

The Known Universe Scientifically Rendered For All to See - ccarpenterg
http://www.amnh.org/news/2009/12/the-known-universe/

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thwarted
Celestia (<http://www.shatters.net/celestia/> ) is an interactive version of
the known universe, similar to the video.

One thing I like about it is that it can show you how fast you're traveling,
which really helps give a sense of scale.

It's the Total Perspective Vortex, for sure.

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Deestan
Thanks for the link. I've just watched a sunrise from the surface of Mercury.
:)

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rbanffy
Try Saturn, through the rings.

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scorxn
Though the model may be accurate, the fly-through speed is impossible to
comprehend, and compromises any feeling of scale or distance. You still have
to read the captions and think. Anyone know of an animation that's a little
more appreciable in that regard? I imagine it's terribly boring.

Edit: (8.8e26 meters) / (mach .8) = 1.02435103e17 years to traverse the known
universe in a 767. Well that doesn't help.

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andrewcooke
yes, i was thinking about the same thing. as far as i can tell, the velocity
is increasing exponentially throughout the video.

an alternative would be to use a constant velocity and, once that gets boring,
go back to the start and use a velocity ten times faster. that way, you'll
know when the velocity increases and you'll also see what was shown earlier
flash by, giving a sense of scale.

unfortunately, i don't know of a film that does that.

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RiderOfGiraffes
An inaccuracy at 4:57 to 5:00 where it shows the Moon's orbit to be
circular(ish) around the Earth. If you show the Moon's orbit without the Earth
it isn't a set of spirals, it's almost indistinguishable from a circle(ish)
around the Sun. The size of the orbit around the Earth is so small compared
with the distance to the Sun that the Moon's orbit looks like a circle with a
slight wobble.

It's even convex.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon#Path_of_Earth...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon#Path_of_Earth_and_Moon_around_Sun)

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kaib
Moon's orbit is usually depicted around the Earth. Even if the choice is
arbitrary it's also customary to claim that an object orbits the closest large
mass, or more precisely the object and the large mass orbit the center of mass
of the combined system. It is also customary to depict several orbital systems
in a single image using multiple frames of reference, the context can usually
be deduced even bay laymen.

More generally, your comment is inconsistently heliocentric. Why not pick the
center of the Milky Way as the reference for orbit instead.

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RiderOfGiraffes
I'm not sure if you've simply missed my point, think my point is wrong, or
actually disagree. Let me address your points.

Of course the Moon's orbit is usually shown as being around the Earth (and
more generally, the Earth around the Sun, and other moons around their nearest
large mass, _etc._ )

What I'm saying is that they have shown what might be interpreted as the paths
of the planets as those beautifully rendered trails. People will interpret
them as trails, and when they do so, the "trail" of the Moon is thoroughly
misleading.

And I'm not being arbitrary, I'm interpreting those lines as trails, and hence
your comment about using other points of reference is irrelevant. The Sun in
this rendering is not shown as having such a trail, and hence the image shown
is heliocentric.

And when using this sort of image for laymen, they may correctly take from it
that the Moon orbits the Earth, but in my direct personal experience, they
then believe that the Moon makes a loopy orbit when seen from a heliocentric
point of view.

Which is wrong. Hence my comment.

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russell
The original is still the best: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2cmlhfdxuY>
It's the Powers of 10 documentary made by Ray and Charles Eames.

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memetichazard
In the video, it's shown that there's a cone of galaxies and quasars that we
have seen and mapped. What prevents us from mapping the dark areas? Is the the
light from the other stars in the Milky Way?

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russell
Layman to layman: it's light that hasn't reached us yet. Light that left alpha
centuri last week wont get into the cone of visibility for another 4 years.
During the period of inflation after the big bang some parts of the universe
got so far away so quickly the we will never see those parts.

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ramchip
I think you're confusing the boundary of the visible universe (the limit after
which light cannot have reached us yet) and the unmapped volume the poster is
talking about, which is inside this boundary. Alpha Centauri was emitting
light just fine 4 years ago so of course it can be mapped.

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hugh_
It's quite pretty, but to me still doesn't quite manage to convey the real
scale of the universe. We zoom so rapidly from the solar system scale to the
galaxy scale that we forget we've just gone up in scale by a factor of 10^9 or
so. Then we do the same trick again in going from galaxy to universe scale.

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rbanffy
I don't know.

What really hit home for me was the sphere of radio signals. To imagine that,
from all that space we can see, that tiny little bubble is the frontier of
where man is detectable.

For the rest of the universe, we are only a tiny speck of rock orbiting a very
average and unremarkable star.

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hugh_
If it's any consolation, for anyone more than 4.5 billion light years out the
rock and the star don't exist yet either.

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rbanffy
Good point ;-)

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Maciek416
Direct link to the video on YouTube:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U&hd=1](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U&hd=1)

