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so star wars was real?

Krieg wrote:Not really that related, but analyze this:

What we observe is not really "real time" because light needs some time traveling, but the distances are so short in our day to day surrounding that we never perceive the lag.

When we look at the sun we are looking at events that happened some minutes ago.

Now we have those giant telescopes that can observe the other side of the universe, galaxies far far away, but then what you see through the telescope is not actual events, because of the extremely long distances you are observing events that happened thousands, maybe millions, maybe a couple of billions years ago. If you zoom the telescope in and out quite fast, you would be "traveling" in time and watching a 4D video.

Now if someday we manage to travel faster than the light, we just need to put a telescope far enough and we could watch all our history in planet earth. Too bad it will be a video only, without sound.

This is the shit that blows my mind. Plus the bit you added about "time unfolding." We talk about seeing the known universe, but we really only see the edge of the known universe the way it was 14 billion years ago, right? Fuck. I pretend I can imagine that, but I know I'm only lying to myself. For all we know about the universe, it still feels so enormously and impossibly inaccessible.

Krieg wrote:

Friendly Goatus wrote: Why do I even bother with "going to school" or "working" or even "breathing"?

WHY

According to Einstein all time exist at the same time, past present and future. We just "travel" through time (at the speed of the light) while we live so that's why we perceive that time is unfolding.

So, what you're saying is that Slaughterhouse-Five is a TRUE DEPICTION OF ACTUAL EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF ONE BILLY PILGRIM?

I kid, I kid.

Though it does mesh strangely well with the Trafalmadoran view of time in the story...

I'd love to talk to astrophysicists or chronologists or whoever studies time about ancient conceptions of time, especially what guys like Plotinus thought about it. Has anyone read any good books about the subject that aren't impossible to understand without a degree in quantum theory?

The passage of time and the lag in our visual perception of the surrounding universe seems profound but when taken in the context of the development of our universe what we see truly is what's happening in the "now" rather than the past. We see a supernova that happened a million years ago but the universe is almost 14 billion years old. It might take less than .001% of the total passage of time from the beginning of the universe for that light to reach us. That's like banging your toe on a door frame and then measuring the amount of time it takes for your brain to perceive pain. Maybe not an accurate analogy but you get my point. Time is such a flimsy concept.

But, isn't it this latency that allows astronomers to peer into the beginnings of the universe?

Yeah, we can detect radiation that originated closer to the birth of the universe, gain some insight into it, but I don't think it's possible for us to actually see something that old. Not from our POV anyways.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/sc ... 11feb_map/

Mari_Mar wrote:But, isn't it this latency that allows astronomers to peer into the beginnings of the universe?

He means the lag is not representative when we are talking about big numbers. But as far as I remember our current telescopes can see really far away. I think I saw it in this documentary:

http://eztv.it/ep/12283/bbc-horizon-200 ... 3-mvgroup/

(The host is a gay hipster, but it is watchable)

It shows this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Ultra_Deep_Field



This one might be interesting as well:

http://eztv.it/ep/19125/bbc-horizon-201 ... v-mvgroup/

And the "BBC Time" series are good as well.

This is no different from analyzing humankind as a collective brain-like structure, explored pretty darn well in Matt Ridley's Agile Gene. The guys that wrote this are astronomers that have probably spent way too much damn time looking at cosmological phenomena and not enough time exploring black holes connected to finite mass between 90-200 lbs.

Gookstorm wrote:This is no different from analyzing humankind as a collective brain-like structure, explored pretty darn well in Matt Ridley's Agile Gene. The guys that wrote this are astronomers that have probably spent way too much damn time looking at cosmological phenomena and not enough time exploring black holes connected to finite mass between 90-200 lbs.

Pretty sure Darrell weighs more than 200lbs.

Also, faster than light travel is under pretty heated debate and all, but I think it's been established that we can't actually go "back" in time, just slow down time for ourselves while everything around us goes faster. Either that or we need wormholes / teleporters. And tachyons. Lots of tachyons. I suppose if we did FTL travel, we could just teleport to someplace where the light hasn't hit yet and start observing the shit happening on earth X years ago. I'd be pretty cool with that approach to uncovering the mysteries of history honestly. We could watch Mark Twain fapping as a child... or Alexander the Great. Or see how awesome Cleopatra's tits really were.

I will create a new genre of historical porn by inventing teleportation, dammit.

I'd like to see how Helen of Troy looked. Did she really have a face that launched a thousand ships? Or was it just a reference to Aphrodite. Fucking crazy greeks, always getting their mythology and history mixed up.

I'm not dying for this.


Looks like an 80's cock rock frontman.

http://www.everyjoe.com/articles/the-bi ... space-191/

The guy seems to be Theory of Inflation believer, though.

That's a pretty interesting theory. I'd never read about it before.

Krieg wrote:http://www.everyjoe.com/articles/the-bi ... space-191/

The guy seems to be Theory of Inflation believer, though.

fucking cool. this is similar to what a lot of the ancients thought, believe it or not. you have to take out the big bang part, which i guess is pretty important, but dudes like Plotinus theorized that there could be no time BEFORE creation (he was a mystic) because creation was the act of bringing space and time into existence. this is why so many of those old dudes differentiated between infinity and eternity.

time and space might go on forever, but they are ~in time~
eternity is something else entirely.

This thread makes me happy I own all 4 seasons of The Universe on Blu-ray

holy shit. might be old news/ragman hot now but these belong here.

caldwell.the.great wrote:holy shit. might be old news/ragman hot now

Definitely Ragman hot now. But still cool...

First post, and I had to put it here. Great thread.

It's already been mentioned, but one of the most impressive concepts for me is the significance of light having a finite speed. This means that there's a limit on how fast we can get information about distant events.

The Andromeda galaxy (also called M31) is the most distant galaxy we can see with the naked eye if you live in the northern hemisphere. This galaxy is about 2.2 million light years away.

That means the light forming the image of Andromeda on your retinas left that galaxy 2.2 million years ago, when our distant ancestors were still swinging from tree branch to tree branch.

That's pretty amazing.

[google]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 6535911834[/google]

I was reading about zero point energy and found this video. Pretty awesome if you ignore that shit eater at the beginning.

Edit: God dammit, how the fuck do you use these google tags? http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 6535911834

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... irror.html
Every one of us, travelers of the left hand path.


Unrelated but cool
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1 ... -test.html

I did not finish watching them all:

Sci.Fi.Science.Physics.of.The.Impossible.01of12.How.To.Explore.The.Universe.HDTV.x264.720p.AC3.MVGroup.Forum.mkv
Sci.Fi.Science.Physics.of.The.Impossible.02of12.How.To.Travel.To.A.Parallel.Universe.HDTV.x264.720p.AC3.MVGroup.Forum.mkv
Sci.Fi.Science.Physics.of.The.Impossible.03of12.How.To.Blow.Up.A.Planet.HDTV.x264.720p.AC3.MVGroup.Forum.mkv
Sci.Fi.Science.Physics.of.The.Impossible.04of12.How.To.Teleport.HDTV.x264.720p.AC3.MVGroup.Forum.mkv
Sci.Fi.Science.Physics.of.The.Impossible.05of12.How.To.Become.Invisible.HDTV.x264.720p.AC3.MVGroup.Forum.mkv
Sci.Fi.Science.Physics.of.The.Impossible.06of12.How.To.Travel.Through.Time.HDTV.x264.720p.AC3.MVGroup.Forum.mkv
Sci.Fi.Science.Physics.of.The.Impossible.07of12.How.to.Build.a.Starship.HDTV.x264.720p.AC3.MVGroup.Forum.mkv
Sci.Fi.Science.Physics.of.The.Impossible.08of12.How.to.Build.a.Light.Saber.HDTV.x264.720p.AC3.MVGroup.Forum.mkv
Sci.Fi.Science.Physics.of.The.Impossible.09of12.How.to.Build.a.Sci.Fi.Robot.HDTV.x264.720p.AC3.MVGroup.Forum.mkv
Sci.Fi.Science.Physics.of.The.Impossible.10of12.How.to.Become.a.Superhero.HDTV.x264.720p.AC3.MVGroup.Forum.mkv
Sci.Fi.Science.Physics.of.The.Impossible.11of12.How.to.Build.a.Flying.Saucer.HDTV.x264.720p.AC3.MVGroup.Forum.mkv
Sci.Fi.Science.Physics.of.The.Impossible.12of12.How.to.Build.a.Force.Field.HDTV.x264.720p.AC3.MVGroup.Forum.mkv


All can be downloaded from www.eztv.it

The outer gods.

I just want to see dinosaur fights

Continuation of fbts' post on Enceladus. more pics
(spoilered for fuckhuge)

Here's a nice picture of Enceladus from the Cassini orbiter.