The number of massive maps of the universe in recent years are absoultely fascinating, and have reignited my childhood interest in astronomy and cosmology.

These maps consist of a large number of statistical observations derived from images, and that lines up with all the data analysis I've used in the past decades in genomics. (Most DNA sequencing data comes from image analysis, coincidentally!). And the plots I see in these papers are looking increasingly like the plots I've produced over the past 20 years, so I'm thinking maybe it would be fun to download a few TB of atlas and see if I can reproduce their plots...

Thanks for everyone who works in this field, it's fantastic work that's reshaping our very understanding of reality.

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greenleafone7 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Scary as well though. All those cosmic powers, and here we are, not even ants standing on a hilltop.

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ahazred8ta an hour ago | parent | next [-]

There's a diagram of the size of everything in the universe from quarks to the whole observable universe. https://www.universetoday.com/163927/everything-in-the-unive...

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Insanity 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

On the flip side of scary, it can put your problems in perspective and offer some kind of solace. I guess it's a bit of both :)

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epistasis 11 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I honestly find it extremely comforting. Having something so much bigger than oneself in the world is calming. All my worries, all my loves, everything that goes well, everything that goes poorly, just a tiny blip in the hugeness of it all. To me, it makes the good things better, and the worse things less meaningful. I watch DESI animations every few months for a reminder.

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folkrav 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Knowing how precious the current state of Earth is at human scale makes me fear the asshats acting like everything revolves around “progress” a lot more than knowing how insignificant we are at cosmic scales.

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jibal 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I find this sentiment so bizarre ... scared of what, exactly? There are real threats that people ignore, like rip tides, global warming, RFK Jr., and fascism, but those "cosmic powers" aren't coming to get us.

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engineer_22 an hour ago | parent [-]

Love how you throw in RFK Jr. His muscular tone is certainly impressive!

	▲	jibal an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I referred to real threats, and he is one. His muscles aren't relevant.