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briunj04

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A lot of people find our own insignificance in the grand scheme of things in the universe pretty frightening, but I find it pretty comforting actually. No matter how badly I or the world screws things up, in the end it doesn't really affect anything. We may kill ourselves off, destroy Antarctica, and end up punching baby seals in the face, but the universe will just proceed no matter what we do. The only thing I find kind of disappointing is the fact that the other life out there in the universe (yes, because I swear, other life in the universe better exist or I'm gonna be majorly depressed (-_-)) may never hear about the icons from our world. Mario may be one of the most recognizable characters on Earth, but no one else out there will ever know about his legacy. It's a silly thing to worry about, but I do anyways.
 

Fbuh

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Galliam said:
The largest known star, if placed in our solar system would stretch past Saturn. Saturn almost doubles the distance from the sun to Jupiter. :0

This is my current favorite astronomical fact.
That's a big damn ball of gas. But then again, so's my wife! Cha ching!

Ahem


http://www.tealdragon.net/humor/facts/facts.htm

There are too many to post
 

cookyy2k

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Aug 14, 2009
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briunj04 said:
No matter how badly I or the world screws things up, in the end it doesn't really affect anything.
Unfortunately due to the 2nd law of thermodynamics everything you do such as breathing, converting food to energy, using a comuper or fridge is raising the entropy. Once entropy reaches it's maximum (and there is one) stars can no longer "burn" and life cannot exist as no energy can be converted from one form to the other, so your very existance is killing the universe :p
 

aww yea

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cookyy2k said:
aww yea said:
Due to einsteins smarts n stuff we can actually travel a lot farther in the universe than it seems (time dilation and lenght contraction) but when we get back to earth MILLIONS OF YEARS will have passed, and everyone you know would be dead n stuff.

But yea you could totally reach other galaxies in a near lightspeed craft in a lifetime despite them being lightyears away from us, just make sure you dont have anyone you know or love first.
Only problem is as you get faster the force required to accelerate you gets a lot higher very quickly, We cannot produce the forces needed to get near light speed on anything much bigger than a few atoms.
Very difficult is a lot better than entirely impossible
 

Valate_v1legacy

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Now I want to see the density scale so we know which of those will collapse into neutron stars and possibly 'black holes'.
 

John the Gamer

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worldruler8 said:
I'm going to make you guys hate me, by showing a video of a game that failed miserably at doing what is in the said video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8dvMDFOFnA
Yeah, but in this vid it was still awesome and epic and such, at least more so than now....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8dvMDFOFnA

They so need to upload this version with the source code; a competent group of community members would be able to turn that into a decent game in a month. Or a day. Something like that.

Seriously. Spore sucks because of missed potential. And a bunch of EA/Maxis employees dicking around all day screwing it up.
 

cookyy2k

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Aug 14, 2009
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aww yea said:
cookyy2k said:
aww yea said:
Due to einsteins smarts n stuff we can actually travel a lot farther in the universe than it seems (time dilation and lenght contraction) but when we get back to earth MILLIONS OF YEARS will have passed, and everyone you know would be dead n stuff.

But yea you could totally reach other galaxies in a near lightspeed craft in a lifetime despite them being lightyears away from us, just make sure you dont have anyone you know or love first.
Only problem is as you get faster the force required to accelerate you gets a lot higher very quickly, We cannot produce the forces needed to get near light speed on anything much bigger than a few atoms.
Very difficult is a lot better than entirely impossible
oh agreed but our fastest achieved so far is 5.2kms[sup]-1[/sup], this is peanuts compared to 300,000kms[sup]-1[/sup] speed of light in a vacuum.

Valate said:
Now I want to see the density scale so we know which of those will collapse into neutron stars and possibly 'black holes'.
This is called the Chandrasekhar limit, Anything above this will end as a neutron star or blackhole, anything below will be a white dwarf before it fizzles out unceromoniously. It currently stands at 1.4 solar masses.
 

aww yea

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cookyy2k said:
aww yea said:
cookyy2k said:
aww yea said:
Due to einsteins smarts n stuff we can actually travel a lot farther in the universe than it seems (time dilation and lenght contraction) but when we get back to earth MILLIONS OF YEARS will have passed, and everyone you know would be dead n stuff.

But yea you could totally reach other galaxies in a near lightspeed craft in a lifetime despite them being lightyears away from us, just make sure you dont have anyone you know or love first.
Only problem is as you get faster the force required to accelerate you gets a lot higher very quickly, We cannot produce the forces needed to get near light speed on anything much bigger than a few atoms.
Very difficult is a lot better than entirely impossible
oh agreed but our fastest achieved so far is 5.2kms[sup]-1[/sup], this is peanuts compared to 300,000kms[sup]-1[/sup] speed of light in a vacuum.
hahahah oh..... thats really depressing. I wish you didn't remind me how backward we still are. One day. one day...
 

John the Gamer

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cookyy2k said:
(snip)We cannot produce the forces needed to get near light speed on anything much bigger than a few atoms. (snip)
Actually, I saw a documentary once that stated that we are capable of closing on the speed of light, but the closer we go, the slower time moves to compensate, it showed that time travel would be possible by building a train around the world, which would speed up to near lightspeed, and run for 10 years or so. By the time it stops only a week or so would have passed for the people inside, even though they were right there all the time.

The same idea applied to black holes; by using a spaceship to circle around the hole in a stable orbit for long enough, time would slow down and the crew would move to the future.

Sadly I can't remember the name, but I think it was on National Geographic.

I wouldn't want to be in the country the train passes through when something goes wrong and it crashes though, an object crashing into the ground at near-lightspeed would blow up the entire continent, or worse I guess.
 

FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
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The title made me think of this, oddly enough...


We want...information.
 

Brandon237

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Mar 10, 2010
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Ooh, I love astronomy. A bit of a pet-love...

I am mildly obsessive with Jupiter... it creates more energy than it receives from the sun in heat alone. It's magnetic and electrical fields are so powerful that if you were to live on one of its inner moons you would get radiation poisoning. It's inner Galilean moon, Io, is the most volcanically active body in the solar system thanks to the tidal forces exerted on it by Jupiter and the other three Galilean moons: Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. It is also so massive that the point of orbital rotation between it and the sun is outside of the sun.[footnote]A smaller body does not orbit around a larger body, they both orbit around a point of gravitational equilibrium[/footnote] Finally, Jupiter weighs more than the rest of the major planets in our solar system put together.
 

cookyy2k

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Aug 14, 2009
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John the Gamer said:
cookyy2k said:
(snip)We cannot produce the forces needed to get near light speed on anything much bigger than a few atoms. (snip)
Actually, I saw a documentary once that stated that we are capable of closing on the speed of light, but the closer we go, the slower time moves to compensate, it showed that time travel would be possible by building a train around the world, which would speed up to near lightspeed, and run for 10 years or so. By the time it stops only a week or so would have passed for the people inside, even though they were right there all the time.

The same idea applied to black holes; by using a spaceship to circle around the hole in a stable orbit for long enough, time would slow down and the crew would move to the future.

Sadly I can't remember the name, but I think it was on National Geographic.

I wouldn't want to be in the country the train passes through when something goes wrong and it crashes though, an object crashing into the ground at near-lightspeed would blow up the entire continent, or worse I guess.
The closer to the speed of light we go the slower your clock would move to a stationay observer, from your point of view time remains the same and stationary clocks move faster.

The main problem with speed of light travel is as I said as speed increases you need a greater force to accelerate you, and the real kicker is acceleration and velocity are nolonger in the exact same direction. you apply an accceleration that then produces a velocity in a different direction.

you see F=dp/dt (F is force, p is momentum, t is time) this is simply Newton's second law.

This equation is invarient. it does not change in different frames.

which is more commonly stated as F=m(dv/dt) (m is mass, v is velocity)

However this only exists in classical mechanics, in relativistic mechanics you need to introduce gamma (calling it g here). giving:

F=m(d(gv)/dt)

which expands to

F=m(v*(dg/dt)+g(dv/dt))

Now g raises very rapidly as you get close to the speed of light, this means the closer you go to this speed the faster and faster g raises which means you need much greater forec to produce any acceleration.

At the speed of light g is infinate meaning that to get anything with mass to the speed of light an infinate accelerating force is required.
 

Church256

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Jul 24, 2008
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John the Gamer said:
cookyy2k said:
(snip)We cannot produce the forces needed to get near light speed on anything much bigger than a few atoms. (snip)
Actually, I saw a documentary once that stated that we are capable of closing on the speed of light, but the closer we go, the slower time moves to compensate, it showed that time travel would be possible by building a train around the world, which would speed up to near lightspeed, and run for 10 years or so. By the time it stops only a week or so would have passed for the people inside, even though they were right there all the time.

The same idea applied to black holes; by using a spaceship to circle around the hole in a stable orbit for long enough, time would slow down and the crew would move to the future.

Sadly I can't remember the name, but I think it was on National Geographic.

I wouldn't want to be in the country the train passes through when something goes wrong and it crashes though, an object crashing into the ground and near-lightspeed would blow up the entire continent, or worse I guess.
That was Stephen Hawkings Into The Universe. And he said the train was impossible to make.

However he said that if we find alien life anywhere then the universe could be full of it.