Confidemus

f**k all wrong with neck cricking and noting awesomeness, tbf.

Morning chums. Seems like a good time for one of my all time favourite quotes. Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot: The photo above was taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 as it sailed away from Earth, more than 4 billion miles in the distance. Having completed its primary mission, Voyager at that time was on its way out of the Solar System, on a trajectory of approximately 32 degrees above the plane of the Solar System. Ground Control issued a command that directed the distant space craft to turn around and, looking back, take photos of each of the planets it had visited. From Voyager's vast distance, the Earth was captured as a infinitesimal point of light (marked by the arrow in the image above), actually smaller than a single pixel of the photo. The image was taken with a narrow angle camera lens, with the Sun quite close to the field of view. Quite by accident, the Earth was captured in one of the scattered light rays caused by taking the image at an angle so close to the Sun. Dr. Sagan was quite moved by this image of our tiny world. Here is an enlargement of the area around our Pale Blue Dot and an excerpt from the late Dr. Sagan's talk: “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

It's best not to think about it in terms of spatial understanding as we know it. Space isn't "made" of anything and doesn't need any kind of higher space to "exist" in. If it did, what would be outside that space? And the space that occupies, and so on and so on until your heid explodes! The easy answer is, we don't know. Most probably nothing, as space isn't "material" in the way you or I know. Hope that helped!

Since it's you Adders! A neutron star is so dense that one teaspoon of it would have 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Because of this density, it produces amazing gravitational forces, so much so that an object dropped on the surface of a neutron star from a height of one metre would take one microsecond (a millionth of a second) to land on the surface and would fall at 2,000 km per second, or 7.2 million km per hour. Yes. Yes, I am.

Another universe fact, you say? Oh go on then... Matter in space, i.e. planets, suns, asteroids, meteors etc is so sparsely scattered throughout space that it is comparable to a building 20 km across, 20 km long and 20 km high with a single grain of rice inside it. Another? Oh, alright. The main booster rocket on the space shuttle, when firing at full capacity, consumed more oxygen per second than every person on Earth breathing in at once.

Time for another fact, universe fans! Every second, the sun converts 600 million tonnes of hydrogen into 597 million tonnes of helium.

But what's going to happen first, the galaxy collision, or the sun dying and becoming a red giant and crossing our planetary orbit and killing us all?

Given that entropy is concerned with the process of a state of order becoming a state of disorder, it seems reasonable to suggest that heat death will be the universe's eventual fate. What's amazing if you read into that is that some stars will eventually turn into black dwarves. There are no black dwarves yet, because the universe isn't old enough! Man, I love this shit! ETA: And by black dwarves I don't mean Gary Coleman.

Another little fact about light speed, if we're ever going to try and explore our stellar neighbours, without the use of curving or bending space time. It's estimated that, in order to get an object the size of a bowling ball up to 99% the speed of light, it would take all the energy consumed on Earth in a week.

Extraordinary, is she not?

Kinda hard to pinpoint exactly where a mythical beardy flying man in the clouds would live, tbh. How about some Universe extremities facts, P&B? Pulsars for example. namely PSR_J1748-2446ad. Might have a shitey name, but it's the fastest spinning Pulsar we know about, rotating 716 times a second, has a mass almost twice that of the sun and is only around 16 km across... At it's equator, it's spinning at around 70,000 km a second. Hot Jupiters. Basically, planets the size, or mass of Jupiter that are far closer in orbit to their parent stars. Because of the gravitational forces here, wind speeds have been observed at between 6 and 7 THOUSAND mph! Gamma Ray Bursts are flashes of radiation usually associated with stars going super or hypernova. So powerful, they release more energy in a few seconds than our sun will in it's entire 10 billion year lifespan... Just getting warmed up, P&Bers, I've plenty more to bore you with!

Who knows what's there now? When you look into the sky you're always looking at history. Even when you look at the sun, you're seeing it as it was 8 minutes ago, so when you look at the night sky, there's a good chance a few of them have went supernova, but the light from that event just hasn't reached us yet. The scale of it totally baffles me. Take lightspeed for example. 186,000 miles a second. To put that into context, light could travel round the Earth 7 times in one second. Now just think for a second how fucking fast that is. Then think on the fact that, going at that speed, it would take over FOUR YEARS to get to the nearest star to our sun. Baffling. About the more stars in our galaxy than grain of sands on Earth, that's true. There's also more GALAXIES in the observable universe than there are grains of sand on Earth. Since this post has been rather serious, here's a pleasing picture of Jessica Jane Clement:

It's the biggest thing in the, well, universe, so let's fucking discuss it. I'm an utter space geek and I'm not ashamed to admit it. What things about the cosmos do you particularly dig, fellow forummers? I love the sheer mind blowing scale of it. I love it's extremities, such as Gamma ray bursts, supernovae, Pulsars, Neutron stars, hot Jupiters, the lot. Share your love of space, chums.

Never heard of the man.

^^^ Utterly verbally battered by TC, imo. Embarrassing really.

You're too kind, good sir. And the least I can do is return the favour.

"I do not want to talk much about this because I still have a contract. At the moment I am Celtic player.” Nothing like a bit of commitment eh, Victor? To be fair, he has a point about Borussia Dortmund coming from nowhere: Honours Domestic German Championship Winners (: 1955–56, 1956–57, 1962–63, 1994–95, 1995–96, 2001–02, 2010–11, 2011–12 Runners-up (5): 1948–49, 1960–61, 1965–66, 1991–92, 2012–13DFB-Pokal Winners (3): 1964–65, 1988–89, 2011–12 Runners-up (2): 1962–63, 2007–08DFB-Supercup/DFL-Supercup Winners (4): 1989, 1995, 1996, 2008 Runners-up (2): 2011, 2012DFB-Ligapokal Runners-up (1): 2003Oberliga West Winners (6): 1947–48, 1948–49, 1949–50, 1952–53, 1955–56, 1956–57 European [edit]UEFA Champions League Winners (1): 1996–97UEFA Cup Winners' Cup Winners (1): 1965–66UEFA Cup Runners-up (2): 1992–93, 2001–02UEFA Super Cup Runners-up (1): 1997 Worldwide [edit]Intercontinental Cup Winners (1): 1997 Oh, wait..

And I green dotted you because I am thoroughly enjoying the crayfish salad I am having for lunch.

I should clarify that I green dotted Patrick Bateman and red dotted you, simply because I could.

That just illustrates that players know far far more than writers.

“Would Everton be a step up? There’s no Champions League and I think Lenny wants to go further or as far as last year. “Celtic are a big club, I know we’re a big club in a small goldfish bowl. I just hope he doesn’t go. “Would he find it difficult to walk away? I think he would as he does enjoy it. Everton are not as big as Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham. “Would he want to pursue these clubs or would he rather be at the top, winning the championship with Celtic?” Is he seriously suggesting Lennon should hold out for one of the English big 4? f**k off Grandad. What a doddering old fuckstick McGrain really is.

Stop getting Bond wrong!

I have limited knowledge of Edinburgh. My Uncle is from Cramond, that's about it. Who are the junior teams local to Gorgie and Leith? Perhaps you can scrap over that as well?

For a double album to have absolutely no filler at all is incredible. I'm still discovering it, as I've only listened to it about 5 times straight through so far, but frig me what an album. With this and Frightened Rabbit, what a start to the musical year! And they're Killie lads an all...!! Love it.