Please note, I am going to be saying some heavily opinionated things that may offend some peoples beliefs. I do not want to start a flame war if you do not share my worldview, and I do NOT want this to turn into some "religion vs science" bullshit. Please show respect. If you are going to type something with the intention of trying to sway the foundation of my or others beliefs, don't. You aren't going to change the basis of someones beliefs on an internet forum. Plain and simple, so save us time and bans. ^^
What do I do other than video games and school? Well, I read -- a lot. I'm only 18 years old, but I've spent the past four years of my life informing myself of everything I could in Science -- ranging from Theoretical Physics to Environmental Science. I simply love everything to do with the subject and, well, kind of want to write a bit about it in my free time. I'm no Doctor, and I don't expect anyone to take what I say and my opinions on matters as fact. In fact (hue), I encourage anyone who may be interested about what I may write to go and research it themselves or input their own ideas on the matter. I'm sick and tired of coming to the blog section every day and seeing the same old blog posts of pity parties and life advice and shit (along the really good shit), so I want to try and add to the aforementioned really good shit.
Anyways, I had a bit of difficulty deciding what to specifically talk about this time so I decided on something very simple -- how fucking awesome our Universe is. I'll also go off on basics and shit of science that some may be unaware of ^^
It wouldn't be a blog on TL without out of place pictures
I never truly understood the beauty of our Universe until four years ago, when I lost my faith. It was almost like an epiphany in a way, of me just looking up one night and just realizing. "Holy shit, this is awesome." I don't want to trash religious people, but before I always held a very simplistic view of the world and the Universe and never really cared to understand it much. However, once that all changed so did my perspective. I realized how amazing the Universe we dwell in is. Just to give you an idea of how absolutely massive our Universe is, let me put it like this.
There are stars as big as our entire Solar System. There are hundreds of billions of stars in our Galaxy, which is relatively small comparative to others; when there are trillions of other galaxies each with hundreds of billions or trillion of stars in them themselves. There are even Supermassive Black Holes at the center of all galaxies light years in diameter that hold us in place. The stars you look up at every night are not as they are now. They are millions of light years away from you, and the light you are seeing is representing the star as it was millions of years ago. You are literally seeing into the past every time you look up at a star. An interesting line from a youtube video titled "Science Saved My Soul", this man put it very eloquently. We always have fantasized about going up and reaching the stars, when, in reality, they are reaching down and touching US. The photons reaching across the void and interacting off of your eyes came from that star. You, in a way, every time you look up at the night sky, are literally touching a star.
There are stars, called Neutron Stars. These fuckers are made from stars that when collapsed and went supernova, the original star was too small to form a black hole and instead made this, and, in fact, are only about a 20km in diameter. They are so incredibly dense that just a single teaspoon of its material would weigh 100 million metric tons. Yeah.
A badass picture of a Neutron Star
Did I mention Supernovas? Of course I did. Supernovas are pretty god damn cool, and this will also lead into my inevitable rant on black holes. To understand why Supernovas are important, you must first understand Stars. For those who don't know, a Star is simply a big bundle of gas in a tug of war battle with gravity (hint: gravity always wins). Stars are doing something called Nuclear Fusion, which is the, well, fusion of atoms. In our Suns case, it is producing Hydrogen. This massive amount of energy is forcing the sun to expand, but gravity is also forcing a star to crush down on itself. Hence, the tug of war.
However, there's a part in a stars life when it dies, as all do. Because, gravity ALWAYS wins in the end. How does a star die? Well, iron. In the final stages of a Stars life, it begins to hyper-produce Hydrogen/Helium. Hence, a Red Giant in some cases. Well, it gets so intensely hot that new, heavier element is created -- Iron. This iron is a death sentence for a star, as it is too heavy for the Star to sustain with Fusion. Gravity wins again motherfucker, and the Star has literal seconds to live. This is when black holes and supernovas occur.
When the star collapses on itself, it condenses in a superdense state for just a few brief moments. It is so intensely hot, that a plethora of heavier elements are created in mere seconds. With all of this, there is such an intense reaction that this condensed form of matter explodes -- producing more energy than the star would in its entire life in just a few moments. In this heat of the following supernova, even heavier elements are produced. So this leads to two very, very interesting facts.
One, the bullshit that I hear every single god damn day that without a god we are nothing and we are not unique is, in fact, total bullshit. Think about what I just explained for a moment. The components inside of your body that let you live could only be created from an explosion of a star. Stars must die, so that I may live. If that doesn't make you feel unique and boss as fuck, I don't know if anything will. Second, next time you are frying eggs with an iron skillet, know that the iron that composes that pan literally killed a star.
You are cooking eggs with a Starkiller motherfucker.
Public Enemy #1
Oh, and black holes? I actually began to write my conclusion and I remembered halfway about these things. I don't want to go into too much detail, as I want to write a huge post on them later, but for now I'll leave it at this. Some Stars, when they collapse don't go Supernova. Instead, they are so dense that they gain infinite density. They become a singularity. So yeah, black holes aren't actual holes -- they're just super dense objects that fuck everything up.
Now I dunno what else to talk about, and instead of dragging this out fruitlessly I will stop now for the sake of boring you on my rant. I will go into far more detail on subjects I want to talk about on the future. I'll probably write something on the origins of the Universe, our Solar System, our Planet, and all that for my next post and go into retarded amounts of detail into it. Hell, I'll even go into M-Theory if I'm feeling crazy enough
Glad you're so enthusiastic about it, although I should point out that a star larger than our solar system is pretty unlikely. I don't know of a clear limit, but the size of a star does tend to be restricted as the strength of its gravity will eventually overwhelm the nuclear pressures that support it. Thousands of times larger than our sun is possible, but the solar system is much bigger than that (and doesn't really have a well-defined edge).
On March 08 2012 10:33 Jumbled wrote: Glad you're so enthusiastic about it, although I should point out that a star larger than our solar system is pretty unlikely. I don't know of a clear limit, but the size of a star does tend to be restricted as the strength of its gravity will eventually overwhelm the nuclear pressures that support it. Thousands of times larger than our sun is possible, but the solar system is much bigger than that (and doesn't really have a well-defined edge).
It is extremely rare, yes. But there are observed cases of them roughly the size of our Solar System, which I would roughly define to the average distance of our 8th planet. Most are not by any means that big, but holy shit are some stars just absolutely huge.
EDIT: A classic visual representation we've all seen.
VV Cephei is 1900 Solar Radius' in diameter. A solar radius is 695,500km. So, it is 13,214,500,000km in diameter. The distance of Neptune from the Sun, the 8th planet in our Solar System, is 4,536,870,000km. Since we're talking about the entire Soalr System and not one direction though, that's roughly 9 billion kilometers. So I think it's safe to say they're out there
Same here. My curiosity about the universe began when I was very little. I would ask all kinds of questions about stars and meteors and planets that not all got answered. Was really into astronomy when I was a teen. Then the internet happened and I would happily waste a day listening to various science lectures and talks. The universe really is amazing. I like the way that Lawrence Krauss put it:
The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way they could get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.
If you like space, science, biology, numbers, other dimensions, and a host of other cool things like that I strongly suggest you watch Cosmos by Carl Sagan. It's nearly 40 years old now but it is still an amazing piece of work.
All 13 episodes are on youtube. I still go back and watch it from time to time.
On March 08 2012 10:33 Jumbled wrote: Glad you're so enthusiastic about it, although I should point out that a star larger than our solar system is pretty unlikely. I don't know of a clear limit, but the size of a star does tend to be restricted as the strength of its gravity will eventually overwhelm the nuclear pressures that support it. Thousands of times larger than our sun is possible, but the solar system is much bigger than that (and doesn't really have a well-defined edge).
It is extremely rare, yes. But there are observed cases of them roughly the size of our Solar System, which I would roughly define to the average distance of our 8th planet. Most are not by any means that big, but holy shit are some stars just absolutely huge.
EDIT: A classic visual representation we've all seen.
VV Cephei is 1900 Solar Radius' in diameter. A solar radius is 695,500km. So, it is 13,214,500,000km in diameter. The distance of Neptune from the Sun, the 8th planet in our Solar System, is 4,536,870,000km. Since we're talking about the entire Soalr System and not one direction though, that's roughly 9 billion kilometers. So I think it's safe to say they're out there
Your diameter calculation is out by an order of magnitude. Barring that though, the numbers are roughly what I expected, although even being 1/7th the diameter of Neptune's orbit is pretty amazing.
On March 08 2012 10:33 Jumbled wrote: Glad you're so enthusiastic about it, although I should point out that a star larger than our solar system is pretty unlikely. I don't know of a clear limit, but the size of a star does tend to be restricted as the strength of its gravity will eventually overwhelm the nuclear pressures that support it. Thousands of times larger than our sun is possible, but the solar system is much bigger than that (and doesn't really have a well-defined edge).
It is extremely rare, yes. But there are observed cases of them roughly the size of our Solar System, which I would roughly define to the average distance of our 8th planet. Most are not by any means that big, but holy shit are some stars just absolutely huge.
EDIT: A classic visual representation we've all seen.
VV Cephei is 1900 Solar Radius' in diameter. A solar radius is 695,500km. So, it is 13,214,500,000km in diameter. The distance of Neptune from the Sun, the 8th planet in our Solar System, is 4,536,870,000km. Since we're talking about the entire Soalr System and not one direction though, that's roughly 9 billion kilometers. So I think it's safe to say they're out there
Your diameter calculation is out by an order of magnitude. Barring that though, the numbers are roughly what I expected, although even being 1/7th the diameter of Neptune's orbit is pretty amazing.
Of course it's very rough. There probably very little stars out there that even come close to VV Cephei, but nonetheless I was being hyperbolic for the sake of being hyperbolic xP
Astronomy is so cool that it makes all the other sciences look bad. That's not taking away from the other sciences because they're interesting too, it just elaborates on how amazing astronomy is.
I doubt there's a star the size of our solar system if you include the Oort cloud, but if there is then holy shit lol
On March 08 2012 10:56 GGTeMpLaR wrote: Astronomy is so cool that it makes all the other sciences look bad
As cool as it is, I actually prefer Evolutionary Biology. Astronomy requires so much math, so many analogies to get the layman to understand, and so much support that I really don't like having to go and learn about. There's something about Evolutionary Biology is that is so much cooler because we basically know it's true, instead of theorizing it and making predictions. I don't want to doubt the incredibly difficult and accurate math a lot of Theoretical Physicists do, but I prefer the hard facts over theoretical math is all. That's just me.
On March 08 2012 10:33 Jumbled wrote: Glad you're so enthusiastic about it, although I should point out that a star larger than our solar system is pretty unlikely. I don't know of a clear limit, but the size of a star does tend to be restricted as the strength of its gravity will eventually overwhelm the nuclear pressures that support it. Thousands of times larger than our sun is possible, but the solar system is much bigger than that (and doesn't really have a well-defined edge).
It is extremely rare, yes. But there are observed cases of them roughly the size of our Solar System, which I would roughly define to the average distance of our 8th planet. Most are not by any means that big, but holy shit are some stars just absolutely huge.
EDIT: A classic visual representation we've all seen.
VV Cephei is 1900 Solar Radius' in diameter. A solar radius is 695,500km. So, it is 13,214,500,000km in diameter. The distance of Neptune from the Sun, the 8th planet in our Solar System, is 4,536,870,000km. Since we're talking about the entire Soalr System and not one direction though, that's roughly 9 billion kilometers. So I think it's safe to say they're out there
Your diameter calculation is out by an order of magnitude. Barring that though, the numbers are roughly what I expected, although even being 1/7th the diameter of Neptune's orbit is pretty amazing.
Of course it's very rough. There probably very little stars out there that even come close to VV Cephei, but nonetheless I was being hyperbolic for the sake of being hyperbolic xP
When I say out by an order of magnitude, I mean that it should read 1 321 450 000 km. You added an extra zero.
On March 08 2012 10:33 Jumbled wrote: Glad you're so enthusiastic about it, although I should point out that a star larger than our solar system is pretty unlikely. I don't know of a clear limit, but the size of a star does tend to be restricted as the strength of its gravity will eventually overwhelm the nuclear pressures that support it. Thousands of times larger than our sun is possible, but the solar system is much bigger than that (and doesn't really have a well-defined edge).
It is extremely rare, yes. But there are observed cases of them roughly the size of our Solar System, which I would roughly define to the average distance of our 8th planet. Most are not by any means that big, but holy shit are some stars just absolutely huge.
EDIT: A classic visual representation we've all seen.
VV Cephei is 1900 Solar Radius' in diameter. A solar radius is 695,500km. So, it is 13,214,500,000km in diameter. The distance of Neptune from the Sun, the 8th planet in our Solar System, is 4,536,870,000km. Since we're talking about the entire Soalr System and not one direction though, that's roughly 9 billion kilometers. So I think it's safe to say they're out there
Your diameter calculation is out by an order of magnitude. Barring that though, the numbers are roughly what I expected, although even being 1/7th the diameter of Neptune's orbit is pretty amazing.
Of course it's very rough. There probably very little stars out there that even come close to VV Cephei, but nonetheless I was being hyperbolic for the sake of being hyperbolic xP
When I say out by an order of magnitude, I mean that it should read 1 321 450 000 km. You added an extra zero.
Did I?
Oh fuck you're right. I'm retarded. LOL Perhaps I should just use the calculator feature on my computer from now on, eh?
On March 08 2012 10:56 GGTeMpLaR wrote: Astronomy is so cool that it makes all the other sciences look bad
As cool as it is, I actually prefer Evolutionary Biology. Astronomy requires so much math, so many analogies to get the layman to understand, and so much support that I really don't like having to go and learn about. There's something about Evolutionary Biology is that is so much cooler because we basically know it's true, instead of theorizing it and making predictions. I don't want to doubt the incredibly difficult and accurate math a lot of Theoretical Physicists do, but I prefer the hard facts over theoretical math is all. That's just me.
Well I wouldn't say we "know" it's true in the hard sense of having certainty, but I see you're point about it having a higher degree of certainty than something like theoretical physics whose foundations aren't as firm (unless you're a Kuhnian//Feyerabendian in which case you've got incommensurability so that goes out the window u_u)
On March 08 2012 10:56 GGTeMpLaR wrote: Astronomy is so cool that it makes all the other sciences look bad
As cool as it is, I actually prefer Evolutionary Biology. Astronomy requires so much math, so many analogies to get the layman to understand, and so much support that I really don't like having to go and learn about. There's something about Evolutionary Biology is that is so much cooler because we basically know it's true, instead of theorizing it and making predictions. I don't want to doubt the incredibly difficult and accurate math a lot of Theoretical Physicists do, but I prefer the hard facts over theoretical math is all. That's just me.
Well I wouldn't say we "know" it's true in the hard sense of having certainty, but I see you're point about it having a higher degree of certainty than something like theoretical physics (unless you're a Kuhnian//Feyerabendian in which case you've got incommensurability so that goes out the window u_u)
Yeah, exactly
I mean, shit like M-Theory and all that is cool but...there's something about the simplicity of Biology/Chemistry I like. Dark Matter is fucking awesome, but I find the chemicals that run through our brains even cooler.
On March 08 2012 10:50 SnipedSoul wrote: If you like space, science, biology, numbers, other dimensions, and a host of other cool things like that I strongly suggest you watch Cosmos by Carl Sagan. It's nearly 40 years old now but it is still an amazing piece of work.
All 13 episodes are on youtube. I still go back and watch it from time to time.
Every episode of The Cosmos is available on youtube for free, and it contains extra footage that elaborates on topics based on very recent findings.
Even though it is an older show, it is the best "space" show out there by far. There are also episodes on evolution, alien life, alternate dimensions, and others. Through the Wormhole does not hold a candle to this show. Carl Sagan was responsible for a huge influx of interest in science in his lifetime.
On March 08 2012 10:50 SnipedSoul wrote: If you like space, science, biology, numbers, other dimensions, and a host of other cool things like that I strongly suggest you watch Cosmos by Carl Sagan. It's nearly 40 years old now but it is still an amazing piece of work.
All 13 episodes are on youtube. I still go back and watch it from time to time.
Every episode of The Cosmos is available on youtube for free, and it contains extra footage that elaborates on topics based on very recent findings.
Even though it is an older show, it is the best "space" show out there by far. There are also episodes on evolution, alien life, alternate dimensions, and others. Through the Wormhole does not hold a candle to this show. Carl Sagan was responsible for a huge influx of interest in science in his lifetime.
I'm way too into Science Channel shit like that, so I'll be sure to watch that series when I can. Love Carl Sagan.
Hi Candadar, This was a great fckin blog man. I love this kind of shit and i can tell you have put alot of time into this. Im curious what you think about the big bang theory? Do you believe thas was how it started, I have heard alot of people who have other idea's.
An interesting tidbit courtesy of Wikipedia: The late Eugene Shoemaker of the U.S. Geological Survey came up with an estimate of the rate of Earth impacts, and suggested that an event about the size of the nuclear weapon that destroyed Hiroshima occurs about once a year. Such events would seem to be spectacularly obvious, but they generally go unnoticed for a number of reasons: the majority of the Earth's surface is covered by water; a good portion of the land surface is uninhabited; and the explosions generally occur at relatively high altitude, resulting in a huge flash and thunderclap but no real damage.
Someday we are likely to have something real hard bumping our noggin' though.
On March 08 2012 12:28 EtherealDeath wrote: Technically speaking in a supernova gravity loses.
Depends on how you "win"
On March 08 2012 12:28 cmen15 wrote: Hi Candadar, This was a great fckin blog man. I love this kind of shit and i can tell you have put alot of time into this. Im curious what you think about the big bang theory? Do you believe thas was how it started, I have heard alot of people who have other idea's.
Look. Matter and Information can not be destroyed, we know this. We may not know everything, but we do know one thing -- that there was an explosion. Big Bang is a more colloquial term for a scientific idea, and is very simplified at that. It just means that there was, at some point, a very large explosion. Since we know, as I talked about in the OP, that Stars are what produce elements -- that everything at one point was very basic. I know I'm probably going a bit off track, but a lot of people are uneasy about the Big Bang because they think that when it went boom, all of our complex materials came out of it which is simply untrue. Lots of dust, lots of hydrogen came out. Over time it collected, formed Stars, and those Stars became massive furnaces that produced new elements as they lived and died.
So yes, I believe a bang was involved. Whether it's parallel universe's that collide every few trillion years like in M-theory (and that's grossly simplifying it), or if it's a cyclic universe where it expands, contracts, condenses, and blows up again, we don't know. If I had to pinpoint a "belief" in something, it would be cyclic though. In fact, I would probably put the most trust in thinking the Universe works much like a collapsing star does. It is expanding at a rapid rate, and then suddenly it just collapses on itself at an extraordinary speed. After condensing itself at a superdense level, it gets super hot and explodes again -- hence the Big Bang.
Now that's most likely wrong, and there's a reason I don't take sides on this matter. Because we simply don't know, and I'd be a hypocrite to take a side. I trust in what we know, and that there was a bang. Everything else is speculation and math, and until we get something definitive, I leave the rest up in the air. I'm more concerned about what happened after the Bang, not before. Because trying to quantify what happened before the Big Bang would be like trying to ask what came before god. It's simply not a fair question.
This looked like a good blog, then I saw you describe things like, "they're just super dense objects that fuck everything up" and "These fuckers are made from stars..." and I became immediately disinterested. Try to actually learn what you're talking about and you won't have to resort to saying things like "that fuck everything up" and you can actually explain what it does.
On March 08 2012 13:46 AegonC wrote: This looked like a good blog, then I saw you describe things like, "they're just super dense objects that fuck everything up" and "These fuckers are made from stars..." and I became immediately disinterested. Try to actually learn what you're talking about and you won't have to resort to saying things like "that fuck everything up" and you can actually explain what it does.
Are you trying to imply Neutron Stars aren't made in the aftermath of stars?
Neutron stars are one of the possible ends for a star. They result from massive stars which have mass greater than 4 to 8 times that of our Sun. After these stars have finished burning their nuclear fuel, they undergo a supernova explosion. This explosion blows off the outer layers of a star into a beautiful supernova remnant. The central region of the star collapses under gravity. It collapses so much that protons and electrons combine to form neutrons. Hence the name "neutron star".
I was also grossly oversimplifying black holes, I thought that would be apparent by me condensing them (heh, pun unintented) into a 4 sentence paragraph. I intend to go into the meat of them later, and was just glossing over them for the sake of time. Black Holes are infinitely dense singularities that fuck everything up, that's the bar none, simplest way to put it. Or are you implying that me using the word "Fuck" so liberally somehow discredits my point?
On March 09 2012 02:08 dan_dark wrote: I loved it, please do one for black holes, also what do you think of aliens? i know its a bit far from what you are talking here but still :3
I think that we are looking in just a very small corner of our galaxy and we have found dozens of planets that are Terra, or could potentially support some form of life (although most are less likely than some). I think that there are billions of stars in our galaxy, and there are hundreds of billions of galaxies with trillions of stars in them -- most with their own planetary systems. I think that Natural Selection is a very amazing thing and that life is present in very extreme areas on our planet, and I find it really stupid for someone to say that there is no chance for life out there.
I will doubt that there is a hyperintelligent race out there that is going to come kill us or something, or some galactic empire or a Type 3 Civilization or something out there. However, I would not doubt for a moment that there are dozens if not hundreds of planets in our own galaxy that harbor some form of life.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/iFflZ.png)
![[image loading]](http://www.dailygalaxy.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/08/21/neutron_star_1_2.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mZxbyIv5NNI/TrvUigKK0BI/AAAAAAAABEQ/nexMRO-ndSc/s1600/cast-iron-skillet.jpg)
Most are not by any means that big, but holy shit are some stars just absolutely huge.![[image loading]](http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/files/legacy/archives/Planet-star-sizes-01.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ldnm1lI4eq1qazxt8o1_500.jpg)
