{"id":45442,"date":"2024-02-20T17:29:44","date_gmt":"2024-02-20T09:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/new-app-always-points-to-the-supermassive-black-hole-at-the-center-of-our-galaxy\/"},"modified":"2024-02-20T17:29:44","modified_gmt":"2024-02-20T09:29:44","slug":"new-app-always-points-to-the-supermassive-black-hole-at-the-center-of-our-galaxy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/new-app-always-points-to-the-supermassive-black-hole-at-the-center-of-our-galaxy\/","title":{"rendered":"New app always points to the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Thursday, designer Matt Webb unveiled a new iPhone app called Galactic Compass, which always points to the center of the Milky Way galaxy\u2014no matter where Earth is positioned on our journey through the stars. The app is free and available now on the App Store.<\/p>\n<p style=\"\">While using Galactic Compass, you set your iPhone on a level surface, and a big green arrow on the screen points the way to the Galactic Center, which is the rotational core of the spiral galaxy all of us live in. In that center is a supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A*, a celestial body from which no matter or light can escape. (So, in a way, the app is telling us what we should avoid.)<\/p>\n<p><iframe allow=\"autoplay; attribution-reporting 'src' https:\/\/cm.teads.tv\" scrolling=\"no\" title=\"native\" id=\"teads-native-iframe\" sandbox=\"allow-same-origin allow-scripts\" style=\"margin: 0px; padding: 0px; width: 100% !important; height: 385px; border: none; overflow: hidden; display: block; float: none;\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But truthfully, the location of the galactic core at any given time isn\u2019t exactly useful, practical knowledge\u2014at least for people who aren\u2019t James Tiberius Kirk in <em>Star Trek V<\/em>. But it may inspire a sense of awe about our place in the cosmos.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"ars-img-shortcode id-2004341 align-center\">\n<p>                <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/galactic_compass_in_action.jpg\" class=\"attachment-full size-full\" alt=\"Screenshots of Galactic Compass in action, captured by Ars Technica in a secret location.\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/galactic_compass_in_action.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/galactic_compass_in_action-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/galactic_compass_in_action-640x360.jpg 640w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/galactic_compass_in_action-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/galactic_compass_in_action-384x216.jpg 384w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/galactic_compass_in_action-1152x648.jpg 1152w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/galactic_compass_in_action-980x551.jpg 980w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"><\/p>\n<p>                Screenshots of Galactic Compass in action, captured by Ars Technica in a secret location.<\/p>\n<p>                    Credit:<br \/>\n                                          Benj Edwards \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>\u201cIt is astoundingly grounding to always have a feeling of the direction of the center of the galaxy,\u201d Webb told Ars Technica. \u201cYour perspective flips. To begin with, it feels arbitrary. The middle of the Milky Way seems to fly all over the sky, as the Earth turns and moves in its orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Webb\u2019s journey to creating Galactic Compass began a decade ago as an offshoot of his love for casual astronomy. \u201cAbout 10 years ago, I taught myself how to point to the center of the galaxy,\u201d Webb said. \u201cI lived in an apartment where I had a great view of the stars, so I was using augmented reality apps to identify them, and I gradually learned my way around the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While Webb initially used an astronomy app to help locate the Galactic Center, he eventually taught himself how to always find it. He described visualizing himself on the surface of the Earth as it spins and tilts, understanding the ecliptic as a line across the sky and recognizing the center of the galaxy as an invisible point moving predictably through the constellation Sagittarius, which lies on the ecliptic line. By visualizing Earth\u2019s orbit over the year and determining his orientation in space, he was able to point in the right direction, refining his ability through daily practice and comparison with an augmented reality app.<\/p>\n<p>,<\/p>\n<h2>With a little help from AI<\/h2>\n<figure class=\"ars-img-shortcode id-2004381 align-center\">\n<p>                <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1414\" height=\"1060\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/galaxy_1.jpg\" class=\"attachment-full size-full\" alt=\"Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is thought to look similar to Andromeda (seen here) if you could see it from a distance. But since we're inside the galaxy, all we can see is the edge of the galactic plane.\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/galaxy_1.jpg 1414w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/galaxy_1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/galaxy_1-640x480.jpg 640w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/galaxy_1-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.arstechnica.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/galaxy_1-980x735.jpg 980w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1414px) 100vw, 1414px\"><\/p>\n<p>                Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is thought to look similar to Andromeda (seen here) if you could see it from a distance. But since we\u2019re inside the galaxy, all we can see is the edge of the galactic plane.<\/p>\n<p>                    Credit:<br \/>\n                                          Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>In 2021, Webb imagined turning his ability into an app that would help take everyone on the same journey, showing a compass that points toward the galactic center instead of Earth\u2019s magnetic north. \u201cBut I can\u2019t write apps,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m a decent enough engineer, and an amateur designer, but I\u2019ve never figured out native apps.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s where ChatGPT comes in, transforming Webb\u2019s vision into reality. With the AI assistant as his coding partner, Webb progressed step by step, crafting a simple app interface and integrating complex calculations for locating the galactic center (which involves calculating the center\u2019s azimuth and altitude in relation to the user\u2019s location).<\/p>\n<p>Still, coding with ChatGPT has its limitations. \u201cChatGPT is super smart, but it\u2019s not embodied like a human, so it falls down on doing the 3D calculations,\u201d he says. \u201cI had to learn a lot about quaternions, which are a technique for combining 3D rotations, and even then, it\u2019s not perfect. The app needs to be held flat to work simply because my math breaks down when the phone is upright! I\u2019ll fix this in future versions,\u201d Webb said.<\/p>\n<p>Webb is no stranger to ChatGPT-powered creations that are more fun than practical. Last month, he launched a Kickstarter for an AI-rhyming poetry clock called the Poem\/1. With his design studio, Acts Not Facts, Webb says he uses \u201cwhimsy and play to discover the possibilities in new technology.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Whimsical or not, Webb insists that Galactic Compass can help us ponder our place in the vast universe, and he\u2019s proud that it recently peaked at #87 in the Travel chart for the US App Store. In this case, though, it\u2019s spaceship Earth that is traveling the galaxy while every living human comes along for the ride.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce you can follow it, you start to see the galactic center as the true fixed point, and we\u2019re the ones whizzing and spinning. There it remains, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, Sagittarius A*, steady as a rock, eternal. We go about our days; it\u2019s always there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Thursday, designer Matt Webb unveiled a new iPhone app called Galactic Compass, which always points to the center of the Milky Way galaxy\u2014no matter where Earth is positioned on our journey through the stars. The app is free and available now on the App Store. While using Galactic Compass, you set your iPhone on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[293,1661,4581,9698,9734,9735,5295,9736],"class_list":["post-45442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-ai","tag-astronomy","tag-chatgpt","tag-chatgtp","tag-galactic-center","tag-galactic-compass","tag-machine-learning","tag-matt-webb"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45442"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}