3/9/2004: New Hubble deep field
 

http://cellar.org/2004/hubbledeep2a.jpg

Today they released a new Hubble deep field image, and thanks to Archer for suggesting it although (heh heh) I was already busy downloading the 11MB 6200x6200 TIFF version that NASA made available.

This is the Hubble taking roughly two weeks, looking out at one specific point in space, taking an "extended exposure" of sorts to see what comes out. And this is what comes out: light from the furthest point in space, thousands of galaxies, each containing hundreds of thousands of stars.

Now, see -- look, in the upper-left of that image, there are four galaxies in a row, orange, green, blue, and red?

I "zoomed in" on those, to create the image below, to see how all those dots around them are just MORE galaxies.

http://cellar.org/2004/hubbledeep2b.jpg

There has *got* to be other life out there. I mean, *look* how many of those fuckers there are in just one small region of space, and how many stars, and therefore probable planetary systems there are.

What is the distance (i.e., how far back in time) involved with these galaxies? They are so incredibly varied in shap, size and spectra...just mind-boggling.

HOLY SHIT

Break out the theramin!

And NASA wants to abandon the Hubble...

I really enjoy all the other stuff NASA does, but the Hubble is the best thing they have got going.

http://www.savethehubble.org/petition.jsp

As the late, great, Carl Sagan would say

Billions and Billions

There are more galaxies out there than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of the world

Griff! You maka me laugh out loud.

And even in just OUR galaxy, there are more stars than you can shake a stick at. I'd say it's just about a lock that there is life out there.

Damn light speed.

Don't quote me on this but I heard them talking about this today, not sure what area they were discussing, but I heard a Trillion galaxies each with a couple hundred billion stars.

Yeah, I'd say the odds of life out there are pretty good.

Could be life but so what? They're 13 BILLION light years away. It'll never be a vacation destination.:)

Love it
 

These galexies are about 13 billion years old
Check out http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Very cool site if you are into this stuff:cool:

<EM>> It'll never be a vacation destination.</EM>

I find your lack of faith... disturbing...

I find your lack of underpants... disturbing.....

(I think we did that one time too.. or maybe it was back on the Waffle Cellar.)

If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space. -- Thomas Carlyle, looking at the stars.

If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space. -- Thomas Carlyle, looking at the underpants.

just nitpicking, i know, but the photo above took 3 months to capture. the bbc reported that it took 4 months. They began shooting the image in september last year, and wrapped it up in mid january. Wht strikes me is that this is a photo of "one" spot from within a 3D sphere, from our vantage point. i don't know the dimensions of the area photographed, but you have to consider that there is as much evidence of life in all of the other directions this could have been taken in. In 3 months, does all of the light coming from the furthest reaches of the universe show up on the film? Have we seen the outer edge of the universe now? can we then measure it? Does any one know what direction this camera was pointed? toward the center, out from center, laterally? I'm flabbergasted. Evidence of life from a purely overwhelming statistical stand point, I think. But, as Bruce says, it's all so goddamn far away that it doesn;t really matter.

For all intents and purposes, we are alone. Imagine our society in 2500 years, assuming we don;t destroy ourselves or collapse back to the stone age. the growth of technology is exponential. we've all imagined what is to come in the distant future, and first among them is star travel. it seems a relative certainty that some other civilzation would have acheived that level of technological acheivement. However, we are a relative needle in a haystack to them, and again....does it matter? would they have found us?? maybe there's intelligent life in MOST of the systems we can see in tis picture. Why would a civilization from so far away bother with us at all? There might be everything they are looking for in their local galaxy.

I think we will not be the first space faring people, but at the same time, I think we will stillhave to bootstrap ourselves out there. If there was a local starfaring people, we would already have been enslaved or colonized.

Since I doubt that I'll live long enough to see any of the marvels to come, I hope that reincarnation is true. I want to see what happens.

yeah! sez me!

did you ever think, as a kid, that you would be able to put your potato in a box, and cook it in 7 minutes?

stay tuned!

Mask
 

Does anyone else think that the top-right galaxy of the blowup looks like a masquerade mask with particularly evil eyes?

As far as life on other planets, I'd be amazed if it was aware of us no matter how technologically advanced it is; we've only been sending out radio signals for what, 100 years? And even at the speed of light how many stars are in that radius? Sure we've hit a few stars with classic big band, but do we transmit with enough power for it to be far enough above background radiation for them to even notice? Background from the sun is strong enough that it interfere with current broadcasts between satellites and cable TV viewers.

Great. Now I'm not going to be able to sleep at night knowing that thing is hanging over me ...

Thank you SOOOO much.

Masquerade!
Paper faces on parade . . .
Masquerade!
Hide your face,
so the world will
never find you!

Masquerade!
Every face a different shade . . .
Masquerade!
Look around -
there's another
mask behind you!

(with a tip o' the hat to Andrew LLoyd Webber)

Astronomy Picture of the Day
 

Oh yes, and speaking of Astronomy Picture of the Day, and sites that update once a day every day (like IotD here), I have a webpage a friend made for me a few years ago that will look at the cookies on your computer, see if you've been to that site today, and if not it sends you there. It's kind of cool; every time I open up my browser it makes sure I've seen today's pictures. If anyone's interested in something like that let me know and I'll send it along / post it. (I originally made it to make sure I went to the Hunger Site every day, but I didn't want that to be my homepage because, well, it's not so good as a portal).

And growing. I hear that these distant objects are not only still moving away but they are gaining speed. So the question becomes are they being pushed or pulled? Common sense would suggest they are being pulled since, if they were being pushed, the further they moved away from whatever was doing the pushing, the less "push" there would be so they would slow down. BUT to consider that they are being pulled is ... too difficult for me to fathom.

Anyway, I also wonder if everything is moving away at a faster speed or is it the further away the galaxy the faster it is moving which means that the separation between galaxies is increasing which kind of suggests that the universe will die a cold, lonely death at some point.

I wonder too, if all the galaxies are moving away from where the big bang happened, why hasn't someone plotted the reverse course of a few galaxies to see where the paths intersect to find the "center" of the universe. They could put up a Stuckey's there or something.

Hard to believe that all that stuff fit on the head of a pin at one point but that's what they say... Sometimes I think there is an equal but opposite universe and we just keep trading matter back and forth. But that just raises more questions. And I'm with Bruce - if there's life out there I don't think we'll ever know it.

Lastly, speaking of galaxies colliding, the Andromeda Galaxy is heading straight for the Milky Way Galaxy at well over one million miles per hour. But I think we're ok for another few billion years. Too bad we'll miss the fireworks. Then again, maybe we won't.

>Anyway, I also wonder if everything is moving away at a faster speed or is it the further away the galaxy the faster it is moving which means that the separation between galaxies is increasing which kind of suggests that the universe will die a cold, lonely death at some point.<

That's what they say what will happen. One day all the energy will have been transformed into head and the temperature will be the same in every point of the universe, and it won't be hot!

Just to give a bit of perspective
 

If you go along with modern big band theory, which makes pretty good sense to me, then this map gives you a decent idea how far back the light we are looking at was created. It's pretty close to the beginning/end of the universe, and really close to the distance where there would be any light to even be seen.

That's one theory. Another is that the so-called dark matter will eventually overtake everything and the universe will collapse in on itself and we start all over again.

To subscribe to the first theory (for which there is a lot of supporting evidence) is to accept the idea that the universe had a specific beginning and will have a specific end. And the end will be conclusive and final.

Without a shred of evidence to back it up, I submit that there seems to be a discord about everything within the universe being cyclical while the universe itself is not. My guess is that the universe is in some kind of never-ending loop.

The model I came up with is a vocano crater filled with water that is welling up slowly from a spring down deep. The water in the center is fairly stable while the water close to the edge is spilling over the edge of the crater and, hence is moving quickly. The water that spills over is somehow feeding the spring that is welling up inside the crater.

A goofy analogy perhaps but one that allows me to put things in some sort of context. I'm the first to admit that it raises questions that I'm neither equipped nor prepared to answer. I think its hard to understand something when there are forces influencing it that we are not even aware of.

u click the button, and the space shuttle whistles off.

Then it whistles back, and with pictures.

And then everybody sees those pictures.

And no one challenges those pics, since they've never been there.

... But we already have! :alien:

Not quite. For accelleration, there needs to be a continual force. Velocity remains constant in the absence of outside forces, not acceleration.

i'm not a physics prof, but i thought that if an object in motion was not encountering any contrary action, then the motion would continue as it is. including a state of acceleration. if it's gaining speed, and there's nothing to slow it down, why would it stop gaining speed?

one of you bookworms has to know this.

on third thought, as i re-read my point, why would it continue to gain speed if there was nothing adding further impetus?

so, then, why ARE these galaxies increasing in speed?

I think it needs to be an increasing force: constant force produces constant velocity and resistance is not relevant to the phenomenon itself but merely its magnitute. And that is what is a little unsettling to me. What force at that distance grows stronger?

Accelleration cannot occur in the absence of an outside force. The absence of resistance is not sufficient to create accelleration and would, in fact, violate Newton's 2nd law (inertia: objects at rest/motion tend to stay that way- motion being constant velocity in this case).

No, constant force produces constant accelleration. Zero force produces constant velocity.

If a spaceship in deep space stops firing its engine, it will not stop. It will just stop accelerating. To stop, it would need to fire the engine in the opposite direction.

Are you saying they're faked?

PURE CONJECTURE:

suppose the object was moving through our local space, which, while relative to our atmoshpere is a vaccuum, is not a pure vaccuum. as these galaxies travel into deeper space, the vaccuum may be more PURE. therefore, the relative resistance to it's motion is less, causing a PERCEIVED acceleration as these objects encounter increasingly less resistance.

??

who's the physicist? belesteiri?

bruce probably knows. he knows EVERYTHING!

Many answers have been offered including dark matter. But to really understand this effect, we must better understand Quantum effects. Newtonian and Einstein physics have only taken us so far. Both were early attempts at explaining gravity. They don't explain the relationships between gravity and other universal forces. A unified theory is necessary to explain those other forces. Ten dimensional string theory may have recently gone farther to explain how the various forms of energy and matter interplay.

But currently, we don't know which way to look. Is the acceleration due to matter or energy we don't know about - the dark matter? Or do we first need to better learn quantum physics. In quantum physics, we are only about where Newton was in understanding Newtonian gravity - the stuff taught in high school physics. A not so veiled comment about (and again) why we needed the super collider.

was this just your fancy way of saying, "uh, i dunno?"

or are you saying that no-one knows?

I'm a Comp-Sci major, math minor, but if I had a sub-minor, it would be physics.

There are several issues with that. First, the diminishment of resistance doesn't speed anything up unless there is a force pushing through the resistance. If something moving in space enters an area with zero resistance, it will continue moving at the speed at which it entered. Second, I greatly doubt that interstellar particles would produce a measurable effect on the acceleration of galaxies. Third, as far as I understand, galaxies aren't actually expanding into an area of empty space. Space itself is expanding, including the space between galaxies. I'm not well versed enough to explain it, so look here. Of course, this theory allows for a universe which curves back on itself, which would explain the seemingly infinite number of galaxies the further away we look.

What the fuck...
Can't we just look up to the stars and enjoy the feeling of being tiny and unimportant considering these enorm distances?
Come back to earth and see the world with better eyes, stop bothering and be happy?

That's what I think seing these pictures...

sure we could, pi, but that doesn;t leave much room for impressing each other with the profundity of our thoughts.

:)

oh my god, i'm turning into xoxoxobruce!

No, you're still confusing the ; for the '

We know you're you.

If the Universe is curved (call it a hypersphere), is there the possibility of looking all the way through the Universe at ourselves?
The ultimate in self-reflection.

I've seen something very similar to that in the Nevada desert. ;)

The universe, for our purposes is flat. If it is curved, it is so massive that for as far out as we can see, it's flat. And, considering we can see out pretty far, we can treat the universe as if it was flat.

To attempt to include conjecture where there is no evidence is akin to religion, not science.

In your dreams, grasshopper.:p

i think if that happened, i would never sleep again. but, it would be kind of cool to have 8 cars and all of those doodads. hey, that gm key wasn;t a corvette, was it?...i might reconsider this....

without conjecture, there is no theorum, without theorum, there is no theory. without theory, there is no discovery. without....

you smell what i'm cookin?

Hence the phrase "theory allows for", and "which would explain", rather than "proves" and "explains".

But space does curve! Einstein showed that gravity is actually caused by the mass of objects causing a curvature of space.

If there was enough mass in the universe to stop expansion, then that would mean that the curvature of the universe is closed in on itself, the same way a black hole's gravity closes it off from the rest of the universe.

It is not religion to consider this kind of thing, scientists have to speculate in order to come up with theory.

You left out the first part there, observation.

So if there is a complete lack of evidence (e.g. you do not observe something), then why spend time with the rest of your thought process? The basis of science is observation and repetition. Religion (or more accurately faith) skips the first step (observation), and moves directly to conjecture.

One can apply this process to another field very closely associated to science; invention. But these two fields, while relying heavily on one another, are not one in the same.

While, "necessity is the mother of invention", inventors rely heavily on faith, which is the lack of evidence.

So yes, LJ you're on the menu, but you are trying to skip right to dessert.

Slart,

Local space-time can be distorted, bent and shaped by the objects on it, which is why we have gravity. In fact, space-time can be so badly distorted as to bend back on itself, which is what we think are black holes.

This is all on a local level; the whole of space-time (e.g. the universe) is flat. Think of it this way, if the universe is expanding from a single point (essentially, we can argue those semantics/theories another time), and the universe comprises everything then what is causing the universe to bend back on itself?

I agree, speculation is not a bad thing, but to apply speculative theories (those that go against observation) is just bad science. We observe that the universe is flat, and it may not be flat, but since, what we observe is a flat universe, and our theories fit this observation, then why clutter the theory with bad science?

This may sound a lot like "here there be dragons" arguments of a flat earth from the 13th or 14th century, but remember, all you have to do to prove the earth is round is stand up. Watch the sun set over the horizon (not trees or a house, something like a beach is good), and as soon as it completely disappears, stand up. Check your math if you want to, but if the world was flat you would not be able to see the sun again. And, though I'm not 100 percent sure on this point, I think that section of geometry was around well before 1492.


*edit* I spell like a six year old

Oh shit. I'm going to have to read "A Brief History of Time" again.

I have the edition with the nice color pictures.

I'm fighting an urge to just curl up in a little ball of agoraphobia and wait for the peaceful sleep of oblivion. My. There's lots of stuff that's very very far away, isn't there? :worried:

And you guys are geeks. :D

Eratosthenes of Cyrene proved that the earth was round and even accurately computed it's circumference prior to his death in 194 B.C.

See below link for more details:
http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/obs.../eratosthenes/

I realize that belief in the bible and God isn't too popular around this message board, but if you're of that bent this is what the bible has to say about the earth being round:

(NIV) Isaiah 40:22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
and spreads them out like a tent to live in.

Did Columbus know that the earth was round? How bout this nasa site?
http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Lcolumb.htm

So why did my teachers tell me the whole flat earth crap in school? Who knows?

Sorry, didn't mean to be a thread jumper

I think i took your last sentence of your previous post out of context.

this one:
I had always concieved of the universe as 3D. An expanding shpere. I would consider that to be "curved". What do you mean when you say that the universe is "flat?"

Einstein's equations take the amount of matter and energy in the universe (assumed, again by the consideration of symmetry, to be distributed uniformly) and as output, they give the curvature of space.

The tough part is... how much matter and space is there really out there?

The way I understand it, if all matter and energy in the universe were to be smeared uniformly throughout space, and if, after this was done, there turned out to be more than the so called critical density of of 10 to the -23 grams in every cubic meeter (about five hydrogen atoms per cubic meter) Einstein's equations would yield a positive curvature. If there were less than the critical density, there would be a negative curvature, if there were EXACTLY the critical density, the equations would tell us that space has no overall curvature.

It's impossible to prove this without knowing how much matter and energy is out there, and how it's spread out. Don't you agree?

They are only beginning to delve into "dark" matter and speculate their could be more of it than any matter we were formerly aware of.
But, the WMAP (WILKINSON MICROWAVE ANISOTROPY PROBE) team has come up with a time line. :eyebrow: