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First images from Euclid are in

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Re: First images from Euclid are in

#171

Post by kortilla »

feoren wrote: post #132
wayoverthecloud wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that too. That it's surely meant to be something. But sometimes I think what does "meaning" even mean? Does universe really have any "meaning", the term that humans invented and that even they are unsure of? Then, I think it's a big randomness, a random accident, a big joke, just happening with nothing to make sense of.

It's not a joke, because jokes have underlying meaning. It is somewhere between a "random accident" and the only way it could have possibly been given the constraints of fundamental physics. I suspect that everything that could possibly be, is , but it's random that you are you and I am me and we find ourselves here in this corner of this galaxy in this part of the universe which might itself be the inside of a giant…

Jokes don’t always have meaning. “I want to play a joke on Bob” can very easily mean “I’m just going to torture Bob a bit for my amusement”. The joke will not have meaning to Bob.

Re: First images from Euclid are in

#172

Post by skibz »

shiroiushi wrote: post #52
bikamonki wrote: post #7

So many solar systems out there, life evolved in many planets for sure. No proof but no doubt.

No, there's only one solar system in the entire universe. There's countless star systems though, but only one of those stars is named Sol. /pedant

We live in what's known as a planetary system. Star systems involve only stars.

Re: First images from Euclid are in

#173

Post by valval »

kranner wrote: post #114
Jun8 wrote: post #90

Watching this is ... hard to find the words to describe it. It's insane! It shows us how mind bogglingly vast the universe is and how we're literally nothing compared to it. Paradoxically, it also makes me feel incredibly potent and capable as a human being in that being this small we can know so much! Your size is to the distance of that distant spiral galaxy (420 Mly - 10e24m) as a neutrino is to you (effective cro…

That we can know anything at all is a miracle in itself. It could have been just fine evolutionarily for us Earth creatures to be no more than Large Action Models with no inner experience, but somehow we ended up as these perceiving, cogitating, apprehending beings.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Re: First images from Euclid are in

#174

Post by seanhunter »

Absolutely astonishing. Thank you to everyone involved in this effort. It's completely mindboggling to think it's only 4 hundred years from Kepler deriving the equations of orbital motion to us being able to do this. Just stunning.

Re: First images from Euclid are in

#175

Post by Tepix »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #141
lefrenchy wrote: post #63

It's just so crazy to me to see a galaxy 420 million light years away. That is so much time for what we're seeing to have changed. I presume life can form within that window given the right conditions, so to some degree it just feels a bit sad that the distance is so great that we can't actually see what may exist in this moment that far away

It might be possible to build a powerful telescope to see life on planets that are closer to us, though: https://www.palladiummag.com/2024/10/18/its-time-to-build-th...

Or go for the gravitational lens provided by our sun (580 AU out).

Re: First images from Euclid are in

#176

Post by Tepix »

ourmandave wrote: post #57

The mosaic contains 260 observations made between 25 March and 8 April 2024. In just two weeks, Euclid covered 132 square degrees of the Southern Sky in pristine detail, more than 500 times the area of the full Moon. This mosaic accounts for 1% of the wide survey that Euclid will capture over six years. During this survey, the telescope observes the shapes, distances and motions of billions of galaxies out to 10 bill…

Well, there's the Vera Rubin Observatory with the LSST which will provide us with an exciting dynamic map of the sky.

Re: First images from Euclid are in

#178

Post by openrisk »

my God! it's full of stars! [1] I can't help but think that living and evolving under a starry sky has had a deep impact on our reptile brains and the process is still ongoing. First it was the simple act of looking up to a mysterious, clean and regular clockwork unfolding in the heavens. The fortuitous match of eye structure, atmospheric transparency to certain wavelengths etc. that created a permanent mental stimulus that was complex yet not beyond grasp. Astronomy and the development of Mathematics were closely intertwined in the dawn of civilization [2]. Then it was the invention of the telescope [3], one of our first sensory-extension devices, that marked the beginning of the modern science and technology era. Culminating into the satellite era (detached "eyes" lifted into low-Earth orbits) and the incredible ESA projects like Euclid (looking out at the furtherst reaches of space) and Copernicus [4] (looking back at us and our predicament). It does feel that the process of learning about the universe and our place within it is still in full swing. It is still a great time to be alive!

Small quibble: Credits for the soundtrack are missing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_2001%3A_A_S...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeoastronomy

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_telescope

[4] https://www.copernicus.eu/en/about-copernicus/infrastructure...

Re: First images from Euclid are in

#179

Post by murrayhenson »

beAbU wrote: post #146
gorgoiler wrote: post #101

A fun thing I like to do every so often is to try to break away from the natural notion that space has a horizon and that instead force myself to feel that it continues equally in all directions. We’re naturally inclined to be ok with giant distances on the horizon. It’s natural to put more emphasis on that part of the world. Hold up your thumb to the horizon and notice how many things fit alongside it compared to yo…

Many years ago I read some sci-fi novel, and in it was a sub-plot of a warring alien species that started destroying anything and everything they came across in their travels. The story went that their local system was in some sort of a dust cloud, so they had no stars visible from their planet. At some point, that cloud somehow dissipated. On the planet, one of the inhabitants bothered to look up one night, and it h…

The end of Chapter 12 from Douglas Adams' Life, the Universe, and Everything.

The darkness of the cloud buffeted at the ship. Inside was the silence of history. Their historic mission was to find out if there was anything or anywhere on the other side of the sky, from which the wrecked spaceship could have come, another world maybe, strange and incomprehensible though this thought was to the enclosed minds of those who had lived beneath the sky of Krikkit.

History was gathering itself to deliver another blow.

Still the darkness thrummed at them, the blank enclosing darkness. It seemed closer and closer, thicker and thicker, heavier and heavier. And suddenly it was gone.

They flew out of the cloud.

They saw the staggering jewels of the night in their infinite dust and their minds sang with fear.

For a while they flew on, motionless against the starry sweep of the Galaxy, itself motionless against the infinite sweep of the Universe. And then they turned around.

"It'll have to go," the men of Krikkit said as they headed back for home.

On the way back, they sang a number of tuneful and reflective songs on the subjects of peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms.

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