Behold the Coma Cluster; H-scroll ahead (Hi-speed beware)

[Ender]

Yes, you read that title right. The Hubble has returned a bunch of images of the Coma Cluster
Here is the smaller version

Large image...very large


Yes, that was the smaller version. Here is the whopping 125 megabyte full image.


The Coma cluster is about 300 million lightyears away and has over 1000 galaxies. That's right, those little dots there, the ones you thought were stars? Those are entire freaking galaxies. The grainy bit that looks like poor resolution from the Hubble? Those are the stars.

The term "full" I used above is a bit of a misnomer, this is just a fraction of the cluster. We are in the suburbs of the podunk Virgo cluster, which is 60 million lightyears away, which puts us out in the sticks as far as the universe is concerned.

Here are a few close ups:











I've toured the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Smithsonian Institute, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the cathedrals and castles of London, the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel, and the ruins of Rome and Crete. I've been fortunate to see some of the best works of art mankind has created. And the raw forces of nature; the power of gravity, CMB fluctuations, nova and eruption, this utter chaos has given rise to things that meet or surpass all we have done.

The main archive with bigger, higher resolution images.

Science:

[Zixinus]

First: USE FUCKING THUMBNAILS, PLEASE! Those images are way too fucking big for casual forum viewing.

Second: Why is this significant? Why is this interesting?

[Ender]

First: USE FUCKING THUMBNAILS, PLEASE! Those images are way too fucking big for casual forum viewing.

You have a point, I can see how the title was misleading about the content, you know, what with it saying there would be H-scroll and massive bandwidth draw.

Second: Why is this significant? Why is this interesting?

"What use is a newborn baby?"

[Imperial Overlord]

First: USE FUCKING THUMBNAILS, PLEASE! Those images are way too fucking big for casual forum viewing.

Second: Why is this significant? Why is this interesting?

They're beautiful images and that's enough for AMP.

Thank you Ender.

[Adrian Laguna]

I'm surprised you can see the details of more than one galaxy at a time. You can't do that with stars, if you zoom in enough to one star for it to be more than a bright dot, all the other ones are still bright dots.

[chitoryu12]

Jesus Goddamn Christ on a stick. From now on, I'm using these images every time someone tries to claim that there's no such thing as aliens. Let's see him try to refute that there's no life on every single grain of star.

[General Zod]

I'm surprised you can see the details of more than one galaxy at a time. You can't do that with stars, if you zoom in enough to one star for it to be more than a bright dot, all the other ones are still bright dots.

It helps that galaxies are brighter than individual stars by several orders of magnitude, which makes it easier.

[Melchior]

Jesus Goddamn Christ on a stick. From now on, I'm using these images every time someone tries to claim that there's no such thing as aliens. Let's see him try to refute that there's no life on every single grain of star.

It would be completely fallacious. Besides asking to prove a negative on a grotesque scale, we cannot draw a statistical inference, since we only know a single certain case of inhabited planet.

[Feil]

The bright dots with the + shape are Milky Way stars between us and the target region, yes?

[lazerus]

This is awesome. Thanks Ender.

Most hubble pictures are "Oh...more stars to catalogue. Great." but every once in awhile you get one that really leaves you grasping at the scale of things.

And the raw forces of nature; the power of gravity, CMB fluctuations, nova and eruption, this utter chaos has given rise to things that meet or surpass all we have done.

Seconded.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Woo.. new wallpaper.

Nice ones, Ender.

[The Grim Squeaker]

First: USE FUCKING THUMBNAILS, PLEASE! Those images are way too fucking big for casual forum viewing.

You have a point, I can see how the title was misleading about the content, you know, what with it saying there would be H-scroll and massive bandwidth draw.

God, you crashed my work laptop .
Still, who gives a shit, this is awesome . I think my Saturn desktop image is getting replaced. (Well, I'd replaced it with a dead sea beach shot, but still...)

[cosmicalstorm]

Those pictures reminds me of the HUDF, no matter how many times I look at stuff like this I can never grasp the true scale of it.
They also make for excellent poster material, take the high-res versions on a burned cd down to the local printshop, costs ~$50/poster but its well worth it.

I have larger versions of these pictures printed and placed on the wall of my bedroom:

[starslayer]

The bright dots with the + shape are Milky Way stars between us and the target region, yes?

Yes. The shape comes from the incoming light diffracting around Hubble's secondary mirror vanes.

[Junghalli]

It would be completely fallacious. Besides asking to prove a negative on a grotesque scale, we cannot draw a statistical inference, since we only know a single certain case of inhabited planet.

Strictly speaking you are correct but it is a nice way of driving home the fact that the universe is huge enough that even if intelligent life were ridiculously rare (say, one in every billion stars) we would be far from alone in the entire universe.

[Patrick Degan]

Amazing. On Earth, every time something new was discovered, it made the world seem a little bit smaller. But in the wide universe, every time something new is discovered, the universe seems that much bigger.

[Brimstone]

I'm surprised you can see the details of more than one galaxy at a time. You can't do that with stars, if you zoom in enough to one star for it to be more than a bright dot, all the other ones are still bright dots.

The Milky Way galaxy has a diameter of about 100000 light years, with Andromeda 2500000 light years away. The separation is only 25 times greater than the diameter. The nearest star is about 4 light years away. Assuming the sun is 2 AU in diameter, it has a diameter of 16 light minutes or 0.00003 light years (some red giants do get this large, but most stars are orders of magnitude smaller). The separation is over 100000 times greater than the diameter. This is equivalent to two Milky Way galaxies separated by 10 billion light years.

[Darth Raptor]

It would be completely fallacious. Besides asking to prove a negative on a grotesque scale, we cannot draw a statistical inference, since we only know a single certain case of inhabited planet.

Strictly speaking you are correct but it is a nice way of driving home the fact that the universe is huge enough that even if intelligent life were ridiculously rare (say, one in every billion stars) we would be far from alone in the entire universe.

I'm still not clear on the practical difference between "there's no one out there" and "we'll never find anyone". That there may be other islands in the Endless Gulf of Nothing doesn't change the fact that you're still on an island in the Endless Gulf of Nothing. Yes, maybe Einstein was wrong, but that's not a parsimonious assumption to make.

[PeZook]

Second: Why is this significant? Why is this interesting?

If you have to ask, you don't belong in that thread

[Sarevok]

Don't know why but wide area shots of cosmos like Ender posted leave me depressed. At least there is small hope that nearby star systems could be explored. But all those millions of galaxies full of billions of star will forever remain a secret. Who knows what grandiose sights we will never see. Alien civilizations could rise and prosper and then vanish. Entire galactic scale alien societies could form and we will never learn about them.

Sometimes I wish the universe was smaller even though it is grand and amazing to just look up at the night sky and wonder what's out there.

[cosmicalstorm]

Don't know why but wide area shots of cosmos like Ender posted leave me depressed. At least there is small hope that nearby star systems could be explored. But all those millions of galaxies full of billions of star will forever remain a secret. Who knows what grandiose sights we will never see. Alien civilizations could rise and prosper and then vanish. Entire galactic scale alien societies could form and we will never learn about them.

Sometimes I wish the universe was smaller even though it is grand and amazing to just look up at the night sky and wonder what's out there.

Dont be so sure about that, maybe we are only a few decades away from discovering something like A.C.Clarkes WormCams

[Junghalli]

I'm still not clear on the practical difference between "there's no one out there" and "we'll never find anyone". That there may be other islands in the Endless Gulf of Nothing doesn't change the fact that you're still on an island in the Endless Gulf of Nothing.

I wasn't talking about practical differences, just the possibility of aliens existing. Anyway, assuming we never find any then no, there isn't any practical difference. But there is a difference in that if aliens are out there it is possible that we will meet them eventually if we explore enough, it's just a question of how much we'll have to explore before we find them. Of course, if they're sufficiently few and far between it is entirely possible we may not meet them in the lifetime of our civilization, but then my view on that is that I'd rather see us be like Galileo and do the experiment than be like the Greeks and "answer" the question with nothing but abstract logic.

Yes, maybe Einstein was wrong, but that's not a parsimonious assumption to make.

I assume you're talking about the lightspeed barrier, I don't really see it as a fundamental barrier. It's possible to explore the universe without FTL, it just takes longer.

[General Zod]

I assume you're talking about the lightspeed barrier, I don't really see it as a fundamental barrier. It's possible to explore the universe without FTL, it just takes longer.

Are you kidding? It takes us years just to get a vessel to Mars. Exploring beyond the solar system is effectively out of the question, unless you're talking about multi-generational voyages. Even then the logistics behind things like supplies and inter-stellar anomalies are astronomical. Without some sort of FTL we're confined to an extremely small portion of the universe.

[Starglider]

Without some sort of FTL we're confined to an extremely small portion of the universe.

Only if you want to cart around living humans. I can't imagine why you'd want to do that, given sufficiently advanced technology to even consider interstellar exploration. The most sensible thing to do is send robotic probes with AIs (probably including human uploads if you want that personal touch). For a physical presence at the other end, send self-replicating probes that build a receiving station, then beam your mind over via microwaves and have it put into a freshly cloned body. If for some reason you absolutely must ship meat around, cryogenically freeze the passengers (probably just their heads actually, less mass) and thaw them (and regrow the body) at the other end. Greg Egan portayed all that quite nicely in the novel 'Schild's Ladder'.

Yes we're talking about millenia-plus time scales, but that isn't a problem with sufficiently advanced technology - some combination of anti-aging treatment, uploading and any cognitive engineering necessary to keep humanlike minds stable over those periods will do the trick.

[Junghalli]

Are you kidding? It takes us years just to get a vessel to Mars.

Yes, with the space equivalent of dugout canoes. A laser lightsail could get high fractions of c, and there's nothing in the laws of physics that says we can't build one.

Exploring beyond the solar system is effectively out of the question, unless you're talking about multi-generational voyages. Even then the logistics behind things like supplies and inter-stellar anomalies are astronomical. Without some sort of FTL we're confined to an extremely small portion of the universe.

Well, yes, if you're thinking on a timescale of human individual lifespans. But interstellar exploration would have to take the long view.

Say you send out probes at .1 c. In 100 years you can explore space 10 years around yourself. In 1000 years you can explore a 100 light year sphere. In a million years you can explore the galaxy. Whether a civilization could last a million years or whether it would choose to keep up an exploration program for that long are open questions, but there's nothing in the laws of physics to stop you from doing it. If you use self-replicating probes it need not even be very expensive: just send a couple of probes to your nearest stars and they'll do all the rest by themselves.

Even a civilization that lasts only as long as the Roman Empire in its various incarnations (kingdom, Republic, Empire, Byzantines) could concievably explore a sphere a significant chunk of its immediate galactic environments (a ~2000 ly sphere) using high-speed laser lightsails.

As I said, it's not a fundamental barrier. It's fundamentally a question of will, not whether or not it's possible.