Not anymore. A new map of the Universe has been released based on the results of the Sloan Survey, and it shows where we are in the Universe: right at the bottom. As discussed in The New York Times, “this lordly view of the largest possible scale, in which we can see God’s own brush strokes, might be the most fundamental and revealing map of the universe.” This new map has been produced by Dr. J. Richard Gott, graduate student Mario Juric and others. It uses a “compressed” representation of space like the famed View of the World From Ninth Avenue by Saul Steinberg linked to earlier. Each “strip” in the map (which can conveniently be printed out on your local printer for easy reassembly!) represents a regin in space ten times farther away than the “strip” below it. In this sense, the new map is sort of like an “inches and feet” measurement chart tacked on the wall used to record a child’s growth. In this case, though, what’s being measured is our very imagination, on a scale that reaches upward 45 billion light years and ends at the ceiling of our room.
At a distance of about 10 billion light-years (3,000 megaparsecs on the map) is the point where astronomers say a mysterious “dark energy” began to speed up the expansion of the universe. Before then, cosmic gravity was slowing the expansion. The turnaround occurred about five billion years ago, according to recent measurements, but distances in the map have been adjusted so that things are “now,” rather than where they were when they emitted the light we now see.
Accordingly, those Big Bang embers are now some 45 billion years out. Beyond is whatever you like to think: Platonic forms, God’s breath, elephants perched on turtles. Dr. Gott intends to produce a version of their map 22 feet wide by 167 feet tall that could be projected on the side of building. Says Gott, “We haven’t gotten the movie of the giant version up on the digital wall yet, but we are working on it!”
In the meantime, I’ve got a new Map of the Universe to put up with two very important features: it fits on my office wall, and it tells me where I am, something I’ve always wanted to know.