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rfmcdonaldWe are so small, and the galaxy so vast. This From Quarks to Quasars article had a fairly stunning map of what we know, in detail, about the neighbouring universe.
That red, too, hardly represents solid knowledge, only what we've managed to find. We still have no idea what's at Alpha Centauri, just next door; we only this year got detailed images of Pluto and Charon for the first time. There is just so much out there, so much we do not know of now and may not ever know of. It's enough to give someone vertigo. (It does me.)
It is surprisingly easy to forget how vast our universe truly is. Since we are able to glimpse light from stars that are an astonishing distance away, it’s easy to assume that we have a pretty firm grasp on the cosmos. True, we may need to use telescopes in order to peer across the expanse and truly see distant objects; however, the mere fact that we can see this far is reassuring.
But in fact, we know surprisingly little about even our own galaxy.
It may be a little hard to believe that the Milky Way is largely unexplored, but keep in mind that there’s a lot that we don’t know about our very own planet. Indeed, According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, we have explored less than 5% of the ocean. And considering that the ocean covers some 70% of our planet. That is a lot of unexplored territory, if you ask me. Moreover, although the surface of the Earth is littered with people, researches exploring the recesses of our world discover dozens of new species each day (literally).
With this in mind, the above map, which was recently released by NASA, shows the range of the Kepler Space Telescope. This is the primary instrument that is used to discover exoplanets (worlds that reside in alien solar systems). Kepler’s field of view is the small, red cone.
That’s it. That little cone is nearly all that we have to detect other worlds.
The yellow dots show all of the planets discovered with microlensing. This method of detection is much harder. So the problem is thus: While Kepler has discovered thousands of alien worlds in its field of view, its range is limited to a short, narrow band. And while microlensing can find planets much farther out, it is a bit trickier, resulting in just a handful of discoveries.
That red, too, hardly represents solid knowledge, only what we've managed to find. We still have no idea what's at Alpha Centauri, just next door; we only this year got detailed images of Pluto and Charon for the first time. There is just so much out there, so much we do not know of now and may not ever know of. It's enough to give someone vertigo. (It does me.)
