The universe is big. This big.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/03/23/an-ultradeep-image-thats-full-galaxies/

by wwwhizz • 14 years ago

422 98 14 years ago

blogs.discovermagazine.com

andys627• 14 years ago

Ask a scientist: Can you see black hole lens effect in this?

lloeki• 14 years ago

This [0] IMHO gives more perspective (don't be taken aback by the flashy images, the good stuff comes after, ~2:50 mark) When watching, remember this is when looking at the absolute darkest spot of our sky.

[0] Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAVjF_7ensg

PS: Inevitably, the title reminded me of this:

   Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly,
   hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you
   may think it's a long way down the road to the
   chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

   -- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

acdanger• 14 years ago

"The universe is a big place. Perhaps the biggest" - Kilgore Trout

rokhayakebe• 14 years ago

What did the author mean by "Perhaps?"

mortenjorck2• 14 years ago

I still remember the time I saw the first Hubble Deep Field. The idea that the researchers could point this massive telescope at an empty part of the starfield, run a long exposure, and come back with a plate full of galaxies full of solar systems full of planets, while we've yet to get too far beyond the surface of our own.

A lot of people's first reaction always seems to be "we're so insignificant!" And yet, most fascinating to me is trying to reconcile the vast complexities of our planet and of humans with our physical near-nonexistence in the universe.

We have infinite complexity in approximately zero space. Kind of a strange thing to consider.

grannyg00se• 14 years ago

"A lot of people's first reaction always seems to be "we're so insignificant!" "

Neil deGrasse Tyson often counters this reaction by pointing out that while the universe is vast, we are made of it. So we are not simply small separate objects in a large universe, we are actually part of the physical elements that make it up and come from the same "stuff". At least that's what I gather when he says this:

"Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOzkEwaMnaE http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/12855.Neil_deGrasse_T...

billybob• 14 years ago

>>A lot of people's first reaction always seems to be "we're so insignificant!"<<

I feel the emotion of this reaction, but I think the proper response to this is the one that C.S. Lewis gave: size is just a number; significance is attached to things by minds.

If you don't think tall people more important than short ones, or feet more important than eyes, why do you think stars more important than people? Certainly the stars don't think any such thing. They don't think at all. We do.

Here's a quote from his space novel "Perelandra" where this concept comes up:

"Part of him still knew that the size of a thing is its least important characteristic, that the material universe derived from the comparing and mythopoic power within him that very majesty before which he was now asked to abase himself, and that mere numbers could not over-awe us unless we lent them, from our own resources, that awfulness which they thmselves could no more supply than a banker's ledger. But this knowledge remained an abstraction. Mere bigness and loneliness overbore him."

zeteo3• 14 years ago

Astronomical numbers may be large but in e.g. computational science people have been dealing with even larger numbers for quite a while now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number

JonnieCache3• 14 years ago

Not wishing to be rude but that's peanuts.

Try http://www.xamuel.com/busy-beaver-numbers/

If anyone can come up with any larger numbers I'd like to hear them.

EDIT: Oh and if you think the universe is big and hard to imagine, try considering the phase space of the entire universe! That's the set of all possible configurations of all the particles. Bananas.

I encourage you to watch this lecture from Roger Penrose, Aeons Before the Big Bang,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OutKE3tyG94

...if only for the fantastic hand-drawn overhead transparencies in all the colours of the rainbow. They are a delight and I want to see hipster programmers using them at conferences.

BTW also watch it for the crazy physics.

asmithmd1• 14 years ago

The tip of your little finger held at arms length would about cover this image.

st0p• 14 years ago

Makes me feel very small.

Synthetase• 14 years ago

I'm surprised someone hasn't converted the large image over to something like the Google Maps navigation UI for better viewing. I guess I'll be attempting that when I get home from work.

geuis5• 14 years ago

Just had the same idea. Downloading the full image now.

dmd• 14 years ago

I would hope that this data would soon be integrated into http://www.google.com/sky/

maaku• 14 years ago

World Wide Telescope:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/wwt/

jlynn4• 14 years ago

Check out http://zoom.it/VGFr

jlynn4• 14 years ago

I also converted the 450mb tiff http://zoom.it/dNMW

username3• 14 years ago

Amazing. All those galaxies and Earth is the only one with life.

twiceaday• 14 years ago

*Citation needed.

rhygar2• 14 years ago

Fixed: Earth is the only known planet to have life.

qq66• 14 years ago

Fixed: Earth is the only planet known by Earth to have life.

elorant2• 14 years ago

Well if another galaxy has life in it we'll probably never find it.

sneak• 14 years ago

Not with that attitude, we won't!

chucknelson• 14 years ago

Unfortunately I have the same attitude. With the expansion of the universe apparently speeding up, it's like a race we can't win. Unless wormholes DO exist...that would be great. Or maybe we'll discover some mass relay type thing ;) If you haven't played Mass Effect, I'm sorry.

jussij• 14 years ago

And they will probably never find us. Everything is just too far away:

http://www.planetary.org/image/radio_broadcasts.jpg

_pattern• 14 years ago

unfortunately unlikely.

every horrible thing in history, every holocaust and slave trade, every excruciating death,

is probably playing out countless times over throughout the universe.

DanBC• 14 years ago

I love that image. It's very hard for me to begin to comprehend the numbers involved.

See also "animated scale of the Universe" from NASA.

(http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html)

thechrisj• 14 years ago

this is awesome.

boyter2• 14 years ago

That is pretty impressive. I wish there was something like this that showed travel between two points, say earth and Alpha Centauri, but at lightspeed or faster with a timer in years at the bottom like an odometer. I imagine that would impart a greater sense of scale for myself.

Jun8• 14 years ago

Totally unrelated to the universe (but maybe not): To me the "Ye. Gads" moment came after this quote:

"There’s a long jet of material apparently coming from that bloated galaxy on the left (I increased the brightness and contrast of this picture to make it more obvious; it was subtle in the original image but I have a lot of practice picking out things like this)."

I am once again totally stupified at the level of image processing a trained brain paired with a good visual system can do. One day, instead of developing complicated image processing algorithms, we will have it done by a brain-in-a-vat & computer implant combo, using different animal brains and visual systems for different applications, e.g. an owl or eagle for detecting pinpoints of light in a large image of the universe.

geuis5• 14 years ago

How many galaxies are in the observable universe?

Quick numbers check:

Author estimates over 200k galaxies in the image. Image covers 0.004% of the sky.

200000/0.00004 = 5,000,000,000 galaxies. (edited, thanks to % help from commenters below)

Finding somewhat standardized values for this rather standard question is frustratingly vague. Estimates range from a few billion to a trillion, though the most frequently quoted number I could find was about 100 billion.

The standard for measurement in the last 10 years or so have been the Hubble Deep Field Survey images. In the last one done, there were about 10k galaxies shown. The HDFS had a square arcminute resolution of 11.5. It would require 12,913,983 HDFS-type images to cover the entire side. (ref: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=720)

Using these numbers: 12913983 * 10000 = 129,139,830,000 galaxies.

So why the vast difference between the two numbers? My supposition is the new ESO image isn't as deep as the HDFS.

I would argue the larger number, ~129.134 billion galaxies is a bit more accurate.

Damn, 129 billion galaxies. Someone else has to be out there.

AlisdairO• 14 years ago

I think your calculated number needs to be multiplied by 100, if I'm not mistaken.

geuis5• 14 years ago

Can you reference which sets of numbers? I made reference to a couple and want to make sure I understand.

boyter2• 14 years ago

When chucking those numbers through the drake equation it looks pretty likely. I think it comes down to a matter of time, both for searching and because I believe we have entered a very dangerous period for a species where technology can either be our savior or cause us to destroy ourselves.

jerf• 14 years ago

Galaxies are not evenly distributed. But for all I know this is an unusually sparsely populated part of the sky. Still, your number could shift in either direction by quite a lot.

geuis5• 14 years ago

That is an excellent point. To further refine the estimate we need measurements of the number of galactic clusters and their various densities. For example, in the Local Group (Milky Way, Andromeda, etc) there are about 50. The Virgo Supercluster contains over 2500. Getting those estimates is beyond me at the moment.

Galaxies are strung out across the universe along filaments, with vast voids in between. The voids are mostly empty and very cold, but recent observations have found hot spots in some up to millions of degrees. Overall, the universe has a soapy appearance, i.e. lots of space with the "stuff" strung together.

One thing to note is that, at least to my knowledge, there are galaxies in all directions. There may be voids along the way, but you'll always see them closer or further away.

One of the reasons that this ESO deep field view is important is that its bigger than the original Hubble Deep Field, so we can start answering questions about density and distribution.

zeteo3• 14 years ago

The author's calculation seems to be off, 1.2 x 1.5 degrees is 1/72,000 of the total sky area, or roughly 0.0014% (not 0.004%). That still leaves an order of magnitude to be accounted for, but considering the ballpark nature of the 200k estimate and also this being a "dark" spot it's not very surprising.

kamaal3• 14 years ago

What are the odds of intelligent life NOT existing in such a space?

MrScruff• 14 years ago

The odds are incalculable, see previous discussion here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3662890

wyck• 14 years ago

and if the multiverse ends up being true that number might be slightly larger, and by slightly I mean unimaginably larger, I think it's called infinity.

nico_h• 14 years ago

Most probably. THe universe is Big. But it also is Old.

Most probably someone else was or will be out there. Homo Sapiens Sapiens has a currently very short history (~200k years ?). History is 6000 years old (China?). The universe is 13 billion years Old.

Maybe we're late to the party. Or Early.

analyst742• 14 years ago

Also mentioned in the article:

"we’re seeing them with light that left them shortly after the Universe itself formed."

That means, there could be a lot more, but their light has not travelled to earth yet.

jeremyarussell• 14 years ago

With all this out there it leaves one to wonder, when will the aliens finally get here?

But really, if we evolved from chaos and minerals (so far that's the best explanation anyone's given me.) Then somewhere on some of these other planets are sentient creatures looking up going, "I wonder if there are other sentient creatures out there?"

swalkergibson• 14 years ago

No doubt! It is exceedingly egotistical to think that we are the only life-forms in this vast expanse.

Also, this image seems like a good use of the iPad 3 retina display...

EREFUNDO3• 14 years ago

I still remember when I learned that the Sun was a star. I was six years old when my uncle told me about it. I actually asked him what the Sun was and his answer pretty much shocked me to the core. I already knew the Earth revolved around the Sun so learning that the Sun is just one of little tiny bright lights at night was a true eye opener. That night I looked up the sky again and wondered if there are other people up there.....

sliverstorm• 14 years ago

was a star? :)

EREFUNDO3• 14 years ago

Oops misstype! We still have 5 billion years before we could refer to it as "was a star".....lol I just type what comes to mind and rarely do editing.....

sethbannon• 14 years ago

The world needs more images like this to inspire the scientists and adventurers of tomorrow.

InclinedPlane2• 14 years ago

Interestingly we don't actually know how big our Universe is, perhaps even within a great many orders of magnitude. This is because the visible Universe has expanded at sub-light speeds over its history, but in the very, very early Universe there was a period called inflation in which space-time expanded at speeds much faster than light.

kamaal3• 14 years ago

>>very early Universe there was a period called inflation in which space-time expanded at speeds much faster than light.

References for this?

InclinedPlane2• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)

jlynn4• 14 years ago

Looks like the image has been added to zoom.it. You can browse the full resolution image without downloading all of it: http://zoom.it/VGFr

jrockway• 14 years ago

"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," is beginning to sound a lot more plausible.

How could there not be a few Death Stars inhabited by English-speaking humans somewhere in one of those galaxies?

paraschopra• 14 years ago

What I find interesting about this question is that it is at once fascinating and silly. Fascinating because it would be incredibly cool to have someone like us somewhere out there. Silly because the distances involved are mind boggling, so it is highly unlikely they would ever be able to contact us.

So is there any real difference between they not existing at all and they existing and we (probably) never been able to know that they exist? All we can hope is to hopelessly theorize and write science fiction stories about them.

losvedir2• 14 years ago

> How could there not be a few Death Stars inhabited by English-speaking humans somewhere in one of those galaxies?

I know this is just a tongue in cheek comment, but I actually thought it somewhat reasonable until recently when I spent a moment with the numbers and saw its impossibility.

Basically, there's only ~100 billion galaxies with ~100 billion stars each (to an approximation of several orders of magnitude...), while the space of possible societies, languages, histories, etc, grows exponentially.

Even if there were 10^100 stars, log_2(10^100) is still only about 330. This means all those stars can only accomodate 330 forks in history where it could have gone one way or the other with equal probability. Or, in computer science terminology, all those stars can only encode 330 bits of information. And describing English alone takes far, far more than 330 bits. (Depending on how inevitable language of a certain type is.)

mikeash• 14 years ago

Note that your numbers apply to the observable universe. The universe as a whole is likely to be infinite. Not that there is much practical difference between "the universe" and "the observable universe".

lee• 14 years ago

> This means all those stars can only accomodate 330 forks in history where it could have gone one way or the other with equal probability. Or, in computer science terminology, all those stars can only encode 330 bits of information. And describing English alone takes far, far more than 330 bits.

There's a huge gap in your logic here. The number of bits to represent all the stars in the universe has nothing to do with the possibility that there is some English speaking society out there.

squarecat• 14 years ago

Composite of the ESO image with Blue Marble 2012: http://flic.kr/p/btoRfL

zrgiu_• 14 years ago

How can you NOT want to travel the universe when you see such a wonderful photo ? Imagine going closer and closer to a perfectly spiral shaped galaxy, effectively discovering a new world, all-so-different yet similar to ours... I get goosebumps just thinking about this..

I know I'm very probably not gonna get to leave Earth in my lifetime, but I genuinely hope that my children or grandchildren will. This opens so many possibilities...

BCM43• 14 years ago

Torrent of the large jpg file: http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/7134685/The_universe_(JPG)

tuacker• 14 years ago

If you want a more interactive look at the universe go here http://htwins.net/scale/ (Flash but so so worth it)

grn• 14 years ago

You may also look at an alternative version at http://htwins.net/scale2/

batista3• 14 years ago

Reading into the article I got a huge urge to re-read the Foundation series (and maybe get into that prequel I never got into).

losvedir2• 14 years ago

To put this image in further perspective, take a look at this link[1]. It blew my mind as I had the universe and observable universe all mixed up conceptually. For instance, the universe was not a point at the big bang: only the observable universe was.

[1] http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/infpoint.html

ajays2• 14 years ago

I don't understand one thing: how can they keep the telescope stable and focused so accurately on one spot in the sky, without any jitter? The Earth is rotating at 360 degrees/24 hours, which is about 0.25 degrees per minute. This 17000 pixel image covers 1.2 degrees, which means the light is sweeping across this sensor at 60 pixels/second as the earth spins.

How can they move the telescope so accurately that a sensor pixel picks up light from the exact same spot in the sky for an extended duration of time?

analyst742• 14 years ago

I think you just answered that, right before asking it.

ajays2• 14 years ago

So you're saying that we have the ability to make sure that a pixel on the sensor is collecting light from the exact same spot in the sky for an extended amount of time? Taking into account (among other things) the rotation of the earth, the shaking of the ground, the wind, the changes in the atmosphere's temperature and humidity and god knows what else?

That's pretty f'in awesome!

The universe is big. This big.

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