Galaxies are clusters of stars (and other stuff), and like you said, they are IN the universe.

Carter Emmart uses astronomy and computational modeling to create scientifically accurate, three-dimensional tours of our universe.

“My job is to translate the difficulty of science into understandable stories.” (Carter Emmart)

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For the last 12 years, Carter Emmart has been coordinating the efforts of scientists, artists and programmers to build a complete 3D visualization of our known universe. He demos this stunning tour and explains how it’s being shared with facilities around the world.

As the Director of Astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural History, Carter Emmart directs their groundbreaking space shows and heads up development of an interactive 3D atlas called The Digital Universe. He coordinates scientists, programmers and artists to produce scientifically accurate yet visually stunning and immersive space experiences in the AMNH’s Hayden Planetarium. Over the last decade, he has directed four shows: “Passport to the Universe”, “The Search for Life: Are we Alone?”, “Cosmic Collisions” and “Journey to the Stars”.

Emmart’s interest in space began early, and at ten he was taking astronomy courses in the old Hayden. As a child born into a family of artists, he naturally combined his love of science with his tendency for visualization. His first work was in architectural modeling, soon moving on to do scientific visualization for NASA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, before joining the AMNH.

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TRANSCRIPT

The flat horizon that we’ve evolved with has been a metaphor for the infinite, unbounded resources and unlimited capacity for disposal of waste. It wasn’t until we really left Earth, got above the atmosphere and had seen the horizon bend back on itself that we could understand our planet as a limited condition. The Digital Universe Atlas has been built at the American Museum of Natural History over the past 12 years. We maintain that, put that together as a project to really chart the universe across all scales. What we see here are satellites around the Earth, and the Earth in proper registration against the universe, as we see. NASA supported this work 12 years ago as part of the rebuilding of the Hayden Planetarium so that we would share this with the world.

The Digital Universe is the basis of our space show productions that we do — our main space shows in the dome. But what you see here is the result of actually internships that we hosted with Linkoping University in Sweden. I’ve had 12 students work on this for their graduate work. And the result has been this software called Uniview and a company called SCISS in Sweden. This software allows interactive use. So this actual flight path and movie that we see here was actually flown live. I captured this live from my laptop in a cafe called Earth Matters on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where I live. And it was done as a collaborative project with the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art for an exhibit on comparative cosmology.

And so as we move out, we see continuously from our planet all the way out into the real of galaxies as we see here, light travel time, giving you a sense of how far away we are. As we move out, the light from these distant galaxies have taken so long, we’re essentially backing up into the past. We back so far up we’re finally seeing a containment around us — the afterglow of the Big Bang. This is the WMAP microwave background that we see. We’ll fly outside it here, just to see this sort of containment. If we were outside this, it would almost be meaningless, in the sense as before time. But this our containment of the visible universe. We know the universe is bigger than that which we can see.

And just in closing, I’d just like to say this beautiful world that we live on — Here we see a bit of the snow that some of you may have had to brave in coming out. So I’d like to just say that what the world needs now is a sense of being able to look at ourselves in this much larger condition now and a much larger sense of what home is. Because our home is the universe, and we are the universe, essentially. We carry that in us. And to be able to see our context in this larger sense at all scales helps us all in understanding where we are and who we are in the universe.

• http://www.ted.com/talks/carter_emmart_demos_a_3d_atlas_of_the_universe.html
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Duration : 0:7:31

Technorati Tags: 3d, American, amnh, astronomy, atlas, carter, cosmos, digital, emmart, hayden, History, known, museum, natural, Of, planetarium, space, tours, universe, visualization

We perceive light–we see it—but what we see and what it means are not the same. Without context, detail means nothing.

Oh, there are so many factors at play here: what wavelengths of light can we see, how well can our brains take what we see and turn it into something we understand?

And also, how do we compare ourselves to the thing we’re observing? What tools do we use to help us capture information? How do we turn light into data, data into pixels, pixels into meaning? Start with a planet.

For example, Earth. And as long as we’re at it, let’s tip the Earth to spin properly on its axis. Now, recall our original points of light. Our idea.

These are satellites in orbit. Satellites collect data as the Earth rotates beneath them.

Think of satellites as paint brushes working in reverse: instead of painting planets with light, satellites collect light reflected from planets below. With enough data we can paint a world.

Data that make this image come from instruments on two NASA satellites called AQUA and TERRA. These instruments see the Earth in what we might regard as “natural color.”

They can also see certain events as they happen. There, splattered like white paint on a blue canvas, something important: Hurricane Katrina.

These satellites are only two of many that can see hurricanes. The stripes you see building up come from a unique spacecraft called TRMM. Among the many remarkable things TRMM can do, it can look inside hurricanes like nothing else in the world.

See for yourself. TRMM sees the actual body of the beast in three dimensions. Orange and red zones indicate higher rainfall rates. Cloud spires called hot towers drive the storm’s greedy grab for energy.

The Earth changes. It breathes. And it surprises. Though we live on a planet largely covered by water, we often forget that huge tracts are frozen solid. Let’s change the perspective.

Ice covers much of the world. The eternally frozen parts are called the Cryosphere. It’s the planet’s thermostat, and a hydrological warehouse, and in terms of a changing climate, it’s the canary in a coalmine.

You may live your whole life and never visit these places, but these places will affect your life nonetheless.

You know this place. The Moon. Earth’s closest neighbor is little more than a beautiful stranger across an airless room. There are mysteries here and answers. And, like love, perhaps, destiny.

Back on Earth, day and night change like moods, with points of light pricking the darkness like vaguely remembered dreams. City lights shine into space at night, like ancient campfires, like candles of civilization.

No other place beyond the Earth shows signs of life like this, or shows signs of life at all. But we’re looking.

Before we can find life elsewhere, we need to be good at reading its signs at home first. And on Earth, life is everywhere.

This is the living Earth: the biosphere. Phytoplankton bloom in vast oceanic fields. Land plants pulse rhythmically with seasonal growth. Together, these sound the global heartbeat, the pulse of life powered by the sun.

The Sun. All energy on Earth comes from the sun.

The Moon…the Earth…the Sun: celestial spheres we see and feel everyday. But in our solar neighborhood, there are other places, too. Fabulous places. Mysterious places.

As a tourist destination, Mars has an impressive brochure. The longest, deepest canyon in the solar system. A volcano so high it’s peak climbs above most of the Martian atmosphere. Nothing like these places exists on Earth. Nothing.

This is from a NASA mission called WMAP. If the whole universe were a person, this would be its first baby picture. There are no stars here, no galaxies, certainly no planets. But there is energy. The rest came soon enough, once the new kid could collect herself.

This is the universe we see today. It’s a lively place. That’s a gamma ray burst, spotted by NASA’s “SWIFT” satellite. These cosmic blasts have long puzzled scientists. They may be stars collapsing in upon themselves, or two densely packed remnants of stars merging together.

But in either case, scientists believe they herald the births of black holes. They’re the most powerful explosions in the universe after the Big Bang. And they seem to happen all the time, as often as once a day.

We look outwards as much as we look inwards, for if there is any certainty in the journey of knowledge it’s that travel in any direction can lead to the same destination.

We see only what we look for, and in space and on Earth we seek the wisdom to ask the right questions.

Duration : 0:13:13

Technorati Tags: astronomy, Black, burst, einstein, Gamma, grb, Hole, hubble, hurricane, Jupiter, katrina, Light, Mars, Moon, NASA, planets, ray, Saturn, solar, space, Sun, supernova, swift, System, telescopes, universe, wmap

I am overjoyed by the reaction to this video. To all those who have made such kind comments: thank you! It is a testament to Carl’s seemingly endless brilliance that he is still able to touch so many people over a decade since his death.

Watch this video with Spanish subtitles here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yPLzUpHqHM
Watch this video with Portuguese subtitles here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W43wOBGueUI
Watch this video with Arabic subtitles here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWeNlZKhk4c
Watch this video with Russian subtitles here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HvhImhF914

I do realize the subtitles are wildly inaccurate and somewhat offensive to some and for that I apologize. YouTube’s auto-transcribe function is still a work-in-progress, but I’ll see what I can do about adding my own subtitles.

If you enjoyed this video, read the magnificent book from which it originated: http://www.amazon.com/Pale-Blue-Dot-Vision-Future/dp/0345376595/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278371196&sr=8-1

Also highly recommended, Billions and Billions: http://www.amazon.com/Billions-Thoughts-Death-Brink-Millennium/dp/0345379187/ref=pd_sim_b_2

For those of you interested in my other work, here is a zombie movie that some friends and I put together in a couple of days (NSFW): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS-pYx72kAI&feature=PlayList&p=67B53ADA0AC49FC1&index=0&playnext=1

Duration : 0:9:1

Technorati Tags: astronomy, blue, Carl, Cosmology, Creationism, Dot, Evolution, for, History, human, Made, Not, Pale, Religion, Sagan, Science, universe, Us

In this episode, we take a brief trip through the Solar System and beyond to see the size of the universe.

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Duration : 0:11:0

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Duration : 0:1:26

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The problem is, civilizations live and die in the blink of an eye compared to the lifecycles stars. They could come and go and we’d never know it.

Duration : 0:8:2

Technorati Tags: astronomy, Cosmology, ET, extraterrestrials, life, space, universe

Duration : 0:3:31

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Duration : 0:1:15

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