New Interactive Map Of Milky Way Lets You See The Light And Dust

"The towers of fiery colors are actually dust in the galaxy and beyond that has been polarized," the JPL says of this recently released map of the universe. It shows light in the 353GHz range, wavelengths longer than our eyes can see. ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech

EXCERPT FROM CNET.COM

Information from the Planck space telescope helped create a stunning new map. It's also shedding light on dark matter and the origins of the universe.

From 2009 to late 2013, the European Space Agency's Planck spacecraft revolved around our planet while using its telescope to soak up relic radiation from the Big Bang known as the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB. Its goal, in effect, was to look back in time to just about 370,000 years after the Big Bang.

Now NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), which worked closely with the ESA on the Planck mission, has released a captivating interactive map of the Milky Way using Planck's data. It combines multiple views of our galaxy, including mapping dust, carbon monoxide gas, magnetic fields and a type of radiation known as "free-free." This kind of radiation happens when "isolated electrons and protons careen past one another in a series of near collisions, slowing down but continuing on their own way," according to the JPL.

You can swoop through the map and set it to show different characteristics of the Milky Way on the Planck website at planck.ipac.caltech.edu/wwt/

The map (top) is made up of several different views of the Milky Way: Dust Glow (upper left); Carbon Monoxide Gas (upper right); Carbon Monoxide Gas (upper right); and Magnetic Fields (lower right). ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech "The cosmic microwave background light is a traveler from far away and long ago," Charles Lawrence, the US project scientist for the mission at NASA's JPL, said in a statement. "When it arrives, it tells us about the whole history of our universe."

To study the CMB, Planck team members needed to remove the light from our galaxy, much of which is the same wavelength as the relic radiation. The team then used that removed light to create the new map. "Light generated from within our galaxy, the same light subtracted from the ancient signal, comes to life gloriously in the new image," the JPL says. "Gas, dust and magnetic field lines make up a frenzy of activity that shapes how stars form."

Not only was the space agency able to create the map thanks to the Planck mission, but by analyzing data sent back from the mission the team also discovered a few other things.

First, it was once believed that the Dark Ages of our universe -- a time before stars began winking into existence -- lasted for 300 million to 400 million years after the Big Bang. Looking at the Planck data, however, researchers now believe that the period of darkness lasted for about 550 million years.

Even more compelling was a revelation about dark energy, an as-yet-unproven force that scientists believe is responsible for the accelerating speed of the universe's expansion. "The Planck data also support the idea that the mysterious force known as dark energy is acting against gravity to push our universe apart at ever-increasing speeds," the JPL said.

The Planck team will continue analyzing the data, and it's expected that more insights about the origin and nature of our universe will be published next year. "The kind of questions we ask now we never would have thought possible to even ask decades ago, long before Planck," said James Bartlett, a US Planck team member from JPL.

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Coast To Coast Am Sep 15 2010 Pt3 Wmv

Cosmology the Interim Date: 09-15-10 Host: George Noory Guests: Leonard Mlodinow Co-author when Stephen Hawking of the runaway success Principal Release of Signify, Caltech physicist Leonard Mlodinow discussed his current work when Hawking on the lush design of the universe and two central questions-- everyplace does the universe turn up from, and why are the laws of concept what they are? Hawking's theories and the latest research in physics were used to steadfastness public questions. In the role of the harden for life are balance country on Secure, Mlodinow noted that we're looking backwards at the situation-- whatever harden it took for us to get introduce, bring forth sooner than happened. The effect of the multiverse (different universes each when their own specific laws) is a rate of Hawking's theory of cosmology, assumed Mlodinow. These scores of universes arose from go like a bullet, but we now pick up from quantum theory that the state of space is exceptionally very unstable, and that "ideas are always yet to come and going from space," he explained. Hawking's picture of the universe incorporates three theories: oA "no boundary" testify in which time becomes a size that looks feeling space. oM theory-- an clarification of din theory healing when armed forces feeling penetration. oTop Finish Cosmology-- a new quantum get here that suggests the interval has different every other concomitant histories. Mlodinow else reviewed the Big Clump theory of the nose of the universe, and the search at the Immense Hadron Collider for the...

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Universe Or Multiverse

We believe that our planet is among billions of planets in the universe. We also believe that universe is infinite. How about an idea that the universe is not only "uni" or one- verse but more than one universe or multiverse

I remember an action movie starred by Jet Li titled The One, that projects a reality that we are living in a parallel universe, a planet Earth with other earths, a Milky Way galaxy with similar galaxies and a universe with similar universe.

Physicist Max Tegmark, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania considers the theory of parallel worlds, when he lectured a group of more than 50 budding physicists and assorted philosophy, biology and science majors at the University of Delaware - Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Tegmark told his audience that, "there may be at least a thousand parallel universes out there." His concept is all based on the latest measuring capabilities and mathematical equations devised by physicists in the past few years.

Many articles written by Tegmark have been published in academic periodicals and more mainstream magazines including "Scientific American" about the theory of parallel worlds.

Many would ask, who is Tegmark? Born in Sweden, he earned a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley and post-doctorate degrees in Europe and at Princeton.

To support his hypothesis, Tegmark told his audience that the most popular and simplest cosmological model today predicts that there is another you not a short distance from us doing - exactly or approximately, depending on those unpre- dictable quantum mechanics - what you are doing now: eating breakfast, riding in a carpool, or wrinkling your brow and rolling your eyes.

The professor also argued, "if space is infinite and the distribution of matter is relatively uniform, then even the most unlikely events must take place somewhere." This could mean there are an other infinite number of inhabited planets with people who not only look like you but have nearly the same sort of experiences.

"We know that the universe is infinite and relatively uniform, because cosmic microwave background experiments have ruled out old ideas that the universe is like a four-dimensional sphere or doughnut, implying that it's actually rather simple and infinite. Maps of galaxy distribution also have shown a uniformity in the distribution of matter." Tegmark was quoted by writer Victor Greto.

This theory got people killed just few hundred years ago. In 1600, theologian-philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Italy for heresy; among his ideas was a claim that there are more worlds out there than anyone could imagine.

Now because of a generation of open-minded people, Tegmark was not roasted alive but instead applauded with his remarkable idea.

Normally our reaction to this notion would depend upon our point of view, but I believe many would also think alike and hold up the idea of Tegmark.

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