♪♫ caek's corner ♪♫

thank you that is exactly what i wanted to know

this was inspired by imagining the molecules moving around in an inert, cellared bottle of wine

(im drinking wine rn)

lol

caek i read the other day that absolute zero is no longer regarded as the point at which atoms cease to move but at which they attain the lowest possible (theoretical) energy state, is this right y/n?

isn't that an intersection

anyways idk re particle motion but absolute zero occurs on the saula rd around mid November,normally when the taxi has gone home and you've lost yr jacket

not sure exactly what your article was talking about NV but...

yeah 'cease to move' is the classical description of what goes on at absolute zero

in quantum mechanics it's not that simple because they're delocalized (i.e. their location is fuzzy via the uncertainty principle)

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/08/06/science/comet-gif-67P/comet-gif-67P-articleLarge.gif

forces are propogated by massless particles. e.g. the electromagnetic force, which is the force that dominates our lives, keeps us warm, prevents us from walking through doors, etc., is propagated by the best known massless particle, the photon.

massless particles travel at exactly the speed of light. therefore forces can only propagate at the speed of light, you are correct.

there is a thought experiment about this involving the sun suddenly disappearing. if this happened then the earth would stay on its orbit for 8 minutes, before suddenly flying off into space, because that's how long light takes to reach us.

the reason all this makes sense is complicated and difficult to explain without getting into special relativity, which is not my strongest subject, and not something i've ever been good at teaching. but perhaps if you're comfortable with the idea that you can't send information at faster than the speed of light, then it would make sense to you that you can't have forces that operate faster than that (or instantaneously) because they could be used to transmit information at faster than the speed of light.

this wikipedia article makes a decent stab at this. of course once you throw in quantum mechanics all hope of understanding this is lost, because that stuff makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

― caek, Saturday, 5 December 2009 22:28 (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fave ilx post, I think

fave ilx thread title, sometimes

it's a good jingle

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1408/comet_on_3_august_2014.jpg

s/t for this thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGPhUr-T6UM

I am disappointed in the appearance of that comet tbqh

were they called the snorkels, that kids cartoon, calypso music intro, the snorkels?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4ALjDSsMd4

man i used to watch the hell out of that show it was not too good

Their Gargamel was The Sand Witch. Great stuff.

Who's your Gargamel, caek?

c++

http://dhavalgada.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/bjarne.png

lol

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BvVvgzYIIAAXwui.jpg:large

https://twitter.com/quark1972/status/501429546101784576/photo/1

wow i hope everyone is okay

would that be as big as the one that finished off the dinosaurs?

about the same size

the real mystery is why they were all standing in the same spot

they was all in Noah's Ark iirc

Noah's arc of descent morelike

http://secondlanguage.blogspot.com/2014/08/academic-virtues.html

i love this post with the fire of one thousand suns

I'm such a terrible citizen, I would never have guessed that landing an unmanned satellite thingy on a comet was...a thing? I mean we landed on the moon. A comet is a challenge?? This is a little disingenuous and I'm watching a news spot about it now.

It took 10 years?? What have scientists been doing all this time?

http://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/avZGG4q_460sa_v1.gif
--caek

"We" didn't land on the moon, the US government did, which has trouble starting a website now.

uh i dont see any mention of the obummer or shrillary in there ur slippin m8

insignificant puppets both

anyhow i thought comets were all flamey; just when ppl are watching, i guess

I sorta admire the dig at "has trouble starting a website now" if you're referring to healthcare.gov's failures to launch during a government shutdown over a year ago.

And I don't know what happened there, but it wasn't me.

http://i.imgur.com/ONTDWjS.png

landing on comets is hard because they are small and move on weird orbits

them being small is a problem for two reasons (1) small target! (2) low gravity which means very little room for error.

like they did as good a job as they could on this one, and it *still* bounced up ~1km

it's a big deal scientifically because planets are made out of comets so we learn about how planetary systems formed, how earth formed, how earth got its atmosphere, etc., etc.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B2P1UPJCMAAVpBX.png

https://twitter.com/roseveleth/status/532538957490561024

lol europe, cool eyewear bro

http://smallpondscience.com/2014/11/12/new-requirement-for-scientists-you-cannot-be-a-sexist-pigdog/

one of the things i find most moving about space exploration is that you literally can't do it on your own. it requires a team.

and then you get dudes like that.

xxp Thanks! That all makes sense. I guess it's more that if you had asked me before yesterday, Have we ever landed anything on a comet, I probably would have been like, Idk, surely we must have by now?

Anyway. Comets!

previously we had smashed like a ton of copper into a comet for the lols, but that was recent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Impact_(spacecraft)

the guy fieri of science xposts

feel like the fact that europe gently landed a spacecraft on a comet, while america fired a lump of metal into a comet and named the mission after a movie is a metaphor for something

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/ITS_Impact.gif🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

first bounce took 2 hours, eh

planets are made out of comets

i need to sit down