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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."
Great.. but where the hell are the restrooms?
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!
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.
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the restaurant at the end of the universe!
So this map must be a fake!
here you go:
l l.htm
http://www.newscienceparadigms.com/astro/great_wa
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.
Looking at the map, you'll see that the sun is actually not that much farther from the Earth than Mars
It looks that way, but in fact the y-scale is logarithmic. Mars is at around 0.4AU away, whereas the Sun is (by definition) at 1.0AU. So really, the Sun is more than twice as far away.
Plus, this map must be a snapshot in time, since it's quite possible for mars to be "on the other side" of the Sun, and thus further away from Earth than it, depending on the relative phase of the two planets' orbits.
These sigs are more interesting tha
I've heard it's so big, you can see it from China.
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!
Brings to mind this passage from Lewis Carroll, 1897:
Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
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
"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
Perhaps less scientific, but it looks cooler: An Atlas of the Universe
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