The Universe

[st jude]

Sounds like a Sevconian plan to me.

Very tedious.

[Confidemus]

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.

[Boghead ranter]

This is where a common misconception happens. The universe doesn't expand "into" anything. There is no beyond or outside. All existence is within the universe (or universes if you wish to support M-Theory).

I understand why people assume there is something for it to expand into because we look at it like a 3 dimensional puzzle. If you want to build an extension to your house then there must be land there to build on. This is how humans see the world and in a sense what we have evolved to deal with. It just doesn't work like that when you are discussing the edges of the universe.

A better way would be to consider it as the universe stretching. It still has all the component parts it always had (albeit in a different form from it's inception) it's just that those things are now farther apart because the space between them has stretched.

real, real apologies for seeming like someone who can't 'think out of the box', but I am honestly keen to learn.

What's it expanding into then? It really worries me that it's actually pushing against something else and contracting IT. My spatial thinking just keeps telling me that it must be expanding/stretching into something.

If you can answer this in fairly layman (ie Dumbarton educated) terms Ric/Confidemus, that would not only be a challenge to you, it'd be appreciated. And it doesn't have to be tonight, I'm half gassed anyway. Or maybe that is the best time to work on my spatial conception, right enough.

[Addie]

Time for another fact, universe fans!

Every second, the sun converts 600 million tonnes of hydrogen into 597 million tonnes of helium.

Useful to know given we are running out of helium.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/a-ballooning-problem-the-great-helium-shortage-8439108.html

Perhaps one day we might find a way to capture this helium and children's parties will continue to be happy, joyful occasions.

Could we have another fact please Confidimus?

[Vacamion]

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.

Dude, you are on FIRE. Loving your work.

[paranoid android]

This shit seriously gives me the fear. I honestly remember having nightmares about this when I was wee - I just cannae cope with the sheer massiveness of it all.

I was wondering about paradigm shifts, though - years ago, theories that are now totally dismissed, were widely held as being 'true' accounts as to the workings of the universe - if I was to meet Brian Cox, or somebody like that, and they could be bothered speaking to me, my first question would be 'could they foresee a time when the currently held view of the universe could be wrong?' - I mean, these guys really know what they're on about, and they seem genuinely convinced that the current accepted theories are 'true' - as scientists, though, they must surely be open to the possibility that they might come accross even more acceptable theories in the future - they seem so convinced, though, having come so far from ancient/medieval theories.

[Heidthebaw]

Certainly "our" fate will be determined considerably sooner, as we are on course to smash into the Andromeda galaxy in anywhere between 3 and 5 billion years. To suggest this would be of a minor disruption would be to suggest that Neil Lennon may be a minor bit ginger. Essentially we have a few million years to figure out how the f**k to get off this planet, out of this solar system (technically these two have already happened), out of our galaxy, out of our local cluster and finally... to somewhere safe.

Anyone fancy the odds of that happening before we either (a) manage to blow ourselves up, or (b) get taken out by something big and nasty lurking in the outer reaches of space?

Please keep this quiet- Lamont may use this as the latest 'Better Together' scare story

[Hedgecutter]

Is there anything to be said in support of the Men In Black aliens playing marbles universe theory?

[Lisa Cuddy]

Was just on StumbleUpon there and found this. Basically, it's the timeline of Earth and the universe to scale, if you see what I mean. You probably don't, so click on the link and keep clicking on the arrow. Brilliant.

[Confidemus]

Could we have another fact please Confidimus?

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.

Dude, you are on FIRE. Loving your work.

Yes. Yes, I am.

[Confidemus]

real, real apologies for seeming like someone who can't 'think out of the box', but I am honestly keen to learn.

What's it expanding into then? It really worries me that it's actually pushing against something else and contracting IT. My spatial thinking just keeps telling me that it must be expanding/stretching into something.

If you can answer this in fairly layman (ie Dumbarton educated) terms Ric/Confidemus, that would not only be a challenge to you, it'd be appreciated. And it doesn't have to be tonight, I'm half gassed anyway. Or maybe that is the best time to work on my spatial conception, right enough.

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!

[Hedgecutter]

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

My maths skills are slowly leaving me, but does that make Craig Burley ~34 times denser than a neutron star?

[Tamdunk]

I'd imagine the universe to have at least another dimension so lile there is no edge to the earth, there's prob no edge to the universe and you just end up where u started if you keep going in one direction long enough.

Just a hunch rather than any type of researched theory.

[fifergaz]

I was interested in space when I was a kid and even got to see Halley's Comet through a telescope (hoping to live long enough to see it on it's return in 50 years from now but I think a diet of football pies will dash that hope)

It's hard to see a really starry sky these days, too much light pollution from big cities even taking into account the rotten weather.

Anyway here's a picture of the moon I took tonight:

moon.jpg

Quality picture tam.I noticed the moon on way home from work tonight.it was really low in horizon and orangey.just like your picture! Dyou take that thru a telescope?

[Confidemus]

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.”

Edited May 26, 2013 by Confidemus

[RawB93]

Great post ^^^

Really loved that quote to go along with it, thanks for sharing.

[Reynard]

If only Paula Segio was here with his atrophysics based knowledge we might have gone further that cricking our necks looking up at the sky saying thats fucking awesome, I feel like a speck of dust like, you know, in the whole universe.

[Confidemus]

If only Paula Segio was here with his atrophysics based knowledge we might have gone further that cricking our necks looking up at the sky saying thats fucking awesome, I feel like a speck of dust like, you know, in the whole universe.

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

[Confidemus]

Afternoon friggers!!

Whats that? Another fact you say?

Ok then.. How about the pressure at the centre of Jupiter? Think of 100 elephants standing on top of each other with the bottom elephant standing on one foot – on a stiletto heel...

More fun space facts to come, P&Bers!

[Boghead ranter]

Afternoon friggers!!

Whats that? Another fact you say?

Ok then.. How about the pressure at the centre of Jupiter? Think of 100 elephants standing on top of each other with the bottom elephant standing on one foot – on a stiletto heel...

More fun space facts to come, P&Bers!

Sounds like my work's Xmas do.