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Infinitely cool.

http://primaxstudio.com/stuff/scale_of_universe/

At the end where it says the universe is 93 billion light years across, that's only the observable universe, out to the particle horizon... And in fact, we ARE the center of the observable (the 93bil LY shown in the app) as would anything, anywhere. (Assuming the universe is infinite in size or wraps on itself)

This stuff is always mind blowing.

That is well tripping.

I feel so small..

But that would be so awesome in 3D all around.. I wanna visit a planetron again..

Oh BTW what are the pillars of creation then?

EDIT: Damn, the Pillars look kinda awesome.. Just looked them up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_creation

It kinda scares me, every time I see it. That's the only emotion I experience, apart from being amazed, of course.

Also, one thing I never really understood.. why does seeing this kind of imagery make people feel utterly insignificant and meaningless? Or is that some sort of cliche?

So because at this large of a scale things take time to reach us (speed of light), similar to how sound takes time to reach us from far away and noises we hear actually occurred seconds/minutes ago, does this mean the things we see in super power telescopes are actually of the past? The light took x amount of time to reach us, right?

And after all that zooming out, that's only the stuff we can feasibly see. That's just, wow. Sometimes I find it hard imaging there's anything outside of the 200km radius of my town that I've travelled in. But, but yeah. Shit's big.. real big.

Yes,

And that every time you look into the sky, the age of the light of some of the stars disprove the Bible.

Stephen Hawkins has some really good books on basic principles. I would only get the newest one though, as his books read like rehashes of the same text over and over.

I don't remember the names, but the last two of his that I read were rehashes of the same book but in different orders; he explains that the newer one is more modular while the later is linear.

BBC also has some great docs

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Side note: most of the atheism boards and atheist discussion involves this kind of stuff (in addition to biology). Great source if you're interested in learning more.

Seen this some time ago. pretty interesting.

not just things from telescopes, i think the sun we see is actually 8 minutes old (takes light 8 minutes to reach earth)


Something i don't understand though is, if the universe is XXX in size, what happens when we get to the edge of the universe? Unless its a constant loop and we end up in the other end (like in earth). But then what happens if you travel upwards. Or maybe we are on the inside of a sphere? o.O

this is like that powers of ten thing...just more epic

The thought now is that the edge of space is like the Earth. Although it's not a sphere or round, the edge of space is met with more space.

The speed of expansion would prevent you from ever reaching the edge. Or, it wraps on itself.

Or, something completely unexpected and unpredictable happens. Who knows.

thats some cool stuff

To travel to the edge of the Universe in one's lifetime would mean crossing unfathomable distances.

Even if you travelled at the speed of light, according to the above link, it would take you 46,500,000,000 years (from the centre).

To put that into context, the Universe is 12,000,000,000 to 14,000,000,000 years old. Our solar system is 4,500,000,000 years old.

The only logical way would be to teleport/jump/etc. from one point to another. Expansion wouldn't be much of a problem in that case; you would probably solve both problems at the same time.

Looks like it's time to create a wormhole and shift into hyperdrive.

Here's what I have issues understanding..

we're at the technical center of the viewable universe because light from all directions reached us at the same time right, as the speed of light in constant. So then every time we look again far out in the universe we should be seeing more and more correct? As light further away has had a chance to reach us, so then for all we know the universe extends forever as we can only see what time has permitted us to see?

Does this mean every year we can see one 'light year' further out? This would mean everything we see that is 'new' each time we look out is actually what said image was like when the universe started since it took x years to reach us (referring to my first post)

and assuming that is correct..does that mean that if we looked into space with a super powerful telescope (or whatever instrument they use) for long enough, we would eventually see new things shape into vision as the light has finally reached us?

quote from original post webpage that sparked all this thought:



any insight appreciated..I love this stuff.

Yes, kind of.

While we cannot look at what happened when the Universe started, we have background radiation from the big bang. This appears, partially, as some of the "snow" on your TV when you tune to a non-existant channel.

Supernovas would be a good example of seeing something "new" that is actually really old.

You have to remember that the observable universe is incredibly small (it's the last slide in the link I posted) and most of the data we have is not in visible form, but from non-visible rays. e.g.: microwave and IF.

Actually, what we can see through rays is still labeled as "visible" and that (despite the fact it can reach object 13b years afar, such as quasars) is just the 3% of the universe we know of. And that is an immensely little part of the whole.

That is due to the fact the 97% is dark matter and dark energy whose existance we got to know because of its interaction with other objects. Best example would be a black hole.
You can cleary not see a black hole, whatever instrument you may use, yet we can assume they exist because they create a vast and powerful gravitational camp around them that attract stars or any kind of objects around.

It'd be interesting to know where they end up. Some say there may be some sort of "white hole" at the end of it, but I'm not really inclined to believe in such theories.

Oh, on a side, last note, this thing was already posted, but due to its awesomeness, it clearly needs to be known by as many people as possible.

As I mentioned, most of the data is not in this form. It's not very practical.

For this reason, all the the high-quality/detailed pictures we have of distant objects are interpretations done by artists.

thats what i don't get.
If the edge of the universe keeps expanding, how can you say the universe is XXX size, because its expanding faster than someone could even write the numbers down (at the speed of light?)

First of..we do NOT know the shape of the universe and that's one of a big deal, even though I think that the most widely accepted shape is the one of sphere, or some sort of that kind. (I tend to doubt that, actually)

Secondly..the universe does have its own density and a critic value of it, above which it might, as EvGa stated, wrap on itself (Big Crunch) and below which it just keeps expanding till it meets a..uh..cold death (don't know the English term, sorry ).
Density relies a lot on dark matter, which, as I stated above, is about the 97% of the knwon universe. So we can't really figure out the density, also assuming that the universe is expanding a lot faster than light.

I don't really know the answer to your question, but I wanted to jot down these two factors that, among others, may contribute to the estimate of the size of the universe.

I think (I might be utterly mistaken, however) that even though the universe is expanding really fast, it is not, for it be observable, noticeable in a lifetime.

If I said lots of rubbish, feel free to correct me.

Our universe is a cycle, part of a larger cycle, part of a larger cycle, and so and so forth. In our universe, smaller cycles appear, inside the smaller cycles, even smaller ones, etc.

My understanding is that, in its essence, reality is recursive; our Universe is but one iteration of that recursion, which, in itself - the recursion -, is void of content.

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Doesn't matter. Still awesome.

inb4palebluedot

With no base case.

Couple relevant things I found today

The first topic in this discussion is related to the size of the Universe, and more specifically, its "edge".

I would suggest watching the whole thing, but of course, the starting is of essence for this particular topic:

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This image, of our galaxy, kind of puts things into perspective by complimenting the above: