Galaxies mapping

Here is the video of the TedX that I chose: The most detailed map of galaxies,
black holes and stars ever made by Juna Kollmeier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88d-58tWhGs

Understand how works our sky is something that fascinate humans since a long time. And
we know that because we discovered multiple of map all over the world. The Fuxy star map
is over 6,000 years old and was discovered in a neolithic tomb in China. Our species is known
to try to figure things out everything. We know our planet; we cure our diseases, and we
leave our planet. But according to Juna, understand the Universe is like a battle and to win a
battle we need to know the battlefield. So mapping the sky involves three essential
elements: Objects that are giving off light, telescope that are collecting that light and
instruments that are helping us to understand what light is. For example, when you look at
the moon. The moon is the object, your eye is the telescope and your brain is the
instrument.

Juna Kollmeier lead a program called Sloan Sky Digital Survey also known as SDSS. In that
program they divide the sky into three mappers: One for the stars, one for the black holes
and the last one for the galaxies.

We know that the Milky Way has 250 billion plus or minus a few hundred billion stars. We
can measure the age of 6 million stars. It’s important to have this information because it’s
like six million clocks spread all throughout the Milky Way. With this information we can
unravel the history and fossil record of our galaxy and learn how it formed.

In The Universe, black holes are among the most perplexing objects because they literally
just math incarnate in a physical form that we barely understand. We can know a lot about
theme by studying the material just as it passes throughout that point of no information
return because at that point it’s emitting lots of X-rays, optical, UV and radio waves. We can
learn how these objects grow. With the SDSS, they are looking at over half a million
supermassive black holes to try to understand how they formed.

Back in 1980, the astronomers have mapped about 1000 galaxies but every year we map
more and more galaxies. According to Juna, we will map every large galaxy in the observable
Universe by 2060.

The idea that it took more than thousands of years to build a little part of what we can see
up there and now in the next 40 years we will be able to map every galaxy in the observable
Universe is unbelievable. Our species fascinate me because when we have an idea in our
head we will do everything to achieve it. And most of the time, we succeed.