The most amazing photo ever taken

submitted by acidSpine
1 decade 4 years 8 months 2 weeks ago
Story of the Hubble ultra deep field... in 3D. Pretty humbling

48 Comments

EndAllsays...

Wow. I've seen the image before, but that was amazing to see in 3D. I'm not as humbled anymore, though. I think if I dwelled too long on the minuteness and relative insignificance of the human race and our little planet, I'd go grazy.

cybrbeastsays...

>> ^conan:
Two WTFs:
1) 47billion LYs?
2) faster than the speed of light?

Yes these are correct. Many people think the universe can only be 13.7 billion lightyears in any direction because the universe it only 13.7 billion years old. However during this time, space itself has been expanding increasing the distance of the observable universe further up to 47 billion light years.
The galaxies themselves are not actually traveling faster than light speed. However galaxies can move away from each other at faster than light speed because the space that the expansion of the universe creates between them grows faster than light speed.

Psychologicsays...

>> ^Raigen:
http://www.cslacker.com/images/file/mediums/insignificance.jpg
The next person that tells me our planet is the only one with life, or even intelligent life, in the whole goddamned Universe is going to get a telescope to the face.


Certainty on the issue is amusing. =)

It is difficult to imagine a lack of some form of life elsewhere in the universe, but intelligent life is tricky. We don't have a good understanding of the probabilities involved in the development of lifeforms with the capability of creating, for instance, long range electromagnetic communication.

It's quite possible that we are the only, or at least the first, highly intelligent life in the Milky Way. There's no scientific reason to conclude that we are the only intelligent life in the universe, but we may be the only ones within any practical distance.

Psychologicsays...

>> ^EndAll:
Wow. I've seen the image before, but that was amazing to see in 3D. I'm not as humbled anymore, though. I think if I dwelled too long on the minuteness and relative insignificance of the human race and our little planet, I'd go grazy.


If it makes you feel any better we currently expect that the universe has a limited shelf life, so eventually nothing that happened before the end will matter anyway. =D

StukaFoxsays...

Amazingly, NASA took the famous deep field photo and passed it through a signal analyzer consisting of 200,000 quad-core CPU's in a Beowulf cluster running a stripped down version of Redhat's RHEL. For roughly 10^29 iterations, these processors ran an optimized fast Fourier transform on the collected data until a pure signal was collected. That signal, a complex series of interlocking sign waves, was then passed through the cluster again, the researchers were totally shocked by the result. A single, simple message, broadcast by the universe its self, to the human race:

"Sarah Palin's a cunt."

Science is truly, truly amazing.

dannym3141says...

>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^Raigen:
http://www.cslacker.com/images/file/mediums/insignificance.jpg
The next person that tells me our planet is the only one with life, or even intelligent life, in the whole goddamned Universe is going to get a telescope to the face.

Certainty on the issue is amusing. =)
It is difficult to imagine a lack of some form of life elsewhere in the universe, but intelligent life is tricky. We don't have a good understanding of the probabilities involved in the development of lifeforms with the capability of creating, for instance, long range electromagnetic communication.
It's quite possible that we are the only, or at least the first, highly intelligent life in the Milky Way. There's no scientific reason to conclude that we are the only intelligent life in the universe, but we may be the only ones within any practical distance.


Yeah. And remember the time factor. In those billions of years that have passed since the universe began, what are the chances of us being alive at the DURING THE SAME SPAN OF TIME as another intelligent species? Let alone aliens being out there and within reach. Take a look at the average life span of the species on earth - it isn't very long at all. You need an appropriate star, an appropriate planet, the planet to be during the prime period for life to develop, the necessary environmental and evolutionary developments to have taken place to allow an intelligent creature to prosper..

Not only have you got to win 1000 lotteries, but you have to win them all on specific days.

Reminds me of the weak anthropic principle - the question of "why are we so lucky that we find ourselves born into life in the most hospitable perfect area of space and time which allows us to live" is answered by "because if we weren't in this perfect area of space/time, we wouldn't be here to ponder such a thing".

GDGDsays...

We do not have to win 1000 lotteries and on specific days. The universe does. And with each planet being a ticket, the metaphorical(?) probability you're proposing seems easily obtainable, if not a given.



>> ^dannym3141:
>> ^Psychologic:
>> ^Raigen:
http://www.cslacker.com/images/file/mediums/insignificance.jpg
The next person that tells me our planet is the only one with life, or even intelligent life, in the whole goddamned Universe is going to get a telescope to the face.

Certainty on the issue is amusing. =)
It is difficult to imagine a lack of some form of life elsewhere in the universe, but intelligent life is tricky. We don't have a good understanding of the probabilities involved in the development of lifeforms with the capability of creating, for instance, long range electromagnetic communication.
It's quite possible that we are the only, or at least the first, highly intelligent life in the Milky Way. There's no scientific reason to conclude that we are the only intelligent life in the universe, but we may be the only ones within any practical distance.

Yeah. And remember the time factor. In those billions of years that have passed since the universe began, what are the chances of us being alive at the DURING THE SAME SPAN OF TIME as another intelligent species? Let alone aliens being out there and within reach. Take a look at the average life span of the species on earth - it isn't very long at all. You need an appropriate star, an appropriate planet, the planet to be during the prime period for life to develop, the necessary environmental and evolutionary developments to have taken place to allow an intelligent creature to prosper..
Not only have you got to win 1000 lotteries, but you have to win them all on specific days.
Reminds me of the weak anthropic principle - the question of "why are we so lucky that we find ourselves born into life in the most hospitable perfect area of space and time which allows us to live" is answered by "because if we weren't in this perfect area of space/time, we wouldn't be here to ponder such a thing".

dannym3141says...

>> ^GDGD:
We do not have to win 1000 lotteries and on specific days. The universe does. And with each planet being a ticket, the metaphorical(?) probability you're proposing seems easily obtainable, if not a given.

In your haste to shoot someone down on the internet, you have expertly and entirely missed the metaphor of "crazy odds" which i was trying to portray.

Twice in fact. Every planet can't be a ticket if we're talking about planets being out of our sphere of potential influence. Only the planets inside our potential sphere of influence would be a ticket. Which, compared to the amount of planets - which, for all we know, is infinite, as we cannot see the whole of it - is an infinitely smaller number

Thanks for attempting to start an argument out of nothing. And thanks me for biting.

/facepalm for the 2nd time in 2 days

Ryjkyjsays...

Helloooooo!!!! This photo is almost ten years old. It's amazing but let's move on to the next telescope and naysayer's be damned. This is the reason we are all alive. It's the most significant event any of us have ever seen. Let's not just sit here and pretend that it's quaint but that thing's like this are the most important advances of science in our lives. This is what we can see and know. This is what we have to offer as far as the answer to the question... Why? Why am I so drunk right now?

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