A Tiny Glimpse (of our Universe)

[GoldEagle]

This truly amazes me!

http://atinyglimpse.ytmnd.com/

Press F11 to make the text visible.

Thoughts? Feelings?

If there are 10,000,000,000,000 (10 Quadrillion [1 Trillion x 10,000]) stars in that little picture alone, imagine how many chances for life that is. I believe I remember hearing that there is like a 1 in 100 Billion chance that a star has a planet in its system that bears life...it seems we are not alone ... just imagine what life is like on another life-bearing planet...surely it would be much different from ours...but is it intelligent? Do they have a common language? Religions? Or are any of the planets advanced enough to have explored space?

I love contemplating the Universe

[mobsterboy]

Great

It isnt bad enough we have to deal with Agg kiddies in the Milky Way...Now theres threats that there are agg kiddies in other galaxies....

[koleah]

This truly amazes me!

http://atinyglimpse.ytmnd.com/

I love contemplating the Universe

Wow.

Just wow.



Thank you

[Carbon]

i think one of the greatest and the worst things of being human is the the inabillity to grasp very large and very small scales and measures.

[tribalman]

the drake equation

N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL

N* represents the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy

Question: How many stars are in the Milky Way Galaxy?
Answer: Current estimates are 100 billion.

fp is the fraction of stars that have planets around them

Question: What percentage of stars have planetary systems?
Answer: Current estimates range from 20% to 50%.

ne is the number of planets per star that are capable of sustaining life

Question: For each star that does have a planetary system, how many planets are capable of sustaining life?
Answer: Current estimates range from 1 to 5.

fl is the fraction of planets in ne where life evolves

Question: On what percentage of the planets that are capable of sustaining life does life actually evolve?
Answer: Current estimates range from 100% (where life can evolve it will) down to close to 0%.

fi is the fraction of fl where intelligent life evolves

Question: On the planets where life does evolve, what percentage evolves intelligent life?
Answer: Estimates range from 100% (intelligence is such a survival advantage that it will certainly evolve) down to near 0%.

fc is the fraction of fi that communicate

Question: What percentage of intelligent races have the means and the desire to communicate?
Answer: 10% to 20%

fL is fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live

Question: For each civilization that does communicate, for what fraction of the planet's life does the civilization survive?
Answer: This is the toughest of the questions. If we take Earth as an example, the expected lifetime of our Sun and the Earth is roughly 10 billion years. So far we've been communicating with radio waves for less than 100 years. How long will our civilization survive? Will we destroy ourselves in a few years like some predict or will we overcome our problems and survive for millennia? If we were destroyed tomorrow the answer to this question would be 1/100,000,000th. If we survive for 10,000 years the answer will be 1/1,000,000th.

When all of these variables are multiplied together when come up with:

N, the number of communicating civilizations in the galaxy.

[Maggot6]

I for some reason was expecting a screamer, however, that is far cooler.

I love the entire "Light being the fastest" concept, and how we saw those pictures from (I forget exactly) billions of years ago.

[bentothejam1n]

mark already posted that awhile back but still good none the less

[GoldEagle]

I for some reason was expecting a screamer, however, that is far cooler.

I love the entire "Light being the fastest" concept, and how we saw those pictures from (I forget exactly) billions of years ago.

13 Billion Years ago

(Not to get on a religious topic, but scientifically, this does disprove literal Creation, though one could say that God created that light.)

[Steelrat]

(Not to get on a religious topic, but scientifically, this does disprove literal Creation, though one could say that God created that light.)

DANGER, WILL ROBINSON, DANGER!!!

[Pneumagger]

if youever get a chance to see more hubble "deep field" pictures, check out gravitational lensing. That happens when some of these huge galaxies are in line with each other from our POV and we can see images of the galaxy in the back my means of the light bending around the galaxy in the front.

Light effected by gravity... yeah, galaxies are that massive.

This pic shows a simple schematic of how a grav-lense operates.


This animation is a simulation of what happens when a Black hole passes directly in front of a galaxy from our view. Notice how intensly the light bends around the "einstein" ring of a Black hole. The einstein ring is the light basically surfing around the edge of th eevent-horizon. Light outside the horizon gets minorly refracted and we never see that, light at just the right incident angle to the horizon gets turned towards us, and anything inside the event horizon gets pulled in. You will see that this produces the illusion of extreme brightness at the midpiont of crossing. This theory can be used to spot black holes.


Here is a deep feild pic of gravitaional lenseing. To make this image, Hubble peered straight through the center of one of the most massive galaxy clusters known. The gravity of the cluster's stars, plus dark matter, acts as a 2-million-light-year-wide "lens" in space. This "gravitational lens" bends and magnifies the light of the galaxies located far behind it. Some of the faintest arcs in this image are background galaxies over 13 billion light-years away. The most prominent lensing effect is the long blue arc, just above, and to the left of, centre. But you can see many arcs that have refracted around the galaxy center. Many of these arcs of light are refracted images of the same galaxy in the distace.



Now to cook your noodle:
The fact that gravity can bend light means two things...

Light, being affected by gravity is indeed massive. Meaning it is possible to travel the speed of light if you have a mass and not just a wave of evergy. However due to the theory of relativity, anything travelling the speed of light should be infinately massive, relatively. And thus have infinate inertia becoming undeterrable. So how does something travel the speed of light, have mass, and be moved (have altered trajectory). <--- Paradox Much?

Furthermore, Gravitational time dilation exists in a true sense. It causes time to pass at different rates in regions of a different gravitational potential; the higher the local distortion of spacetime due to gravity, the slower time passes. It is similar to velocity time dialation (as most are aware of a twin paradox example) only more pronounced and measurable as acceleration is simply the derivative of velocity and thus is easily measureable over a compounded period of time versus the point obsevation of a velocity inertial frame. Light passing through a gravitational lense will be older, relatively, than coincident light passing through a lesser field. Is it then possible to go forwards (only forward) in time by traveling through a dense cosmic cluster? Will a black hole send you forever into the future?

One thing that I like to ponder is the gravity dialation of a black hole on captured light. The light doesn't get pulled in and sucked away by gravity... It is stopped dead in it's tracks by the extreme dialation - it never gets to us or anywhere else. I sure would like to go and grab some light... I'll bet it's fuzzy


/ I pulled these pictures off HERE... A very interesting read along with Steven Hawking's "Brief History of Time" and "Universe in a Nutshell"
//Warning: the two latter books require 1000mg asprin per day

[Dubstar112]

That is mind boggling.

[Altimas]

I just pooped my pants for no apparent reason...

[Pneumagger]

I once made a pneuframe so massive I could see and shoot enemys behind their bunkers.
It all boiled down to gravitaional focal lengths and the right size dremmel cut-off wheel.


/but SP told me they patented time control at some point in the distant future and due the nature of the patent's protected medium that it was dialationally condescending. So they basically told me thier future patents are now enforceable prior to thier conception and recognition.
Needless to say, I was given the Cease and Desist so I won't be making them for you guys.

[Lenny]

Have you ever wondered this?

Say a star is 2 million light years away. You can see it from your back yard. Ever wonder if the star is really there? Or is it just the light energy finishing it's travel and once all 2 million light years of that energy is past us, we will finally see the end of that star?

Science makes me confizzled.

[rkjunior303]

Have you ever wondered this?

Say a star is 2 million light years away. You can see it from your back yard. Ever wonder if the star is really there? Or is it just the light energy finishing it's travel and once all 2 million light years of that energy is past us, we will finally see the end of that star?

Science makes me confizzled.

thinking about the universe just blows my mind away.