The Galaxy at the End of the Universe

March 04, 2009

Douglas Adams fans, rejoice! Via io9, I learn that there is now an actual subway-style map of our galaxy's most traveled "portal stations":

It's part of a project called the Milky Way Transit Authority, the brainchild of Harvard computational sociologist Samuel Arbesman, who describes the concept thusly:

This map is an attempt to approach our galaxy with a bit more familiarity than usual and get people thinking about long-term possibilities in outer space. Hopefully it can provide as a useful shorthand for our place in the Milky Way, the 'important' sights, and make inconceivable distances a bit less daunting. And while convenient interstellar travel is nothing more than a murky dream, and might always be that way, there is power in creating tools for beginning to wrap our minds around the interconnections of our galactic neighborhood.

I have attempted to actually make this map as accurate as possible, where each line corresponds to an arm of our galaxy, and the stations are actual places in their proper locations.

And once we get the Milky Way all mapped out so any tourist can find their way around, we can move on to doing the same for the others as well -- making it that much easier for space travelers of the future to find the fabled Restaurant at the End of the Universe. It's not like there's a cosmic Zagat's Guide. Yet.

Ironically, there actually is a project underway that its creators describe as a kind of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxies." It's called Galaxy Zoo 2, an updated version of the original Galaxy Zoo project, and it just launched on February 17th. The original Galaxy Zoo asked members of the public to access galleries of galactic images to help determine whether a given galaxy was a spiral or elliptical, and whether it was rotating. The 2.0 version is asking participants to delve a bit deeper and "fill in all the details and create a real Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxies," according to Oxford University's Chris Lintott, one of the project's founders.

Why ask a bunch of amateur enthusiasts to get involved in the first place? I mean, it's not like we have much specialized training. But apparently "The human brain is still better at doing pattern recognition tasks than a computer." And the response from armchair scientists has been staggering: in the last 18 months, 80 million classifications of galaxies were submitted on one million objects -- the handiwork of a mere 150,000 amateur astronomers all over the world. Add in a new feature called "Galaxy Wars" -- in which users can compete against their friends to see who can describe the most objects -- and we should have that "Hitchhiker's Guide" up and running in no time.

Douglas Adams would be so proud...

Comments

[Bahata]

A related resource is Timothy Ferris' beautiful large size book "Galaxies". The author has made an attempt at accuracy in the pictures and gives a scale wherever possible.

[Dale Basler]

This needs to be on a t-shirt

[RD Padouk]

That is very clever, and really does highlight our ability to extract patterns from randomness. At one point I recall seeing someone attempt to do the same thing with the World Wide Web. Back before it was quite as, well, Webby.

[RD Padouk]

For the interested, here is the map I was referring to:

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/07/21/153-a-subway-map-of-web-trends-20/

[Joseph Mohr]

As a AAA member (among other memberships I have) I wonder why
the author of this map did not include distances from one Galaxie to another complete with speed trap warnings, and I did not see a single sign of "under construction" on the way. Also was it too much to turn this flat 2D map into 3D one? I hardly know where I live, but it is encouraging to find out my relative location to whatever is out there in the universe. Do you think that having a GPS gizmo will help me avoid some black holes on the way to the farthest Galaxie presented here?
Joseph Mohr

[anurag]

i really admire the professional comments given by anyone but still it may be assumed that as the specified part of any enthusiasm and perfectionism it can never be neglected to be supporter of the illuminates.