Astronomy & Space Exploration

Revan said:
Agree about string theory. Despite that is the best explanation we can come at the moment, it is based very much on speculation so it could be entirely wrong.

Quantum mechanics is definitely more counter-intuitive than the special theory of relativity. The double slit experiment is the most strange experiment that has ever happened. And that is only the beginning of quantum mechanics.
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I don't know about "the most strange" experiment ever. I recently read about an Israeli research group that got some very curious readings from an interferometer experiment. The article can be found here if you're interested.
The funny thing here is of course that in Fig. 2(B) they get readings from point A, B and C but not from E which the photons have to pass in order to get to point A and B. I haven't read it in detail but it looked quite interesting.
 
Eriku said:
String theory hasn't gotten itself away from being entirely speculative in all its years of imminent paradigm shift. And Quantum mechanics is tricky and alien, but relativity pertains to things that one would think our intuitions should be somewhat suited for by comparison.
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Revan said:
Agree about string theory. Despite that is the best explanation we can come at the moment, it is based very much on speculation so it could be entirely wrong.
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Holger Bech Nielsen doesn't believe in string theory himself for what it's worth.
 
Will Absolute said:
The discussion on the Earth 'travelling at the speed of light' is based on a bit of a misconception.

For instance, if you were lying by the pool, dozing off the effects of the Christmas turkey, and spotted a ray of light flying past the Earth heading towards the outer solar system, and, having nothing better to do, jumped into your super fast spaceship, and took off in pursuit, quickly accelerating to 99.99% of light speed, and thought to yourself: 'I'm going to stay on this little sucker's tail till it reaches the nearest star', and then calculated the speed at which it was moving away, you'd find, to your chagrin, that it was receding from you at light speed. If you then gave up in disgust, turned the ship around, and headed back to Earth at 99.99% of the speed of light, and took one last grudging measurement of the light ray, it would still be moving away from you at light speed, even though you were now headed in the opposite direction.

The Earth, being a material object (object with mass), cannot travel with respect to any other material object at the speed of light, but it is moving at light speed with respect to the photons which are now striking your retina, and enabling you to read this text.
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Wait...what? Do you mean that if you travel at 99.99% the speed of light, that ray of light would still be getting away from you at the speed of light? How does that work?

Oh, and you know the way when we look at an image from the hubble telescope we could be looking into the past and all that, does that mean if you managed to teleport instantly to somewhere ages away and look at the earth through a similar telescope, you'd be looking at the earth from the past?
 
BD94 said:
Wait...what? Do you mean that if you travel at 99.99% the speed of light, that ray of light would still be getting away from you at the speed of light? How does that work?

Oh, and you know the way when we look at an image from the hubble telescope we could be looking into the past and all that, does that mean if you managed to teleport instantly to somewhere ages away and look at the earth through a similar telescope, you'd be looking at the earth from the past?
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You're not really looking into the past in the conventional/sci-fi way, basically the light takes X amount of years to travel to the Earth so that means the light we are seeing is from as long as it took X to arrive ago. So if the light takes 5 years to reach Earth, what we are seeing is what the star/planet looked like 5 years ago.
 
That'sHernandez said:
You're not really looking into the past in the conventional/sci-fi way, basically the light takes X amount of years to travel to the Earth so that means the light we are seeing is from as long as it took X to arrive ago. So if the light takes 5 years to reach Earth, what we are seeing is what the star/planet looked like 5 years ago.
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Yeah I know that. So that means that if we somehow got, say 1000 light years away, and looked at the earth, we'd see the earth as it was 1000 years ago?
 
BD94 said:
Wait...what? Do you mean that if you travel at 99.99% the speed of light, that ray of light would still be getting away from you at the speed of light? How does that work?

Oh, and you know the way when we look at an image from the hubble telescope we could be looking into the past and all that, does that mean if you managed to teleport instantly to somewhere ages away and look at the earth through a similar telescope, you'd be looking at the earth from the past?
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Time dilation. Your perception of the passage of time would speed up (relative to an observer on earth, say) to the extent that the light beam is once again travelling at light speed relative to you.
 
Wait, so there was something before the big bang? There's more than one universe? Do they know how big a universe is? I can't deal with this.
 
niMic said:
Let's take it with a grain of salt until more people discover the same.
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To be fair, this is a new discovery but the majority of scientist were thinking something similar for a long time. The idea that the Bog Bang was created after 2 universes hit each other or one universe divided on two isn't exactly new.

VeevaVee said:
Wait, so there was something before the big bang? There's more than one universe? Do they know how big a universe is? I can't deal with this.
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Big enough. I don't think that anyone can know it exactly because the expansion of the universe is happening with a faster speed that the speed of light so it is impossible to know how big it is. But likely larger than 13.8b light years.

And yes, a lot of people think that there are many other universes.
 
Revan said:
To be fair, this is a new discovery but the majority of scientist were thinking something similar for a long time. The idea that the Bog Bang was created after 2 universes hit each other or one universe divided on two isn't exactly new.
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It was difficult/annoying enough grasping the concept of what was or wasn't there before the big bang when it was 'nothing'. So where did all these universes come from? I hate this shit and actually feel a bit sick thinking about it. F U space.
 
VeevaVee said:
It was difficult/annoying enough grasping the concept of what was or wasn't there before the big bang when it was 'nothing'. So where did all these universes come from? I hate this shit and actually feel a bit sick thinking about it. F U space.
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Likely there won't ba any significant developlent in our lifetime (or ever) about that. I don't think that at the moment anyone has the smallest idea about that. We can't even look at the first moments of Big Bang (and it is widely thought that we won't ever do) let alone look before it happened. There might be developed some theories (mainly based even more in speculation that the string therory) or so, but I wouldn't get my hopes high that in this century there will be anything more than that.
 
Revan said:
Likely there won't ba any significant developlent in our lifetime (or ever) about that. I don't think that at the moment anyone has the smallest idea about that. We can't even look at the first moments of Big Bang (and it is widely thought that we won't ever do) let alone look before it happened. There might be developed some theories (mainly based even more in speculation that the string therory) or so, but I wouldn't get my hopes high that in this century there will be anything more than that.
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I know, it was more of a rhetorical question because I know we'll most likely never find out. That's what is so frustrating. I don't actually hate this stuff, it's so interesting but so annoying at the same.
 
I like to think of them as just probabilities, it was possible for them to occur so... they did. If it can happen once it can happen billions of times.

Revan said:
Big enough. I don't think that anyone can know it exactly because the expansion of the universe is happening with a faster speed that the speed of light so it is impossible to know how big it is. But likely larger than 13.8b light years.

And yes, a lot of people think that there are many other universes.
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That would just be the radius as well, so actually likely larger than ~27b light years in diameter.
 
Ubik said:
I like to think of them as just probabilities, it was possible for them to occur so... they did. If it can happen once it can happen billions of times.



That would just be the radius as well, so actually likely larger than ~27b light years in diameter.
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Yep. I meant that but I hasn't wrote it well. The expansion is believed that for the last 8b years has started become more faster than it should and for feck knows how many years even faster than the speed of light so I think that we can only imagine how big the universe is. We won't ever be able to see the other part of the universe (cause expansion has surprassed the speed of light) so unless we find an equation about the increase of speed of the expansion of universe, we won't be able ever to know how large it is.
 
Why are we here?
How did we get here?
How were the planets formed?
How did the running of our planet and our functions just happen to pan out perfectly?
Why is the universe here?
How did it form?
How big is it?
What's at the end of it?
Did God put it there?
When will we see other forms of life from other planets?
Will we ever get to know the true answers?

I hate this thread!....Makes me question life and my existence and makes me fearful of death.

Wankers
 
.Rossi said:
Why are we here?
How did we get here?
How were the planets formed?
How did the running of our planet and our functions just happen to pan out perfectly?
Why is the universe here?
How did it form?
How big is it?
What's at the end of it?
Did God put it there? Nah
When will we see other forms of life from other planets?
Will we ever get to know the true answers?

I hate this thread!....Makes me question life and my existence and makes me fearful of death.

Wankers
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Yeah, I'm really interested in all this sort of stuff but it makes me feel all small and existential and shit.
 
BD94 said:
Yeah, I'm really interested in all this sort of stuff but it makes me feel all small and existential and shit.
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I'm not making this up or trying to be funny here. I discovered this thread a month ago....It's been a full month of reflection and thoughts about dying. I'm a catholic and I've always believed in God and always assumed there is another place for us to go. My reasoning being that, you can explain all our physical attributes by science but, how can you explain your emotions, your conscience, your thoughts...That to me doesn't have an explanation.

But when I think about the stuff in this thread, I am now terrified of dying and scared of what happens after. And the thoughts of the universe and what I've seen in this thread has blown my mind.....I've only just turned 25 you bastards! :lol:
 
.Rossi said:
My reasoning being that, you can explain all our physical attributes by science but, how can you explain your emotions, your conscience, your thoughts...That to me doesn't have an explanation.
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errrmm pretty sure that can be explained with science to a point too. I've never understood why people who believe in a God can't believe that a God created science etc. Meh. Not the place for it here.
 
VeevaVee said:
errrmm pretty sure that can be explained with science to a point too. I've never understood why people who believe in a God can't believe that a God created science etc. Meh. Not the place for it here.
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Oh probably can be...But not to me. That's just my beliefs anyways. I tend not to get into "them" sort of conversations. :)
 
.Rossi said:
I'm not making this up or trying to be funny here. I discovered this thread a month ago....It's been a full month of reflection and thoughts about dying. I'm a catholic and I've always believed in God and always assumed there is another place for us to go. My reasoning being that, you can explain all our physical attributes by science but, how can you explain your emotions, your conscience, your thoughts...That to me doesn't have an explanation.

But when I think about the stuff in this thread, I am now terrified of dying and scared of what happens after. And the thoughts of the universe and what I've seen in this thread has blown my mind.....I've only just turned 25 you bastards! :lol:
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I don't think you should be scared of what happens after your death. You're not really around to experience it. The process of dying can be scary though. I'd rather die instantly in some way than drown for example.
It's inherently difficult imagining the nothingness after your dead. I don't think the brain is capable of setting up a scenario where there is absolutely nothing at all because the brain itself won't be there in the first place. If that makes sense.
 
.Rossi said:
I'm not making this up or trying to be funny here. I discovered this thread a month ago....It's been a full month of reflection and thoughts about dying. I'm a catholic and I've always believed in God and always assumed there is another place for us to go. My reasoning being that, you can explain all our physical attributes by science but, how can you explain your emotions, your conscience, your thoughts...That to me doesn't have an explanation.

But when I think about the stuff in this thread, I am now terrified of dying and scared of what happens after. And the thoughts of the universe and what I've seen in this thread has blown my mind.....I've only just turned 25 you bastards! :lol:
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I'm more scientist than believer and the idea of nothingness can be frightening but I'll offer you a few random thoughts on the subject.

We're created (at the atomic level) from long vanished stars. Those atoms get reused and recycled repeatedly into both sentient beings and inanimate objects. When the earth's done with, by being eaten by the sun, we all return to the stars.

On an individual level where we talk about conscience, emotions and thoughts, we pass them on to the people we meet, to the animals we keep, and even to the planet we live on. We really do pay it forward (as well as back) but not just because we're hoping for a reward from God, but because we've got brains, and that's a massive biochemical gift that the stardust gave us, along with life itself.
 
I always think the thing humans will never be able to understand is the concepts of "nothing" and "infinite". Try and get your head round either, it's impossible.

Imagine there was actually nothing outside of our own Universe, pure nothing. I'm not talking about a Vacum like we have in space, but nothing. Something where nothing can exist in.
 
Pexbo said:
I always think the thing humans will never be able to understand is the concepts of "nothing" and "infinite". Try and get your head round either, it's impossible.

Imagine there was actually nothing outside of our own Universe, pure nothing. I'm not talking about a Vacum like we have in space, but nothing. Something where nothing can exist in.
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I find nothing easy because nothing is nothing, it's the absence of something. A good analogy is death, when you die there's nothing, just like there was nothing before you were born. Infinity I find difficult though because humans always want to quantify something, ideally in a linear fashion.
 
That'sHernandez said:
I find nothing easy because nothing is nothing, it's the absence of something. A good analogy is death, when you die there's nothing, just like there was nothing before you were born. Infinity I find difficult though because humans always want to quantify something, ideally in a linear fashion.
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What I mean is actual "nothing". The Universe is mostly a vacuum that "nothing" exists in however the space can be filled with any sort of matter. A gas could fill that vacum and a planet or asteriod can move into that space. That's the "nothing" we know. What we seem to have trouble for the same reason you state above "being able to quantify" is actual nothing. Somewhere beyond the Universe where it's not just a vacuum but a place/time/whatever where nothing exists, that can't just be filled with any sort of matter.
 
Pexbo said:
What I mean is actual "nothing". The Universe is mostly a vacuum that "nothing" exists in however the space can be filled with any sort of matter. A gas could fill that vacum and a planet or asteriod can move into that space. That's the "nothing" we know. What we seem to have trouble for the same reason you state above "being able to quantify" is actual nothing. Somewhere beyond the Universe where it's not just a vacuum but a place/time/whatever where nothing exists, that can't just be filled with any sort of matter.
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But as you say, nothing exists there, so really that nothingness...doesn't really exist either. It's not really a property of itself. I don't really think of it as something the universe is growing into, just that the universe is growing, full stop. It's not growing into anything, and nothing's there to stop it growing.
 
It doesn't really matter anyway lads, the Universe will soon expand too much and implode in on itself. I just hope I'm there to see the fireworks.

Yes I know, this is only 1 theory among many
 
Adzzz said:
It looks insanely good, my god. Finally, the new age of Sagat is upon us - where is your false idol now Gambit?!
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He did it all already 3 years ago, and his version didn't include any red balls flying into his face. Me thinks Seth Mcfarlanes influence was in that bit. To say it borrows from the wonders series is a but of an understatement.
 
Watched Cosmos, wasn't overly impressed with the first episode which is a surprise. In comparison to Wonders it feels very dumbed down. The fact they're attempting such a show on a prime time network is great though.
 
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