[HN Gopher] New 10 Terapixel Image of the Night Sky Contains 1B ...
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New 10 Terapixel Image of the Night Sky Contains 1B Galaxies
Author : soheilpro
Score : 121 points
Date : 2021-02-08 17:17 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kottke.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (kottke.org)
| tosser0001 wrote:
| This is just a wrapper around:
|
| https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/a-billion-galaxies-lurk-in-a-1...
|
| Probably should change the link to that
| jbritton wrote:
| Any idea what the colors indicate. There are some patches of
| mainly blue galaxies on a black background. These stand out as
| kind of unique. I initially zoomed all the way out, and in the
| top left is a giant blue and black area that looks like a lamp. I
| assumed this to be some imaging problem. Upon zooming in though
| one can see other blue on black areas.
| KenoFischer wrote:
| Counting the number of galaxies in these image datasets is
| actually a highly non-trivial, supercomputer-scale problem. I
| worked on this a few years back! Paper link for those interested:
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.10277.pdf
| cma wrote:
| Has anyone taken stuff like this and applied deep learning to
| cluster it and look for galaxies/other entities with standout
| features? Any good papers on stuff like that?
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Galaxy Zoo [1] applies distributed humans to classify galaxies.
|
| [1] https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/zookeeper/galaxy-zoo/
| lb1lf wrote:
| Whenever life gets you down, Mrs.Brown
|
| And things seem hard or tough
|
| And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
|
| And you feel that you've had quite enough
|
| Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
|
| And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
|
| That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned
|
| A sun that is the source of all our power
|
| The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
|
| Are moving at a million miles a day
|
| In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour
|
| Of the galaxy we call the 'milky way'
|
| Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
|
| It's a hundred thousand light years side to side
|
| It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick
|
| But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide
|
| We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
|
| We go 'round every two hundred million years
|
| And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
|
| In this amazing and expanding universe
|
| The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
|
| In all of the directions it can whizz
|
| As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know
|
| Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there
| is
|
| So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure
|
| How amazingly unlikely is your birth
|
| And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
|
| 'Cause it's bugger all down here on Earth
|
| -Eric Idle
| efynn wrote:
| Had to sing it along :-D
| protoman3000 wrote:
| Compared to winning the jackpot in a standard state's lottery,
| how unlikely is it that Earth is the only planet containing life?
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Three topics you might enjoy:
|
| Drake's Equation [0], the Fermi Paradox [1], and the Great
| Filter [2].
|
| Drake's Equation basically tries to guess the number of
| civilizations in our galaxy by multiplying the rate of star
| formation, the fraction of stars with planets, the average
| number of planets that could support life, the fraction that
| actually DO develop intelligent life, the fraction that develop
| a method of communication that sends signals into space (such
| as radio), and the length of time those civilizations exist.
| Obviously, a lot of unknowns here, but if you take some
| guesses, you can create estimates.
|
| The Fermi Paradox is the contradiction that the galaxy is so
| vast that it's incredibly improbable that we're the only
| intelligent civilization in existence, so how come we haven't
| found any evidence of other civilizations? Considering how
| relatively young the Earth and our Sun are, some other
| intelligent life should have expanded into a multi-star species
| by now, and we should have seen evidence for it.
|
| The Great Filter is basically an answer to the Fermi Paradox.
| Basically, there are several steps to go from "a star system
| that might support life" to "interstellar colonization". Life
| likely needs to start from reproductive molecules, eventually
| evolving to complex multi-cellular life, to tool-using
| intelligence, to technology advancement, and eventually towards
| space exploration and an explosion of space colonies. The
| question is which step is hardest, least likely to be achieved?
| Which step is the Great Filter that has led to the apparent
| lack of evidence of other civilizations? If the filter is, say,
| the development of complex multicellular life, then it's very
| possible that Earth really is the only planet with intelligent
| civilization. If the filter is the final step, then we haven't
| reached it, and our outlook is bleak, as it would indicate that
| other intelligent civilizations have gone extinct despite their
| intelligence.
|
| Obviously, these are very very abridged descriptions. Each of
| them has entire books dedicated to them.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter
| jandrese wrote:
| IMHO anybody who says we are alone hasn't comprehended the
| scale of the universe.
|
| It's unthinkable that there isn't life elsewhere on the almost
| uncountable other star systems. Unfortunately I think we may
| have also proven that interstellar travel is effectively
| impossible thanks to the Fermi paradox.
| indrax wrote:
| If the info we have is proof that no species in history could
| do any of the things that would let us notice them, then it
| can't also be strong evidence that they must exist.
| captainclam wrote:
| Or the great filter. :/
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Honest question: Is it possible to answer this without knowing
| how life occurs?
| aardvark179 wrote:
| That's a hard question to answer. The Drake equation breaks the
| problem down by expressing it as the product of other
| probabilities that might be easier to quantify, but even
| pinning down some of those is still really hard.
| lwansbrough wrote:
| Not sure it's possible to answer this question accurately with
| a sample size of 1. :)
| floxy wrote:
| Here's an unrelated question. Do we think essentially all stars
| are contained within galaxies? Or could there be there free-
| floating stars in the universe that aren't confined to galaxies?
| sanity31415 wrote:
| Galaxies aren't always cohesive, they can collide, split apart,
| etc - so the answer is "no".
| renke1 wrote:
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_star
|
| Also interesting: "The hypothesis that stars exist only in
| galaxies was disproven in 1997 with the discovery of
| intergalactic stars."
| gizmo686 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergalactic_star
|
| Such stars have been observed to exist. The common thought is
| that they formed within galaxies but ejected from them through
| gravitational forces.
| aduitsis wrote:
| The vastness of the cosmos we are living in, is simply
| unfathomable. I'm not even sure we have the ability to really
| appreciate the scale here. After a certain point it becomes just
| numbers.
| unavoidable wrote:
| I agree, unfathomable. But one interesting thought that I
| usually entertain is that based on our best estimates there are
| more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on
| Earth. Now imagine every time you step foot on a beach and
| think - there is potentially a star system for every grain!
|
| https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/are-there-more-grains-of...
| AbraKdabra wrote:
| There is absolutely no possible way we are alone in the universe.
| lm28469 wrote:
| It depends on how you look at it, we could very well be alone
| right now. Humanity is fairly recent and modern human history
| fairly short. There could have been dozen of other advanced
| civilizations on other planets just 1 million years ago and we
| most likely will never know about them. Or dozen advanced
| civilizations in 1 million years in the future long after we
| have collapsed. When you add time to the equation everything is
| possible, a few million years is a lot for us but nothing for
| the universe
| tcldr wrote:
| So, when you see that picture of 1 Billion galaxies, each
| with a few billion solar systems, you think it's more likely
| than not we're alone?
| lm28469 wrote:
| Nobody knows. If only carbon based life is possible and it
| needs liquid water then, afaik, most of these stars don't
| have a planet susceptible of hosting life as we know it,
| and even for the ones with the right conditions we might be
| a bit early or a bit late.
|
| It's hard to quantify the chances of life existing anywhere
| else at the same time as us when we don't have any idea of
| how it came to exist in the first place. We might be the
| exception, we might not. You can't just make the
| connection: "billion of stars" = "we're not alone". I don't
| pretend to know what's "likely" on a universal scale and I
| don't think anyone should
| onion2k wrote:
| That ignores how likely intelligent life is to arise, which
| is something we don't know.
| Shorel wrote:
| We are alone.
|
| The aliens, they are extremely far away. Probably not even
| their light can ever reach our "known universe".
|
| They also are alone.
| Razengan wrote:
| Sorry, our science dictates that we are.
| tcldr wrote:
| Source?
| NeutronStar wrote:
| Based on human science and based on the fact that normal
| matter only represent 4% of all matter.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| You're allowing a lack of evidence to be evidence of the
| negative.
|
| The incredible vastness of the universe means it's incredibly
| unlikely we're the only intelligent civilization in
| existence. But the incredible size of the universe also means
| that any radio signals being emitted by said civilizations
| haven't reached us, and even if they did, they'd be so weak
| they'd just be background noise.
|
| A picture with 1 billion galaxies...each with millions of
| stars...each potentially with any number of planets...it just
| seems really unlikely that we're the only ones out there.
|
| But even if we somehow proved another civilization exists,
| outside of the knowledge that we're not alone, it'd be
| meaningless. They're way too far away to observe, let alone
| communicate with.
| onion2k wrote:
| I like to imagine we are the only intelligent life in the whole
| universe sometimes. It's _highly_ unlikely, but it isn 't
| impossible. Given that possibility, we certainly aren't great
| at looking after what might be the most significant species on
| that entire map.
| 0000011111 wrote:
| In November 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space
| mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-
| sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of sun-like stars
| and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy.[2
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation#Current_estimat...
|
| So at a rate of 40 billion earth like planets in each galaxy.
| Deep field from Hubble turned up 125 billion galaxies. 125
| billion * 40 billion = 5e+21
|
| That means that over billions of years there is allot of time for
| life creation and death within the universe.
| elil17 wrote:
| The viewer is served using a REST protocol and Javascript library
| used to display maps. Just thought that was cool!
| wmwmwm wrote:
| I could look at this in full-res if only I had a multi monitor
| setup with a million 4k screens!
| DavidSJ wrote:
| What are all the horizontal bands?
| dvh wrote:
| CCD artefact. In CCD charge from one pixel is carried to the
| edge of the chip to be read, when the signal is too strong it
| bleeds into neighboring pixels.
|
| This is how CCD works:
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/CC...
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Big diffraction spikes for oversaturated stars.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Here's an example where you get to see lots of the optics in
| the telescope along with the sky: https://viewer.legacysurvey
| .org/?ra=165.4455&dec=56.3941&lay...
| redisman wrote:
| Very excited to see what the James Webb telescope will show us if
| the launch happens this year as planned
| dazhbog wrote:
| I tried to zoom in, and it only went a few clicks.. I was like
| cool. Then I started zooming out and out and out. The scale is
| just insane.. Im sure if we had a better camera and a medium to
| store the pixels, it would be like a Mandelbrot basically.
| kangnkodos wrote:
| There are two very similar galaxies here. I've heard of a gravity
| lens making a star look like it's two. Is it possible a gravity
| lens is making a galaxy look like two?
|
| https://viewer.legacysurvey.org/?ra=211.0715&dec=81.6327&lay...
| kangnkodos wrote:
| If you select Overlays, Bright Objects, Tycho-2 stars, they get
| labelled as Tycho-2 4564-935-1 and Tycho-2 4564-1031-1. So I
| guess they are stars?
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Those look like two saturated stars, so not actually galaxies.
| But in general yes, gravitational lenses can create multiples
| images of a galaxy, here is an example of four images ( pretty
| rare, not of galaxies though)
| https://www.space.com/28744-cosmic-lens-4-supernova-views-ph...
| gillytech wrote:
| This makes me feel a little better about the whole "heat death"
| problem.
| macu wrote:
| I wonder how the ASKAP dataset will compare when it's rendered as
| an image
| Jakobeha wrote:
| The size of this image is comparable to Google Maps.
|
| Go to Google maps and zoom out as much as possible. The bottom
| right hand corner should display a line measuring 1000 miles.
| Then zoom in so that the line measures 1 mile.
|
| This is the same as zooming out on this map so to 30 degrees,
| then zooming in to 100 arcsec.
|
| Google maps can zoom in a bit more to 20ft, but it's still
| impressive.
| notum wrote:
| Enjoy it while you can folks, next iteration of this project will
| only show Starlink serial numbers in great detail.
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(page generated 2021-02-08 23:00 UTC)