Forums > Social Discussion > Hubble, Herschel & Planck

Posted: 11th May 2009
Happy Christmas, Seye. It does sound delish, composite images are lush.

Posted: 12th May 2009
Seye: Agreed, it is awesome....

'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Posted: 12th May 2009
did you see this


Non-Https Image Link


https://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/04/14/space.hand/index.html

"the geeks have got you" - Gayle

Posted: 12th May 2009
Originally Posted By: simtadid you see this


Non-Https Image Link


https://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/04/14/space.hand/index.html


thats all the proof I ever needed of God

Posted: 12th May 2009
Seve 3-400,000 years after the big bang is quite an ambiguouis statement, remind me how long ago the big bang was again?

Do you mean we can see the state of the universe 3-400,000 years ago?

Posted: 13th May 2009
R0cketSh1p:
No. 400,000 years after the big bang. I think current estimates put that at about 4 billion years ago.

And basically what happens is that because light moves at a finite speed in a vacumn, if something is sufficiently far away, the light takes a certain amount of time to get here. The analogy is with sound: you see someone chopping wood and hear the "thunk" after they have finished.

With light, you just need things to be (a lot) further away.

The Sun (Sol) is 8 light-minutes away. That is a measure of distance equal to about 150 million kilometers, and is enough that the light given off at the instant that you read this only arrives in 8 minutes time. The next nearest star (Alpha Centauri) is 4.6 light-years or so away (might be 4.2, can not remember off-hand). That means if it blew up now, the first we would know about it is in 4.6 years time (or 4.2 if I was right with my second guess), when the light has finally gotten here.

Extrapolate that to an object far enough away and you can, in effect, see billions of years into the past.

Make sense?

'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Posted: 13th May 2009
Originally Posted By: astonR0cketSh1p:
No. 400,000 years after the big bang. I think current estimates put that at about 4 billion years ago.


I thought it was even further than that, that's more like the age of the Earth, I believe universe has been narrowed down to 13-14 Billion years old. Down from the 20 billion previously thought. I was reading about the hubble project yesterday, about the delay of doing this and how the newer technology hopefully being installed will give even better images. Looks like a hard job, with some work being done on things not designed for repair in space.

A couple of balls short of a full cascade... or maybe a few cards short of a deck... we'll see how this all fans out.

Posted: 13th May 2009
yea that makes sense, I thought the unvierse would be ALOT older than 13-14 billions year though. That really doesnt make it very old at all by comparision, I thought 100's of trillions would've been a better estimation. But I'm not the scientist here ^^

Posted: 14th May 2009
Sorry. It is about 14 billion. I am used to thinking of the limit as four and bit due to being a geologist. My apologies.

But the rest looks about right.

R0cketSh1p: Not very old? Look here. Have not checked the numbers, but have seen many similar things.
One of my geology lecturers had a similar analogy for time since Earth's creation as a movie being played backwards at a year per frame, 24 frames per second. I think your would be sitting for about 16 days, but can not remember and do not feel like doing the maths right now. Will get back to you, unless you feel like doing it.
Anyway, using that analogy, to go back 3500 years (to where human history in many places gets rather sketchy) will take you 146 seconds or just under 2.5 minutes.
Christ is at around 83 seconds.

For all that geologists trot out a million years as being short (and it is, relative) it is anything but. Once your mind starts wrapping around how much can change in a million years, you really get a sense of it.

Try counting to a thousand at a constant rate. It would take you a thousand times longer to count to a million. And a thousand times longer than that to count to a billion. Think about it.

Deep time is called that for a very good reason....

Hopefully that all makes sense and I have not made too many errors....

'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Posted: 14th May 2009
The old theory for universal age was about 20 billion but has been re-worked using more up to date methods. looking back through 13 Billion years it quite impressive

Humans have been around about 40,000 years so humans have only existed for 1/350,000 of the age of the universe. nothing compared to Dinosairs 160 million year reign (although to be fair that IS more than 1 species) if we died out tomorrow we wouldn't even be a footnote in universal history everything we created would be gone in 10,000 years save a few bits of space junk like voyager speeding away.

Stars take approx 4-14 Million years to form (rough estimates taken on basis for dust clouds to collapse under gravity) which will be the kind of thing we will be hopefully able to view in beautiful shots like above. trust me 13 billion years is quite a long time even astronomically.


Edit -
For parity I had better mention, According to creationist theory, the Earth is in fact only about 6000 years old which is incredibly younger than stonehenge, about the age of the Pyramid of Khufu

EDITED_BY: Mynci (1242310669)
EDIT_REASON: parity lol

A couple of balls short of a full cascade... or maybe a few cards short of a deck... we'll see how this all fans out.

Posted: 14th May 2009
Maybe God built them retrospectively to boost tourism?

Burner of Toast
Spinner of poi
Slacker of enormous magnitude

Posted: 15th May 2009
Durbs - Or maybe as Bill Hicks said he is some kind of prankster

I'm really busy until next week but I will drop drop back into this topic as soon as I can to make a propper reply.

Just for the sake of interest I think the general concensus is that universe is currently about 13.7 billion (13,700,000,000) years old.

And, while I'm here... Happy birthday Dubs & Aston

Posted: 17th May 2009
Sounds like the idea behind Terry Pratchett's Strata....

Thanks Seye.

'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland