//Into The Universe//

[Coal Man]

In this thread we post mind blowing facts and theory about space, time and everything in between!

I will begin with the obvious

[Seann_]

1st

Edit: A few facts from an article by Neil deGrasse Tyson.

-There are 100,000 times as many stars in the universe as sounds and words ever uttered by all humans who have ever lived.

-Dark matter and dark energy make up 94 percent of the universe. We can measure their existence, yet we have no idea what they are.


-With chemical elements forged over 14 billion years in the fires of high-mass stars that exploded into space, and with these elements enriching subsequent generations of stars with carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and other basic ingredients of life itself, we are not just figuratively but literally made of stardust.

-Since light takes time to travel from one place to another, the farther out in space you look, the farther back in time you see. With our most powerful telescopes, we can observe the universe all the way back to its earliest moments -- all the way back to the Big Bang itself.


Other facts:

-It's a small world. More than 1,000 Earths would fit into Jupiter's vast sphere.

-The brightest astronomical event in historic times was the supernova of 1054, which produced the Crab Nebula. The supernova was far brighter than Venus. It was bright enough to be visible in daylight and to cast a shadow at night. We know of it through the astronomical records of China, Japan, and the Middle East

-Since the invention of the telescope, no supernovae have been observed within our galaxy. Supernovae were recorded in 1572 and 1604, while Hans Lippershey invented the telescope in 1608 and Galileo was the first to turn his telescope skyward in 1609

-The matter in the universe is so thinly dispersed that the universe can be compared with a building twenty miles long, twenty miles wide, and twenty miles high, containing only a single grain of sand.

[mab23]

that puts some things into perspective - were pretty damn small

[flexbrah]

the obligatory 'most important picture ever taken' (essentially ever spec in the image is a galaxy...)

[Cronoh]

Stephen Hawking's Into The Universe has been a pretty interesting series to watch - he does a good job of making it understandable for new people to the field!

Follow the videos to youtube for the continuing parts (You want to watch in HQ right?!)

Time Travel



Intelligent Life/Aliens



The Story of Everything

[MontelWilliams]

" The photo above was taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 as it sailed away from Earth, more than 4 billion miles in the distance. Having completed its primary mission, Voyager at that time was on its way out of the Solar System, on a trajectory of approximately 32 degrees above the plane of the Solar System. Ground Control issued commands for the distant space craft to turn around and, looking back, take photos of each of the planets it had visited. From Voyager's vast distance, the Earth was captured as a infinitesimal point of light (between the two white tick marks), actually smaller than a single pixel of the photo. The image was taken with a narrow angle camera lens, with the Sun quite close to the field of view. Quite by accident, the Earth was captured in one of the scattered light rays caused by taking the image at an angle so close to the Sun"

""We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam."

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...26tbs%3Disch:1

[CLEAN_SET_OF_10]

if an atomic nucleus was the size of a ping pong ball, its electrons would be in "orbit" about a kilometer away.

[Coal Man]

if an atomic nucleus was the size of a ping pong ball, its electrons would be in "orbit" about a kilometer away.

I saw a show comparing it to a small bug standing in a cathedral.

[mab23]

" the photo above was taken by voyager 1 in 1990 as it sailed away from earth, more than 4 billion miles in the distance. Having completed its primary mission, voyager at that time was on its way out of the solar system, on a trajectory of approximately 32 degrees above the plane of the solar system. Ground control issued commands for the distant space craft to turn around and, looking back, take photos of each of the planets it had visited. From voyager's vast distance, the earth was captured as a infinitesimal point of light (between the two white tick marks), actually smaller than a single pixel of the photo. The image was taken with a narrow angle camera lens, with the sun quite close to the field of view. Quite by accident, the earth was captured in one of the scattered light rays caused by taking the image at an angle so close to the sun"

""we succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam."

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...26tbs%3disch:1

crazy!

[MontelWilliams]

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



"Tardigrades are polyextremophiles and are able to survive in extreme environments that would kill almost any other animal. Some can survive temperatures of -273°C (-460 °F) , close to absolute zero,[5] temperatures as high as 151 °C (303 °F), 1,000 times more radiation than other animals,[6] and almost a decade without water.[7] In September 2007, tardigrades were taken into low Earth orbit on the FOTON-M3 mission and for 10 days were exposed to the vacuum of space. After they were returned to Earth, it was discovered that many of them survived and laid eggs that hatched normally, making these the only animals known to be able to survive the vacuum of space.[8]"

[Dude.Jon]

A baby pic of the universe ^^


If you guys ever read about COBE (cosmic background explorer) "The COsmic Background Explorer (COBE), also referred to as Explorer 66, was a satellite dedicated to cosmology. Its goals were to investigate the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) of the universe and provide measurements that would help shape our understanding of the cosmos."

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

The WMAP "Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) is a NASA Explorer mission that launched June 2001 to make fundamental measurements of cosmology -- the study of the properties of our universe as a whole. WMAP has been stunningly successful, producing our new Standard Model of Cosmology. WMAP continues to collect high quality scientific data."
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/







These 2 pictures show the afterglow of the Big Bang, the microwave radiation shown is radiation from when the universe is believed to be about 380,000 years old.



Now recently, the Planck Satellite, launched May 2009 by the European Space Agency has recorded the most up-to-date, highest resolution picture of the baby universe. Before you look at the picture, look back at the top and then look at this new scan.































"Planck’s map depicts subtle variations in the universe’s temperature at different points in the sky, reflecting the distribution of matter when the universe was 380,000 years old. White and blue areas represent foreground interference from the Milky Way and other galaxies; that data must be subtracted before the primordial microwaves (represented by the yellow and reddish portions of the image) can be fully analyzed."

http://sciencenews.org/view/access/i...oppedto445.jpg

[YesMaybeNo]

Yes long, but very interesting.

I love Neil deGrasse Tyson

[wildphucker]

If stars were the size of dots made by a lead pencil, and our nearest star was 3cm away...



The whole galaxy would be a kilometre wide

[drewh4386]

astronomy, physics, philosophy


<3

[Number_Seven]

Dark energy (quintessence)

It's been shown that the universe is expanding at an increasing rate. A theory to explain this is dark energy, an energy that we haven't found a way to detect that is basically anti-gravity: it's pushing objects apart with more force than gravity is pulling them together making the expansion rate accelerate.

I found this really interesting.

[flexbrah]

[img]http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mcclth/Pictures/pbd_sm.png[img]

" The photo above was taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 as it sailed away from Earth, more than 4 billion miles in the distance. Having completed its primary mission, Voyager at that time was on its way out of the Solar System, on a trajectory of approximately 32 degrees above the plane of the Solar System. Ground Control issued commands for the distant space craft to turn around and, looking back, take photos of each of the planets it had visited. From Voyager's vast distance, the Earth was captured as a infinitesimal point of light (between the two white tick marks), actually smaller than a single pixel of the photo. The image was taken with a narrow angle camera lens, with the Sun quite close to the field of view. Quite by accident, the Earth was captured in one of the scattered light rays caused by taking the image at an angle so close to the Sun"

""We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam."

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...26tbs%3Disch:1

speaking of Voyager 1... it hit a landmark today: its been operating continuously for 12,000 days and has traveled 14 billion miles! Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are the most distant human-made objects in the universe right now...

Within the next five years, the spacecraft will enter interstellar space, where it will study the boundaries of the solar system, including the Kuiper Belt. Long-life nuclear batteries are expected to power Voyager 1 until at least 2020, when it will be more than 13 billion miles from Earth.

source

[moosecakes4all]

Thank you X's horizontal asymptote Coal Man for helping our cause!!!!

[flexbrah]

isnt the universe expanding at a rate faster than the speed of light?



oh, and in on 1st page of 1st sticky in the most epic sub section since the misc

i'm pretty sure it is. we were talking about it awhile ago in Astronomy... the universe is ~13.7 billion years old, but the estimated radius of the universe is something like 75-80 billion light years across... which would mean that the universe is indeed expanding at a rate faster than the speed of light.

[Skunk]

" The photo above was taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 as it sailed away from Earth, more than 4 billion miles in the distance. Having completed its primary mission, Voyager at that time was on its way out of the Solar System, on a trajectory of approximately 32 degrees above the plane of the Solar System. Ground Control issued commands for the distant space craft to turn around and, looking back, take photos of each of the planets it had visited. From Voyager's vast distance, the Earth was captured as a infinitesimal point of light (between the two white tick marks), actually smaller than a single pixel of the photo. The image was taken with a narrow angle camera lens, with the Sun quite close to the field of view. Quite by accident, the Earth was captured in one of the scattered light rays caused by taking the image at an angle so close to the Sun"

""We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam."

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...26tbs%3Disch:1

[JM2412]

Interesting stuff.

[Irezumi]

isnt the universe expanding at a rate faster than the speed of light?



oh, and in on 1st page of 1st sticky in the most epic sub section since the misc

Yup. Everything inside the universe is limited to general realitivity (cosmic speed limit is the speed of light) but the universe itself is indeed expanding faster.

[drewh4386]

Yup. Everything inside the universe is limited to general realitivity (cosmic speed limit is the speed of light) but the universe itself is indeed expanding faster.

basically meaning the universe is still way bigger than the biggest comprehension. I dont know why but 13.7 billion years still seems to short for me to believe.

[Coal Man]

Thank you X's horizontal asymptote Coal Man for helping our cause!!!!

you're welcome bro.

Less than a page long and my mind is already being shattered. Lots of quality info for me to dig deep into when I'm finished with my exams

[Maestro]

YES FINALLY!!!!

MY current wallpaper:

[moosecakes4all]

you're welcome bro.

Less than a page long and my mind is already being shattered. Lots of quality info for me to dig deep into when I'm finished with my exams

Check this video out, It was really really good!

[Seann_]

Coal Mang definitely came through!

[Maestro]

Check this video out, It was really really good!

contributing:

I keep meaning to look up all of this guys talks, He's pretty damn good but not as well known as, say, Hawking:

His name is Neil deGrasse Tyson:

[BumpRnB]

In for mindblowing facts and videos.

[Slugger00001]

Currently taking astronomy classes. It all definitely is very interesting, and something good to learn about.

[flexbrah]

Currently taking astronomy classes. It all definitely is very interesting, and something good to learn about.

same here! its one of my favorite classes i've taken so far...