♪♫ caek's corner ♪♫

I stand with mookie

jwst about to do it

https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive
https://www.nasa.gov/webbfirstimages

me after a few pints

https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01GFRYYRTCTMX197BY86MBFCR9.png

that's where Tar Trek happens

damn whut

https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/053/01GFRYSFM89AFADVAA0W625BSB?news=true

caek, would you be trying to submit propopsals for using jwst if you were still doing astronomy research, or would that not be especially relevant to the research you did/too much of a hassle/unlikely to succeed given jwst's priorites/etc.?

you're right that generally you use ground telescopes if possible, because getting time on them is less competitive. ground data was usually fine for my research area. i only used archival hubble data a couple of times, and never actually applied for new observations.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FgQuVotWQAQ_biQ?format=jpg&name=medium

I get that space is fucking huuuge but what I find most startling about this scaling here is not how big "the pillars of creation" is, it's how big the oort cloud is that I find most mind boggling. Like how can a humble medium sized star exert such an enormous field of gravitational influence? Not really a question but wtf!

Because space is so so empty I guess, there are no other stars near the Oort cloud objects so the sun wins by default.

Right. Gravity is an incredibly weak force. It falls with distance squared so it’s tiny at the distance of the Oort Cloud. But it’s the only game in town.

was reading abou t this in a Carl Sagan book

https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2010/11/15/a-focal-mission-into-the-oort-cloud/

an incredibly weak force

stop

also someone tell me where proxima centauri's oort cloud is on that graph

gravity gets so much respect because it was the first 'invisible' force that was detected and quantified and also because we instinctively respect massive objects like stars and planets more than subatomic particles

"also someone tell me where proxima centauri's oort cloud is on that graph"

Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star with a mass about 12.5% of the Sun's mass

I'd guess not very far at all, but also simultaneously much further than you'd expect!

awesome

i looked this up. apparently we have never observed an oort cloud around another star system, but based on what we know about how the one around the sun formed we would expect many/most stars to have one. given ours gets half way to proxima centauri it's not out of the question they overlap if PC does have one.

oort fite!

Andoortagain

thoughts on this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropic_gravity

Never heard of it. Looks clever in the best and worst ways.

write a better lede

https://www.science.org/content/article/near-disaster-federal-nuclear-weapons-laboratory-takes-hidden-toll-america-s-arsenal

Technicians at the government's Los Alamos National Laboratory settled on what seemed like a surefire way to win praise from their bosses in August 2011: In a hi-tech testing and manufacturing building pivotal to sustaining America's nuclear arsenal, they gathered eight rods painstakingly crafted out of plutonium, and positioned them side-by-side on a table to photograph how nice they looked.

it can't be done

Homer Simpson on the job

pics or it didn't happen

There are pics in the article

https://frinkiac.com/video/S05E03/99U3CK0l_3KajDa3RTOkLp_iB00=.gif

terrifying story, astonishing that intelliegent and qualified people can get so lax around that stuff. not all bad news though, "undermining the nation's ability to fabricate the cores of new nuclear weapons" oh no.

maybe sterilize the galaxy

Now at 140% of my usual brightness! #Betelgeuse pic.twitter.com/pi9BPLijtj

— Betelgeuse Status (@betelbot) April 24, 2023

yesss

Now at 156% of my usual brightness! #Betelgeuse pic.twitter.com/rs527QaW1m

— Betelgeuse Status (@betelbot) April 27, 2023

is this just observing the increased brightness from what has already occurred at some point in the middle ages? it's all way too too big.

yeah if it went supernova it happend ~500 years ago, done deal

It'll probably go off while it's hidden by the sun, ruining any chance of seeing the show.

what if it turns us all into piles of salt

nice to think about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kya_LXa_y1E

i remember you saying exactly this about 15 years ago lol

oh wait it's in this thread lol. 13 years

there is an AMSR quality to listening to true believer physicists talking bout string theory. You know u don't need to engage with the science because u know it's ludicrous nonsense, so it does have a relaxing quality for me during bouts of insomnia!

the dolorous priests of string theory!

perhaps not a very scientifically nuanced take - but it sure does feel like they were just making this shit up as they went along!

they definitely had some gaps to fill with uh portentous speculation

hawking started this.

― caek, Thursday, March 4, 2010 10:03 AM (thirteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

lmao

hawking started this. bitcoin fixes this.

if you have time for a 1000 pager then this is canon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb

string theory is when you just want more dimensions and i do

wasn't it something like the existence of 26 dimensions they theorised? lol is that enough for you!

wait till you hear about hilbert spaces

I'd have theorised about 36 dimensions because it's a beautiful number

the right idea on >= 4 dimensions

I'm laughing so hard at this slide a friend sent me from one of Geoff Hinton's courses;

"To deal with hyper-planes in a 14-dimensional space, visualize a 3-D space and say 'fourteen' to yourself very loudly. Everyone does it." pic.twitter.com/nTakZArbsD

— Robbie Barrat (@videodrome) June 10, 2018