Scientists release biggest 2D map of the universe

(newscenter.lbl.gov)

63 points | by NKosmatos 2 hours ago

13 comments

  • thewanderer1983 11 minutes ago
    And here I thought this was the biggest 2D map.

    https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2016/01/a-logarithmic-map-of-...

  • doodlebugging 1 hour ago
    That's impressive. Though I think there's too much space on this plane. I'm wondering whether it is actually a 2D view since it obviously isn't planar.

    To paraphrase Samuel L Jackson - "I have had it with this m'f'ing space on a plane! Everybody strap in I'm about to open some f'in' windows."

    Proceeds to crank open an array of telescopes to get another 3D perspective of a 4D universe so we can project it onto our 2D viewing devices as if that were reality.

  • Towaway69 53 minutes ago
    I wonder how many of the red points/stars are black hole stars[1]

    [1] https://news.mit.edu/2026/astronomers-discover-brand-new-typ...

  • cryptolobster 4 minutes ago
    Holy shit, this is very impressive
  • Razengan 12 minutes ago
    Could this be used for a new Elitelike game?
  • br0ceph 21 hours ago
    is there anyway to download the entire map, and play with it locally
  • antonvs 15 minutes ago
    Not many people know this, but the actual universe is 3D, so this map is misleading.
  • ionwake 28 minutes ago
    i note the hyperspace bypass is missing
  • fercircularbuf 17 hours ago
    Wow, this is humbling
    • sambapa 57 minutes ago
      In what ways? Galaxies are just fat fucks, they don't do no philosophy, play piano or shitpost.
      • Towaway69 50 minutes ago
        If you squint, look at just the right portion, at just the right zoom level, the stars line up and spell out "thanks for all the fish".
        • sambapa 43 minutes ago
          Hm, that's a good thing to consider - are there portions of the sky in which stars align into a coherent text?
          • Towaway69 34 minutes ago
            Just gotta join the dots! ;)

            Or better still, develop a traveling salesman solution for visiting each star just once.

            > Bowerick Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged was a being who became immortal after an accident with a few rubber bands, a liquid lunch, and a particle accelerator. After a period of total boredom, especially on Sunday afternoons, he decided to insult everyone in the entire universe in alphabetical order. [1]

            So that wouldn't be just an academic exercise!

            [1] https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Bowerick_Wowbagger

          • dylan604 31 minutes ago
            Feed it to an LLM to see what it hallucinates
          • idiotsecant 13 minutes ago
            I think the odds of a character are very high, the odds of a short word are very high, the odds of a meaningful sentence are quite low, and the odds of anything more than that vanishingly small. It probably also depends on whether you're ok with viewing your assembly from an arbitrary position or if it must be from earth.
  • therobot24 22 hours ago
    make sure you watch the youtube video embedded in the website, it adds some real perspective of just how massive this is
    • Snoeprol 36 minutes ago
      Yep and the examples are really cool!
  • cwmoore 1 hour ago
    Not this data, but from nearby 3D star map with rotations:

    https://www.ouruboroi.com/moire3

  • zuzululu 55 minutes ago
    why is there so many weird flat lines is that an artifact?

    this is fascinating wish there was a 360 VR version of this

    truly immense scale

    • dylan604 29 minutes ago
      back when I was playing with making VR content, this is one of the first things I did by using an 8K rectilinear image from NASA. Mapped it to a sphere and lined up Polaris at the zenith, and then just had one of the best nights of stargazing I had ever had!