The random picture thread

[Alex]

Thats breathtaking. Unbeliveable views.

[Norbs]

http://gizmodo.com/5847467/is-this-t...apse-video-yet

Not strictly a picture, but well worth the watch IMO

Thanks for posting that, it's one of the most beautiful videos I've seens online. How lucky are people who get to view the Milky Way like that on a regular basis

[Norbs]

Ah ****, I knew I shouldn't have done that. Googled Milky Way and now my brain is going to be a useless mush again for the foreseeable future.

200-400 billions stars in the Milky Way alone, and there's probably 200 billion galaxies all containing roughly that amount

[Paul.S]

Remember the space program Sam Neill did? He said -

"For every grain of sand, there are a billion stars..."

[Norbs]

Cheers, boss!

That's the EXACT sort of thing that's going to stop me getting any sleep at all tonight

[Norbs]

Oh bugger. I had to go and Google that too

I can't look at a bag of sand now, let alone think about the Sahara desert x 100


""So how many grains of sand are there in the world? You could start
off by trying to guess how many grains of sand there are in a spoon of
sand. Use a magnifying glass to count how many grains fit in a small
section. Then, count how many of those sections fit in your spoon.
Multiply the two numbers together to get an estimate.
"Using this same principle, plus some additional information,
mathematicians at the University of Hawaii tried to guess how many
grains of sand are on the world's beaches. They came up with
7,500,000,000,000,000,000, or seven quintillion five quadrillion
grains of sand."
How many grains of sand are in the world?

http://www.miamisci.org/tripod/whysand.html

The calculation is detailed here:

http://www.hawaii.edu/suremath/jsand.html

That number is 7.5 x 10^18 or 7.5 billion billion.

How many stars, galaxies, clusters, QSO's etc. in the Universe?

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/faq/part8/section-3.html

"To get the total stellar population in the Milky Way [that is, in our
galaxy alone], we must take the number of luminous stars that we can
see at large distances and assume that we know how many fainter stars
go along with them. Recent numbers give about 400,000,000,000 (400
billion) stars, but a 50% error either way is quite plausible."

So in our galaxy alone, there might be between 2 x 10^11 and 6 x 10^11 stars

How many galaxies in the Universe?

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/astronomy/faq/part8/section-4.html

"the Hubble telescope is capable of detecting about 80 billion
galaxies (although not all of these within the foreseeable future!).
In fact, there must be many more than this, even within the observable
Universe, since the most
common kind of galaxy in our own neighborhood is the faint dwarfs
which are difficult enough to see nearby, much less at large
cosmological distances. For example, in our own local group, there are
3 or 4 giant galaxies which would be detectable at a billion
light-years or more (Andromeda, the Milky Way, the Pinwheel in
Triangulum, and maybe the Large Magellanic Cloud). However, there are
at least another 20 faint members, which would be difficult to find at
100 million light-years, much less the billions of light years to
which the brightest galaxies can be seen."

So the lower end estimate for the number of galaxies is 8 x 10^10

If we accept even the lower end of these Hubble figures, and if our
Milky Way has a typical number of stars in it, that puts the number of
stars in the universe to be at least
(2 x 10^11) x (8 x 10^10) = 16 x 10^ 21

So if we round the number of sand grains to, say, 10^20
and round the number of stars to, say 10^22
then there are at least 100 stars in the universe for every grain of sand on earth.

As you say, that's a *LOT*

Search terms used
beach sand particles cubic
"number of stars in the universe

Thanks again for your interesting question
Richard-ga"

[Stanbull]

This image of Hubble Deep Field blows my mind,an area of the sky that is the size of your thumbnail contains all these galaxies, each with millions of suns probably with several planets per sun.

Then add into the equation that what you are looking at is an image that is over 10billion years old, the light has taken that long to get here

My mind cannot get to grips with the numbers, distances and time

[Norbs]

That's so ****ing frightening. The little yellow swirl in the bottom could be a Milky Way sized galaxy and that only covers a minute area of the entire sky.

Ow, my head

[Icon]

For Norbert -

Watch when it get to about 1:00, and apologies for the music...

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnzwVHxtHws&feature=related"]Hubble Deep Field Zoom & Pan - YouTube[/ame]

[Norbs]

[Subby]

[Subby]

NOM

[Subby]

Kids test....

[Subby]

[wiw]