MetaFilter posts tagged with Space and universe

Portals to the universe

Brandon Blatcher — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 05:44:19 -0800

"A mission scientist with NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, Natalie Batalha hunts for exoplanets — Earth-sized planets beyond our solar system that might harbor life. She speaks about unexpected connections between things like love and dark energy, science and gratitude, and how "exploring the heavens" brings the beauty of the cosmos and the exuberance of scientific discovery closer to us all". (Audio link of interview at top left corner of page, other relevant links at bottom of page)

So high, so low, so many things to know.

zarq — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 14:20:09 -0800

How Big is the Universe?

Yellow — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 10:48:58 -0800

How Big is the Universe? Measured with a protractor. Lots of Pictures!!!

Dark Matter Haters to the Left

2manyusernames — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 14:40:42 -0800

When we talk about dark matter and its alternatives, we are talking about no less a task than explaining the structure of every large object in the Universe. On the largest scales dark matter blows all of its competitors away. In terms of explaining the large-scale structure of the Universe, not a single one of dark matter's alternatives comes close to mirroring its success. But of course, that doesn't stop the sensationalist headlines from rolling in. We are understandably uncomfortable with the notion that we are not the most important thing in the Universe. We've just successfully figured out where the new material to form the Milky Way's young stars is coming from: high-velocity intergalactic gas clouds! About a Sun's worth of gas falls into the Milky Way (on average) every year, and this resupplies the Milky Way's gas reserves, which get eaten up as new stars form over billions of years. But what about the other, larger mystery? What about reproducing the structure of the Milky Way itself?

That's a big number

SpacemanStix — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 09:54:40 -0800

"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, but that's just peanuts to space. " -- Douglas Adams There are three times as many stars in the universe as previously estimated, bringing the number to 300 sextillion, give or take a few. That's 300 with 21 zeros after it: 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. So how bit is that, anyway? This is a million. This is a billion. "If you received $1000 per day, seven days a week ... it would take 2737 years, 10 months, 7 days to reach a billion. But it would only take 2 years, 8 months, 26 days to reach a million." This is a trillion, using dollars. To give you another frame of reference, a million seconds is 13 days, a billion seconds is 31 years, and a trillion seconds is 31,699 years. This is a quadrillion, if you counted using pennies. This is a quintillion. "This many pennies,if laid out flat like a carpet, would cover the surface of the earth - twice. If you look hard, you can still see the Sears Tower and other buildings at lower right. Another way to see it is to realize that Mt. Everest (29,000 ft.) is only 1,700 feet taller than this 27,300-foot cube. "This is as far as we will go. Three trillion tons of pennies is quite enough. To imagine larger cubes, (stepping by factors of 1,000), just imagine cubes roughly ten times larger than the last one. For instance, one quintillion pennies makes the cube above - about 5 miles on each side. If you step up to one sextillion, imagine a cube about 50 miles wide tall and thick." Now take that cube of pennies, 50 miles on each side, and make 300 of them. That's how many stars we're talking about. And that's before we take them all and spread them really, really far apart.

The Known Universe

srboisvert — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 01:29:10 -0800

The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010.

Zoomable Universe

paradoxflow — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 14:02:24 -0800

Amazing zoomable images of the Extended Groth Strip and Orion Nebula.

The Size of Things

nola — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:13:16 -0800

Welcome to the Universe - III: The Size of Things . . .we take a breif trip through the Solar System and beyond to see the size of the Universe. A youtube video by AndromedasWake about the scale of the Universe.

It's full of stars

Hactar — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:06:50 -0800

One of the hardest things for people to understand about the universe is just how big it is. There are three approaches typically used in describing its size. The first, the song, was pioneered by Monty Python (NSFWish, wireframe of naked woman) and then done just as masterfully by the Animaniacs. The second, the zoom method has been featured twice before here on the blue. The third method is the comparison method (skip to 1:30, unless you like looking at a image of the solar system with terrible distorted orbits), yielding some truly beautiful videos (this one found via the fantastic Bad Astronomy blog). These videos go, at most, as far as looking at the local cluster or the Virgo Supercluster. There are two videos that attempt to show the size of the entire universe, one unsuccessfully (although with great music) and one successfully. (Warning, all links except the first one, are to YT videos). (These links are not YT videos, with the one noted exception) The last video shows the Sloan Great Wall (although it confuses the entire image with just the wall itself, which is only the largest galaxy filament (large mpg of a filament) that we can see in the sky. These filaments create the large scale structure of the universe, resembling a web or a cotton ball. (YT Video) Once one looks larger than the filaments, one hits the "End of Greatness", where the universe appears homogeneous. (This can be seen, more or less, in the first link.) Finally, and perhaps the best link of the bunch, more pictures and videos of similar things from the Max Planck Institute of Astrophysics.

Dark Flow

homunculus — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:28:16 -0800

Mysterious New 'Dark Flow' Discovered in Space. "As if the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy weren't vexing enough, another baffling cosmic puzzle has been discovered. Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can't be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon 'dark flow.' The stuff that's pulling this matter must be outside the observable universe, researchers conclude." Here's the paper (subscription required): A Measurement of Large-Scale Peculiar Velocities of Clusters of Galaxies: Results and Cosmological Implications. NASA has preprints you can download: results and implications and technical details (PDFs).

Universe Sandbox

stavrosthewonderchicken — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:44:31 -0800

An Interactive Space Simulator "Smash planets together, introduce rogue stars, and build new worlds from spinning discs of debris. Fire a moon into a planet or destroy everything you've created with a super massive black hole. You can simulate and interact with our solar system: the 8 planets,160+ moons, and hundereds of asteroids, the nearest 1000 stars to our Sun, and our local group of galaxies." [31Mb, Windows only, sorry, but see inside for similar Mac and Linux apps] If you're keen and you're not an XP or Vista user, you'll probably like Stellarium [Linux, Mac or Windows] and Celestia [Linux, Mac or Windows] [previously] as well, which are less physics simulation and more 'fly through the universe' brain food, but heaps of fun, too.

"The sun descending in the west, The evening star does shine;"

wander — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 14:12:27 -0800

Have you ever wondered what a solar eclipse would look like from space? The STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) has just sent back its view (awe-inspiring video included). It has also sent back some gorgeous pictures of our sun (and the McNaught Comet). For more media, check out the other galleries (including some 3D images). For more about the project, see NASA's STEREO homepage. Be sure to also stop by the Johns Hopkins University STEREO Page, where you can download a mission guide (pdf), view animations, watch a video of the launch, or even make your own papercraft STEREO model (pdf). You can also learn more in six minute segments with their series of short educational videos.

Imagining the Tenth Dimension

Jimbob — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 05:38:15 -0800

Imagining the Tenth Dimension (Flash). 10th dimensional physics and string theory don't get any easier than this.

Who can invent for us a cartography of autonomy, who can draw a map that includes our desires? - Hakim Bey

absalom — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 17:51:57 -0800

Cartography is a skill pretty much taken for granted now, but it wasn't always so. Accurate maps were once prized state secrets, laborious efforts that cost a fortune and took years (or even decades) to complete.

How things have changed. (Yours now, $110) It took almost 500 years to map North America, but it's only taken one tenth of that to map just everything else. In the last 50 years, we've been able to create acurate atlases of two planets and one moon (with a second in the works). Actually, we've done a lot more than that. We're actually running out of things to map.

Maybe Not.

The universe as a football

grahamwell — Sat, 11 Oct 2003 13:21:20 -0800

The shape of the universe may well be a dodecahedron. New research from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe suggests a finite universe with a definite shape. One up for Plato, who, following Pythagoras, maintained that “God used this solid for the whole universe, embroidering figures on it.”. So it appears. .. all expressed much more lucidly by the Economist.

Are there other universes?

Prawn — Tue, 12 Feb 2002 10:02:44 -0800

Are there other universes? It's mind-boggling to imagine how this might be so, but some scientists think it's possible. But if there's no way to detect something, does it really exist?