the eye of God / the void stares back
January 6, 2016 7:38 PM   Subscribe

Artist Pablo Carlos Budassi scours through images from NASA's rovers and satellites to produce a logarithmic map of the entire known universe.
posted by divabat (23 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
Beautiful!

Where can I get a nicely-printed poster?
posted by brambleboy at 8:01 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


Based on the orientation of the earth, I have to ask if Mr. Budassi is antipodean. I also think I recognize some of those galaxies from the Hubble deep field. But that really is cool and beautiful. It should be one of those posters in every college kid's dorm room, if that is still a thing these days. If not, I still want a nice copy for myself.
posted by TedW at 8:06 PM on January 6, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ok, this lead me to this less pretty/more accurate map and from there I learned about the Sloan Great Wall which is a Galaxy Filament ("massive, thread-like formations [...] that form the boundaries between large voids in the universe") and man space is awesome.
posted by quaking fajita at 8:20 PM on January 6, 2016 [6 favorites]


He gave it away to the public domain, and you can download a high resolution copy of the file here.

You could get that printed on a poster lots of places. Here for example. It looks like they have a 40% off coupon right now, so a 3'x4' poster would run around $18 at the moment.
posted by MythMaker at 8:24 PM on January 6, 2016 [2 favorites]


Perhaps I'm wrong here, but isn't this a map of the OBSERVABLE universe? Doesn't the actual universe extend infinitely in all directions?
posted by Captain Chesapeake at 9:05 PM on January 6, 2016


It includes the non-observable parts too, you just can't see them.
posted by onya at 9:10 PM on January 6, 2016 [17 favorites]


Powers of Ten, the other special effects extravaganza of 1977
posted by infinitewindow at 9:39 PM on January 6, 2016


Ah, that's what you call a map like this.
posted by grobstein at 9:43 PM on January 6, 2016


Doesn't the actual universe extend infinitely in all directions?

I don't think that's how it works.....that kind of presupposes a container of absolute space that the Universe sits inside of.
posted by thelonius at 3:32 AM on January 7, 2016


At last! My Mappa Mundi!
posted by Devonian at 5:00 AM on January 7, 2016


There's something incredibly diminutive about the phrase "bing bang," as if a little kitchen timer somewhere went off and the universe was ready to come out of the microwave.
posted by Wolfdog at 5:08 AM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Perhaps I'm wrong here, but isn't this a map of the OBSERVABLE universe? Doesn't the actual universe extend infinitely in all directions?

I think that question is still being investigated by cosmologists, but as a "logorithmic" illustration of the universe, the implication would seem to be that it approaches infinite distance / scale at the circular edge, right?
posted by aught at 7:14 AM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


This is the best thing since Escher!
(This kind of project deserves some hyperbole)
posted by fitnr at 7:34 AM on January 7, 2016


I see Pluto gets the shaft yet again.
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:39 AM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


(Nice map, otherwise!)
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:39 AM on January 7, 2016


Was just nowooking for info on 3D structure of galactic filaments & I came across this here dark matter 3D model from Hubble. Pretty cool.
posted by Devils Rancher at 7:46 AM on January 7, 2016


Based on the orientation of the earth, I have to ask if Mr. Budassi is antipodean

Well this is just typical of the liberal bias of MetaFilter, isn't it? We can't even have a discussion about whether the Earth is oriented the right way without Podial Justice Worriers piling on about being anti-podean. Well I fully support this orientation, and some of my best friends are podes. If that makes me an "antipodean" then maybe free speech is upside-down.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 8:41 AM on January 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


I think the bing before the bang is an yet undiscovered typo. Bada bing!
posted by Oyéah at 8:44 AM on January 7, 2016


beautiful-thanks for this post.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 10:20 AM on January 7, 2016


... rovers?
posted by BrashTech at 10:27 AM on January 7, 2016


I love this a lot but I was sort of hoping for something that did feel a bit more like a desperate void
posted by BradyDale at 11:23 AM on January 7, 2016


Ah! Excellent. This will be a great help in my travels.
posted by Splunge at 11:49 AM on January 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


yes, it's a map of the observable universe.

the universe is currently thought to be either infinite or at least jolly big (because the observable universe appears to be flat). neither require that it is embedded in anything.

the observable universe is finite because it has a finite age and the speed of light is finite.

and this map is really only a rough approximation (the scale has an arbitrary cutoff at the centre amongst other things). but it is very cool.
posted by andrewcooke at 10:13 AM on January 8, 2016


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