♪♫ caek's corner ♪♫

http://i49.tinypic.com/2ez2rs6.jpg

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.

how many of the stars i see are actually galaxies

― crazy farting throwback jersey (gbx), Saturday, December 5, 2009 10:22 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

not many. with the naked eye, in a dark place, you can see andromeda (m31):

http://www.tcd.ie/Physics/Schools/what/galaxies/m31_ware_big.jpg

and m33:

http://www.astrogb.com/images/galleria/M33.jpg

in the southern hemisphere you can see the small and large magellanic clouds, which are galaxies too.

however, there are a lot of galaxies. this is the hubble ultra deep field, which is not very pretty, but may give you an idea for how many;

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2004-07-a-large_web.jpg

pretty much everything you see there (except the two twinkling things, which are stars, is a galaxy. there are about 10,000 in that image. that images is 1 ten millionth of the total area of the sky. and the hubble is only seeing a tiny fraction of them.

http://i49.tinypic.com/2ez2rs6.jpg

No : (. Law 4: "if thermal undershorts are worn, they are of the same main colour as the shorts"

dear caek,

what is a cool video about angular momentum?

great question. i would have to say:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r__nGqGpTD8

I'd agree with you, xp, but Keith Hackett says: "Yes. Let the substitution go ahead because there's also nothing in the laws to prevent playing in furry trousers – and there's no reason for you to intervene because the trousers are clearly not dangerous to either the player or his opponents. You should monitor the situation though in case problems do occur – at which point you'd have the authority to have him removed, even if the side have used all their substitutes."

So I asked Mrs K to arbitrate and she said: "Yes, for the humour value."

xxxxpost

The abyss gazes also...

These pictures - they are amazing.

xxp, some people are pragmatists or intentionalists, myself i am a textualist.

dear caek, what is a pretty thought about people and stars and shit?

For many years I put up a Day of the Dead altar every November 1 in my Mexico City apartment. I did this in collaboration with the woman who used to take care of it and me; Señora Jacinta Cruz Ilescas, a Zapotec woman from a village in highland Oaxaca where traditional dress has long disappeared and only Spanish is now spoken. In a fever of creative ambition, we would find new ways each year to suspend cloth backdrops on a bare wall. We would pin paper cutouts to the cloth; wrap and stack shoeboxes to create small free-standing altars on the larger one; surround portraits of the departed with fruits and the fruit with flowers and small plates of the favorite traditional foods of the deceased. Then we would fit a dozen prayer candles among the dense display of offerings and try to make the whole thing fireproof.

Finally, after we had admired the result and pointed out the current altar's virtues with regard to the previous year's, Señora Jacinta would invariably say, "Ah, señora, but if we were in my pueblo, we would be able to uproot a vine chock-full of jicamas, and make an arch for the altar with it. That way it would be right." Years ago, I read that the Maya people of southern Mexico also make a ceremonial arch from jicama vines, and they still remember why. The radish-like jicamas, which hang down from the vines, and have brown skins but are white on the inside, represent the stars of the Milky Way.

Another cool food-space connection: galaktoboureko! but that's probably just because it's Greek.

i think it is totally dishonest to suggest that what astronomers do is important in the true sense of the word.

― caek, Saturday, December 5, 2009 9:53 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i think this about a lot of intellectual careers (incl. my own, if i ever manage to have a career), but as long as you're honest about it, it's ok to do something just because it's really interesting and somebody's willing to pay for it.

yeah, i agree. i've done my phd during a weird time, and i think it's worse than usual at the moment. funding situations occasionally become so desperate (e.g. now) that you see people convincing themselves that what they do is v. important so that they can convince other people. i think this is disastrously counter-productive, both for the long term attitude of the public toward science (i genuinely worry about what's going to happen when the science results start coming out of the LHC and the electorate are going to be like 'are you fucking kidding me?') and for our internal intellectual health (as big bad betrand russell said, "One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.")

Another cool food-space connection: galaktoboureko! but that's probably just because it's Greek.

galak = milk, hence the milky way is a galaxy. i was not aware of those cakes though. they look good!

awesome thread!

w/r/t: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r__nGqGpTD8

do you, caek, condone the practice of dress shirts tucked into shorts?

I do not condone the practice of adult men wearing short trousers at all, but that is next level. I condemn it!

I do not condone the practice of adult men wearing short trousers at all

says the referee

dear caek, what was a cool astronomy picture you saw today?

hi caek, great question. the answer is

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f325/caek/clip_image002.jpg

A+

caek,

schrodinger's cat, alive/dead?

whenever i think about that i am reminded of this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpKqMC2YfwI

seriously though

1) i have no idea. i have had to teach QM, and it is seriously troubling shit that i try not to think about too much.

2) all these guys otm: http://phys.wordpress.com/2006/06/09/quantum-mechanical-quotes/

i will read that later, and i will post again when it makes me angry and my head hurt.

caek:

string theory, yay or nay

-max

nay x 1,000,000. lost generation of theoreticians.

pssst People We Like

caek: it seems awfully convenient that all this stuff exists (by which I mean: the entire universe). Is there a guiding hand behind it all?

seven fundamental numbers, iirc?

caek, did u get a bike in the end and pics or it didn't happen

lol thank you erica, you made me day : )

Ismael: the guiding hand is jesus iirc. but seriously, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nothingness/#1. although i need to stop responding with links. i'm like a tumblr-generation zen asshole. don't know anything about the seven fundamental numbers. having said that, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/137_%28number%29#In_physics.

cozwn, i did not buy a bike yet. i found out i was moving house in munich over christmas (which is going to be difficult enough without a car), and will be away from germany for about 6 weeks starting soon. also this country is coooooold. and the 2009 stocks were limited but the 2010s have not yet shown up in germany. so now did not seem like the perfect time. i am going to wait to see where if anywhere i get a job (should know by late jan), and then i will make a decision. if it turns out that i'm leaving europe in september then it gets tricky. but i need to nazi up soon. getting antsy.

♪♫ no worries I understand and forgive u ♪♫

i think some reasonably well respected authorities had isolated a number similar-to-but-not-necessarily-exactly 7 fundamental universal constants that result in the stability we currently enjoy

can something be "against the run of play" when it happens 1 minute into kick off?

― adorable cheese inscription (a hoy hoy), Wednesday, 9 December 2009 20:51 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

sounds like a question for ♪♫ caek's corner ♪♫

― Ismael Klata, Wednesday, 9 December 2009 20:53 (24 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

*shrug*

which commentator made this point?

x-posts :D

fwiw science has already hit a brick wall, physics hasn't really advanced at all since the middle of the 20th century, for ex.

― a triumph in high-tech nipple obfuscation (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, December 9, 2009 7:08 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

also Dawkins is a deluded, irritable jerk he's not converting anybody as far as I can tell

― a triumph in high-tech nipple obfuscation (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, December 9, 2009 7:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

damn cant believe a whole 50 years have gone by without our understanding of the universe changing, thats never happened before

― max, Wednesday, December 9, 2009 7:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

physics has not advanced *at all*?!

― harbl, Wednesday, December 9, 2009 7:13 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i'm telling caek

― harbl, Wednesday, December 9, 2009 7:13 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I don't have a question but I just wanted to say I always assumed caek was a woman until reading this thread.

u should start wearing dockers caek

lollll

fwiw science has already hit a brick wall, physics hasn't really advanced at all since the middle of the 20th century, for ex.

― a triumph in high-tech nipple obfuscation (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, December 9, 2009 7:08 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol, if you change this to "since 1990" and "physics" to "the one bit of theoretical physics that had a really good 50 year run from 1900, and which liberal arts graduates thing is cool, but the rest of physics ignores", then sure.

p.s. i do wear dockers, no homo!

is ur name pronounced cake or kike?

don't think i've ever heard it said out loud, but cake i guess. it's etymology is kind of pathetic and date's back to pre-lolcat 1998.

dear caek,

what is the big news in astronomy this week?

the news is basically RIP UK:

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/12/british-science.html (lol at "left disatisfied")

http://andyxl.wordpress.com/2009/12/14/the-axeman-cometh/ (see the comments threads for some fun. "space" here means solar system exploration, as distinct from "astronomy", which is what i do.)

http://pacrowther.staff.shef.ac.uk/stfc.html (as you can see, yesterday was not a good day)

caek--how rad is this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U&feature=player_embedded#

Never mind that, how cool is this proposal to send a boat to explore the seas of Titan?

Dear caek,

Clyde Tombaugh is a local hero here in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Do you have any opinions on the guy?

thanks,

Abbott in NM

when come back bring superpie

Good thread https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2023-December/033318.html

good galaxies https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/Webb_reveals_structure_in_19_spiral_galaxies

What does this mean? this doesn't make sense

Skyscraper-sized asteroid to pass within 1.7m miles of Earth on Friday

An asteroid as big as a skyscraper will pass within 1.7m miles (2.7mkm) of Earth on Friday.

Don’t worry: there’s no chance of it hitting us since it will miss our planet by seven times the distance from the Earth to the moon.

what doesn't make sense about it?

presumably the m in 1.7m is for million

(I skimmed at first and thought it said "1.7 miles" so maybe Andy did too)

it's 1.7 millimiles, i.e. about 8 feet.

well that seems a little too close

Yeah, I thought it was less than two miles... I was hoping to go out and watch it pass over the neighborhood

In terms of interplanetary space 1.7 million miles is just a skip and a jump away.

the James Webb telescope spotted a drunk riding on it, so it might swerve closer

https://www.blog.lepetitprince.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/buveur.jpg

Dessin-moi un mouton

gbx!

hey whats up

good to see you! hope you are well!

thanks man! likewise!

any new space facts i should know

nah it's pretty much over

whew!