Better bring 42 towels on this trip…!
(Infinity welcomes careful drivers)
I hate travelling.
I love seeing new places, occasionally; it’s just the going from point A to point B that I can’t stand - and that’s before you even start to throw in all those stupid security procedures that we have today, which haven’t made any of us really much safer but which have proved to be a sheer lethal attraction to every crypto-fascist who ever wanted to put on a uniform and make other people’s lives a bureaucratic misery.
In fact, I don’t like anything that reminds me that it isn’t possible just to close my eyes and be wherever the Hell I want to be the next moment. A kind of ‘Beam me up, Scottie’ device, without the need for space crafts, the company of William Shatner or those bloody awful-looking costumes.
I don’t like travel shows much, which just serve to remind me that I am as good with a suitcase as a dinosaur is on roller skates – and I get very nervous whenever I see a map.
It’s just too easy to imagine myself shrinking like Alice, till I’m no bigger than the smallest microdot, lost in that myriad of oddly coloured lines, not even trying to find my way out of there, till I, somehow, will have reached any of the four sides of the map and fall, kicking and screaming, from the edge of that flat, paper world, falling forever towards whatever doom awaits me.
So, as I said, I’m not much for travelling but I have to admit that the following bit of news is quite something else – with the added benefit that nobody will really expect me to grab some bags and actually try to go out there, ready (or boldly) or not.
Anyway, Google Earth, eat your heart out!
For eight years astronomers at the Sloan Digital Sky Survey have scanned the heavens to discover the nature of the universe. Richard Gray reveals their extraordinary findings For any traveller venturing into unfamiliar territory, a map is an essential aid. Now those exploring the final frontier are to enjoy the same kind of help, with the completion of the largest map of the universe ever produced.
After more than eight years of relentlessly scanning the heavens and recording every chink of visible light, astronomers have finally finished the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, producing a three-dimensional colour map that covers a quarter of the night sky. It has determined the exact position and classification of more than 200 million celestial bodies, including a million galaxies and 100,000 quasars.
If you enjoyed this post, subscribe today to get free updates by email or RSS.
