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You Are Here (On Earth)
Anonymous Coward writes "NY Times today has an essay about a map of the entire universe produced by two Princeton astronomers using a variety of data including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Its view begins with the Earth at the bottom and extends back almost to the Big Bang at the top, including such objects as the Sloan Great Wall, 1.37 billion light-years long. The map can be found here."
I can see my house...
mailto:EatSpamAndDie@princeweb.com
Great.. but where the hell are the restrooms?
With 500k graphical images to download you can be sure that by the time you read this you are too late - its been slashdotted!!
A usual with the NYT, Google is your friend. Just click on the "If the URL is valid..." link, and here you go, without any need to make up data for the subscription form!
Oooh, the Total Perspective Vortex!
*waits for Gargravarr to make an appearance*
Get out of my garden !!!
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I heard that next time they are going to release the last decimal of pi.
class he-man extends man!
It is interesting to see the Voyagers and Pioneer spacecraft on there. It is a fascinating subject for me, I believe that our technology will advance at sufficient speed that we will actually catch up with these craft with some future technology, and the issue will come up as to whether we bring them back to Earth as museum pieces or leave them on their course with special protection orders on them.
Food for thought.
And on an unrelated topic - Be careful - there is an acronymic something called WMAP lurking just on the far side of the moon, obviously hiding from earth.
I'm sure it is waiting for the perfect moment to attack!
What is this bit on the map about the Sloan Great Wall? I googled around but only found a reference to the map itself. If this is the biggest cosmic structure ever discovered, news of it sure hasn't traveled very far outside the astronomer's circles. What is the Sloan Great Wall?
There is no such thing as a good lie.
There is, however, such a thing as a good model, as any true scientist will tell you. Obviously, the only perfect model of the universe is the universe itself; however, the derivation of useful models which are by design imperfect is absolutely at the heart of science.
This map was published as a special pull-out in New Scientist, just before Christmas last year. Very cool.
/* This comment may not be thread-safe */
Investors showed their appreciation and stock prices backed all the way up to the fifth floor, when a plumber was called to alleviate the massive flooding.
signatures are for fools with hands
Pretty cool picture though; It'll look real nice alongside the Unix Family Tree on the wall. If only there was a landscape version... time for some PostScript hacking I guess.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Nope.
Can't see SCO anywhere.
If you zoom in on the SDSS galaxies at about 1 giga-parsec, it looks like one of them's broadcasting a message... looks like... "Can you hear me now?"... that can't be right.
These sigs are more interesting tha
the restaurant at the end of the universe!
So this map must be a fake!
On which map?
Looking at the map, you'll see that the sun is actually not that much farther from the Earth than Mars. I found that kind of interesting.
:)
Anyone up for some Icarian missions? Maybe we should suggest a Sun Base to our deer leader
The Chinese government is claiming to have property rights over all thing relating to "Great Walls" and are demanding the universe pay royalties for using this "Great Wall". In other news, the computer used to generate this map of the universe was running Linux so SCO is now claiming ownership over the entire universe. Permits to live in their universe may be purchased at any local SCO vendor for $699.
Just so you know. 'Mensa' Without the 'a' in swedish means when a women has a period...
And.. when you add the 'a', that is like saying that she 'has a period' right now. To have a period.
---
This weird comoving future visibility limit that is mentioned at the top of the map is explained in detail in the paper:
;)
[...] which shows how far a photon can travel in co-moving coordinates from the inflationary big bang to the infinite future.[...] This is the co-moving future visibility limit. No matter how long we wait, we will not be able to see further than this. This is surprisingly close.
Yeah, that's only 19,027Mpc
Proud owner of a Mensa membership card.
You should have returned it to its owner.
'Told ya that the fucking chinese were everywhere..'
jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
The wall is actually 760 million light years wide... the comparison is that one light year is 1.3 billion times the length of the Great Wall of China. (Info is from here.)
It's got to be somewhere on the map!
All spelling mistakes are in my mind and are faithfully reproduced by my fingers
Anyone?
Just me then.
Oh well.
Now that we have a map, how long before the kids start asking "Are we there yet?"
Strange, I looked at that map and I had a feeling of, well, elation, joy, immense personal satisfaction, and an even higher feeling of self importance.
Surprise Galaxies at the Edge of Observable Space do not fit here?
If I'm right they would be somewhere above the Sloan Great Wall..
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
This is clearly wrong. It doesn't look anything like the map in Frontier: Elite II.
All flat maps of the US are lies. I mean, don't these people realize that it's impossible to make an acurate flat representation of a curved surface? Rivers change course, mountains are growing and erodeing, and don't even get me started on changing town and county boundaries. Besides, some of these maps have less than 50 meter accuracy in the placement of roads. They are lying to their customers!
SCO won't be happy when they find out they're not at the center of it...
Brings to mind this passage from Lewis Carroll, 1897:
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
But where's Hell and that old fart on his throne?
m l
http://www.stanford.edu/class/engl174b/chain.ht
Obviously the Spanish Inquisition got to them first. Incidentally, the link says the Catholic Church finally agreed the Earth wasn't at the centre of the solar system in 1983!
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
You've seen the Matrix too often.
Kids today are tyrants. They contradict their parent, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers. - Socrates 400 BC
I took a look at your previous posts, and you've got about 50% troll or flamebait moderation. Which tends to tell me that many people here think you're an idiot...no matter what your Mensa card says.
What are you talking about?
This is a GREAT model/map for teaching. the general population sit's ther eand simply drools when they see a log chart so this is obviousally not for general public consumption but for scientists and students to use to get a better grasp on spatial locations from earth center at that given point in time.
pan this all you want, but I was able to teach my child some very important facts about our solar system with this chart. Her astronomical sciences teacher at her middle school was not able to explain a couple of the topics as clearly as this chart/map does.
This is a great tool, if you are not able to understand it's usefulness that is your loss.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Perhaps it's an area that smells bad?
Oh, no, wait, it has to do with dust.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
http://perdu.com/ Did
did you notice the name of the primary author from the preprint on astro-ph/0310571?!
J. Richard Gott III - and guess what "Gott" means in german?
(same as english "god" of course!
It's a university server, you dolt.
Wow, so Earth really is at the center of the universe! I knew it!
begin 644
> Pretty cool picture though; It'll look real nice alongside the Unix Family Tree on the wall.
Per the photo gallery at the bottom, Linus needs to grow a beard.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
LOL, that post made the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) sound like a secretive spy satellite. :-)
Actually, WMAP is a hugely successful astronomical microwave observatory which sits at Earth's second Lagrange Point (L2). L2 is 1.5 million kilometers on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun. This informative page shows the location and how the probe got there very clearly.
The WMAP was launched in June of 2001 and has made a map of the temperature fluctuations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation with much higher resolution, sensitivity, and accuracy than its predecessor, COBE. It has been a huge success.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I guess the drawers of this map were well aware of all the problems you mention. It is however not their goal to produce an accurate reproduction of the universe, but rather an idea of how large a large scale can be. Then, it is a static plot, and no time involved here. Think of it as a snapshot. If you had read the article you would have noted that the authors gave a concise introduction of how their map was drawn. The map should show large scale structures and keep the shapes locally correct. Therefore, they have to use a (4D, of course) metric (the Friedmann metric) that does just this: It introduces so-called co-moving coordinates which keep objects at a constant position while the universe expands. Perhaps you should think about reading the article first and then complain. There is a reason for this model that they did. When you want to understand large scale structures, 4D stuff does not count, since how would you imagine this anyway, you want to have an impression of size as we see it, since we do not have another frame to see it from... There the map does a great job.
Black holes were created when god tried to divide by zero
"What? Harmless? Is that all it's got to say? Harmless! One word!"
Ford shrugged.
"Well, there are a hundred billion stars in the Galaxy, and only a limited amount of space in the book's microprocessors," he said, "and no one knew much about the Earth of course."
"Well for God's sake I hope you managed to rectify that a bit."
"Oh yes, well I managed to transmit a new entry off to the editor. He had to trim it a bit, but it's still an improvement."
"And what does it say now?" asked Arthur.
"Mostly harmless," admitted Ford with a slightly embarrassed cough.
"Mostly harmless!" shouted Arthur.
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
Borges did so in "Of Exactitude in Science" in A Universal History of Infamy":
Umberto Eco then took up the challenge in "On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1" in How to Travel with a Salmon:
A nice summary of the three can be found here
whaddaya know, here i thought that i were in a proll other starsystem, but then these jolly good fellas give me a map of the whole universe, how nice of them to make me able to pinpoint earths location for the great armada of zokchburhl
*resistance is futile, or fuzzy, i dunno*
*resistance is futile, or fuzzy, i dunno*
that's what that o'neil guy must be wondering?
disgruntled former employee sindrone? it's DOWtful.
Perhaps less scientific, but it looks cooler: An Atlas of the Universe
What we are plotting on the map is the universe in 'comoving coordinates', which are determined by cosmological parameters (amount of luminous matter, dark matter and dark energy in the universe). They're the ones that determine the global curvature of space, and in the past few years have been measured very accurately (eg., with WMAP).
What you seem to be objecting to (among other things) is that the map should somehow depict local curvature as well (eg., you talk about closed timelike loops, black holes, etc). However, note that in that case you'd also have to object to every map of the _Earth_ that has ever been made, because it doesn't take into account the small increase in Earth's area due to mountains and depressions ("And their map would be f**ked around mountains for obvious reasons").
I'm so going to be spending the next few hours trying to print it out on the A0 printer.
Any people who know what they are doing know how to rotate it? So its printed across the width of the printer (thus using the least paper possible).
Close to the same in English, "menses" from Month. English is my native Language, but I'm stupid and only know this from learning Spanish where the word is "mes" for month. Supposing I were female I'd know that I imagine.
:)
Oh, yeah, speaking of Spanish, "mensa" means dumb or silly. But FWIW "Bimbo" is a brand of bread.
--Jim (me)
I had to park out near Rigel and walk in. Who wants to bet my radio will still be there when I get back? Rigel's a tough neighborhood. I walked in to a bar and ordered a shot. Everybody ducked.
All flat maps of the US are lies.
You bet they are. I've spent hours looking for the gigantic 'M' that's supposed to be near the immense yellow dotted line crossing through my town.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
that's how they're looking at US now. this is what you wanted?
the planet/population rescue mandate remains in crisis mode. the danger of overheating (peacing off?) the main processors remains real/is increasing. lookout bullow.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators... get ready to become a active member/stakeholder of the wwuniverse.
Finally, I will not get lost anymore..
Just remeber to bring a compass!!
I want my karma, and I want it now!
In what facets of astronomy are parsecs the dominant unit of measurement?
Its in the LaGrange L2 point, opposite the earth from the sun.. ( so earth shields it from sunlight and solar interference, I suppose. ). Anyway, its mission is to map the picture of the Universe as seen by microwave radiation.
Here's some links courtesy of Google...
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I found Waldo hidden in the Great Wall!
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I'm no expert, but if sciencists think the universe is infinite, whatever map they draw will just be an infinitesimal portion of it!
So, these maps should be called "Maps Of Our Neighborhood" instead, don't you think?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...welcome our new Universal cartographers.
First if it is to represent the entire universe there should be stars beyond the point of the Big Bang. An Explosion is space would disperse matter in a rough spherical manner, thus the Big Bang should be in the center not at the far end. Either we are not able to see the stars on the "other side" of the Big Bang or the Big Bang theory is not valid. I have faith that the Big Bang theory is mostly sound so WE must acknowledge that the map is very incomplete. It should be the map of the known universe.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Because it should be 4000 miles from the center, obviously. They're rocket scientists, they know these things.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
If you actually looked at the map, and rtfa, you would see that it is not a navigational map, but rather an attempt to juxtapose our insignficance in the observable universe, and our absolute significance in being the point of observation of the universe.
"Objects close to us may be inconsequential in terms of the whole universe but they are important to us," (Dr. Gott, from the article)
But then again, your stunning cognitive ability to discredit this 'map' without even understanding why it was done, should silence a mere layman like myself. Mensa would be proud.
there is no cheese spreader.
Suddenly, I feel very small. The kind of feeling I got when I saw this:
o pt icsu/powersof10/index.html
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/science
Its funny how one can be so tiny on one scale, then turn around and see a whole other universe right beneath them. We live in a very interesting place. Very groovy, baby.
haud servio tui deus neque tui diabolus huad servio tui regalis neque tu
That must mean that the next two locations after Mars which the President would propose to send manned explorations to would be Mercury and the Sun...
Who want's to bet?
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Right now Celestia by default only shows most of the stars in our arm of the Milky Way, plus two or three neighboring galaxies. Any reason why it couldn't be loaded up with the results of this survey at some point?
Hillary Rodham Clinton is the sexiest woman alive:
I dunno, her daughter's not bad either
...whats the bit below it marked as CIA2 wall, godamnit!
Others too have written about the (im)possibility of creating a map on a 1:1 scale.
... oh feck it, how about fries and a coke?
Impossible? I don't think so.
Gimme some petabytes of diskspace, a neat digicam with a good macro functionality and _some_ time and I'll
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
I see a pattern that looks like a human figure dancing, perhaps juggling a beach ball on his or her left arm, in the lower portion of the image of the Sloan Great Wall?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
So the church was right all along!?!
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
I think I see my dad.
If you like dogs, maybe....
i would hate to have to fold a map like that...
"All models are wrong-but some models are useful," distinguished statistician George P. E. Box.
Box's profound contributions to statistics include fundamental work and classic references on the design of experiments and the forecasting and control of time series with so-called Box-Jenkins models.
It looks like "Guaoar", but the crappy font makes it hard to read. I've tried a few similar words and Google has given me squat.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Nonsense... a good introspection system can take into account its own existance. For instance, Java and C# both get it right w/their reflection mechanisms. Professor Eco should know better.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
In the town where I live, "Mensa" is the name of the student union's restaurant. Every student can get a Mensa membership card and eat there for 3 bucks.
So I don't know what all the fuss is about.
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
Well, put your mouth on it like I told you to.
What are those large yellow things hanging in the sky in exactly the same way that bricks don't?
And monthly = mensual.
Just need to know so that I don't accidentally aim any laser beams in that direction when trying to pull or push ducklike alien beings to or from Cleveland....err Earth.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Just outside the Moon.
I was actually thinking that Arvin Sloan's (of the show Alias) master plan has finally been revealed. At long last!
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
The first thing I thought when I saw that map was,
"Eureka! Now I have a truly fitting wallpaper for my 21 workspace desktop....Excellent"
(Said to the voices of Prof Fink, the Comic Book Guy and Monty Burns, in that order)
Just wondering...
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
...was that from the Heliopause to the Oort cloud, there's nothing. Why is that? Did they just not get around to mapping anything in that area, or is it really simply empty, lonely space?
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
You mean Londo and Vir?
</b5ref>
Q: Name an animal that has more than 3 eyes and less than 4?
A: Piolho!
Ok... ok...
"Piolho" is Portuguese for "lice".
"olho" is Portuguese for "eye".
Pi + olho, get it? 3.14 eyes!
Bhahahahahahahahahaha (sniff) I kill myself!
ok, I'll go to my room now
The map is a representation of approximately 11.912216896 DUODECILLION MILES.
That's 11,912,216,896,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ,000 miles longhand.
I wonder how many burgers White Castle would have to serve to make a stack that reaches THAT far....
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Doesn't the map remind anyone of that old asteroids game?
That I say.
Enter, Beeblebrox, enter the vortex!
Okay, okay.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Italo Calvino's description of the mythical city of Eudoxia has long been one of my master narratives for any extensive, complex structure (Internet; universe; everything):
------------
In Eudoxia, which spreads both upward and down, with winding alleys, steps, dead ends, hovels, a carpet is preserved in which you can observe the city's true form. At first sight nothing seems to resemble Eudoxia less than the design of that carpet, laid out in symmetrical motives whose patterns are repeated along straight and circular lines, interwoven with brilliantly colored spires, in a repetition that can be followed throughout the whole woof. But if you pause and examine it carefully, you become convinced that each place in the carpet corresponds to a place in the city and all the things contained in the city are included in the design, arranged according their true relationship, which escapes your eye distracted by the bustle, the throngs, the shoving. All of Eudoxia's confusion, the mules' braying, the lampblack stains, the fish smell is what is evident in the incomplete perspective you grasp; but the carpet proves that there is a point from which the city shows its true proportions, the geometrical scheme implicit in its every, tiniest detail.
It is easy to get lost in Eudoxia: but when you concentrate and stare at the carpet, you recognize the street you were seeking in a crimson or indigo or magenta threat which, in a wide loop, brings you to the purple enclosure that is your real destination. Every inhabitant of Eudoxia compares the carpet's immobile order with his own image of the city, an anguish of his own, and each can find, concealed among the arabesques, an answer, the story of his life, the twists of fate.
An oracle was questioned about the mysterious bond between two objects so dissimilar as the carpet and the city. One of the two objects -- the oracle replied -- has the form the gods gave the starry sky and the orbits in which the worlds revolve; the other is an approximate reflection, like every human creation.
For some time the augurs had been sure that the carpet's harmonious pattern was of divine origin. The oracle was interpreted in this sense, arousing no controversy. But you could, similarly, come to the opposite conclusion: that the true map of the universe is the city of Eudoxia, just as it is, a stain that spreads out shapelessly, with crooked streets, houses that crumble one upon the other amid clouds of dust, fires, screams in the darkness.
- from Invisible Cities
So the Earth *IS* the center of the universe! :)
--- Ban humanity.
What are these "Trojans" just past the Asteroid Belt?
Is the Earth going to be r00ted soon?
I'm a chainsmokin' alcoholic sociopath, so-ci-o-path
Your post has become a "black hole", enveloped by a negative karma cloud so powerful that only clicking on the Parent link of one of the many debunking replies can penetrate it.
I thought we beat this subject to death.
The EARTH is NOT the Center of the Universe? Why do we keep drawing our maps that way?
Copernicus and Gallileo are rolling in their graves right now.
Next you will be telling me that the Earth is flat!
*looks at the map again*
Oh wait, you are!
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
And for the second page of the same article try this
Click on "If the URL is valid..." to see actual article.
This map reminds me of a film I saw on PBS once, and then again at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in D.C., called "Powers of Ten". Starts with an overhead camera shot of some people having a picnic. The camera starts to pull away, at the rate of another power-of-ten units each second. You see the earth, then the solar system, then the galaxy, then other galaxies, etc. Then the whole process is done backwards, right back down to the original shot of the picnic. Only this time, the camera zooms in further by powers of 10, into the skin on one of the people's hands, then into the cells, then the atoms, etc. It's really a must see.
... is whot bwings os tugevza tsuzay.
Anyone want to share some light on this?
Thanks!
-db
"What does god need with a starship?"
Obviously, you people haven't heard of the Flat Earth Society...
...extends back almost to the Big Bang at the top...
I thought that at this point the Big Bang theory has actually been disproven without a shadow of doubt by many teams of blast physicists and astronomers all confirming each others work. Anyone have an upgrade of Scientist 4.8.32.1 lying around to send to thees guys? Their making wonderful art based on old / false info. It really surprises me that this falsehood is still acceptable in the respectable halls of Princeton... or did they just not get the memo?
Sure its not exactly as precise as some would want, but not everyone has 300 bucks to blow on a PDA.
I totally agree. I read about this poster several months ago when it first appeared as a preprint on the astro-ph preprint server. I loved it so much that I printed out the postscript version to put on the door of my office at work.
Almost any technically-minded person who stops to look at it finds it very cool, and often has questions about it. The mark of its usefulness as a teaching tool is the fact that many cool astronomical facts can be picked up simply by carefully looking at it. For instance, there is an enormous gap in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies when plotted on this map. At first you may think it is simply an artifact, but actually it occcurs where we are trying to peer through the center of the galaxy -- the so-called "zone of avoidance". It shows up on the plot because the data are plotted in galactic coordinates. The plot is rich in such detail. A few more are mentioned in the astro-ph paper; truly curious and interested folks would benefit from reading it.
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
..."Zaphod heard a distant terrible cry of pain 'What was that?' he asked. 'Its a recording, we play it for every next victim of the vortex'...
NO SIG
http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~mjuric/universe
The wonderful folks at Princeton are keeping track of our activities. Check out the effect of slashdotting on their traffic here.
"That's not ironic, it's just mean!" - Bender
Now that we know where the Mystery Science Theater ship is can't we help Gypsy, Tom Servo and the gang get back?
In the most recent star wars movie, ObiWan and Yoda are looking at a big 3d map of the star system. Obi refers to a small planet to the north of something. Being a map maker for a living, I was somewhat incensed - cardinal directions aren't really applicable in space.
For a cool website on interstellar mapping, check here.
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
They have Venus displayed as being farther away than Mars and Mercury. Granted, at specific points in time that may be true, but it might have made more sense to do average distance or even show a line for the variation in distance for Mars, Venus, and Mercury. Everything farther away has much less variance as a percentage of distance.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
So Gallileo was wrong. The universe does revolve around the earth ;)
For most people here, this one is good enough :)
http://www.stdimension.de/Cartography/Source/map_v oyroute.jpg
It is by Platteville, Wisconsin. The students at the university go and paint it to keep it reasonably white.
Obligatory reference to centerfolds and geeks.
Carry on.
So what's at
0 00 ,001 miles?
11,912,216,896,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
I assure you: the problem isn't unfurling a map of that size, the problem is folding it back up again correctly.
Get off my lawn.
Its the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 5 Parsecs
Others too have written about the (im)possibility of creating a map on a 1:1 scale.
Borges did so in "Of Exactitude in Science" in A Universal History of Infamy":
In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography.
Interestingly, the problem Borges identified has disappeared because we have computers. We no longer have to create an immense, cumbersome map, instead we can store the map on a small harddisk. Furthermore, the monitor allows us to display any piece of the map without having to unfold an immense document. Finally, the computer can easily scale the document so that we can convert the map to a useful scale.
Umberto Eco then took up the challenge in "On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1" in How to Travel with a Salmon:
When the map is installed over all the territory (whether suspended or not), the territory of the empire has the characteristic of being a territory entirely covered by a map. The map does not take into account this characteristic, which would have to be presented on another map that depicted the territory plus the lower map. But such a process would be infinite.
This is mostly a thought experiment and less valuable in the real world. The problem of creating the map and keeping it up to date will be the obstacle long before the infinite recursion will be a problem (which you can just avoid by not expanding the entire map). Still, it is a nice example of real-world infinite recursion. The best example that I know is a visual effect that the Droste company used for their boxes of cocoa. The nurse carries a plate with a box of cocoa which shows a nurse carrying a plate with a box of cocoa which shows... Simple, but a very good introduction to infinite recursion.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
I loaded the .gif and used Photoshop to find the exact center. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't find SCO. :)
Copy the link, go to google and search for the link. Yes, right, search for it you won't get a result, BUT google will tell you "If the URL is valid, try visiting that web page by clicking on the following link" and if you click that link you have access to that article.
:-) my addition was just to not use the browser itself to modify the referrer, but use good old google for that.
----
thanks to a slashdotter who found out that having the right referrer solves the registration problem
There's nothing sadder than a neglected third-rate troll. It's somehow touching to find one every now and then. Maybe with some more practice you'll get a few bites someday.
But we all know what question needs to be answered...
How many VW Beetles is it to the Sloan Great Wall?
Slashdot.. Land of nerds, trolls, and FlameBait..
What are the 6h, 12h, ... units?
They look like 60 of 360 degrees, but if the earth spins, how do you draw the zero radial?
As the Universe is considered to be 13.7 +/- 0.2 billion years old, and things move at light speed at maximum, how is anything over 27.4 billion years from anything?
-- Stephen.
If you look carefully at the map, the Earth is at the *bottom* of the Universe.
Not technically correct...
The map shows it right on the other side of the moon, but that's misleading - it depends on when the 'picture' was taken. On that date, the moon and WMAP lined up.
However, WMAP is at the Earth-Sun L2 point, not the Earth-Moon L2 point.
If it were at Earth-Moon L2, we could never communicate with it, except through a relay satellite elsewhere. Instead, it's at the Earth-Sun L2, in permanent 'shadow', which is perfect for its purpose of observing the background radiation.
-T
Most definitions out there were horrible. Here's my take.
+ as cension
Right Ascension - the angle to the east, measured in hours and minutes, between an object in the sky and the Vernal Equinox (the point in the earth's equatorial plane where the sun passes from south to north) in the celestial equator (the circle in the same plane as the earth's equator and with the earth as it's center).
I am not sure if the 0 hr line includes the earth at all times or at the time of the Vernal Equinox. Or if anyone bothers to make the distinction when most things are so far away.
http://www.hyperdictionary.com/dictionary/right
.. gave this chart away in an issue a few weeks back. It looks MUCH nicer in colour ;)
Have you checked at McDonalds?
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
How, exactly, do they generate 'pictures' of the milky way galaxy?
You could decrease the number drastically by measuring the trail left by the expulsion of consumed burgers.
According to my calculations, you'd only need three.
Two big problems (in addition to the fundamental issue that since pi is irrational it can have no 'last' digit):
First, just because each digit occurs infinitely often doesn't imply that each occurs equally often. For a simple example, it's trivial to write an inifinite series of digits that contains each digit an infinite number of times and never sums to a multiple of 45: 1 0123456789 0123456789 0123456789 0123456789
Second, you later state that the final non-zero digit of any multiple of 45 must be a 4, 5, or 9, but this is also false: 180, for example. In fact, the last non-zero can be any digit (except for zero, of course): i.e. 90, 180, 270,
In the future, sir, please remember that you are allowed only one completely outrageous statement per post, and comport yourself accordingly.
How can the Milky Way center not be... in the center? It's so close to the Milky Way Disk! Is it a matter of perspective?
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
i am still amazed by the starmap of this game. the scales are immense, yet this game, fitting in 1mb, spans an entiry GALAXY. of course, i know, the planets are generated and not stored etc. etc. yaddayadda. nevertheless it's impressive. the main developer, david braben, stated years ago that the planets move according to newtonian physics, and that most of the stars near earth are real & at their correct place. now I wonder: does something like a elite-style starmap exist? i mean, in 3d, with the galaxy forming a plane and the stars being points on this plane, each star with a specific distance from the plane.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
There's an even better map of the universe here, at http://www.anzwers.org/free/universe/index.html
I was just bullshitting, people... geeze. :)
Ah... that must be it. I forgot the smiley.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
can anyone see the Beagle?
I couldn't think of a sig.
It's
"Carter, I can see my house!"
This is a GREAT model/map for teaching. the general population sit's ther eand simply drools when they see a log chart so this is obviousally not for general public consumption but for scientists and students to use to get a better grasp on spatial locations from earth center at that given point in time.
Whereas those of us in the know use apostrophes for plurals and fail to capitalize the first letter of each sentence.
This is a great tool, if you are not able to understand it's usefulness that is your loss.
Oh yeah, and we also don't know the difference between "it's" and "its."
This map shows that the universe is both accelerating and decelerating at the same time? How is this possible? (Last I heard, the universe was expanding, and the rate of expansion was accelerating.)
What is this Great Wall?
Announcer: Well, Mrs. Prezky, open up the bag and see what you've won.
Mrs. Prezky: [stupified] Uh... why, this is a bag of shit!
Announcer: That's right, Mrs. Prezky. But it's really great shit!
--The Firesign Theater
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
For a minute there I thought it was NMAP.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
You, sir, are wrong, wrong, wrong. These are the same infinity. I can tell you how to pair up the 1's and the 4's such that every 1 is paired up with a unique 4, and every 4 is paired up with a unique 1. There are the same number of each.
For example: give each position an index number, starting from one. Pair the 1 at position one with the 4 at position five. Pair the 1 at position two with the 4 at position ten. Pair the 1 at position six with the 4 at position twenty-five. This pairs every 4 with a unique 1, and every 1 with a unique 4. Hence, there are the same number of 1's and 4's.
This is just establishment puffery. If they'd look at actual observations they'd reach different conclusions. See Arp.
(Buncha frickin geniuses. Yeesh!)
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
Where are the fire exits?
A map like this might do the trick. Implementation details are left as an exercise to the reader.
"Your notation sucks!" -- Serge Lang (1927-2005)