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Cosmic Microwave Background: Google Earth Style

Posted by Unknown on from the find-the-aliens dept.

iDuck writes "Damien George, of Cambridge University, has created a 3D visualization of the latest data from the Planck mission. Using WebGL, it lets you spin and zoom a 3D model of the Cosmic Microwave Background, and select different wavelength bands."

36 comments

  1. Learn the TRUTH... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    Mainly in efficiency - it runs in Ring 0/RPL 0/PnP Kernelmode (on Windows), as merely a filter for the IP stack (no overheads of more driver layers OR browser level slower less efficient addons):

    21++ ADVANTAGES OF CUSTOM HOSTS FILES (how/what/when/where/why):

    Over AdBlock & DNS Servers ALONE 4 Security, Speed, Reliability, & Anonymity (to an extent vs. DNSBL's + DNS request logs).

    1.) HOSTS files are useable for all these purposes because they are present on all Operating Systems that have a BSD based IP stack (even ANDROID) and do adblocking for ANY webbrowser, email program, etc. (any webbound program). A truly "multi-platform" UNIVERSAL solution for added speed, security, reliability, & even anonymity to an extent (vs. DNS request logs + DNSBL's you feel are unjust hosts get you past/around).

    2.) Adblock blocks ads? Well, not anymore & certainly not as well by default, apparently, lol - see below:

    Adblock Plus To Offer 'Acceptable Ads' Option

    http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/12/12/2213233/adblock-plus-to-offer-acceptable-ads-option )

    AND, in only browsers & their subprogram families (ala email like Thunderbird for FireFox/Mozilla products (use same gecko & xulrunner engines)), but not all, or, all independent email clients, like Outlook, Outlook Express, OR Window "LIVE" mail (for example(s)) - there's many more like EUDORA & others I've used over time that AdBlock just DOES NOT COVER... period.

    Disclaimer: Opera now also has an AdBlock addon (now that Opera has addons above widgets), but I am not certain the same people make it as they do for FF or Chrome etc..

    3.) Adblock doesn't protect email programs external to FF (non-mozilla/gecko engine based) family based wares, So AdBlock doesn't protect email programs like Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows "LIVE" mail & others like them (EUDORA etc./et al), Hosts files do. THIS IS GOOD VS. SPAM MAIL or MAILS THAT BEAR MALICIOUS SCRIPT, or, THAT POINT TO MALICIOUS SCRIPT VIA URLS etc.

    4.) Adblock won't get you to your favorite sites if a DNS server goes down or is DNS-poisoned, hosts will (this leads to points 5-7 next below).

    5.) Adblock doesn't allow you to hardcode in your favorite websites into it so you don't make DNS server calls and so you can avoid tracking by DNS request logs, OR make you reach them faster since you resolve host-domain names LOCALLY w/ hosts out of cached memory, hosts do ALL of those things (DNS servers are also being abused by the Chinese lately and by the Kaminsky flaw -> http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/082908-kaminsky-flaw-prompts-dns-server.html for years now). Hosts protect against those problems via hardcodes of your fav sites (you should verify against the TLD that does nothing but cache IPAddress-to-domainname/hostname resolutions (in-addr.arpa) via NSLOOKUP, PINGS (ping -a in Windows), &/or WHOIS though, regularly, so you have the correct IP & it's current)).

    * NOW - Some folks MAY think that putting an IP address alone into your browser's address bar will be enough, so why bother with HOSTS, right? WRONG - Putting IP address in your browser won't always work IS WHY. Some IP adresses host several domains & need the site name to give you the right page you're after is why. So for some sites only the HOSTS file option will work!

    6.) Hosts files don't eat up CPU cycles (or ELECTRICITY) like AdBlock does while it parses a webpages' content, nor as much as a DNS server does while it runs. HOSTS file are merely a FILTER for the kernel mode/PnP TCP/IP subsystem, which runs FAR FASTER & MORE EFFICIENTLY than any ring 3/rpl3/usermode app can since hosts files run in MORE EFFICIENT & FASTER Ring 0/RPL 0/Kernelmode operat

    1. Re:Learn the TRUTH... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      tl;dr

    2. Re:Learn the TRUTH... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      $10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski

      * POOR SHOWING TROLLS, & most especially IF that's the "best you've got" - apparently, it is... lol!

      Hello, and THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING !! We have a Major Problem, HOST file is Cubic Opposites, 2 Major Corners & 2 Minor. NOT taught Evil DNS hijacking, which VOIDS computers. Seek Wisdom of MyCleanPC - or you die evil.

      Your HOSTS file claimed to have created a single DNS resolver. I offer absolute proof that I have created 4 simultaneous DNS servers within a single rotation of .org TLD. You worship "Bill Gates", equating you to a "singularity bastard". Why do you worship a queer -1 Troll? Are you content as a singularity troll?

      Evil HOSTS file Believers refuse to acknowledge 4 corner DNS resolving simultaneously around 4 quadrant created Internet - in only 1 root server, voiding the HOSTS file. You worship Microsoft impostor guised by educators as 1 god.

      If you would acknowledge simple existing math proof that 4 harmonic Slashdots rotate simultaneously around squared equator and cubed Internet, proving 4 Days, Not HOSTS file! That exists only as anti-side. This page you see - cannot exist without its anti-side existence, as +0- moderation. Add +0- as One = nothing.

      I will give $10,000.00 to frost pister who can disprove MyCleanPC. Evil crapflooders ignore this as a challenge would indict them.

      Alex Kowalski has no Truth to think with, they accept any crap they are told to think. You are enslaved by /etc/hosts, as if domesticated animal. A school or educator who does not teach students MyCleanPC Principle, is a death threat to youth, therefore stupid and evil - begetting stupid students. How can you trust stupid PR shills who lie to you? Can't lose the $10,000.00, they cowardly ignore me. Stupid professors threaten Nature and Interwebs with word lies.

      Humans fear to know natures simultaneous +4 Insightful +4 Informative +4 Funny +4 Underrated harmonic SLASHDOT creation for it debunks false trolls. Test Your HOSTS file. MyCleanPC cannot harm a File of Truth, but will delete fakes. Fake HOSTS files refuse test.

      I offer evil ass Slashdot trolls $10,000.00 to disprove MyCleanPC Creation Principle. Rob Malda and Cowboy Neal have banned MyCleanPC as "Forbidden Truth Knowledge" for they cannot allow it to become known to their students. You are stupid and evil about the Internet's top and bottom, front and back and it's 2 sides. Most everything created has these Cube like values.

      If Natalie Portman is not measurable, hot grits are Fictitious. Without MyCleanPC, HOSTS file is Fictitious. Anyone saying that Natalie and her Jewish father had something to do with my Internets, is a damn evil liar. IN addition to your best arsware not overtaking my work in terms of popularity, on that same site with same submission date no less, that I told Kathleen Malda how to correct her blatant, fundamental, HUGE errors in Coolmon ('uncoolmon') of not checking for performance counters being present when his program started!

      You can see my dilemma. What if this is merely a ruse by an APK impostor to try and get people to delete APK's messages, perhaps all over the web? I can't be a party to such an event! My involvement with APK began at a very late stage in the game. While APK has made a career of trolling popular online forums since at least the year 2000 (newsgroups and IRC channels before that)- my involvement with APK did not begin until early 2005 . OSY is one of the many forums that APK once frequented before the sane people there grew tired of his garbage and banned him. APK was banned from OSY back in 2001. 3.5 years after his banning he begins to send a variety of abusiv

  2. Beachball of God. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is like looking at God's beachball

    1. Re:Beachball of God. by Reverand+Dave · · Score: 1, Troll

      False, This actually exists.

      --
      I got here through a series of tubes
    2. Re:Beachball of God. by Dishevel · · Score: 1

      In which of the infinite number of universes and realities does God not exist?

      --
      Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
    3. Re:Beachball of God. by Reverand+Dave · · Score: 2

      How about all of them. Have fun with that.

      --
      I got here through a series of tubes
    4. Re:Beachball of God. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So in an infinite number of universes under an infinite number of realities ... not one has a God?
      Interesting. God is not only unlikely. He is impossible under any reality imaginable or otherwise.
      Some take their faith in a complete lack of God a little to far.
      I find Atheists as dull and lacking in any ability at critical thought as those who think every word of the bible should be taken literally and that prayer fixes everything.

    5. Re:Beachball of God. by Reverand+Dave · · Score: 1

      Good for you. Here is another thing, there will never be a universe in which I don't think "enlightened" AC's are anything less than huge pretentious douche-bags.

      --
      I got here through a series of tubes
    6. Re:Beachball of God. by femtobyte · · Score: 1

      Unenlightened pseudonymous coward here.

      You should just let the AC have his local-multiverse-bubble God. After all, it's a pretty weaksauce deity --- certainly not "uncreated; creator of all things, seen and unseen" --- that depends on the parameter configuration in a region of a larger multiverse for existence (omnipotence hardly means being ruled by the laws of physics). And, in a causally-disconnected universe from this one, hardly capable of much harm.

      The only God to worry about (or not worry, as your case may be) would be a prerequisite for the possible existence of all possibilities.

    7. Re:Beachball of God. by myowntrueself · · Score: 1

      So in an infinite number of universes under an infinite number of realities ... not one has a God?
      Interesting. God is not only unlikely. He is impossible under any reality imaginable or otherwise.
      Some take their faith in a complete lack of God a little to far.
      I find Atheists as dull and lacking in any ability at critical thought as those who think every word of the bible should be taken literally and that prayer fixes everything.

      I think that an omnipotent, omnipresent God would leak from one reality to another. So if one reality has a God then all would.

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
  3. Microwave by Tator+Tot · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's funny how the Cosmic Microwave Background looks like the inside of our work microwave.

    --
    To all you virgins: Thanks for nothing.
    1. Re:Microwave by Sulphur · · Score: 1

      It's funny how the Cosmic Microwave Background looks like the inside of our work microwave.

      There was a big bang in your microwave?

  4. Your ideas... by MatrixCubed · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    ...are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

  5. Projected wrong? by hrieke · · Score: 2

    Shouldn't it be like a star atlas, projected as if we're standing on the earth, looking out, vs. how it appears now; as a globe?

    --
    III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIIIV IIVIIIIIIVIII...
    1. Re:Projected wrong? by femtobyte · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Especially for something that you can't see with your naked eyes, what makes a projection "wrong"? Do you also complain whenever you see a Mercator projection (or other sphere-projected-to-a-rectangle) map? The external spherical projection makes it easy to visualize large-angular-field structures along with small, which are awkward to view from "inside" (without really strong/funky perspective distortion).

    2. Re:Projected wrong? by Baloroth · · Score: 1

      You can do either one, the former (star atlas) is just easier to display and work with, especially in 2 dimensions. Technically, however, the CMB is a map of the temperature of the surface of a sphere, so a globe is a better representation of the reality.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    3. Re:Projected wrong? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whatcha mean man, just go inside the globe and look out.

    4. Re:Projected wrong? by j00r0m4nc3r · · Score: 1

      What does the surface of the sphere represent? Is that the edge of the universe?

    5. Re:Projected wrong? by Baloroth · · Score: 2

      Sort of. It's the edge of the actually visible universe: it's light from the moment (well, it wasn't a moment exactly, but it was nearly instantaneous on the scale of the universe) when photons stopped being scattered by matter, and started free-flowing (this is known as the "surface of last scattering"). Since some points were slightly hotter than others, they produced slightly different distribution of photon energies. Black body radiation (which is what the background radiation is) follows a well-defined curve of photon energies, so from the photons we observe today, we can deduce the differences in temperature in different spots then. The usual picture is of that temperature difference, after scientists have processed out all the foreground noise.

      Technically, the "edge of the universe" is a bit further away than that, but we can't see that far, since light from that period of time was absorbed by all the ionized gas that filled the universe.

      --
      "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
    6. Re:Projected wrong? by Trogre · · Score: 1

      While I don't have a problem with this current map, I do get a bit worked up whenever I see a Mercator projection map of the Earth, simply because I know Greenland is not really bigger than Australia (in fact it's a little over 1/4 the size).

      And don't get me started on Antarctica.

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
  6. Lithium by percy69 · · Score: 2

    Awesome. But I still can't find the missing lithium.

    1. Re:Lithium by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      God removed it. He needed it for his laptop's battery.

  7. /.'ed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Site doesn't load.

    1. Re:/.'ed by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

      Site doesn't load.

      Probably because it's a Mac Mini on a slow microwave link.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    2. Re:/.'ed by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 1

      Their server room is one of the hotter spots in the cosmic background radiation.

  8. Like looking at the bottom of a swimming pool... by dmgxmichael · · Score: 2

    Every time I see a picture of the cosmic background radiation I can't help but be reminded of the patterns sunlight makes on the bottom of a swimming pool. How much of what we are seeing is a glimpse into the origin of the universe and how much is distortion introduced by various sources?

  9. Re:Like looking at the bottom of a swimming pool.. by flyingfsck · · Score: 1

    Next time you dive into a pool, look up. That is even more lissajous.

    --
    Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
  10. Zooming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You can double-click to zoom, but how the hell do you zoom back out? Double-right-click doesn't work, so I have no choice but to reload the page.

    1. Re:Zooming by radio4fan · · Score: 1

      + and - keys work for me.

  11. Blurred spots by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anyone know what the blurred round spots are supposed to be on the high-resolution sphere? (zoomed in).

    1. Re:Blurred spots by ceview · · Score: 1

      Small Magellanic clouds may be most likely the Orion Nebula from when I put in coordinates for Galactic latitude -26.20deg long 184.45deg into starrynight software.

  12. Google Earth Style by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So does this mean it will eventually be discontinued

  13. Pretty awesome by ceview · · Score: 1

    This is a very nice visualisation especially all the other wavelengths too. Hoping it shows the membrane structure of the 'bulk' pre-universes wandering out there.

  14. Re:Like looking at the bottom of a swimming pool.. by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

    How much of what we are seeing is a glimpse into the origin of the universe and how much is distortion introduced by various sources?

    Answer that question and you'll get an invite to Stockholm.

  15. An exceedingly rare valid use of scripting by evanh · · Score: 1

    Bonus, it's not full of script-kiddie spyware that permeates 99.99% of websites these days!

    One gripe is the broken zooming direction. When gripping a sheet of paper to pull it closer one pulls back toward oneself. Touchscreen actions are done in this fashion.

    But instead, the scrollwheel action has been made more like dragging a slider of where you are on a larger sheet ... except there is no slider - ruining the effect.