The Milky Way in HTML5 | Hacker News Reader

The Milky Way in HTML5

djer.roe.ac.uk

56 pointsdlf23 comments

This is awesome!

My only question, though, is why "in HTML5"? This doesn't really use anything from the new wave of "HTML5" technologies, save for some CSS3 dust. It's JS and images.

It's the new buzzword. Everything new and cool is apparently "HTML5"...

Even the W3C seems to promote it this way. CSS3 is apparently an HTML5 feature or something.

It is. I'm not sure, since I'm not the creator. It's just what the description said where I saw it.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/04/04/to...

Above, is a link of Phil Plait, explaining a feature on that same image: A star-forming region denominated G305.

The read is worth the time!

I thought that might be the case. I remember that being posted a few weeks ago.

Just a few seconds of looking around and I had several"WTF is that?" moments...space is scary.

[Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/K7GBt.png) [Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/4Tg8y.png)

Wait what?

The first one looks like some kind of sensor/processing issue given how good the bands look on it. The second one...... I've got to agree with my sibling poster, wait wtf?

It's gotta be the Death Star hurtling through space...

So I randomly zoom into a spot, and find the exact same place you have in the first place without meaning to. Can anyone calculate the chances of that?

It's fairly close to the middle. Not sure if that makes a difference.

Zooming into just one galaxy, ours, getting a feel for just how hopelessly vast it is, then recalling the Hubble Deep Field's panorama full of countless more galaxies an eternity away, brought one single thought to my mind:

If there's life out there, and at that scale, there simply must be... The probability of us ever finding it before our sun collapses most likely rounds to zero.

Maybe that is a good thing.

Actually I have a question ... maybe you can't answer it. But as we are looking for radio signals from other civilizations, what are we doing to make sure we continue to send out strong, unencrypted, easy to decipher signals from earth?

To say that IP law will result in all terrestrial signals being encrypted in say, 150 years, is not unfathomable. Then, at that point, if the encryption is good enough, it will just look like noise to a would be discoverer of us.

I would hope that civilization is also attempting to discover life or to be discovered and such is broadcasting a strong unencrypted signal.

Awesome! Now add video, hover-over info with links, and the rest of the universe! Am curious why this was done, though. Class project? There are already a few major implementations of this out there. But, it is cool to focus on the Milky Way. I was able to zoom in and see the center! How cool is that?

My little bullshit friday issues don't seem so important now.

obligatory "My god, it's full of stars"

Beat me to it...

And yet that's just a panorama of a single galaxy. There are billions of other galaxies out there. Seeing such pictures always makes me certain that there are thousands of alien civilizations lurking somewhere...

cannot move anything in chrome. said loading 100%. nothing changes.

That are many stars.

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