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An all-sky map of half a million supermassive black holes

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Re: An all-sky map of half a million supermassive black holes

#21

Post by folkrav »

greenleafone7 wrote: post #12
epistasis wrote: post #6

The number of massive maps of the universe in recent years are absoultely fascinating, and have reignited my childhood interest in astronomy and cosmology. These maps consist of a large number of statistical observations derived from images, and that lines up with all the data analysis I've used in the past decades in genomics. (Most DNA sequencing data comes from image analysis, coincidentally!). And the plots I see…

Scary as well though. All those cosmic powers, and here we are, not even ants standing on a hilltop.

Knowing how precious the current state of Earth is at human scale makes me fear the asshats acting like everything revolves around “progress” a lot more than knowing how insignificant we are at cosmic scales.

Re: An all-sky map of half a million supermassive black holes

#22

Post by honeycrispy »

smolder wrote: post #17
Razengan wrote: post #5

Thanks, now I know where not to go

On the bright side, you could live much longer if you went near a black hole. Though, that's according to everyone else's reference frame, not yours. Also, the gravity probably wouldn't feel nice. So, I concur.

They can watch me flipping them all off for an eternity as I descend into the abyss.

Re: An all-sky map of half a million supermassive black holes

#23

Post by monocasa »

gwerbin wrote: post #9
monocasa wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's more a result of our incomplete/inconsistent scanning.

On the other hand, the ancients assumed there had to be big continents in the southern and western hemispheres to "balance" the land in their own quadrant. They turned out to be right, but not quite for the reasons they put forth. As a non-cosmologist, I'm unwilling to speculate on what "should" be out there, because my mental model is probably very wrong (keeping in mind that our best models of what's happening out…

Well, in more formal terms, cosmology has the 'cosmological principle'[0], which is a conjecture that at large enough scales, the universe is universally isotropic and homogenous wrt the distribution of matter. Basically that it should average out to the same density everywhere, and should look basically the same in terms of how much matter there is from wherever you pick.

There'd be a lot of cosmology glory in proving that wrong. They'd put your name before Hubble's.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_principle

Re: An all-sky map of half a million supermassive black holes

#25

Post by engineer_22 »

jibal wrote: post #18
greenleafone7 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scary as well though. All those cosmic powers, and here we are, not even ants standing on a hilltop.

I find this sentiment so bizarre ... scared of what, exactly? There are real threats that people ignore, like rip tides, global warming, RFK Jr., and fascism, but those "cosmic powers" aren't coming to get us.

Love how you throw in RFK Jr. His muscular tone is certainly impressive!

Re: An all-sky map of half a million supermassive black holes

#26

Post by chrisweekly »

xioxox wrote: post #13

We also released the 2nd half sky catalogue of the eROSITA X-ray survey at the same time, for 1.5 years of operations, in collaboration with SDSS. Here is a sky map and 3D plot with redshift: https://www.mpe.mpg.de/8215311/news20260731 This almost doubled the number of known X-ray sources to 2 million.

> "almost doubled the number of known X-ray sources"

That's a fantastic achievement!

Re: An all-sky map of half a million supermassive black holes

#27

Post by jibal »

engineer_22 wrote: post #25
jibal wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this sentiment so bizarre ... scared of what, exactly? There are real threats that people ignore, like rip tides, global warming, RFK Jr., and fascism, but those "cosmic powers" aren't coming to get us.

Love how you throw in RFK Jr. His muscular tone is certainly impressive!

I referred to real threats, and he is one. His muscles aren't relevant.

Re: An all-sky map of half a million supermassive black holes

#28

Post by ahazred8ta »

greenleafone7 wrote: post #12
epistasis wrote: post #6

The number of massive maps of the universe in recent years are absoultely fascinating, and have reignited my childhood interest in astronomy and cosmology. These maps consist of a large number of statistical observations derived from images, and that lines up with all the data analysis I've used in the past decades in genomics. (Most DNA sequencing data comes from image analysis, coincidentally!). And the plots I see…

Scary as well though. All those cosmic powers, and here we are, not even ants standing on a hilltop.

There's a diagram of the size of everything in the universe from quarks to the whole observable universe. https://www.universetoday.com/163927/everything-in-the-unive...

Re: An all-sky map of half a million supermassive black holes

#29

Post by bigattichouse »

Is the distribution because of taking time to look/equipment? or is that actually related to the distribution (clumps in various directions).. I would guess the lines and things are "that's where we've looked" vs. "that's all there is".. I wonder if it's gonna line up with the CBR.

Re: An all-sky map of half a million supermassive black holes

#30

Post by epistasis »

greenleafone7 wrote: post #12
epistasis wrote: post #6

The number of massive maps of the universe in recent years are absoultely fascinating, and have reignited my childhood interest in astronomy and cosmology. These maps consist of a large number of statistical observations derived from images, and that lines up with all the data analysis I've used in the past decades in genomics. (Most DNA sequencing data comes from image analysis, coincidentally!). And the plots I see…

Scary as well though. All those cosmic powers, and here we are, not even ants standing on a hilltop.

I honestly find it extremely comforting. Having something so much bigger than oneself in the world is calming. All my worries, all my loves, everything that goes well, everything that goes poorly, just a tiny blip in the hugeness of it all. To me, it makes the good things better, and the worse things less meaningful. I watch DESI animations every few months for a reminder.
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