Racer's Lounge - astronomers release image of one billion stars

This picture is amazing. You can keep zooming in and there is just more and more stars. It was created putting together a bunch of sky survey images from two telescopes and shows more than one billion stars in our galaxy.

http://djer.roe.ac.uk/vsa/vvv/iipmooviewer-2.0-beta/vvvgps5.html
http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/news/milky-way-image-reveals-detail-billion-stars-27-03-12

It saddens me to know that there's so much of the universe out there and in my lifetime I'll only be able to limitedly experience it from the confines of this planet.

Thanks for posting though, that's awe-inspiring stuff...

Makes ya wonder what else is out there. Of all the billions of stars and planets, we cant be the only life

Great stuff.

Makes ya wonder what else is out there. Of all the billions of stars and planets, we cant be the only life



That is awesome.

It's extremely ignorant and arrogant to believe that we are the only life out there.

The funny thing is, that is just a picture of part our galaxy alone! A billion stars that have planets revolving around them. LOL Don't even try to imagine the billions of other galaxies that have trillions of stars and even more planets.

I love this kind of stuff, it's so amazing what could possibly be out there and we will never know in our lifetime.

It saddens me to know that there's so much of the universe out there and in my lifetime I'll only be able to limitedly experience it from the confines of this planet.

^^^ this ^^^ :(

i just don't understand space. is there no end? you would think there would HAVE to be an end somewhere, like just a wall or something lol. I can't fathom an infinite never-ending space, just doesn't make sense.

I can't fathom a lot of that cosmic stuff. I try not to think about it because on most of those thoughts, I'll never get answers to in my lifetime. Like black energy, effects on time, life of the universe, extraterrestrial beings, etc. Just too much to ponder on.

Im trying to figure out why those very "bright" stars have a black dot in the middle of them. Too bright to capture the image of it? Super Novas?!

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y122/-knox-/Holyshit.jpg

Im trying to figure out why those very "bright" stars have a black dot in the middle of them. Too bright to capture the image of it? Super Novas?!

Most likely a filter over the brightest part of them so that the fainter stars can be exposed and the light from the bright ones doesn't wash them out.

I'm ready to be abducted just to experience some of that cool shit of other lifeform

i just don't understand space. is there no end? you would think there would HAVE to be an end somewhere, like just a wall or something lol. I can't fathom an infinite never-ending space, just doesn't make sense.

I've wondered that a lot, its hard to imagine it NEVER ending :confused:, but if it did, how would it end? What would be there?
I love The Universe series on Science HD it's one of my favorite shows.

From Wikipedia:
The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy 100,000–120,000 light-years in diameter containing 200–400 billion stars. The Galaxy is estimated to contain at least as many planets, 10 billion of which could be located in the habitable zone of their parent star

Light Year = about 5,878,625,373,183.6 miles (about 6 trillion miles)


And all of that is just in OUR galaxy, hard to comprehend even how big our galaxy is let alone the rest of the universe

:eek: :eek: :eek:

damnit. this is pissing me off now, not knowing the answers to this stuff!

fuck it, i'm going up there myself. i'll build a ship this weekend.

It saddens me to know that there's so much of the universe out there and in my lifetime I'll only be able to limitedly experience it from the confines of this planet.

Thanks for posting though, that's awe-inspiring stuff...

Dont be sad! Most of its just burning gasses anyways, way to hot for your enjoyment! :nod:
lolol, but in seriousness it really is mind blowing just to think about all of it!

What are those black squares, are they like, space squares.

space is mind boggling.

How do you even think about something that never ends, ever, never ever, ever? it contains anything and everything that has ever been, ever.... crazy stuff.

If space never ended then that would mean anything is posable, there could be another earth out there exactly like the earth we live on, same countries same people, same problems. Or their could be a planet that's inhabited with xenomorphs and predators. Or giant talking elephants.
Isn't space just expanding, things are getting further apart, but what is space expanding INTO is the real question. will it stretch to its limit then bounce back, slowly smashing everything together thus causing another big bang giving birth to a new universe, constantly expanding and contracting for eternity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot
This pic says it all

*marker* at awesomeness that can't be enjoyed from cell

Did I break it?

http://i43.tinypic.com/eu0bol.jpg

Did I break it?

http://i43.tinypic.com/eu0bol.jpg

Wormhole

damnit. this is pissing me off now, not knowing the answers to this stuff!

fuck it, i'm going up there myself. i'll build a ship this weekend.

I'm in.
And I know where my towel is.

Awesome find. I love these kinds of things. It definitely sucks to know we won't ever know a fraction of the truth of space.

damnit. this is pissing me off now, not knowing the answers to this stuff!

fuck it, i'm going up there myself. i'll build a ship this weekend.

LS1 swap?

Isn't there some fact that by the time we took and received those images, that the time it takes for the light from the those stars to reach us, they are already gone? Now that is hard to imagine.

Isn't there some fact that by the time we took and received those images, that the time it takes for the light from the those stars to reach us, they are already gone? Now that is hard to imagine.

Well considering that our galaxy is around 100,000 light years wide, we are seeing most of the stars as they appeared 10s of thousands of years ago. Most of them are not now gone, the vast majority are still there, considering that a stars lifetime is typically billions of years.

This stuff always mind fucks me and leaves me feeling like a $2 hooker. I now have a headache cause my brain is trying to process too much.

It's extremely ignorant and arrogant to believe that we are the only life out there.

How so is that arrogant???

The odds of just one of our bodies proteins having evolved randomly are about 50,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1

Now that is just one small tiny sector in what we call life. There are MANY MANY more things that would not support your statement. Look into it.

How so is that arrogant???

The odds of just one of our bodies proteins having evolved randomly are about 50,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1

Now that is just one small tiny sector in what we call life. There are MANY MANY more things that would not support your statement. Look into it.

If the universe is limitless then anything and everything is posable.

awesome links by the way

How so is that arrogant???

The odds of just one of our bodies proteins having evolved randomly are about 50,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1

Now that is just one small tiny sector in what we call life. There are MANY MANY more things that would not support your statement. Look into it.

That's the probability of a protein folding completely randomly. However, when part of the protein folds and finds itself in a stable conformation of lower potential energy it will stay in that position. This VASTLY increases the probability of a protein forming properly.

Getting 500rwhp out of an LS1 was a mystery just 14 years ago, and now look where we are :D

Isn't space just expanding, things are getting further apart, but what is space expanding INTO is the real question. will it stretch to its limit then bounce back, slowly smashing everything together thus causing another big bang giving birth to a new universe, constantly expanding and contracting for eternity.

That's what always got me. I get that the universe is ever expanding and all the mass moves out proportionally, but what is it expanding into?! Even in my old high school science classes, one of my teachers explained the expansion as thinking of a baking raisin bread. I get how that explains how the stars and galaxies expand and move with the universe, but what is the oven?! What is the even the pan or the air inside the oven?!

And to think... A lot of those stars you are viewing may not even exist anymore or there may be new ones in their place...

Here's an old but really cool gif.

http://a.asset.soup.io/asset/0888/1450_2c86.gif

Life did not start on earth, it just happen to land here and become more than a single cell organism. They speculate that life started in one place in space and then was spread out. Well that's just one of many thoughts. But scientist do know that water, and life were brought here by meteorites billions of years ago.

What is even more fascinating is the fact that our (humans) DNA has been altered, and not one scientist on earth can explain how or who or even why this was done. Make you think that with all the evidence o the earth from our own history that we have been helped and visited by other life forms.

Life did not start on earth, it just happen to land here and become more than a single cell organism. They speculate that life started in one place in space and then was spread out. Well that's just one of many thoughts. But scientist do know that water, and life were brought here by meteorites billions of years ago.

What is even more fascinating is the fact that our (humans) DNA has been altered, and not one scientist on earth can explain how or who or even why this was done. Make you think that with all the evidence o the earth from our own history that we have been helped and visited by other life forms.

Our DNA was altered in what way? It was altered by evolution, of course, but I haven't heard any other plausible theories. The theory that humans were planted here by aliens was pretty much disproved by genetic research, which showed how much DNA all life forms on Earth share. And the theory that life came from another part of the universe doesn't make any more sense than the theory that life on Earth spontaneously came about at some point. It still would have had to spontaneously come into existence at some point. Yes, maybe by a Creator-a God-brought about life, but that theory doesn't help much either because you can't explain the existence of a Creator.

If there is other life out there-I'm sure there is somewhere-I wonder if they also use DNA? Even though they may have developed in completely different environments, thousands of light years away, I would think they would have to. Every life form on earth uses DNA to store their genetic code, so I would guess DNA must be a universal method for storing genetic code. The only exception is RNA which some viruses use, but RNA is kind of similar to DNA right?

To be clear though, you are right that life may have started somewhere else and asteroids planted the most basic form of life. It doesn't explain how life spontaneously started, but it very well may have come in on asteroids. There's also a theory that all of the water on Earth's surface was brought here by asteroids (that's a lot of asteroids!). That's disagreed upon though, scientists don't know how all this water got here.