The Universe is AWESOME!

SuperTortoise · 21-04-2018 5:02am

dsaint1 wrote: »

Yes, amazing but, if you count each source of light from this image, it's nowhere near 10,000 individual sources of light....

NASA use equipment far more sensitive than our eyes for detecting light emitted by galaxy's.
Even in those dark places where we can see nothing there are hundered of galaxy's, we can't see them, but they are there.

the_syco · 21-04-2018 5:10am

SmartinMartin wrote: »

I fcuking hate that word. Fascinating, incredible, amazing, spectacular, magnificent, etc, but awsome? Septics have ruined that word through overuse and trivialitization.

Septic tanks ruined what?

pleas advice · 21-04-2018 5:31am

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/hudf/hudf.jpg

I think this is the full resolution version, if you zoom in there are plenty of pretty faint red-ish galaxies

SuperTortoise wrote: »

NASA use equipment far more sensitive than our eyes for detecting light emitted by galaxy's.
Even in those dark places where we can see nothing there are hundered of galaxy's, we can't see them, but they are there.

10000maniacs · 21-04-2018 2:29pm

SuperTortoise wrote: »

The juni probe will travel 23,214,000,000,000,000,000 Km in 10 billion years
or 2.5 million light years.
The observable universe is 93 billion light years in diameter so the juni probe will have travelled just 0.003% of the ways across the universe in 10 billion years! and even then that does'nt account for expansion.

The asteroid belt between jupiter and mars contains millions and millions of asteroids but when NASA launches spacecraft to the outer planets they don't bother trying to negotiate a way through them, because space is so vast and the chances of them hitting one are so small it's not worth their while!
All this would have had to have happened in the last 50 years for us to see it, so while we cannot absolutely rule out the possibility of humans being the outlier in the universe the chances of us finding alien life in the future i would say is decent enough.

Why do you say all of this would have had to have happened in the last 50 years for us to see it.
If an alien space probe crashed into Mars say 5000 years ago, NASA cameras would have been able to photograph the debris.

Kermit.de.frog · 22-04-2018 12:59am

NASA Planet Hunter (TESS) on way in to orbit

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-planet-hunter-on-its-way-to-orbit

NIMAN · 22-04-2018 3:22am

10000maniacs wrote: »

Why do you say all of this would have had to have happened in the last 50 years for us to see it.
If an alien space probe crashed into Mars say 5000 years ago, NASA cameras would have been able to photograph the debris.

Really?

Have NASA mapped the entire surface of Mars?

Kermit.de.frog · 22-04-2018 9:38am

...

wexie · 22-04-2018 9:46am

10000maniacs wrote: »

Why do you say all of this would have had to have happened in the last 50 years for us to see it.
If an alien space probe crashed into Mars say 5000 years ago, NASA cameras would have been able to photograph the debris.

And that's assuming that we would be able to recognize it for what it is which is quite the assumption I would think?

10000maniacs · 22-04-2018 2:45pm

wexie wrote: »

And that's assuming that we would be able to recognize it for what it is which is quite the assumption I would think?

A non natural wreckage would be very easy to spot in an image.

NIMAN wrote: »

Really?

Have NASA mapped the entire surface of Mars?

Nearly 90% of Mars' surface has been mapped by the high-resolution stereo camera on ESA's Mars Express, which celebrates ten years since launch this June.

valoren · 23-04-2018 5:20pm

One 'awesome' moment for me was looking at Jupiter through a telescope one night.
I got irritated at the specks of dust that were on the lense which after a quick wipe were still there.

Then it dawned on me that they weren't specks at all but Jupiter's four Moons.
Is there a word for feeling like an idiot and being awestruck simultaneously?

JupiterKid · 25-04-2018 6:32am

NIMAN wrote: »

Really?

Have NASA mapped the entire surface of Mars?

Yes, and much of it in high resolution. The Mariner 9 orbiter first mapped over 90% of Mars at low resolution back in 1971/72.

We know more detail about the surface of Mars than we know about our ocean floors on Earth.

Kermit.de.frog · 27-04-2018 12:26am

valoren wrote: »

One 'awesome' moment for me was looking at Jupiter through a telescope one night.
I got irritated at the specks of dust that were on the lense which after a quick wipe were still there.

Then it dawned on me that they weren't specks at all but Jupiter's four Moons.
Is there a word for feeling like an idiot and being awestruck simultaneously?

Imagine what went through Galileo's mind when he first turned his telescope to the skies...

Grayson · 27-04-2018 12:29am

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/apr/25/the-largest-thing-in-the-universe-cosmic-collision-12bn-years-ago-created-mega-galaxy

The colossal merger of 14 galaxies more than 12 billion years ago has been captured by astronomers who used the world’s most powerful telescopes to peer 90% of the way across the observable universe.

The cosmic pileup occurred 12.4 bn years ago and the resultant gigantic galaxy will have continued to snowball in size ever since. Calculations suggest that by the present day, hundreds more galaxies would have been swallowed up by the cluster, propelling it to a mass equivalent to 1,000 trillion suns, which would make it the largest known object in the universe.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 27-04-2018 3:54am

But did time exist 12 billion years ago?

Capt'n Midnight · 27-04-2018 10:09am

Princess Consuela Bananahammock wrote: »

But did time exist 12 billion years ago?

Yes*.

There existed 1.8 billion, give or take 20 million, years of time by then. :pac:

In some mathematical models of the early universe time becomes a complex number when you get closer to the very start, so imaginary time :eek:

*Universe is 13.799±0.021 billion years old based on overlap of data from NASA and ESA.

not yet · 27-04-2018 10:12am

Helena Thoughtless Toothache wrote: »

The little Milky Way alone is flush with billions of potentially habitable planets - and that's just one sliver of the universe (there are billions of other galaxies to choose from).

In total around about 6 sextillion (x21 zeros) possible habitable planets in the universe, more than there is individual specs/grains of sand on all of the earths beaches combined.

Who told you that...:D

Kivaro · 27-04-2018 1:09pm

A couple of days ago, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia mission published its first fully 3D map of the Milky Way. The data haul includes the positions of nearly 1.7 billion stars, and the distance, colours, velocities and directions of motion of about 1.3 billion of them.

Only one word for it: Spectacular.

Ipso · 27-04-2018 3:17pm

And yet nearly every newspaper devotes print to astrology on a daily basis ibstead of this!

GreeBo · 27-04-2018 3:35pm

wexie wrote: »

The numbers sure suggest it don't they?

Be a helluva coincidence if it was just our little planet that somehow managed to have the right conditions for life no?
.

What's the coincidence?
That life is on the only plant where life developed?

NIMAN · 27-04-2018 3:38pm

Kivaro wrote: »

A couple of days ago, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia mission published its first fully 3D map of the Milky Way. The data haul includes the positions of nearly 1.7 billion stars, and the distance, colours, velocities and directions of motion of about 1.3 billion of them.

Only one word for it: Spectacular.

I have another word for it.......wide. Ruined my browser formatting.

skallywag · 27-04-2018 3:56pm

10000maniacs wrote: »

And they sent out their radio signals in analogue format like we did before they subsequently moved to digital.

There is no such thing as a 'digital radio signal', all radio signals are actually analogue. You can encode information onto these signals in a Digital (e.g. think DAB/DVB etc) or Analogue (e.g. think FM Radio) manner, but the fact remains that the transmitted signal itself is still analogue.

So there, now you know :pac:

_Whimsical_ · 27-04-2018 4:08pm

I've posted this before but I often think of it and it still blows my mind so I'm inflicting it on you all again.

Remember the analogue tv we all had has kids, the stations that were not tuned in were just snow and static noise?
On those untuned stations we flicked past with the remote, 4% of that static we heard is actually noise/static/molecules bouncing around left over from the Big Bang.
So there in your sitting room on Saturday morning waiting for kids tv to start or whatever you were doing with the snow channel on, you were listening to a tiny fragment of the origin of the universe.

buried · 27-04-2018 4:28pm

GIF of images taken by the Philae lander on the surface of Comet 67P

GreeBo · 27-04-2018 4:54pm

buried wrote: »

GIF of images taken by the Philae lander on the surface of Comet 67P

I call fake!
You cant even see the nightswatch on top of the wall!

skallywag · 27-04-2018 6:32pm

This is one of my favourites...

File:Pale_Blue_Dot.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot

AllForIt · 27-04-2018 6:43pm

With so many stars and so my galaxies it is odd to think there is only one universe.

Whatever started the universe, the big bang, why couldn't their be another big bang, or big bangs happening elsewhere, either in parallel with ours or chronologically after or before. I can't believe there is just one universe that will expand till it's death and that's it, nothing like it to happen ever again.

skallywag · 27-04-2018 7:00pm

AllForIt wrote: »

With so many stars and so my galaxies it is odd to think there is only one universe.

Whatever started the universe, the big bang, why couldn't their be another big bang, or big bangs happening elsewhere, either in parallel with ours or chronologically after or before. I can't believe there is just one universe that will expand till it's death and that's it, nothing like it to happen ever again.

There is a theory describing this in Physics called Multiverse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse

While the math behind such a theory is sound, it remains the case that it would be highly unlikely if not indeed impossible for the theory to ever be proven by experiment, which in itself renders it pretty worthless to many in the science community.

GreeBo · 27-04-2018 8:47pm

AllForIt wrote: »

With so many stars and so my galaxies it is odd to think there is only one universe.

Whatever started the universe, the big bang, why couldn't their be another big bang, or big bangs happening elsewhere, either in parallel with ours or chronologically after or before. I can't believe there is just one universe that will expand till it's death and that's it, nothing like it to happen ever again.

But where would it happen?
What's the universe in...?

Also, if the universe is 13bn years old, why is it only 10bn light years wide? Shouldn't light from the big bang be moving at the speed of light and thus the universe should be at least 13bn light years wide? If not, is this light queuing up at the edge of the universe?

Bah, no sleep for me tonight so!

Fourier · 27-04-2018 9:14pm

GreeBo wrote: »

But where would it happen?
What's the universe in...?

Also, if the universe is 13bn years old, why is it only 10bn light years wide? Shouldn't light from the big bang be moving at the speed of light and thus the universe should be at least 13bn light years wide? If not, is this light queuing up at the edge of the universe?

Bah, no sleep for me tonight so!

The universe is far bigger than that, it's at least 47 trillion light years.

What the universe is actually "in" is unknown, indeed if it is "in" anything.

Fourier · 27-04-2018 9:18pm

skallywag wrote: »

While the math behind such a theory is sound, it remains the case that it would be highly unlikely if not indeed impossible for the theory to ever be proven by experiment, which in itself renders it pretty worthless to many in the science community.

Actually the maths behind it isn't sound, although this not commonly reported. All multiverse theories are on shaky ground mathematically in some respect.

The Universe is AWESOME!

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