A new window on the Universe

[Wolfie]

On 11/07/2022 at 11:10, TigerTedd said:

Embargoed. Does that mean they’ve found aliens photo bombing the images?

 

[TigerTedd]

21 minutes ago, Wolfie said:

 

It’s okay. It’s in a galaxy far, far away. 

Imagine if it was though. Imagine if we could watch some great intergalactic war playing out across the other side of the universe, 13 billion years ago, knowing we can’t possibly get involved cos it’s so far away.

Like America in world war 2. 

[Carl Sagan]

43 minutes ago, TigerTedd said:

That’s the problem. Imagine if we did see signs of life. We’d be looking at a 13.5 billion year old civilisation that is almost certainly extinct now.

I can’t believe all those galaxies are in a space of sky the size of a grain of sand held at arms length. That is just ridiculous.

there’s lots about the universe that can make you feel tiny, but that makes you feel infinitesimal. The whole of human existence means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. 

or even worse, imagine if we are in fact the only place in the whole universe where the exact circumstances came together to create life. Then human existence is ridiculously important. And what are we doing with such a cosmic gift and responsibility?

there’s a religious based theory that god created us because what’s the point of creating the universe if there’s no one to observe it. Imagine if we made ourselves extinct with global warming and wars and things. What an extraordinary waste that would be!!

Deep stuff. And which I think about much of the time. Humanity is on the cusp of becoming multiplanetary and spreading life/intelligence/art/culture/science out into the Universe. Once we start it makes it harder to stop because even if one planet destroys itself (eg engineered biological pathogens) or is the victim of some cosmic event (eg massive asteroid impact) the others can continue, spreading ever further out. It would only take a million years to colonize our entire Galaxy.

That's why the present time is so pivotal and "ridiculously important" as you suggest. I edited a book by moral philosopher Toby Ord called The Precipice https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Precipice-seems-present-moment-Yorker/dp/1526600234/ a couple of years ago making this argument, and much of my publishing is focused on this.

[maxjam]

 

[Highgate]

2 hours ago, TigerTedd said:

That’s the problem. Imagine if we did see signs of life. We’d be looking at a 13.5 billion year old civilisation that is almost certainly extinct now.

I can’t believe all those galaxies are in a space of sky the size of a grain of sand held at arms length. That is just ridiculous.

there’s lots about the universe that can make you feel tiny, but that makes you feel infinitesimal. The whole of human existence means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. 

or even worse, imagine if we are in fact the only place in the whole universe where the exact circumstances came together to create life. Then human existence is ridiculously important. And what are we doing with such a cosmic gift and responsibility?

there’s a religious based theory that god created us because what’s the point of creating the universe if there’s no one to observe it. Imagine if we made ourselves extinct with global warming and wars and things. What an extraordinary waste that would be!!

When the JWST looks at exoplanets in the Milky Way the images we see will be much more recent than that.  The spectrograph from WASP-96 b for example is showing us its atmospheric composition from just over a thousand years ago..   If we looked at the closest exoplanet to Earth, Proxima Centauri b, we would be seeing it as it was just over 4 years ago. There won't be any civilization there but there are many others not too far away.

So if the JWST does find any evidence of life or even alien civilization on a planet in our galaxy, depending on the distance and therefore timeline of the images, there is every chance that the life may still exist.

[Ram-Alf]

I'm fascinated by what's out there, Trillions upon trillions of stars, Planets, Galaxy's, Universes, Now we can see the light from 13.4 billion years ago, I hope it takes British Gas that long to send me my Light Bill.   

[Mostyn6]

anyone else underwhelmed by the serving of just 5 pictures?

[BaaLocks]

16 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

Most of my joy of science comes from physics and maths, but the periodic table is a work of extraordinary genius, with incredible predictive and explanatory power. Good on her!

There's a great book on this called Mendeleev's Dream (which has probably been banned coz he was Russian). He was playing patience, fell asleep and came up with the whole idea - even predicting elements that hadn't been discovered yet. Just amazing! Some great stories in that book btw - the bloke who first isolated phosphorus did it by distilling down gallons and gallons of his own urine into a black paste.

To the telescope, absoutely awe inspiring documentary on the Hubble telescope (named after Edwin Hubble, not made out of apple flavoured bubble gum - one for the teenagers) on BBC4 the other night. Loved the bit where they were up in space trying to fit a multi-million replacement camera to it and the bloke stripped the screw on the handle - eight hours later, after talking about it with ground control the solution was "just rip it off".

The images are almost spiritual in splendour. That Carina Nebula image for example, 8,000 light years away and 1,352,000,000,000,000,000 miles across. You could put 170 billion billion (very Carl Sagan!!) Earths end to end and only just cross it. Mad!

[BaaLocks]

5 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

Deep stuff. And which I think about much of the time. Humanity is on the cusp of becoming multiplanetary and spreading life/intelligence/art/culture/science out into the Universe. Once we start it makes it harder to stop because even if one planet destroys itself (eg engineered biological pathogens) or is the victim of some cosmic event (eg massive asteroid impact) the others can continue, spreading ever further out. It would only take a million years to colonize our entire Galaxy.

That's why the present time is so pivotal and "ridiculously important" as you suggest. I edited a book by moral philosopher Toby Ord called The Precipice https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Precipice-seems-present-moment-Yorker/dp/1526600234/ a couple of years ago making this argument, and much of my publishing is focused on this.

I'm more in the camp of Youval Harari (Sapiens, Homo Deus) that, if we survive, we will upload ourselves to the metaverse way before we develop the capability to galaxy hop. Unless we discover something like wormhole transition we will always be limited to the laws of physics. However, in the metaverse we can be anything, life on Earth will become an irrelevance.

Edited July 13, 2022 by BaaLocks

[TigerTedd]

1 hour ago, BaaLocks said:

I'm more in the camp of Youval Harari (Sapiens, Homo Deus) that, if we survive, we will upload ourselves to the metaverse way before we develop the capability to galaxy hop. Unless we discover something like wormhole transition we will always be limited to the laws of physics. However, in the metaverse we can be anything, life on Earth will become an irrelevance.

This technology combined with wormholes would be quite cool though. Imagine being able to see something millions of light years away and going, ‘that looks interesting, let’s take a look’, and then worm holing over there. 

I always thought the idea of wormholijg was quite a daunting prospect, because if you can literally go anywhere, where would you start?! But with this they can start cataloguing the most interesting looking places to start from. 

[uttoxram75]

A grain of sand on your fingertip at arms length is the view from the away seats at Newcastle.

[uttoxram75]

5 hours ago, TigerTedd said:

This technology combined with wormholes would be quite cool though. Imagine being able to see something millions of light years away and going, ‘that looks interesting, let’s take a look’, and then worm holing over there. 

I always thought the idea of wormholijg was quite a daunting prospect, because if you can literally go anywhere, where would you start?! But with this they can start cataloguing the most interesting looking places to start from. 

Wormholing used to mean something else to pathetically childish males.......

[uttoxram75]

On 12/07/2022 at 23:19, Carl Sagan said:

The other thing is it appears impossible for the telescope to see any blank area of sky. Everywhere it points is full of background galaxies.

Its mind-blowing stuff. Makes you think that the worlds ancient civilisations who studied the skies knew more than we do now.

 

[Carl Sagan]

19 minutes ago, uttoxram75 said:

Its mind-blowing stuff. Makes you think that the worlds ancient civilisations who studied the skies knew more than we do now.

You can certainly make the case that scientific progress has been driven by observing the cosmos since the earliest times. Back to prehistory.

[Boycie]

9 hours ago, Mostyn6 said:

anyone else underwhelmed by the serving of just 5 pictures?

I was underwhelmed at one.

[I am Ram]

17 hours ago, Mostyn6 said:

anyone else underwhelmed by the serving of just 5 pictures?

Yeah me, it looked like sh#t nineties wallpaper to me.

[Boycie]

Is the universe flat?

[i-Ram]

17 minutes ago, Boycie said:

Is the universe flat?

Yep, and it has a vacancy for a decent electrician too.

[LERam]

On 12/07/2022 at 23:01, Boycie said:

Anybody else underwhelmed?

Yes and no...

I suppose we see mock up pictures etc but it's really hard for me to grasp that this is an actual photo of the universe, and I struggle to really understand the magnitude and size of what's inside.

When I start thinking more about what it actually is, then I start to be impressed.

Anyone else struggle like me? Please say yes ?

[Boycie]

So the telescope is pointing one way, what about the other way? What’s over there? Where does it finish?

The more you think about it, the more questions you think of. 
 

Is our universe part of another larger entity?