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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2014 12:39:17 GMT
I've been into this stuff since I was a wee nipper Lawrence and it was given even more momentum when I read a factual book authored by the great Isaac Asimov in which he described the inner workings of the universe and transcribed them into a form that is readily understood. My memory is somewhat hazy now but the chapter on the life-cycle of a star was particularly gripping. He made mention of things such as Chandrakar's Limit (hope that is the correct spelling) which, as I understood it at the time, is the mass a star needs to achieve before it will collapse at the end of its life to form a Neutron Star. I think I read the book when I was around eight or nine years old and it blew my mind. Unfortunately I forget the title and lost my copy in a house move many years ago. I'd dearly like to source another copy for my stepson as space and its inner workings absolutely fascinates him... I have a couple of the Asimov guide to science books. One is physical sciences and one biological. The first one goes into details on the universe, earth through particles and waves etc and covers just about everything known back in 1975 when it was published. I doubt the basics have changed much. He is as good at explaining stuff as writing science fiction and that is very good indeed. |
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Post by Dave on Jul 30, 2014 12:50:28 GMT
will we get sucked into it one day ? I don't think so, it is a very long way away. I can't remember if we get destroyed by the Sun turning into a red giant or by Andromeda crashing into the Milky Way, I think its the former. Although we won't be witnessing it personally, neither will our children's children's children's children's children etc etc. In fact it is far more likely that life on Earth will whither and die as our sun reaches old age and expands in around 4.6 billion years. I'll set my alarm then coz I wanna see it...  |
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Post by jandl100 on Jul 30, 2014 18:05:17 GMT
will we get sucked into it one day ? I don't think so, it is a very long way away. I can't remember if we get destroyed by the Sun turning into a red giant or by Andromeda crashing into the Milky Way, I think its the former. Galaxies can pass through each other with very low risk of any particular star being significantly disrupted - the distance between stars is so huge a near-miss is very unlikely. It would be mighty pretty to watch, though!
I posted a pic earlier in this thread of the aftermath of just such a 'collision' of galaxies. Lots of new stars being created by gas density waves, but I suspect very few existing stars and planets would have been badly affected.
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Post by Chris on Jul 30, 2014 19:26:08 GMT
I'm far too thick to comment here but I'm finding this fascinating.
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Post by MartinT on Jul 30, 2014 20:57:28 GMT
WE CANT BE ALONE IN ALL THAT, CAN WE Agreed, it seems ridiculously self-centred to think that we are.
There may even be common life out there, started from the same wandering comet that started us off.
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Post by MartinT on Jul 30, 2014 20:58:52 GMT
8 billion years and ET still hasn't found us ET can't find us, any more than we can find them. We are too isolated by Einstein's equations. |
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Post by Chris on Jul 30, 2014 21:08:27 GMT
Nonsense.
The evidence is all around us in various forms. The whole human idea of working to strict,rigid laws that impair thinking,to me,makes no sense. Thinking that because we can't,they can't is nuts.
As I've said,I just don't think they want to. Humans,as a species are so destructive and warlike why would anything come near us?
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Post by MartinT on Jul 30, 2014 21:11:36 GMT
Unless you believe in Star Trek-like warp speeds, the radius of distance that we can reach, even by broadcasting radio beams at light speed, is pitifully small. Other life forms would suffer from the same problems.
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Post by Chris on Jul 30, 2014 21:14:55 GMT
Unless they were totally different,millions of years more advanced,had completely different technologies and didn't work to our rigid laws....
Humans are primitive creatures.
I know let's explore space....Right,fill up some massive fuel tanks,stick a rocket underneath them and put some people inside....
Brilliant.
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Post by Dave on Jul 30, 2014 21:16:43 GMT
I believe I've mentioned this before but there's a group in the states that are researching warp technology and they are confident they can get the problem licked. I'll try to find the link...
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Post by Dave on Jul 30, 2014 21:24:06 GMT
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Post by jandl100 on Jul 31, 2014 6:38:01 GMT
You do need "new physics" for that faster than light stuff. But "new physics" is coming along all the time.  Lots of researchers are trying to prove Einstein wrong. There's a huge and literally unbridgeable disconnect between Relativity and Quantum physics - they cannot both be right, something has to give. Probably both! |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2014 6:57:21 GMT
You do need "new physics" for that faster than light stuff. But "new physics" is coming along all the time. Lots of researchers are trying to prove Einstein wrong. There's a huge and literally unbridgeable disconnect between Relativity and Quantum physics - they cannot both be right, something has to give. Probably both! This isn't how I look at it. Agreed, Newtonian and Einsteinian physics doesn't provide all of the explanations for the sub-atomic world, but if/when we do get some answers, these will compliment traditional physics. Do you really think that Newton got it wrong when he explained the laws of gravity? Did he ever claim that his laws applied in the quantumn world? The last attempt I saw by scientists to prove that something can travel faster than light ended with a lot of egg on face as far as I can remember. Lawrence |
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Post by jandl100 on Jul 31, 2014 6:58:34 GMT
I agree that any concerns about the unlikelihood of life evolving (e.g. a planet being in the 'habitable zone' etc) are completely swamped by the sheer numbers involved.
There are 200 billion stars in our galaxy and about 100 billion galaxies can be seen. So the total number of stars is a 2 with 22 zeroes after it. Count 'em.
You need microscopic odds for all the right things coming together for their not to be countless life-filled environments out there.
It's far from proven yet as it's only recently that the planet-spotting technology has been good enough to start to work - but it seems likely that most, maybe all, stars have planets. ... not that life has to be planet-bound, of course!
I'm a devout atheist, and the only way I can imagine that our little planet is the sole haven for life is that God made it so by a miracle. |
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Post by Eduardo Wobblechops on Jul 31, 2014 6:59:20 GMT
Even at less than light speed, theoretically we could colonise the entire galaxy in less than 10 million years, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things.
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Post by jandl100 on Jul 31, 2014 7:01:37 GMT
You do need "new physics" for that faster than light stuff. But "new physics" is coming along all the time. Lots of researchers are trying to prove Einstein wrong. There's a huge and literally unbridgeable disconnect between Relativity and Quantum physics - they cannot both be right, something has to give. Probably both! This isn't how I look at it. Agreed, Newtonian and Einsteinian physics doesn't provide all of the explanations for the sub-atomic world, but if/when we do get some answers, these will compliment traditional physics. Do you really think that Newton got it wrong when he explained the laws of gravity? Did he ever claim that his laws applied in the quantumn world? The last attempt I saw by scientists to prove that something can travel faster than light ended with a lot of egg on face as far as I can remember. Lawrence Sorry, Lawrence, but you are incorrect.
I think that most physicists would agree that the biggest challenge for modern day science is the disconnect between relativity and quantum physics. They literally cannot both be right. That's just the way it is, I'm afraid.
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Post by jandl100 on Jul 31, 2014 7:04:40 GMT
And Newton did not explain the laws of gravity - he just described them.
It took Einstein to start to explain them.
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Post by MartinT on Jul 31, 2014 7:37:05 GMT
I believe I've mentioned this before but there's a group in the states that are researching warp technology and they are confident they can get the problem licked. I'll try to find the link... Is that the space-folding project? Make a small jump between two folded bits of space to cover vast distances.
The thing is.... If it were possible to not only achieve it in a lab but to actually use it for travel, we would not be the first (looking at the age of the universe). So how come we're not inundated with visitors?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2014 8:05:15 GMT
This isn't how I look at it. Agreed, Newtonian and Einsteinian physics doesn't provide all of the explanations for the sub-atomic world, but if/when we do get some answers, these will compliment traditional physics. Do you really think that Newton got it wrong when he explained the laws of gravity? Did he ever claim that his laws applied in the quantumn world? The last attempt I saw by scientists to prove that something can travel faster than light ended with a lot of egg on face as far as I can remember. Lawrence Sorry, Lawrence, but you are incorrect.
I think that most physicists would agree that the biggest challenge for modern day science is the disconnect between relativity and quantum physics. They literally cannot both be right. That's just the way it is, I'm afraid.
Can you point me in the direction of some material that supports this please? I look at it more in these terms, but happy to be shown to have misunderstood what it means to develop a superior theory: www.universetoday.com/108044/why-einstein-will-never-be-wrong/ |
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Post by MartinT on Jul 31, 2014 8:12:23 GMT
See here for an explanation of what Hawking et al have been working on for years, the Theory of Everything, an attempt to unify Quantum Mechanics (the theory of small particles) with General Relativity (the theory of large masses). |
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