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You Are Here (On Earth)

Posted by timothy on from the human-chauvinist dept.

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."

4 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. Voyagers and Pioneer. by kiwioddBall · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!

  2. Sloan Great Wall? by sakusha · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  3. Re:Bad joke. by wildsurf · · Score: 5, Interesting
    thus you can't create such a map.

    Brings to mind this passage from Lewis Carroll, 1897:

    "That's another thing we've learned from your Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?"

    "About six inches to the mile."

    ""Only six inches!"exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"

    "Have you used it much?" I enquired.

    "It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.
    --
    Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
  4. Another map by swinerd · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Perhaps less scientific, but it looks cooler: An Atlas of the Universe