Europe Has Added 1.1 Billion Stars To Its Milky Way Map (vice.com) 74
Ben Sullivan, writing for Motherboard: The European Space Agency (ESA) has released the first batch of data from its Gaia star mapping project -- a mission that is currently on track to chart one billion stars in the Milky Way. The space telescope launched in 2013 and its first data dump contains the precise celestial position and brightness of a mammoth 1,142 million stars. The release also contains the distances and movements for more than two million stars so far. ESA's director of science Alvaro Gimenez told a press conference held at the European Space Astronomy Centre in Spain on Wednesday morning that the data release features around 490 billion astrometric, 118 billion photometric, and 10 billion spectroscopic measurements. "[The] Final survey will contain [around] 250,000 Solar System Objects, 1,000,000 galaxies, and 500,000 quasars," said Gimenez. Those numbers are almost unimaginable, but ESA has used the data so far to form an "all-sky" view of the stars in our galaxy and neighbouring galaxies, based on Gaia's observations from July 2014 to September 2015.
My God (Score:2)
It's full of stars!
*Queue* Richard Strauss
there goes the night (Score:5, Funny)
If they keep adding stars pretty soon the sky is going to be brilliantly light at night and we'll have to sleep during the day.
An ounce of prevention (Score:4, Funny)
...we should burn the observatories so this can never happen again
(credit: Simpsons / Moe)
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No, that would be "cue". And why did you put asterisks around "queue"? To highlight that you can't tell cue from queue?
Re: My God (Score:2)
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*Pause*
What, you don't use the script?
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Actually, they mis-named the project:
They should have named it Galaxia.
(...bonus points if you thought of Trevize, Bliss, and Pelorat when you read the above sentence.)
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Ah, the wonderful Foundation series. Partially what got me interested in psychology. That and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Is there a new track? (Score:3)
" -- a mission that is currently on track to chart one billion stars in the Milky Way."
On track? It sounds like it passed that goal.
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It would appear so, unless by a slim-to-none the editors of the submission stuffed up and it should be 1.1 million as given in the summary itself. </sarcasm> My kingdom for a good Slashdot editor.
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It would appear so, unless by a slim-to-none the editors of the submission stuffed up and it should be 1.1 million as given in the summary itself. </sarcasm> My kingdom for a good Slashdot editor.
I thought so as well, until I looked at TFA. Its title is identical to the summary's, and the 1.14 million figure appears there in the same context (actually, TFS is a direct quote from TFA). Anyway, whether they're on track for a billion or they've already got a billion, they've barely made a start (the Milky Way is estimated to include roughly 100 billion stars).
Re:Is there a new track? (Score:4, Informative)
We fell into the thousand separator trap. The 1,142 million is actually 1142 million or 1.142 billion. The article has the non-separator number which is more globally recognized.
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If we use the definition of "Earth-like" that we use with exoplanets then we've got 3... Venus and Mars both rocky planets in the habitable zone.... Though I wouldn't recommend trying to habbitate either without a protective suit or 10....
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Venus is pretty easily habitable. It has earth-like gravity, earth-like temperatures, and earth-like pressures. You don't even need a protective suit, just a gas mask.
The catch is that to live like this on Venus, you have to live in a giant dirigible or "floating city". The conditions on the surface are hellish, but several kilometers high in the atmosphere, it's actually quite nice. (I'm not sure what the situation is with radiation.)
Of course, this does make me wonder what you'd do there if you can't
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Actually, you will need more protective gear than just a gas mask. The temperature and pressure may be tolerable, but the atmosphere is full of sulfuric acid, and there are constant hurricane-force winds. I guess you could live there
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Here's an article [wikipedia.org] about it. It seems the hurricane-force winds aren't that big a deal, probably because they're constantly moving across the planet, in one direction, rather then in a tight swirl the way they do with Earth-based hurricanes, and also because if you're living in a big balloon, it'll just move with the winds. The problem with hurricane-force winds here on Earth is that we're trying to stay in one place on the ground, fighting against the wind. The article even cites the wind as an advantage
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Sure, it's physically possible, but not really doable with today's technology.
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Not even doable with tomorrows tech, a fusion craft won't go that fast, maybe 10-12 percent C tops
Not until we could produce tons of antimatter to use as fuel will we be able to get 30% or more of light speed.
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Er, no. I could even be called a "space nutter" but with current tech 10% C with fission fragment rocket is the best we could conceivably do, and about 3-5% C the more likely number.
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We should totally colonize the sol system, there doesn't seem to be much intelligent life there yet.
Very useful! (Score:1)
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This is our destiny to live among the stars and not to be limited to this rock.
Says who?
Just like we went to the new world, we will populate the galaxy. It is our manifest destiny to do so.
What a bunch of jingoist crap.
Face it, we're never leaving this planet. Leave that to superior species. We'll be lucky if we're not extinct within a century or two. Most likely, some interstellar explorers will come across this planet in a few centuries and find the ruins of our civilization, and send some xenoarchaeol
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Well useful or not I found it quite profound. I had never seen the stars in our galaxy dance around us before in a simulation. Go look how far back and far forward in time you have to move before our familiar constellations zip apart across the sky. Now that is something else and it blew my mind.
Gaia? (Score:2)
Is anyone else confused that they named a star search program Gaia? Isn't that supposed to be another name for the Earth?
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Gaia is actually a goddess as in "mother earth", and by coincident the name of the planet from which earth was terraformed, seeded and settled ...
Re: Gaia? (Score:2)
Yes. FWIW, IIRC, GAIA started as an acronym for the instrument technology to be used, but that was later replaced but the name kept and de-capitalised.
Current Events (Score:1)
1 billion? (Score:1)
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Of course. You parked on Earth.
Parallax (Score:4, Informative)
After reading the historical book "Parallax: The race to measure the cosmos", I'm in awe of this machine. It took millennia and massive improvements in lens making technology and machining for astronomers to measure the first star's distance. Now a satellite can nail down a billion. Just amazing.
Entrepreneurial opportunity (Score:2)
slackers (Score:2)
they're going to call it quits after only mapping 1 percent of the Milky Way's stars? 99% just left flapping in the galactic breeze? talk about unmotivated
If you could visit one star every second (Score:2)
If you could visit one star system every second, it would take you approximately 31.7 years to visit a billion stars.
We can't even visit one in a lifetime, except of course for the one we're orbiting.
Even with Star Trek warp, a second is a pointless amount of time to spend. The captain and crew might want to spend at least a few hours doing a basic survey of the star and any planets, asteroids, or other interesting things orbiting nearby.
Thus, even with sci-fi technology it's not possible to explore all of