The Most Important Image Captured By Mankind

[Metar]

I could only find the 60MB version from Hubble's site

 

[Barracuda]

I'm actually in the process of getting it right now. He's seeding it for me, which is good because he's the only seeder

 

[Philly]

I've just started downloading it now. I wonder how long it'll take.

If they can get this kind of resolution billions of light years away, I wonder if we could get Google Earth-like imagery of planets less than 10 light years away.

EDIT: Halfway done.

 

[Famine]

I've just started downloading it now. I wonder how long it'll take.

If they can get this kind of resolution billions of light years away, I wonder if we could get Google Earth-like imagery of planets less than 10 light years away.

EDIT: Halfway done.

No.

Deep Field was achieved by pointing Hubble at a patch of empty sky and leaving the shutter open for a week. Planets are far too small, far too dim and far too fast to achieve similar results with.

Best image we can hope for of an extrasolar planet currently is this:

This is the only currently confirmed extrasolar planet to have been directly observed (and this was infrared, rather than visible light) - three more are potential candidates, but may not be planets:

But, technology is always advancing. It's not an indefinite impossibility.

 

[Joey D]

So there is a chance for life. Interesting...


Still doesn't mean we were ever contacted by them. Which was my original point, which I started to over-develop. :\

I still believe we have made some sort of contact within our species history. The best evidence I can offer are the Nazca lines in Peru, look into them if your are interested.

Also why would ancient people build things like the Pyramids of Giza, Stonehenge, the heads of Easter Island, etc. if it didn't have something to do with an all powerful force. To semi-quote Bill Bryson from Notes from a Small Island, "What sort of motivation does one need to convince a group of his closest friends to drag big heavy stone across England and muscle them into place?" I tend to agree with him, unless you had the fear of god over your head you probably wouldn't willingly do it.

 

[Philly]

Also why would ancient people build things like the Pyramids of Giza, Stonehenge, the heads of Easter Island, etc. if it didn't have something to do with an all powerful force. To semi-quote Bill Bryson from Notes from a Small Island, "What sort of motivation does one need to convince a group of his closest friends to drag big heavy stone across England and muscle them into place?" I tend to agree with him, unless you had the fear of god over your head you probably wouldn't willingly do it.

Maybe they had some technology that may or may not have been overlooked.

Someday people may look back at us and wonder how we managed to discover the human gene sequence and not think about how we had computers. Or maybe religion and a lot of time and a lot of people was enough. Even if you only moved each rock 100 yards a day in building the pyramid, you could probably do it in 40 years or however long it took.

 

[Joey D]

I'm not saying that it wasn't possible for ancient man to do it, they obviously did, I'm just wondering what their motivation was behind it.

 

[AOS-]

now thise leaves me wondering, If we had a big bang, and if there was another big bang somewhere else, would be as lucky as to meeting up with one of those planets? Possibly even collide with them, but what are the cahnces of that? it's kinda farfetch'd.

 

[ferrari_chris]

Would it be life as you know it though? Would you recognize it as life?

Laws of probability state there is almost certainly some other kind of lifeform out there, however advanced or not it is. Given how blooming big the universe is though, chances of finding it, is about as likely as Brian Blessed being called quiet.

I certainly don't expect to find intelligent life. It may well be out there, but I think us finding it any time soon (a relative soon) is very unlikely. Just some pond scum would be great!

now thise leaves me wondering, If we had a big bang, and if there was another big bang somewhere else, would be as lucky as to meeting up with one of those planets? Possibly even collide with them, but what are the cahnces of that? it's kinda farfetch'd.

I think that's getting into a whole other discussion. For another big bang to occur, that'd be another universe. Which some will say is in another dimension, and so they don't co-exist in the same place and a collision is impossible. Steven Hawkings knows about this stuff...

 

[Sureboss]

now thise leaves me wondering, If we had a big bang, and if there was another big bang somewhere else, would be as lucky as to meeting up with one of those planets? Possibly even collide with them, but what are the cahnces of that? it's kinda farfetch'd.

Would colliding with another planet be considered lucky in your book?

 

[Metar]

I still believe we have made some sort of contact within our species history. The best evidence I can offer are the Nazca lines in Peru, look into them if your are interested.

Also why would ancient people build things like the Pyramids of Giza, Stonehenge, the heads of Easter Island, etc. if it didn't have something to do with an all powerful force. To semi-quote Bill Bryson from Notes from a Small Island, "What sort of motivation does one need to convince a group of his closest friends to drag big heavy stone across England and muscle them into place?" I tend to agree with him, unless you had the fear of god over your head you probably wouldn't willingly do it.

Fear of God is enough. Or even non-fear of said gods...

Particularly the Giza pyramids (and for that matter, any other pyramids): The ancient Egyptians believed that whenever a person dies, his soul must be guided into the afterworld. The Pyramids were constructed exactly so the geometric lines formed will shoot directly towards two special stars, which they believed were crucial. Pharaohs took this personally, and employed an advanced system of labor-taxing to haul tens of thousands of workers annually to erect their pyramids.

Stonehenge, well, same can be said for every other building. Why did someone spend so much building the temple in Jerusalem? Or the Vatican? These people needed myths, and gods, to explain what they couldn't - but we might be able to. Such as rain, eclipses, volcanoes, and even simpler things like the sun - we know it's a huge nuclear reaction. They had to simplify it to a burning chariot through the sky.

 

[Touring Mars]

A quick look at Google Earth puts these monuments into perspective - although they are awesome and deeply 'meaningful' in one way or another, it is hard to say that they actually did or do serve as some sort of physical cosmic beacon - even the Pyramids are barely visible from the upper reaches of our own atmosphere - they are even the same colour as the ground they stand on! I guess the builders/designers had no real appreciation for just how big this planet is at the time of building, and hence they could be forgiven for thinking that their constructions would be easily visible from the heavens when infact they are far from easily visible - the Great Pyramid of Giza being built more than 2000 years before the first near-accurate estimates of the Earth's circumference (and shape!) were made.

The fact that ancient civilizations made these things at all, however, is what is truly remarkable about them - and it's a brutal irony that alien life forms are more likely to run across a transmission of 'I Love Lucy' or a radio broadcast by Howard Stern coming from our distant outpost in the Milky Way before they are ever likely to see our greatest monuments with their own eyes...

 

[Barracuda]

I tried to open that 689MB picture file and I got

Error: Can't allocate memory for result image(s)!
Out of memory.



EDIT: I was able to open it in PS and am able to zoom in and out as I please, no loading either.

 

[Joey D]

Fear of God is enough. Or even non-fear of said gods...

Particularly the Giza pyramids (and for that matter, any other pyramids): The ancient Egyptians believed that whenever a person dies, his soul must be guided into the afterworld. The Pyramids were constructed exactly so the geometric lines formed will shoot directly towards two special stars, which they believed were crucial. Pharaohs took this personally, and employed an advanced system of labor-taxing to haul tens of thousands of workers annually to erect their pyramids.

Stonehenge, well, same can be said for every other building. Why did someone spend so much building the temple in Jerusalem? Or the Vatican? These people needed myths, and gods, to explain what they couldn't - but we might be able to. Such as rain, eclipses, volcanoes, and even simpler things like the sun - we know it's a huge nuclear reaction. They had to simplify it to a burning chariot through the sky.

I understand all of this since it's part of my studies, I'm hoping to graduate with a degree in Anthropology/Archaeology within the next year. This by no means makes me an expert on the but I do have some ideas in the field, so feel free to throw some of your own out there. I always like to hear other viewpoints on topics like this. I realise mine is a bit far out there but discoveries do not get made by conforming and they certainly do not come by having people agree with you.

I just can not see ancient man being that unintelligent that they thought since water fell from the sky the gods must be angry. I still believe they needed to have witnessed something in order to build such epic structures, especially since such a large portion of workforce was focused on food collection and preparation. I mean the pyramids took at least 40 years to complete, if not longer, and that is a long time to dedicate a substantial amount of your population to something.

I think modern humankind does not give ancient humankind enough credit with their intelligence.

 

[AOS-]

Would colliding with another planet be considered lucky in your book?

Not lucky as in Survival, but in terms of possibility... Get with the program man... I have a life i want to live before I go Boom lol

 

[Metar]

I understand all of this since it's part of my studies, I'm hoping to graduate with a degree in Anthropology/Archaeology within the next year. This by no means makes me an expert on the but I do have some ideas in the field, so feel free to throw some of your own out there. I always like to hear other viewpoints on topics like this. I realise mine is a bit far out there but discoveries do not get made by conforming and they certainly do not come by having people agree with you.

I just can not see ancient man being that unintelligent that they thought since water fell from the sky the gods must be angry. I still believe they needed to have witnessed something in order to build such epic structures, especially since such a large portion of workforce was focused on food collection and preparation. I mean the pyramids took at least 40 years to complete, if not longer, and that is a long time to dedicate a substantial amount of your population to something.

I think modern humankind does not give ancient humankind enough credit with their intelligence.

I'll focus on the pyramids since that's a field I know something about - the bigger ones took 40 years to build, for a worthy cause: Those huge tombs were a sign of the Pharaoh's power and wealth, a statement - and once they started to one-up each other, it didn't stop. From small house-sized pyramids all the way to the gargantuan structures at Giza, which included small sub-pyramids for wifes, priests and important men.

And if you wrap that up with the belief that the pyramidal structure is essential to the afterlife of a Pharaoh, it suddenly makes sense to spend millions of labor-hours on a piece of triangular rock.

 

[Joey D]

But why would they line the pyramids up with certain stars? I know it's far fetched but if you've ever seen the movie Stargate I sort of subscribe to a theory like that. The Egyptians were visited by a more advanced race from another star system, the Pharaohs just told the people they were decedents of that race and that the pyramids were their way to get "back home" once they died. Like I said it's out there but we've really only been studying Egypt since the 1920's and most of the stuff came from pot hunters and tomb raiders.

 

[Famine]

But why would they line the pyramids up with certain stars?

They thought stars were holes into the heavens. Perhaps they thought they should point the pyramids at the stars to "fire" the pharoah's soul back through the hole to heaven.

 

[Metar]

They thought stars were holes into the heavens. Perhaps they thought they should point the pyramids at the stars to "fire" the pharoah's soul back through the hole to heaven.

Exactly what a documentary analyzing the Giza pyramids had to say...

They also pointed out two extremely narrow, long shafts going from the room where the sarcophagus is stored, pointing at two stars.

 

[Joey D]

I know, that's the "accepted" answer currently, I was more asking the question to see what others thought. What I am wondering though is why they thought that and it furthers my believe that the could have been visited by beings from another world.

 

[Famine]

Actually, I made that up. Turned out not to be a bad guess then


There's an interesting episode of Star Trek: Voyager (season 6: Blink of an Eye) which deals with how civilisations - even relatively advanced ones - perceive stars. What the pharoahs were thinking of we'll never know, but they didn't have the ability to understand celestial bodies as we do - or if they did, there's absolutely no written record of it.

 

[Joey D]

Actually, I made that up. Turned out not to be a bad guess then


There's an interesting episode of Star Trek: Voyager (season 6: Blink of an Eye) which deals with how civilisations - even relatively advanced ones - perceive stars. What the pharoahs were thinking of we'll never know, but they didn't have the ability to understand celestial bodies as we do - or if they did, there's absolutely no written record of it.

One thing I do not know and maybe you do, can we translate all of the hieroglyphics yet? I do not believe we can, the Rosetta Stone could tell us only so much. Egyptology really isn't my thing.

 

[Touring Mars]

The general question over whether Earth has been 'contacted' before is a fascinating one, but the evidence is certainly weak, if not totally non-existent.

Ancient civilizations were certainly as intelligent as we are today - but suffered the disadvantages of not having the wealth of accumulated knowledge that we enjoy today or having advanced enough technology to share much of their knowledge effectively. But the fact that ancient peoples would be atleast as curious about the heavens and their own origins as we are today is something we'd be safe to assume. One thing is for sure, they must have appreciated that celestial objects were beyond the reach of humankind and therefore worthy of study, respect or even worship. It is little wonder then that monuments, religions and cults would sometimes go to enormous lengths to make that fact known, both to their people and to their gods.

But the fact that these monuments exist is not evidence of contact by any stretch of the imagination. The fact that the Pyramids are arranged in a pattern similar to that observed for the stars in Orion's belt is one thing - maybe a coincidence, maybe a deliberate homage to a symbolic figure in Egyptian mythology (probably pretty likely, since Orion is a famous and ultra-distinctive constellation, even back in those days). But whether you could accurately 'align' the pyramids with the actual stars as they appear in the sky is quite another thing... considering that Orion would appear to be moving and never quite in the same place on any given night, any true alignment would depend entirely on where the observer chose to stand, begging the question why anyone would bother building such a pointless 'star map' (if that were supposed to be its function). Whether the pyramids trace a direct path to the stars in a literal sense is something that is clearly not true either, but even if they did it (or even if it were possible), it would still only satisfy the 'Stopped Clock' paradox ("Even a stopped clock is right twice a day...") relative to a stationary vantage point. I'm sure that this would have occurred to the Egyptians at the time too...

edit: just having a play around Google Earth with the 3d buildings option on One thing that strikes you is just how big the Pyramids are, and just how far away you'd have to stand to get such a visual alignment with Orion's belt in three dimensions...

 

[FoolKiller]

Is it just me or does the following quote not completely sum up the pyramid and aliens discussion?

Rimmer: No, Lister, I mean like the pyramids. How did they move such massive pieces of stone without the aid of modern technology?
Lister: They had massive whips, Rimmer. Massive, massive whips.

 

[Metar]

That is just such a good series.

 

[Joey D]

The general question over whether Earth has been 'contacted' before is a fascinating one, but the evidence is certainly weak, if not totally non-existent.

I will agree that the evidence is lacking but as I've said we haven't really been studying this stuff all that long. As I've said for years, if we could do archaeology on Mars we might find evidence of a civilisation that existed at one point in time. Maybe not but I really don't think we can discount that life might have been on a planet as close as Mars.

 

[ferrari_chris]

I've always thought that Mars is a bit cold for a civilisation.

 

[Joey D]

I've always thought that Mars is a bit cold for a civilisation.

Now, but what about in the past?

 

[Blake]

Would there not be some surface evidence of a civilisation? I could believe life on Mars, but not a civilisation.

 

[TheCracker]

Would there not be some surface evidence of a civilisation? I could believe life on Mars, but not a civilisation.

If you could shut down the Earth's magnetic field, like what happened on Mars 4 billion years ago, once all life had (quickly) died out you'd probably find the Earth's surface looking similar to Mars within a few million years too. The low pressure atmosphere can't sustain surface water. There is, however, more than enough ice at the poles to cover Mars surface with oceans like on Earth.