Scientists Unveil Largest 3D Map of the Universe Ever (livescience.com) 47
A reader shares a report from Live Science: After five years of peering into the deepest reaches of space, researchers have released what they call the "largest three-dimensional map of the universe" ever. No, you cannot see your house. The mind-boggling map is the result of an ongoing project called the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) -- an ambitious, international quest to map the expansion of the observable universe, and hopefully solve a few cosmic conundrums in the process. With this newest update, the project has mapped and measured more than 2 million galaxies, stretching from our Milky Way to ancient objects more than 11 billion light-years away.
The detailed new map will help astronomers piece together a murky period of the universe's expansion known as "the gap." The gap begins a few billion years after the Big Bang. Scientists are able to measure the rate of the universe's expansion before this thanks to the cosmic microwave background -- ancient radiation left over from the infancy of the universe that researchers can still detect; and they can calculate recent expansion by measuring how the distance between Earth and nearby galaxies increases over time. But expansion in the middle period has been little studied because the light of galaxies more than a few hundred million light-years away can be incredibly faint. To fill in the gap, a team of more than 100 scientists from around the world looked at not just distant galaxies, but also bright-burning quasars (extremely luminous objects powered by the hungriest black holes in the cosmos). The astronomers described their findings in 23 new studies released on July 20. The press release from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) can be viewed here.
The detailed new map will help astronomers piece together a murky period of the universe's expansion known as "the gap." The gap begins a few billion years after the Big Bang. Scientists are able to measure the rate of the universe's expansion before this thanks to the cosmic microwave background -- ancient radiation left over from the infancy of the universe that researchers can still detect; and they can calculate recent expansion by measuring how the distance between Earth and nearby galaxies increases over time. But expansion in the middle period has been little studied because the light of galaxies more than a few hundred million light-years away can be incredibly faint. To fill in the gap, a team of more than 100 scientists from around the world looked at not just distant galaxies, but also bright-burning quasars (extremely luminous objects powered by the hungriest black holes in the cosmos). The astronomers described their findings in 23 new studies released on July 20. The press release from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) can be viewed here.
Of course you can't see your house (Score:2)
They obviously took that picture at night, and unless you're Tim Taylor and it's Christmas, your house would be too dark to be seen.
Duh!
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Thank you for your inquiry for a free security examination of your website. We will publish the findings here for your (and everyone else's) benefit, fun and profit.
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Thanks for sharing your URL. Here is the information about it:
There is 35 errors and 53 warnings for your website.
https://validator.w3.org/nu/?d... [w3.org]
It's an awful waste of space (Score:5, Interesting)
With this newest update, the project has mapped and measured more than 2 million galaxies
For those keeping tabs, that's 0.0002% of the total estimated number of galaxies.
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With this newest update, the project has mapped and measured more than 2 million galaxies
For those keeping tabs, that's 0.0002% of the total estimated number of galaxies.
Yeah. It looks like they looked at two planes and went out as far as they could. And that little "you are here" flag is not even a pixel.
One of the axioms of science is that physics is the same everywhere in the universe. I don't know what axiom there is about everywhen.
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Are you sure? I thought we were just the "third rock from the Sun".
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On the shores of the cosmic ocean, plastic bottles are being washed up on the beach.
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We're more like a drop of liquid than a rock.
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Re:It's an awful waste of space (Score:5, Interesting)
That's incredibly cool, especially when you remember that it was less than a century ago that we found that there were other galaxies (then called "island universes") beyond the Milky Way.
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I'm not so sure of that, the dust motes floating in the air in front of you are packed several orders of magnitude closer to each other than other bits of matter are within our relatively dense solar system. Here's an interesting scale model of our solar system, assuming our Moon is one pixel wide:
https://joshworth.com/dev/pixe... [joshworth.com]
Check the post after Pluto to get a feel for the space between stars.
That's just within our arm of the Milky Way, our whole galaxy is only 100,000 light years wide. The next clos
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It's not wasted space. The Universe simply understands the importance of white space in design better than you.
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It's not a waste of space. Think: "room to grow".
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It's not a waste of space. Think: "room to grow".
I like it... It is remarkable that we sit on this pale blue dot and bicker about stupid meaningless stuff when the opportunities are boundless.
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They just need a telescope a thousand times larger.
It's an illusion (Score:2)
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To a certain extent, perhaps, but they've made a lot of progress in dealing with them since lensing was discovered.
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That might explain why, while I'm shopping for groceries, food tends to disappear from the shelves when fat people are in the same aisle as me.
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You can not trust what you observe due to gravitational lensing.
There’s a “your mom” joke in there somewhere, just waiting to be observed.
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"It's all rigged, CNN is using China-made black holes to gravitate your lenses, making you see fake galaxies, and make 2 rated planets look like nines."
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Re: Hey ho (Score:2)
Can't find your house (Score:4, Funny)
But is there a "You are here," marker for Zaphod Beeblebrox?
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No, but where we live there is a toilet.
We live on a shithole planet. Because we keep shitting all over it.
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Re:How should anyone believe this? (Score:5, Funny)
So... if you know how many toes you have, figuring out how many hairs you have on your head should be a lot easier, since they are much closer.
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True. I stand corrected.
What? (Score:2)
I live in an apartment, you insensitive clod!
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And you left your dirty bloomers on the couch, as seen in grid 4728b.
There's a documentary film on the map (Score:2)
Website Blocked (Score:1)
The link to the website listed in the /. article is blocked by a vicous and aggressive advertising detection script that demans you disable all of those protections before you can view their content.
Rather than being so "user hostile" the website listed in the /. article should have used a paywall. Paywalls are still annoying, but not as offensive as annoying as advertising detection scripts that BLOCK EVERYTHING.
Well... (Score:2)
...I guess David Braben's programmers now have their job cut out for them, don't they?
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I do not fancy paying for the extension that supports all of that. Even the 3D map of the Milky Way would be a thousand times larger than E:D's current map.
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Eh, space legs first; then maybe that.
Summary is flawed (Score:2)
I can so.
I can see it from the inside and from the outside (I just checked)