravitationally at sweeping up and keeping the solar system free of large bodies.

    The configuration of our very solar system with the larger planets on the outside, protecting the smaller solid/rocky planets inside may be one of the reasons why life has been able to hang on for so long and diversify on our planet.

  • As furiousgeorge already said, science is about seeking truth. And you know what? The truth is that on a cosmic stage, we aren't significant. The universe has been here for billions of years before us, and it will be here for billions of years after we're gone. Even if humanity manages to survive long enough to colonize our entire galaxy, which would obviously be no small feat and take millions of years, we would still have little to no impact on 99.99% of the rest of the universe, and we would only occupy a fraction of the universe's entire history.

    Whatever status or accomplishments mankind has assigned itself is only significant to us.
  • an astronomer at McDonald observatory in Texas went nuts about 20 years ago and fired a 45 caliber handgun several times into one of the big scopes there

    I'm sorry, but I just think that's funny as hell. Any idea what made him 'go astral'?

    I am, however, quite relieved to hear that these phenomenally expensive telescopes can take a little beating and keep on ticking.

    --

  • Science is showing us to be small and mostly insignificant, because that's the truth. Our society, no matter how it ends up, is not anywhere close to the most important thing in the universe, and will never be.

    In my opinion, science's position in society, at least partly, is to keep us honest in how we see the world. Showing how one errant rock can knock all records of us off the map, or how animals can understand human logic, should show that the universe won't end when we're gone, so we better make sure that we have a culture that can make our visit here a bit more comfortable for everyone.

  • It's not the job of the scientists to interpret the moral meanings of the data, that's the job of the priests, the rabbis, the shamans, etc. We may be in declining times, we may not be. The whole collapse of everything we know arguement is very old, almost as old as humanity itself.

    If society fails, maybe it was just time to fail; failure gives a chance to see what's truly important, and to dust yourself off and try again.

  • So if there was other intelligent life discovered in the universe, but it happened to be in the Andromeda Galaxy (using your example), it is therefore classified as irrelevant? I didn't think so. I agree that humanity is very important, and that we need to make sure that we have a culture that expresses that life is important. However, we also need to keep in mind that there are sagans of other planets and stars out there, and some of them may have some form of life, and that is important.
  • ...point this thing at some closer galaxies like, Alpha Centauri and study something closer? I realize that this was probably built for, please correct me if I'm wrong, Deep Space Exploration, but seriously, why can't we point it at something closer and study it.

    Just an idea...

  • You do realize that the lawyers (and thier brainchilds, some of which you've listed) are placed here by the aliens to slow down the growth of our society so that we don't "interfere" before they are ready to deal with us;-). Here, I have a tin-foil hat ready for you friend.

  • AHHHHH! Overload. I'm reading this first thing in the morning so maybe I'm underthinking it, but I think I just split a couple of brain cells.

    Seriously, is this sort of stuff discussed in some of the more recent books? Perhaps Stephen Hawking's? I love this type of discussion, but I don't have the background on the scientific side of it (however, once I get fully woke up I do have a lot of background on the philosophy/deep thoughts side of things).

  • I like that idea, and it is entirely possible. Perhaps black holes are really transferring mass to "another" place in the universe (have we ever detected anything that just seems to spew out massive quantities of matter without ever seeming to run out? Maybe it's into another universe within our "multiverse", yeah I know I'm reaching). Anyway, isn't it possible that the "worm hole" theories are based on the same sort of idea? Over the sphere you can travel in any direction, but you can only reach the center of the sphere through either a "worm hole" or a "black hole". Perhaps worm holes actually just go between two points on the sphere and black holes all meet in the center so that, if it were possible to create a faster than light ship that could penetrate a black hole without disintegrating, you could "navigate" to any other black hole from the "center". Damn, you got my mind playing all kinds of games with me now! I love these type of ideas.

  • I've thought long and hard about this one many, many times. If the Universe is really "curved", then perhaps by travelling far enough around the "curve" in one direction you would find yourself in the same physical "place" just in a different time (forward or backward). And perhaps, by learning to travel perpendicular to the curve, we could learn to enter "alternative" versions of the reality we inhabit. Of course, this is all just philosphical mumbling, but how much do we really know about stars and galaxies that are so far away that by the time we see their light they could have been burned out for a couple of billion years? Even that "fact" is just guesswork on our part. How much do we "know"?

  • Does everything have to be an "issue" now? Fuck the PC (politically correct) garbage. Just tell him his fucked in the head and be done with it!

    Personally, I always thought science was about enhancing the overall knowledge of society. That's not demeaning our signifigance in the universe. It is in fact trying to show that we are important enough to realize how vast and immense this thing we call "reality" really is, and that we are intelligent enough to realize that no matter how important we think we are, we are just a part of the whole. If you simplify that into "we are insignifigant", well then mores the pity for you. Ignore science all you want, people are still going to question things. And good scientists will keep trying to answer those questions.

  • I've always felt that there are many, many other "intelligent" species around the Earth, perhaps even inhabiting it. These "others" can see us, hear us, understand us on one of thier "planes" of existance, and when they try to communicate with us using their "standard" method of communication, they do not understand why we don't respond.

    We are insignifigant, yet massively signifigant all at the same time. These "others" I referred to may or may not be present, but I like the idea of it. They see us, the hear us, they "know" us in ways we do not know ourselves. Yet they cannot help us, even though some of our struggles may help them (as they see what helps, or what makes things worse in our actions). Crazy talk, I know, but such is the poet's curse. Always to question, always to wonder, never to answer.

    Science is about finding those answers that the poet cannot find. And each scientific answer simply leaves the poet asking more questions. Combine the two things, science and poetry, and you would see a wonderful individual. In a way, this is my view of someone as rich in spirit and mind as Steven Hawking. Stuck in a wheelchair, yet intelligent, questioning, always wondering, and answering as many questions as he can before his time is up. If only we could all be so bold, and so accepting of our isignifigance. If we stopped fighting how "small" we were, we could get on with things that would make us "less small".

    Ah well, I've wandered too far off course, sorry....

  • - Speed: how far are the galaxies drifting away? I suppose there was an analyzable spectrum?

    - Does it imply in a new lower bound for the age of the Universe? (I'd say at least 10 billion years -- they had to get there first, plus the light travel time)
  • It seems to me that the Copernican effect is running out of control. Every day, almost, scientists strive to convince us that we are small and insignificant as a civilisation.

    Sorry, but on the large scale, we are beneath notice. You are one human among countless billions of other life forms, on a very tiny planet, orbiting a smallish star, 30000 light years from the center of an unremarkable galaxy.

    We, the human race, are the most important things we know of.

    Why? Most of the oxygen in the atmosphere come from algae in the oceans; surely the algae is more important than us? I bet the dolphins think they're pretty important too.

    I purport that in this age of guilt trips and materialism run riot, they should be striving to show the opposite ; just how important we are.

    Science is not about making people feel good; it's about trying to find out the truth. Whether people *like* the truth or not is a different matter.

  • Actually, that number keeps fluctuating. The last figure I'd heard, IIRC, estimated the Universe's age at around 14 to 15 billion years... or maybe I'm just remembering wrong. :) Although I'm almost positive the 6 billion figure you mentioned isn't quite right...
  • (And I wonder if it is formal attire?)
  • Maybe you should spend more time looking at submicroscopic particles, bacteria, and the like. We are impossibly huge and important compared to the lowly gluon or protozoa, maybe that will make you feel all special and important. Like it's some sort of accomplishment to be larger than a bactera, or smaller than the Universe.
  • Very well said.

    We may be meaningless and insignficant to the universe (assuming said universe has a capacity for thought or concern > 0, which is a pretty wild, perhaps even absurd, assumption in and of itself) but we matter to one another and to ourselves, therefor we matter.

    As the dominant species on this planet the world is exactly what we make of it. That makes us pretty significant in the local realm -- demanding anything more of the rest of the universe is nothing more than petty, even childish, emotional hubris and greed.
  • If all the votes for a state are pooled, evenly mixed, then a statistically significant number are randomly chosen to predict the winner, it will be FAR more accurate than the current system of hand recounts with varying criteria used by different counties or counters.

    Exit polling is based on bad data, and is not a random sample. Using a random sample of the actual vote data, is guaranteed to converge to the correct answer.
  • You were close, I guess. Actually it's the Seven Sisters and it isn't a constellation but an open cluster of stars in the constellation of Taurus.

    The western name is The Pleides.
  • >If the universe is curved, how do we know we are
    >not looking at our own galaxy, from a long ago
    >time?

    there are a # of experiements being performed now looking at this thesis.

    (btw - if the distance for a light round trip is > speed of light * age of universe we wouldn't see ourselves anyway).
  • >Presentation is the key.

    Are you an adult? Presentation-schezentation. Just the *facts* ma'am.

    If i gave you a nice big shit sandwich, on a toasty whole wheat bun with cheeze and some nice garnishes i wouldn't expect you to gulp it down.

    You don't like the message - don't attack the messenger, no matter how it's presented. In the same vein, don't just swallow any message if it IS presented well.

    Science isn't about making you feel good. It may, it may not. Cope with that (or bury your head in the sand). If you want something guaranteed to make you feel nice, give your mom a call.

    >When they discover something new, they always
    >get some talking head to say 'It just shows how
    >insignificant we are'

    When i hear somebody telling me how important i am, i usually check to make sure my wallet is still there. Don't confuse somebody kissing your ass with the message. THAT is why civilization is in a decline (in my opinion). Too many people have surrendered their rational thought, instead happy to be placated with platitudes of how 'important' they are.

    j

  • There are upwards of 500 stars in the Pleiades cluster. It just so happens that there are only a handful (six or seven, as you've noted) that are reasonably visible to the naked eye.

  • Heh... (Score:2)

    by Haven ( 34895 )
    The funniest thing is, the light that we are seeing is SO old that those galaxies may not exist anymore...
  • There's some info on the software that makes the SUBARU Telescope run at http://www.corba.org/industries/research/subaru.ht ml, with a focus on how it uses CORBA to share distrbuted data.
  • All I know about mirrors I learned from my countless mirror lab tours ;)

    Doug
  • I believe you meant 3.something meter radius... there are plenty of telescopes larger than 4 meter diameter meters now... including the one shown in the NOVA the previous poster mentioned: the MMT on top of Mt. Hopkins

    (the 6.something meter mirror was cast at the Mirror Lab here at UA!)

    Doug
  • It's called sampling... you don't care when you're getting a count of stars in a galaxy when you're off by a few hundred million... it's the order of magnitude that counts...

    when you're counting ballots, a statistical description is unacceptable... note the mis-call of florida by the network's exit polling...

    Doug
  • They are reported to be 5 billion light-years away. In 5 billion years, it is conceivable that many of them may have collapsed or something similar.

    ------------
    CitizenC
    My name is not 'nospam,' but 'citizenc'.
  • Well, sort of. They're known as the Seven Sisters, yes, but most people can only see six. The reason for this is that (according to Greek legend) Orion stole one of them. Taurus the Bull was placed between Orion and the Pleiades to protect them from Orion. That's why there're only six, and that's why they sit on Taurus' shoulder.
  • ... but the seventh star is extremely hard to see. I once heard a story that in Arabia, they used to use the Pleiades to select their scouts. If a man could describe the position of all 7 stars, then he had eye sight good enough to be a scout.

    -Ted
  • Einsteins Relativity theory and the uncertainties of Quantum Mechanics have filtered down into the Moral Relativism and uncertainty we see around us today, via the medium of failed religion and collapsed world views.
    Perhaps the most ridiculous and pethetic thing I've seen on slashdot in a along time!

    What "moral relativism"? And "failed religion"? The sooner these damn cults and superstitions die, the better off we will all be.

    I only ask that scientists be careful and responsible, ...
    Scientists are careful and responsible when they talk about the truth and do everything they can to debunk superstition and irrational power-hungry cults. Yes, in the universe humans are insignificant. So? In our world, we are not; we have a responsibililty to humanity, to each other, to our ethics.

  • Non-sense. Five Billion years isn't that long in the life of a Galaxy. Our Galaxy is estimated to be about 8-12 Billion years old (depending on which astronomer you ask). Even a typical star's life is measured in Billions of years. Or Sun is estimated to be 5 Billion years old, and is only halfway through its life.

  • Where groups of galaxies occure, it is indeed very common for the larger ones to absorb the smaller ones when they venture too close. Our own Milky Way galaxy is known to have canniblized a number of small irregular galaxies, as evidenced by the common orbits of a few scattered stars outside the plane of the galaxy. The same effect can be better observed (and has been) in other galaxies when it occurs.

  • The press release [subarutelescope.org] makes no mention of the number of galaxies in the cluster that was detected. A footnote mentioned that a cluster of galaxies was composed of at least 50 galaxies, but that was the only number of galaxies mentioned. The press release did state that some 30,000 objects were captured in the photograph, but made no mention of what those objects were. The article on StartBulletin.com is the only place that 1000 Galaxies was mentioned.

  • Then the astrophysicists should not be allowed to count ballots or the count will be off by a few hundred million.
    Wait a moment, it is off by a few hundred million!
    OOPS!
  • When they discover something new, they always get some talking head to say 'It just shows how insignificant we are'

    I have never seen a scientist wax lyrical about how incredible we are, it's always how insignificant we are.

    Then blame the talking head, not the scientist. In any case, you must not spend very much time talking to scientists if that's your view, because the ones I talk to (i.e. my coworkers, as I myself am a scientist) are constantly amazed by humanity. That includes physicists who are boggled at the combination of cosmic factors that have to be just the way they are in order for life to exist at all, chemists who are amazed at the complexity and beauty of the way that the molecules that make up our body interact, and biologists who are astounded by the interactions of cells that make us functioning organisms. That doesn't even mention the cognitive scientists who are still baffled and enthralled at how our brains process information and engineers who are impressed by the efficiency of our bodies. Try actually talking to scientists before you make up your mind about what they think.

  • Actually, current cosmology believes the universe is approximately 15 billion years old, although you are correct that its supposed to have started at a single point. Yes, everything in the universe appears to be flying away from everything else, with exceptions for local mutual gravitational effects (on the scale of galaxy clusters). Objects which are extremely far from us (say 10 billion light years and up) seem to be moving at significant percentages of the speed of light away from us. And there appears to be a nice, linear relationship (Hubble's law) between the speed and the distance. If you want to read some basic stuff on it, a good site is http://www.hubbleconstant.com/ [hubbleconstant.com]

    On a related topic, another response to your post mentioned the recent claim that the universe apears to be accelerating. So far, this claim is based only on studies of supernovae at the most extreme distances we can detect them. One of the assumptions the researchers made on that study is that the maximum brightness and the decay curves are the same for these distant supernovae as for the closer ones. I guess what I'm getting to is that the conclusion that the universe is accelerating in expansion is not entirely accepted as being fact yet. The results are good enough to lead to further research to confirm them, but it's been only about 2 years since publication.
  • If the universe is curved, how do we know we are not looking at our own galaxy, from a long ago time?

    Bork...
  • Is Fuji Heavy Industries endowing telescopes now, or is the Japanese name a bow to Hawaii's large Nisei population?

    I suppose it could be both. According to the blurb from my car dealer, "Suburu" is Japanese for "The Five Brothers". Which is the name of the constellation on the hood (I forget the western name) and also of the five-company cartel that makes the car.

    __________________

  • That was a GREAT Nova too.


    No, it was a super nova.

    --

  • The Japanese name on the telescope is for the star cluster we call the Pleiades, or the seven sisters.

    The funding for Subaru came mostly from the government of Japan through a number of universities, much like how telescopes such as the Gemini telescopes [noao.edu] are built. In fact it is run by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the counterpart to the US's National Optical Astronomy Observatories [noao.edu]. As the Japanese built it and paid for it, they can call it whatever they want. The only thing they have to do is give 15% of the time to observers at the University of Hawai'i.

    Subaru's site is here [naoj.org] and it has pictures, though the headquarters is on the big island (aka Hawai'i) and the net connection is slow.

  • Hmm (Score:2)

    by Fervent ( 178271 )
    Subaru?

    Let me guess. They plan to use an Outback to get there.

  • Good Troll.

    How many scientists do you know run around claiming how insignificant we are? I think you're missing the point. While humanity is important, it is even more important to see how we fit into the grand scheme of things. I don't think any scientists are trying to de-value humanity, rather I believe that we are putting our existance into the proper context.

    If you get the idea that science is destroying human esteem, then perhaps you aren't taking the time to understand the science itself. Science isn't about ethics and having a purpose for things, it is only an exploration into our reality. So if one feels overwhelmed by the results, it is only a personal fear of being insignificant. If you look at most of the popular scientists of the last half century (Einstein, Sagan, Feynman) they all embrace the value of humanity, don't try to white-wash science as un-human - in the end science is only what you make of it.

  • It has the worlds largest single mirror, but the title of worlds largest optical scope goes to the twin Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea each of some 10 metres diametre. Subaru is 8.3 metres diametre.
  • I don't agree that "Big Science" is destroying human esteem. Scientists are not obsessed by reducing our status (how does revealing how big the universe does that reduce our status?). They are interested in finding the answer to the great question, "Why?" - whether that is studying the learning pattern of chimps or studying how the universe got here. Through this, we may understand more about our own existence.

    Personally, I don't have any problem accepting that, on a cosmic scale, all of humanity is microscopically insignificant. It doesn't bother me one bit. Now I'm the first to admit I have a little bit of a big ego, but I'm quite happy with the fact that if I spun in tomorrow, although my Dad would be distraught, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't give a damn.

    I think this song is quite apt:

    The Big Cigar Theory [mp3s.com]

  • What is the point of finding all of these galaxies? I mean, what do we gain from it? Do we derive any tangible benefit from this line of research?
    Viewing galaxies so far from us means we are able to look back in time, theoretically to the point at the Universe's creation. Such research increases our understanding about the formation of the Universe, a question worthy of our attention as a civilization.
  • It's a great big universe and we're all really puny,
    we're just tiny little specks about the size of Mickey Rooney
    It's big and black and inky, and we are small and dinky
    It's a big universe and we're not!

    -Yakko's Universe
    ((FOR full lyrics visit: http://www.home.global.co.za/~eyal/docs/yakkos.txt [global.co.za] ))

  • Nitpicking (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27, 2000 @10:29AM (#598294)
    So I took a tour of the telescopes on Mauna Kea this past summer and I just wanted to clarify a few things (by the bye, if you're ever on the Big Island, I highly recommend the tour (it's even free on Thurs - Mon)).

    a) the Subaru telescope is named after a constellation, not the car company.
    b) it is the largest single mirror telescope in the world; however, the two Keck telescopes that are right next to it are larger (they're made up of 36 small hexagonal mirrors) (there may be larger telescopes of this kind elsewhere).

    dmd

  • most galaxies fleeing us (Score:3)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @10:55AM (#598295)
    If we aren't so important, then how come just about every galaxy is rushing away from from ours? (with about three exceptions). We must have done something to make them flee :-)

  • Or is it doing just the opposite? (Score:3)

    by cowboy junkie ( 35926 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @09:25AM (#598296) Homepage
    I think it could be argued that understanding the infinite scale of the universe can help us see that life at any level is something precious, rare, and valuable - something that shouldn't be squandered. And that perhaps if we find a little bit of humility in looking at something so vast, it's not necessarily a bad thing.

  • science's amazin' (Score:3)

    by Mondongo ( 43895 ) <joaquin@mEULERon ... r minus math_god> on Monday November 27, 2000 @08:50AM (#598297)
    Heh. These science guys can count stars up to a
    billion... where are they when we wanna count a
    few ballots?

    my $0.02

    mondongo

  • Re:science's amazin' (Score:3)

    by TMB ( 70166 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @08:57AM (#598298)
    Heh. These science guys can count stars up to a billion... where are they when we wanna count a few ballots?

    Of course, any scientist will tell you that a margin of 537 out of 6 million is in the noise. Poisson error on 6 million is 2450. You can beat that down by sqrt(N) if you recount N times... so we need to recount the votes 21 times before the result becomes significant. ;-)

    [TMB]

  • Did anyone notice this in the FAQ? (Score:3)

    by ptbrown ( 79745 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @06:05PM (#598299)
    You can freely use Subaru images on this web site for personal use. But "personal use" does not include the use of images on a personal web site if that web site is open to the general public. You are not allowed to use Subaru images on your personal web pages.

    This makes me appreciate NASA a whole heck of a lot more. All NASA material is public domain. Subaru may take pretty pictures, but what's the point if I can't take full advantage of them?

  • Re:Car or Constellation? (Score:3)

    by mr. roboto ( 85479 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @09:21AM (#598300)
    The 'scope has a Japanese name because it's a Japanese telescope; built by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. I think that the U of Hawaii gets some free use in return for the land on Mauna Kea.


    "Subaru" is the Japanese name of the constellation we call the Pleadies. The name is simply from the constellation, and has nothing to do with the car.

  • Explanation... (Score:3)

    by lamontg ( 121211 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @11:38AM (#598301)
    Saying the universe started in a central place and then expanded from there is misleading if not totally inaccurate. According to the big bang theory the universe was a singular point in the beginning. This means that not only was all the mass compressed into a single zero dimensional dot but that space-time itself was a singular point.

    In order to understand this, you have to understand that space-time itself can bend, expand and contract, and that this is the most important feature of the expanding universe -- not the matter that sits inside the universe. The big bang was not an explosion which happened at a single point and then the material radiated outwards in a shell like a conventional explosion taking place. The big bang actually happened at every point in space. The big bang happened where you are sitting now.

    Galaxies are actually not moving very fast, even though we may be seeing the distance between us and them get greater and we may see a large redshift from them as they get farther away from us. What is changing is space-time in between us and them which is expanding and placing them farther away from us. It is not the galaxies which are moving, it is space time that is warping (and there is no spoon).

    Another aspect of this is that space-time can be much, much larger than the 10-20 billion light years which would be possible if it were a conventional explosion. If the universe exploded from a point on a flat background space-time (the wrong picture), then material would have been limited to the speed of light and the radius of the universe would be fixed to be less than a number light years equal to the age of the universe. However, if the big bang happened everywhere there is no limit to the size of the universe. It could be 10,20,100,1000, etc billion light years or even infinite in size.

    Some of this may be a bit hard to swallow -- I find the part about the universe coming from a point-size singularity particularly hard to swallow -- but other aspects of the theory are well tested. We know that the theory of the big bang is correct back to the time when the universe was expanding fairly rapidly and was around 3000 degrees kelvin. We can actually see the light from that time as the cosmic microwave background radation (CMBR). Observations of the CMBR along with stellar nucleosynthesis and other observations have established the post-3000K big bang theory very well.

    Hope that helps a bit...

  • Re:Imagine... (Score:3)

    by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @09:25AM (#598302) Homepage Journal
    If by 'tangible benefit' you mean cash, then no, there is no cash in this line of work. Probably various theories (such as Hubble's) get more proof with each discovery of this type. We learn more about the structure of the cosmos, we learn more about the fate of our own Sun. Maybe astrophysics can be beneficial in future explorations - we learn more about space and time. The major difference between humans and other creatures on this planet is our curiosity and inability to be satisfied with only what we know now. A tangible benefit is not the only benefit, there is also intangible benefit and it may not be obvious. Maybe learning more about the space around us we'll appreciate better the place where we live now.

  • it's the curvature.... (Score:3)

    by efuseekay ( 138418 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @01:41PM (#598303)
    That's a good question that even veteran cosmologists get it wrong (I recalled Alan Sandage I think, this year's Cosmology Prize winner making the same mistake!)

    Here is a short primer (without much Jargon I hope) :

    The BB DOES not happen at a single point necessarily, contrary to popular belief (and the blasted "primeval atom" picture which is totally wrong). Whether or not it happened at a single point depends on the "curvature" of the Universe.

    Currently, the latest results (Cosmic Microwave Background) points to a "flat" Universe, which means that the curvature is zero (a balloon has positive curvature, a table has no curvature). Now , a balloon has a "bounded" surface area : i.e. it is finite. But the flat space we lived in is infinite. Thus, an infinite space, extrapolating backwards the finite age of the Universe, does not have a "single point" start.

    The point of all that is to tell you that to impress you that when we look "deep", we are both looking "far" and "into the past". The idea is that "curvature" warps space-time into a continuum, so "far" and "into the past" is not separable : 6 billion light years away is not the "distance light will travel in 6 billion light years _given_ the Universe is static and not expanding." Distance has no meaning without the time component (I know it sounds woozy, and I can't visualize it either : it's all in the equations and I just work at them.)

    The 6 billions LY quote in the article is probably the "luminosity distance". Astronomers use the term "luminosity distance", a _defined_ concept with the curvature of the universe embedded in. So
    if new data shows a different curvature, the 6 billion LY will have to be revised.

    To blow up your brain a little, think about this :
    What is the furthest thing you can see?

  • Re:Is big science destroying human esteem? (Score:3)

    by efuseekay ( 138418 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @10:50AM (#598304)
    It is a sad state of affairs to see posts like these from reasonably well educated people.

    How the hell does GR and QM filtered into Moral Relativism?! Moral Relativism is a creation of Humainities with a political agenda (yeah, blame the progressives!). Science makes no judgements on Morals or Ethics, she just seeks the truth.

    Your ignorance towards what Science is has led you to fear it, and then blame it for the ills of the world. It's very sad. Maybe you should have taken a Physical Sciences degree in College. Then perhaps you will see Science for what she is : a wonderful adventure where Nature is the playground, and the finding the Truth is the game.

    Sagan once said,"I prefer the ugly truth then comforting fantasy."

    I guess you prefer the other one.

  • In a related story, the cluster has been named the "Outback cluster." the Corporate sponsorship people have struck again......

    --

  • suburu is an astronomical object (Score:4)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @10:52AM (#598306)
    Suburu is the Japanese word for the constellation Pleiades. It looks like that six-star design you see on their cars. The constellation is prominant in the winter sky. It appears as a fuzzball to the right of Orions shoulder. When you look closely you see the six stars that appear like a little dipper, plus a bunch of faint ones surounding them. Alsmost every ancient culture has a story about the Suburu constellation. I don't know the Japanese story, but the Greek one is they are the daughters of the Titan Atlas.

  • Re:Is big science destroying human esteem? (Score:4)

    by furiousgeorge ( 30912 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @10:15AM (#598307)

    >I would lay the blame of much of the problems we >have in society today at the doors of science. >Einsteins Relativity theory and the >uncertainties of Quantum Mechanics have filtered >down into the Moral Relativism and uncertainty >we see around us today

    Please site one example of quantum mechanics filtering down into 'moral relativism'. Please cite sources.

    Where are we - back in the 16th century - going to lock Galileo in his house because suggesting that the earth went around the sun? It WAS a scary thought. But it was true. The former outweighs the latter in my book EVERYTIME.

    Sorry - i don't feel ANY obligations to shelter you from reality if it shatters your illusions, or proves that a belief or truth that you have held to be wrong. Being able to cope with changes like that is what makes a person emotionally strong.

    >You cannot monkey about with a society's
    >certaintys and worldview without expecting
    >consequences. We have seen a lot of that this >century.

    what 'certainties'? If something is wrong it's wrong. FACT. The earth is not flat. The sun does not go around the world. We are decended from single celled protazoa. None of these facts make me feel any less at all. That is the world - and I LOVE learning more about it. I can't think of a single scientific discovery that has EVER made me feel less. On the contrary, i find them empowering and a statement to the genuis that is 'man'.

    >t that they censor themselves.

    No, you want a censor. You want the status quo. Science isn't about that. If you want consistent, dogmatic teachings there are a multititude of applicable religions, cults, socieites, or political parties (grin) suited to you.

    Going out at night and staring at the stars doesn't make me want to weep because I'm so 'insignificant'. My jaw hangs open in wonder because the universe is such an incredible place to be - and i'm just happy to be here.

    This is left as an exercise to the reader.

    j

  • The scientists are preparing us for the day that they announce (for they have known for 50 years) that not only are there aliens amongst us, but they already own all the human-habitable real-estate in the galaxy. If we think we're special, that could cause a collosal mindquake. If we have accepted our lowly place in the universe, it will just be another "whatever".

    Interestingly, the aliens have also patented, trademarked and coprighted all future inventions. You are no longer allowed to think of new things. Please turn the television on.

  • Re:Is big science destroying human esteem? (Score:5)

    by furiousgeorge ( 30912 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @09:05AM (#598309)
    Mod this nonsense down.

    >But I don't think they will any time soon, as >they seem to labour under the illusion that
    >science is about demeaning our cultures status,
    >not enhancing it, and have done so for the last >500 years

    Oh bullshit. I hope that i'm not in the minority when i feel that the true aim of science is TRUTH.... irregardless of if it gives you a warm fuzzy, or makes you feel cosmically insignificant.

    Reality is NOT a zero sum game. The 'gain' of a monkey speaking sign language is not a 'loss' for homo sapiens. If your neighbor gets a better car than you, does that mean you are somehow 'less'? If you answered yes to that, get professional counselling.

    >just how important we are

    Get over yourself. The purpose of the universe isn't to make you feel important.

    You want science to make you feel important? I have a few papal indulgences to sell you too...

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