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xp needs some poles imo

― mookieproof, Wednesday, August 31, 2016 10:02 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2016-231

ty

hello mate http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Rosetta/Philae_found

http://i.imgur.com/xSBxXJ7.jpg

^^^stealing that

http://i65.tinypic.com/kbvnsx.jpg

http://spacetelescope.org/news/heic1620/

Observable Universe contains ten times more galaxies than previously thought

the universe: no matter how bad you think, it's always worse

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Galaxy_195910.jpg/220px-Galaxy_195910.jpg

My first thought is to ask how does this discovery affect calculations of the total mass of the universe, especially in regards to the amount of dark matter thought necessary to create an oscillating universe?

it likely doesn't very much. the mass distribution of the universe on which those expansion/contraction calculations depend is not found by counting galaxies. it comes from treating those galaxies we can see as probes. how fast they move, etc. tells us how much mass is nearby. so it's not the end of the world if we can't see all the galaxies, at least from the POV of figuring out if the universe is expanding, contracting, etc.

so it's not the end of the world if we can't see all the galaxies

invert that sentence--We can see all the galaxies, and it's the end of the world!--and you have a great bad 1950s pulp story

i think you mean a great good 1950s pulp story

If not a good right-before-the-crackup Silverberg story.

this is a fun story http://nautil.us/issue/42/fakes/the-cosmologists-who-faked-it

Thought that was going to be about Joe Weber.

That was a great read.

Somehow never thought I would never "hear" Aimless use that exact formulation.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I contain multitudes.

HI caek - I know this is not your field, but I don't know any other scientists to ask, and google searches have not been helpful.

Is it possible that the idea that the time dimension is unidirectional is false, and that it is instead a strong force that we might be able to overcome with technological advances? Like say if you were falling from an infinite height toward a centre of gravity, you would perceive that movement was possible only in the single direction "down." But if you were able during that freefall to harness air resistance and glide, moving you in a lateral direction, or if somehow you could manufacture a helicopter and temporarily overcome gravity to move upward, then you would have unlocked the hitherto tyrannical unidirectionality of space movement.

I get that in this scenario you occupy three dimensions while falling (and are also moving along the single time axis) whereas in the real world there's no perceivable evidence that multiple dimensions of time exist, or that the past or future physically exists anywhen, but I'm willing to chalk that up - for the sake of argument - to a handicap of perception.

Am I on the road to a Nobel or should I quit drinking in the daytime?

time is not just another dimension. it's very different to the three dimensions of space.

there are lots of arguments for this (unlike the other dimensions, it gets multiplied by the square root of minus 1 when it crops up in relativity, and other messed up things), but imo the simplest one is: time is special because of the second law of thermodynamics.

that law states that entropy in a closed system must increase with time. traveling in the direction in which time increases is possible because entropy increases that way. but backwards in time entropy decreases, which is verboten. there are ways around this (by spending energy you can decrease entropy), but hopefully it makes the basic point that backwards and forwards in time are not two arbitrary and equally possible bearings in space like north and south.

basically, you can't make an argument that beings "think of time as being just like space" without being very very careful.

the infinite monkey cage special on relativity really helped me with some stuff

im sorry

hey i watched this film on time travel a few times. when you say "energy" needs to work against entropy, would a specialized device, powered by a small plutonium reaction, possibly work?

i have acquired a vehicle that i believe could go fast enough to counteract the physical forces, combined with the device
mentioned above this setup should work

the most famous example of entropy decreasing (in the short term in cosmological terms) is the evolution of life on earth. the energy source there is the sun. if you don't have a star then perhaps a capacitor of some sort.

localized time disruption due to energy from outside sources? idk

yeah doesn't that only work if you consider earth as a closed system?

forgetting the existence of the sun is one of the ways creationists sometimes use the 2nd law to argue that evolution is impossible.

🎶 it's all just a little bit of entropy decreasing (trumpet riff) 🎶

the square root of minus 1

it's just a thing between you and i

https://d2t1xqejof9utc.cloudfront.net/screenshots/pics/a028bf2f275780eacd06484c545e6e17/large.gif

i dont know what that is but i like it

it is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_drive

i was in the uk last week and saw some rare crisps 龜 and thought of you

one of my favourite things is when you have a call scheduled for 9am or whatever and it's getting to 9:05 and you're starting to think "this person isn't going to call"

it's 9:06 now

Update request

This happened to me last week - 16 minutes late - and things got really tense.

they called at 9:09 :-(

then of course there's the 9:00:00 on the dot kind of call, which is like a fresh tray of frozen ice cubes

8:59 and i'm still in my pjs!

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/science/solid-metallic-hydrogen-harvard-physicists.html

i love how petty everybody in this piece is

haha yes, open contempt. love it.

i'm on team anti-science. this is what they publish http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/11/30/science.aah6990. it's a bad journal.

the dog ate my evidence

what are yr August eclipse plans?

going to try to go to totality for the one in 2024 assuming we're all alive, but i don't think i'll make this one

I live in Oregon, where the path of totality passes, and I am psyched that this one is in August instead of January, like the only other one I had a chance to "see" through a cloud deck multiple thousand feet thick. (It was still damned impressive despite the complete lack of visibility.) I am hoping to be backpacking up somewhere high in the Cascades on the big day. Best way to beat the crowds.

DAMN

https://twitter.com/ESO/status/834463153966682113

http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/trappist-1-seven-earth-size-exoplanets-04641.html

now we just need to figure out how to travel near/at/above light speed or build multigenerational colony ships and we're all set

don't worry collaborator in chief musk is on the case

The more immediate excitement would be the prospect of finding some form of life there, right?