Alt text:
If you live in Los Angeles (around 33°52'N, roughly the latitude of Hermosa Beach) the black hole in V404 Cygni passes over you each day. On Christmas Day it will be directly overhead around 2pm.
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
507 points (99.2% liked)
xkcd
8681 readers
148 users here now
A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
In a program called SpaceEngine, the observable universe is simulated, based on everything we know so far.
You can fly around freely and if you start at earth, you've got this blue beautiful ball right next to you and an ocean of stars all around you.
First I flew towards the sun with the speed of light. Earth got tiny quickly, but then you realise: it would still take you 8 full minutes to get to the sun at this speed.
So you pump the speed to millions of light years per second (luckily we can ignore the laws of physics).
You stop at a random place, some hundreds of millions of light years away from earth.
And then you realise what astronomers mean when they say: the universe is basically homogeneous. It looks basically the same everywhere.
And in fact you once again see an ocean of stars in front of you. Just as if you were back at earth. However as you turn around, there is of course no earth, but the same view of an ocean of stars and earth is unimaginable far away. You are alone in an infinite ocean of light.
This program truely messed with my head (in a good way).