Life Lessons from Astronomy

tkRage

225 Posts

July 18 2011 08:53 GMT

The universe is not an ordered system of nice happy planets spinning in elliptical orbits around a nice happy sun. They're actually giant balls of chaotic mass that are slowly changing their orbit and will someday fly off into random outer space.

Then, absent of the heat of the sun, they'll become completely frozen, and fly off until they collide with another frozen random destruction planet.

Nothing is really ordered, especially not in the brief 90 year life span we have on our own happy planet.

My poker friend said... something to the effect of, Life is a freeroll, so enjoy it.

Sigh, I'm morose today because my mom is dying and my life is kinda collapsing.

Empyrean

17018 Posts

July 18 2011 09:18 GMT

Luckily, it seems that for the next few billion years, none of the planets will go "flying off into random outer space."

Source: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0702179

An interesting read would be en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amor_fati

tkRage

225 Posts

July 18 2011 09:42 GMT

On July 18 2011 18:18 Empyrean wrote:
Luckily, it seems that for the next few billion years, none of the planets will go "flying off into random outer space."

Source: http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0702179

An interesting read would be en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amor_fati

Thank you for the second link.

Taekwon

United States8155 Posts

July 18 2011 11:51 GMT

Dam, I'm sorry for what's going on in your life.

I've always liked astronomy regardless. It's fascinating that we're not being sucked into a black hole.
Well, I guess we are ever so slowly but for now, we'll study how we can make wormholes and control the entropy that is space.

Empyrean

17018 Posts

July 18 2011 12:30 GMT

On July 18 2011 20:51 Taekwon wrote:
Dam, I'm sorry for what's going on in your life.

I've always liked astronomy regardless. It's fascinating that we're not being sucked into a black hole.
Well, I guess we are ever so slowly but for now, we'll study how we can make wormholes and control the entropy that is space.

Yeah, this is another misconception. Black holes don't "suck" things into them. If the sun were to be replaced by a black hole with the same mass as the sun, we'd continue to orbit in the same trajectory. You only get "sucked" into a black hole (and by that I mean its singularity) if you're already within its event horizon.

IVFearless

United States165 Posts

July 18 2011 13:59 GMT

Sorry to hear about your Mom. Hope you are able to spend time with her.

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