♪♫ caek's corner ♪♫

dear caek,

i was wondering about space. so if the universe exploded and stars are just explosive accretions of mass and eventually everything will be really far apart from everything else, why is it all going to collapse sometime?

or is some stuff getting farther away from other stuff at a significantly faster or slower rate? because maybe then the combined mass of the entire universe would be enough to decelerate one of the more rapidly escaping densities such that it would fall back into some orbit---do this with everything in the universe and it eventually just settles into a steady state, right?

anyway thanks for being a scientist,

gbx

what is the difference btw space and time?

why does it matter what's happening in space when ppl are suffering here on earth

Are you the kind of guy who can pull off wearing all-white shoes, white pants, and a white shirt?

dear caek,

if you were in a film then who would play you?

^^relevant to my interests xp to lamp but this works too

i think maybe time and space are the same thing because at some point it is impossible to reconcile velocity and position.

i think if you take a space journey at a speed of .4 c you can come back to earth and play yourself as a baby

goin on a star voyage...movie star, that is!

is "space" an appropriate answer to "whats yr fav color" i mean is space a color cause pretty sure it is u might want to look into that

dear caek,

if you were in a film then who would play you?

dude from match point??? http://www.tribute.ca/tribute_objects/images/stars/matthew_goode.jpg

i was wondering about space. so if the universe exploded and stars are just explosive accretions of mass and eventually everything will be really far apart from everything else, why is it all going to collapse sometime?

it's not certain that it will, but if it does it will be due to gravity. there are three things: (i) the force of the big bang, which was big, maybe too big for anything to overcome and is still totally dominant on intergalactic scales; (ii) gravity, which adds up to quite a lot given enough time and everything in the universe to work with; and the third thing, which acts in the same way as the explosion (i.e. drives things apart) is ~~dark energy~~, which no one really understands and if basically some bullshit to sell new scientist [*]

so the question is, when you add these three together, what is the ultimate fate: collape, expansion, or exquisitely balanced steady state. i am not a cosmologist, so this is not really my area, but my understanding is that the latest thinking is that it's the last one, yeah. but the steady state we're headed for has galaxies much further apart than they are now, and is going to be an extremely boring place.

[*] this is not entirely fair. there's pretty good evidence that something other than just (i) and (ii) are happening, but we have no idea what, so we call it dark energy.

what is the difference btw space and time?

― Lamp, Saturday, December 5, 2009 9:37 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

in relativity, the only difference is you cannot travel backwards in time. it is otherwise identical to the other dimensions. in the real world, time is time and space is space, and the difference is obvious although i once did get so perfectly drunk that i was experiencing the world in derivatives with respect to time. totally amazing.

why does it matter what's happening in space when ppl are suffering here on earth

― harbl, Saturday, December 5, 2009 9:39 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it absolutely does not matter what is happening in space, other than to the extent that knowing about it makes people happy. anyone who tells you that pure astronomy is anything other than culture is lying. i feel v. strongly about this and get into many arguments with astronomy geeks at work. i think it is totally dishonest to suggest that what astronomers do is important in the true sense of the word.

oh yeah i can def understand that. it's why i quit doing math&physics after undergrad. thanks 4 ur time ; )

Are you the kind of guy who can pull off wearing all-white shoes, white pants, and a white shirt?

― big darn deal (Z S), Saturday, December 5, 2009 9:40 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i always wore white chuck taylors between the ages of 16 and 25 and that looked ok, but i have a very fair complexion (i got hospitalised with sunstroke in cornwall once), so i don't think that would be a good look for me. i think it works well for pierce brosnan though. he has amazing hair imo.

oh yeah i can def understand that. it's why i quit doing math&physics after undergrad. thanks 4 ur time ; )

― harbl, Saturday, December 5, 2009 9:57 PM (45 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's the same reason i quit philosophy early in my undergrad. both astronomy and philosophy don't matter at all, but worrying about whether we exist or not did seem to be taking the piss a bit.

what is the best galaxy and why

pics ok

dear caek,

if you were in a film then who would play you?

― caek, Saturday, December 5, 2009 9:42 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

great question. the answer is simon pegg.

dear caek,

what is your favourite john updike quote about astronomy?

although i once did get so perfectly drunk that i was experiencing the world in derivatives with respect to time. totally amazing

o_O

caek: does the massiveness of space ever seem sinister to u?

is "space" an appropriate answer to "whats yr fav color" i mean is space a color cause pretty sure it is u might want to look into that

― ice cr?m, Saturday, December 5, 2009 9:46 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that question has an answer thanks to the nerds at at&t bell labs:

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

they may not do mms messaging or tethered mode, but this is cool:

http://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/product/map/current/pub_papers/fiveyear/basic_results/images/med/gh5_f12_PPT_M.png

what is the best galaxy and why

pics ok

― crazy farting throwback jersey (gbx), Saturday, December 5, 2009 9:59 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

imma get back to you on that one.

dear caek,

what is your favourite john updike quote about astronomy?

― caek, Saturday, December 5, 2009 10:00 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

caek: does the massiveness of space ever seem sinister to u?

― Lamp, Saturday, December 5, 2009 10:05 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

It is not true that developments in physics go ignored by professional humanists or by the common man. The basic facts get to us all and frame the way we think and even feel. The picture physics paints of the material universe is arresting enough to make the newspapers but far from flattering to our individual identities. Astronomy is what we have now instead of theology. The terrors are less, but the comforts are nil.

-- John Updike, 2005 iirc, Physics Today

seriously though (i) yes, terrifying moments of clarity every year or two (ii) listen to this short story, it will only take you 15 minutes and it is pretty much on the money about the end of time: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/04/a-bite-of-stars-a-slug-of-time-and-thou-episode-5/

a favourite galaxy:

NGC 1300

http://www.phys.ncku.edu.tw/~astrolab/mirrors/apod_e/image/0501/ngc1300_hst_c30g90.jpg

itt a strange man asks you if you saw the massive bar and dust lanes and flocculene on that galaxy

Can you explain a bit more about forces? Like, for instance, is gravity subject to relativity rules - if something starts increasing in mass really fast (uh pretend this is possible I guess), do nearby object start feeling the extra tug immediately, or only after exactly (distance/speed of light) seconds? I guess it must be the latter but why does that make any sense?

M104 (aka the Sombrero galaxy)

http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~broek/pictures/sombrero_galaxy.jpg

she's a beaut

whoa it's like a plate!

M104 u r a treat

how many of the stars i see are actually galaxies

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

max, the extent of anthropogenic radio signals is amazing. i love that.

the boat to the seas of titan seems like good show business. it's not a nasa idea though, and it sounds a bit retarded though, so who knows if it will ever happen. it would be cool though!

i had not heard of clyde tombaugh until your message abbott, so thank you for filling in that lacuna in my knowledge! he seems pretty cool. NM is still one of the world centres for astronomy: http://www.sdss.org/background/site.html.

hey, what it your jam for 2009-02-09?

great question! it's this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSMDgVr3YMA

that is beautiful.

totes.

ysi: http://www.mediafire.com/?yntoytonmwz

oh thank you! is the capsoul label comp worth buying? i am q tempted to go out and see if i can find a copy.

a thousand times yes, imo : )

dear caek, iyo is this a decent example of astronomical reporting?

http://www.astronomynow.com/news/n1003/02comet/

will read properly tomorrow but,

a) booming last paragraph
b) ctrl-f poppage : (

hey great article louis!

:D morelike sloppy seconds amirite, and ty! ty max as well!

anyway yeah our class was offered the optional task of writing-up some press-releases and those of us who chose to do so did a pretty good job imo - the 4 or 5 above mine (i.e. posted more recently) are by classmates. my press-release was particularly fun to flesh out. the work of astronomers = srsly rad. heavens how will we photograph this comet we trepanned earlier oh hai there's trusty ol' Stardust just orbitin' like it ain't no thang

yeah pretty good, i lolled at the last paragraph tbh

*puts fingers in mouth, whistles at Stardust, who obediently trots into aligned convergence course with some darn comet*

(and ty harbl! sorry i shall stop befouling ♪♫ caek's corner ♪♫ with Lonest Ranger fanfic)

NASA's unfished business

(congrats lj)

Hahaha! I read this earlier, chuckled at the final para, thought 'that's interesting stuff', didn't spot the author's name - and thought no more of it 'til now. I can think of no higher praise.

XD you've made my evening! well, you and the HOOM thread.

This may sound like faint praise to others, but as you presumably know by now, it's not: although I don't know the mission in detail, there are no errors in the article as far as I can tell, and I actually learnt a bunch of stuff!

"The American Astronomical Society announced" ... but the AAS is basicaly just a professional organization (pensions, academic politics, outreach, etc.) They aren't running the mission. Would it be more accurate/give credit where due to say NASA announced it?

I have some comments on the prose, but I'm no more qualified than anyone else to give them (less qualified if you ask max). They basically boil down to: try to write more clearly, don't say "thus", no need to use the passive voice, etc. If you can get hold of a copy of "The Complete Plain Words" then it is a dope British English version of Strunk and White that I highly recommend.

if i leave astronomy then the first thing i will do is write a crazy DFW-style feature about the politics of international observational astronomy, and particularly how the U.S. and Europe chose where to put their forthcoming giant telescopes.

p.s. you picked a really really interesting topic by the way

haha that's true, i didn't know if it was just me. it is a bit wordy in places but a lot less wordy than a normal lj post so i saw it as already a giant improvement ; )
xposts

i love the way LJ has to adjust his style in pretty much the opposite direction of everyone else when he writes for print rather than ilx

tried to read that article, fell asleep three times. and i'm at work. rubbish.

tips for again- include more zings, references to the work of ocean colour scene 1995-7, and ws pics.

yeah I also noticed the wordiness but it was a booming article overall

guys this dude will never learn with all of this unrequited positivity. our man is definitely a 'tough love' responder, see how SB worked for him?

if i leave astronomy then the first thing i will do is write a crazy DFW-style feature about the politics of international observational astronomy, and particularly how the U.S. and Europe chose where to put their forthcoming giant telescopes.

― caek, Wednesday, 3 March 2010 11:24 (3 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah this is really interesting! i read something about europe's latest launch to stash a telescope at the second Langoustine* Point on the far side of the Earth to the Sun - geostationary and thus glareless

*the precise name may have slipped my mind

lagrange, methinks. (i always have trouble with the idea of the lagrange points anywhere other than between the two objects.)

lagrangian, yeah

the telescopes i'm talking about (the european extremely large telescope and the u.s.-led thirty metre telescope) are ground telescopes. the choice of site (morocco vs. china vs. chile vs. spain vs. hawaii vs. etc.) is worth billions (and is a billion-dimensional optimization problem) which no one will go on the record about until it's finished.

they are massive btw, e.g. ELT

http://www.roe.ac.uk/elt/graphics/elt-telescope.jpg

why are not all telescopes space telescopes? they plainly kick so much more ass. but perhaps they are too expensive, and/or the astronomers get a kick out of actually looking down the telescopes. or are they all telescopes which deal in non-visible wavelengths these days :(

there are two reasons to work in space:

1) the atmosphere is strongly absorpant at a number of important wavelengths (gamma, X, UV, etc.)

2) the atmosphere blurs images

point 1) is a showstopper. if you want to detect x-rays you need to work in space. there are a bunch of instruments like these. they don't make v. photogenic images, so they don't get a lot of press, but they do great science.

if you're working at optical wavelengths (i.e. you could in principle observe from the ground) point 2) can these days be worked around from the ground with adaptive optics, which involves laser beams and shit. you can't quite get the high resolutions you get in space, but you can get pretty close. and you can do it for a _tiny_ fraction of the price. and you can build telescopes with _preposterously_ big mirrors, which is of course not an option in space. e.g. the elt has a 42m mirror. hubble has a 2m mirror. that means the elt will collect light at ~400 times faster than hubble, so it can observe fainter objects in less time. so in many circumstances, the ground is preferable.

the hubble has obviously been great, and it's put dinner on a lot of people's tables, but if you had $10bn or whatever it cost, and your goal was to make as many great discoveries as possible, you would not build a space telescope. of course that was not nasa's goal, which is fine.

ahh ok, I knew the atmosphere was a hindrance to many wavelengths but yeah they can adjust image resolution on their fancy computers and whatnot. don't you need space telescopes to pick up the most distant non-pulsar objects? generally the most jawdropping photos of space (as on that other thread) come from space telescopes too. what things tend to emanate x-rays?

will they be capable of firing an ELT into space, do you think, within our lifetimes? i appreciate that hubble was a PR thing to some extent, and also a political statement

also I would like to know more about dark matter :) because if 75% of the universe is made of it then it's pretty important right

dark matter is basically just a best guess because iconic minds of astrophysics got their sums wrong but can't admit it.

boom

(that was the sound of a truth bomb going off)

jesus can't a guy have a little fun? thought that was challops for the ages and i can't even get that right.

idk ianaa but i thought this thing was pretty clear and convincing:
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/09/dark_matter_part_iii_dark_matt.php

also
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/10/dear_mond_time_for_a_new_song.php

I've got dark matter in spades, ladies

don't you need space telescopes to pick up the most distant non-pulsar objects?

no. you need a big collecting mirror/dish, which are always going to be ~10 times bigger (and therefore 100 times more efficient) on the ground than in space (even as space telescopes get bigger)

(i think you're confused about what pulsars are btw. they are not particularly bright. you can't really see them outside of our galaxy, either from space or the ground. when you can see them, you detect them in radio, which you can do much more easily from the ground (a radio telescope has be be hundreds of meters big these days, and does not look like a "telescope").)

you get x-rays from very very large structures (e.g. clusters of galaxies). it comes from the gas that surrounds them, which is very hot. x-ray observations are a good way to probe the large scale structure of the universe and figure out how wrong your sums are.

http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/ is going up in a few years. that's a 6m mirror. going to be a pretty big deal iirc.

cool :) so space telescopes are for the two extremes: really pretty pictures and really uncharismatic but vital details about the mass of extremely distant objects

yeah i knew pulsars were only found by radio telescopes, and only then when they happened to be beaming in the correct orientation - i had been asking earlier whether these new telescopes were radio telescopes but it appears they are conventional, just enormous

also nice links guys, will peruse

forthcoming radio/mm telescopes:

massive array of dishes in the atacama, EUR-US-Japan consortium, http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/alma/

SKA, probably end up in western australia:
http://www.skatelescope.org/photo/design_full.jpg
http://www.skatelescope.org/pages/page_genpub.htm

what is this radial spiral nonsense

goonhilly and herstmonceux all the way, bitches

I don't understand gravity. if I spin a ball, objects resting on its surface fly off of it. how do we stick to the earth?

dark matter has been a major component of shoe soles since 1906

iirc centripetal force keeps us in a sort of fixed harmonious orbit around the earth's centre, as for gravity, well, help us caek

no one understand's gravity. it just is. things with mass are attracted to each other. that is the way of things. people are working on understanding it, but given it's the most familiar force on the day-to-day, it's odd that it's by far the most poorly understood.

lj's centripetal force comment is not even wrong.

i am getting better at science iirc - either that or i am now making sure i only say the stuff i know to be truthful

gravity is caused by god fyi

yeah I get centripetal force conceptually but gravity seems like mysterious magic and I was hoping someone had figured it out since the last time I took a science class

I don't believe in god but it's hard to deny gravity

p sure gravity is due to god

im a scientist btw

i love caek

like a fat kid loves caek

lj: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong

lol

sombrero galaxy would be a good band name

;_;

plan to use that as awesome stealth zing though so all good

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

Something that is wronger than wrong is therefore more wrong than something that is not even wrong.

wrong

not as stealthy as it used to be thanks to peter woit: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0099488647/

(a+ book)

RONG

∞RONG∞

the rong ranger rides again

~wtw~

sombrero galaxy would be a good band name

― 鬼の手 (Edward III), Wednesday, March 3, 2010 10:54 AM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark

STEALING THIS

also caek u rule and also again i solved the universe btw the other night on w33d and it has to do with magnets, do u want my theory y/n

magnets sound more plausible than god tbh and you can have sombrero galaxy btw

dude

god is magnets

why do you think one magnet moves when you put another one near it

I thought I was moving it with my mind

it is like when the T-1000 was frozen and shot to bits but managed to recoagulate - god's design is beautiful and mysterious

popular 3-D cinema is also god's design fwiw

no gbx U rule, when we're both doctors let's start a blog called hipster doctors

ppl already think i'm the hipster med student cause i ride a bike and played in a band once. so cool let's do it

btw i am working on my explanation of magnets for u

popularpoppage 3-D cinema is also god's design fwiw

― queen of the rapping scene (acoleuthic), Thursday, March 4, 2010 2:19 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

click here to see fresh young teens losing their anal virginity...in 3D

tbf that is the point at which we put human culture into a little box and fire it into a comet at ~high speed~

3D Porno wd be kind of self-defeating in its unsatisfyingness

"Hey! Just look at these awesome 3D boobies all up in your face" is more distracting than arousing really

i mean being caught wanking is one thing but wearing those goggles too i mean seriously now

btw LJ, is there an official definition of poppage that is more than just 'sex'

zits exploding in 3D is much, much grosser than 3D porn

'solving' the universe by making it destroy itself in sheer embarrassment.

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2750/27501101.jpg

well that's as clear as mud then

need more physicists to cheerfully admit 'we can't know that right now, but thanks for asking', then carry on with studying actual data.

onion infographics like that aren't entirely physicists's fault, to be fair. there is codependent relationship between a certain kind of science and new scientist type publications.

basically www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=2773

~god is a hologram~

i have that tattooed on my back

only in *this* universe

btw caek i bet you feel the same way about this kind of science as many humanities profs feel abt buzzy crit theory papers

ha, i hope so.

although i don't see many scientists defending the bullshit, and i know where to look, whereas finding people working in the humanities willing to defend the airless heights is a lot easier : ( is that fair or is this confirmation bias?

popularising science kind of depends on pushing out a lot of fuzzy/dumbed down stuff, though?

if science was easy we'd all do it, imo. i was strongly advised by prof of theoretical physics in trinity to back off on an open day, as my expectations in the LC weren't A1 in both physics/maths. broek hart ;_;

popularising science kind of depends on pushing out a lot of fuzzy/dumbed down stuff, though?

― quiz show flat-track bully (darraghmac), Thursday, March 4, 2010 2:47 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

when done properly, it certainly involves making stuff more accessible, which is fine.

but a lot of popular writers have no interest in this. they choose stuff that is particularly difficult to explain in human language (field theory, quantum mechanics) because it sells and they don't have to work hard at making it comprehensible because no one can tell the difference.

or far worse, they are willfully obfuscatory about stuff like quantum mechanics of field theory or whatever because "gee whizz awesome" or "lol what will those crazy scientists think of next"

or they do things like that NS article, and write about stuff that is miles outside the mainstream of even theoretical physics, and simply be mentioning it they give the impression that it is credible or they are teaching the debate or something.

fwiw field theory and quantum mechanics have been touched upon at not a single point by my scijourn class - we're largely concentrating on stuff that can be explained lucidly while still telling the whole story

good. totally down with abraham cowley when it comes to science writing: abjure "the painted scenes and pageants of the brain".

which is not to say people should not try to explain QM or string theory or whatever. they should just not do a deliberately bad job of it in order to sell more copies. hawking started this.

abjure "the painted scenes and pageants of the brain".

this sounds like the kind of thing i'd totally fail to abjure, but i've been pretty good about hardtruthing it iirc - psychedelia is best saved for art, not news

although i don't see many scientists defending the bullshit, and i know where to look, whereas finding people working in the humanities willing to defend the airless heights is a lot easier : ( is that fair or is this confirmation bias?

― caek, Thursday, March 4, 2010 9:46 AM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

confirmation bias + a "only im allowed to make fun of my brother" mindset

i am fine with people making fun of the embarrassing bit of physics (although if the goal is to get rid of it i think the best policy is to ignore it). or are you talking about that mindset in the humanities?

in the humanities. cant speak for everyone but im really defensive when 'outsiders' or non-enthusiasts bag on stuff that i disagree with but hews close to stuff i dig.

yeah, it's easy to make fun of that stuff in a really phillistinic, ignorant way, which is something i should do less. e.g. my impression is that the guy who actually did the social text thing gets it and had good intentions, but the fallout of pointing and lolling (just waiting for the xkcd cartoon tbh) was (and still is) really ugly.

Dear caek,
hello you do not know me pleased to meet you.
I am watching Horizon on bbc2. It is about space & galaxies etc. Did you see this documentary? Did you approve? Was it full of your rivals?

I do not feel I am learning a lot really. They just keep introducing a new 'dark' thing then saying we don't understand it. We're on dark flow now (or darkflow? Wd be better).

Crank's on Itv4 in a bit tho, prob more my level.

i live in germany so i don't habitually watch uk telly except for antique's roadshow and university challenge.

i read the synopsis on iplayer. never heard of dark flow or "Sasha Kaslinsky, the scientist who discovered the phenomenon". he has no published papers as far as i can tell. hope you watched crank instead.

In fairness, I think it was this Nasa dude, Alexander "Sasha" Kashlinsky:

http://www.kashlinsky.info/anima/skash.nsf/home?OpenForm

duh, NASA.

some neat stuff in that show. inflation theory new to me. but it did follow what's beginnning to feel like a formulaic style for bbc big bang/quantum phsycis etc documentaries, where each theory is intercut with shots of scientists silently peering into the camera or off into the distance, with strange lighting and/or subtle effetcs used to illustrate just how to deep in thought these crazy characters are

Did anyone catch the programme about the universe (first episode focused on the sun) the last day? Was pretty good, looked great, could have done without the script and delivery of same by indie scientist dude.

Yeah, I saw Wonders of The Solar System and liked it. indie scientist Brian Cox is the "celeb" academic of my workplace and I've sometimes found his style a bit rich in previous stuff, but this time I warmed to him as the show progressed - the footage of the total eclipse and his humbled response to it was quite stirring stuff imo.

Saturnian ringshine ftw

and i've enjoyed that dude's presenting before, but i have a feeling his winsomeness might push it by the end of the series. especially when it seems the Sigur Ros track from the BBC ident is perpetually imminent.

yeha i will watch it this week again, don't get me wrong, but he just really grated on me. he's so...deep man, y'know?

and his teeth don't fit into his lips, which bothered me.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4043/4439443924_3d354c38bd_o.jpg

Okay, what's the backstory there? And why have they given him a suit?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Ham_the_chimp.jpg/468px-Ham_the_chimp.jpg

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

that helmet, yes

Ham was born July 1956 in Cameroon, captured by animal trappers and sent to Rare Bird Farm in Miami, Florida. He was purchased by the United States Air Force and brought to Holloman Air Force Base in 1959

One of the less likely biographies, that. But surely they could've come up with a better tribute than this:

It was decided that the AFIP would retain Ham's skeleton for further study, and his body was cleaned of soft tissue by lengthy placement in the Dermestid beetle colony at the Smithsonian

He's holding a wallet in that B/W picture - probably holding his passport & visa?

wow that article is full of unusual details for the wikipedia thread.

the story of ham the chimp is a great read in the right stuff, btw

Dark Flow is realer than previously expected!

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100322-dark-flow-matter-outside-universe-multiverse/

lol Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. i actually attended my first talk on this idea today. no idea if it's worth anything tho. not my area. anything "outside the universe"/multiverse is nonsense though, i do know that.

are u saying u don't believe in the DEADLIGHTS?

Wonders Of the Solar System was very good, I've decided, and I regret missing the second one now.

the whole thing is on iplayer until the season finishes! http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qyxfb

is it likely that i will be able to watch that from ireland tho? believe i've had difficulty before.

it is not likely.

lol ireland. looks like it's on bittorrent.

Wonders Of the Solar System was very good, I've decided, and I regret missing the second one now

The actual content of this has been excellent at times, and Prof Cox has really won me over. Only disappointment is that the cgi recreations of asteroids clashing, geysers on Io etc are all accompanied by KABOOM noises, which for a show that aims to be factual is pretty sloppy (I realise this is to make these events more "exciting", but same applies).

also, i didn't experience the sulphur poisoning that i would have expected while hovering above io's explosions O_o

Cox hasn't won me over, but he got easier to tolerate.

He had the earnest, dead eyes and smile of an apologetic young canon lecturing to college students.

also, i didn't experience the sulphur poisoning that i would have expected while hovering above io's explosions O_o

Hem, hem, I rather think that they gave the Cassini spacecraft a few coats of sulphur-proof paint for this very reason, before it was sent off into the void. If they had equipped it with a Radio Shack condenser mic as well then we could've heard the sound of yon geysers...

anyway pictures and graphics of space on prime time telly = win

important space video: http://vimeo.com/3921306

See, that (awesome) vid shows a way that some artistic flair can be fused with incredible space footage. I'm being a churlish about Prof Cox's show simply because the producer has gone with some lazy "rock music and sound FX" accompaniment for sights which deserve a bit more imo (but totally agree with you darragh, wld much rather have more of this kind of thing on the telly - as a youth I'd be bug eyed during The Sky At Night, and if Cox can do the same for today's youngsters then more power to him).

i should watch this brian cox thing!

I've enjoyed what I've seen of it but I do find Cox's presentation style a little distracting. Also he looks like a mate of ours which makes it worse.

yeah i think so- it's baby level stuff for you i'd say but the pattern is beginning to emerge- last night he went to various volcanic sites on earth (jammy get is really milking it imo) and then cut to a segment of "if you thought that was impressive" showing olympus mons and what have you.

it's definitely a show i'd have flipped over as a teen, and as i said it's still well worth watching now.

(xp)

cox's whole steez is "it really makes u *think*" but i'm getting over it tbh.

He just has odd little Jamie Oliver-isms - cool guy thinking baout stuff - that irk a bit.

he just really grated on me. he's so...deep man, y'know?

yep

I guess it mightn't be down to Cox so much as the director - don't really need to see establishing shots of you riding a quad bike up a hill for example.

could be worse, i suppose- could be davina or claudia winkleman.

hi caek

sup

hey caek how's munich tonite

i am drunk x 1 billion so not sure about the city

ok sound

although i am concerned at your lack of scientific notation usage

drunk x 10^9

wait that's an American billion dude

there is no such thing as an Irish billion

nah i thought we'd all settled on a thousand million at this stage?

xp lol NAMA joke

oh right that's yr thing innit

xp

if there was it would be measured in ale and hats

i say lol i mean fuck this country to pieces, piss on the pieces and then salt the scattered remains

and in any case a thousand million is the british billion iirc?

I don't think so?

i am reasonably certain of this, even at twenty to one in the morning

a "british billion" was a million million. a thousand million, aka a "us billion" was a "milliard". uk government changed in 1974 tho.

i am hungover

x 1 milliard?

ish

Mm, i'm going to have to check out this Cox In Space thing. When is it on? (Hope it's on one of the channels we get overseas)

it's on bbc2, so you should be safe enough there. i think it's on sunday evenings, but my brain is old and it may be monday

sunday at 9 on bbc2

thx!

when i get around to watching this, if i find it to my satisfaction, i will be happy to send it to anyone who wants to see it. we're probably going to screen it in a lecture theatre somewhere here in münchen.

"thousands of women of a certain age have developed a sudden and burning interest in particle physics"

More than just a pretty face: Brian Cox gained a physics degree at Manchester University when he was 23

WOW PRECOCIOUS

lol dailymail.co.uk

pretty sure kate has professed love for him on this board btw

He is honestly the spit of my friend Michael.

Things Can Only Get Wetter

Hi dere.

I was interested in physics *way* before I discovered Brian Cox. I think I might have found out about him asking on ILX "who was that DDB on Horizon last night?" several years ago. Humph. (I have already had the "I knew about him before you did!" conversation with a fellow electronic musician who was being all Losing My Edge about him because he liked the film Sunshine.)

Though, if you want to point the blame at a TV science hotty, you might want to ask a prepubescent Kate about Carl Sagan.

My illustrations on Flickr have picked up a sudden surge of interest since this programme began, though.

I was interested in physics *way* before I discovered Brian Cox.

i know, the mail thing just reminded me you had already identified him at talent. i remember talking to you about him here in 2006ish.

going to do a bunch of not reading ilx for a few weeks. will be back for the world cup. i wish you all nothing but the very best in all things.

rip you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISVZ3GrMJk8

come back soon dude

lucky you, wish I could do that

r.i. piece of caek

I've started re-watching Wonders Of The Solar System now Kate's WDYLL picture reminded me that I've ordered it on blu-ray - its glorious and breathtaking HD quality is another reason to be happy I took the blu-ray plunge. I've seen a couple of earlier Brian Cox things (about time and CERN and stuff) and I'm a fan of his contagious enthusiasm, but I find I always have to adjust to his accent a little bit. "... about everythink. But you'd be wrongue." :-)

dear caek

what is this I am hearing about Betelgeuse

*awaits ten tons of real-talk*

hiyo!

where you been at?

my desk for a month. it sucked. back for world cup madness/12 hour nights shifts at an observatory in texas.

In an observatory, do you actually do any looking through telescopes, or is that old hat?

you don't use your eyes, no. the detector is a CCD, just like in a digital SLR camera.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/04jun_swef/

caek on a scale of 1-10 how worried should I be?

This happens every 11 years, doesn't it? I don't think we should be to worr

stanm how were you able to click the 'submit post' button?!?!

DAMN! busted ;-)

yeah, i think that refers to the regular 11 year solar cycle. next peak is 2013. you should be worried 2/10 : )

Patrick Moore's "The Sky At Night" was on last night. It was surreal - I don't think I've seen him on telly since Gamesmaster. What a strange guy.

he is a very old man

right wing mentalist too, but I do enjoy The Sky at Night.

what a pro:

On 26 April 1957, at 10:30 pm, in an event that was to be a landmark of his career, Moore presented the first episode of The Sky at Night, a BBC television programme for astronomy enthusiasts. Since then, he has presented every episode each month, excepting July 2004, because of a near-fatal bout of food poisoning caused by eating a contaminated goose egg.

yeah, he is mental, xp

i usually tear up at the end credits of sky at night tbh

even is he is a racist paleoconservative

I was also watching Sky at Night last night and pleased that it's been going all this time with no horrible flashy re-boots, just some peeps discussing new discoveries in unpatronising layman's language. Hope it can continue like that when Moore eventually has to pack it in.

xpost

Yeah he is a guy who I can separate his politics from his other fine attributes.

He writes books with Brian May from Queen and a very astronomy looking young dude.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20100607/sc_space/strangediscoveryontitanleadstospeculationofalienlife

caek should we be interested/concerned/frightened about this strangediscoveryontitan that has apparently led tospeculationofalienlife?

what's this shit?

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

some fucking space shit iirc. dunno!

xp, you should take note of this discovery, for the beings are certainly taking note of you.

EVERYBODY PANIC (*)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7819201/Nasa-warns-solar-flares-from-huge-space-storm-will-cause-devastation.html

(*) again. Stupid newspapers.

How do I set up a mailman list to which non-members can post questions, comments, and problems to which members can respond without non-members posts getting bounced and with non-members receiving and auto-reply acknowledgment? This is administered within my institution. I don't know if that affects things. I tried to do this through Privacy Options -> Sender Filters -> generic_nonmember_something-or-the-other set to Accept, but this did not seem to work. No auto-replies. No posts. Thanks in advance for any help that you can provide that is probably unrelated to your known area of expertise.

non-members'
an

I know you can set it up to accept posts from non-members. Presumably it's just a switch in the admin interface? Not sure about autoreplies though. Worst comes to the worst, you could set up a dummy gmail account to receive all posts and acknowledge them using an autoreply (in a way that appears to come from the list admin).

this is an unsatisfactory situation: http://observatories.hodar.com/mcdonald/index.html

four fully clear nights in a row on a 60% site though, so i'm not complaining.

it is very cloudy here so we are goofing off with a seriously fancy teleescope. we just discovered saturn.

congrats 2 u

thanks. discovering a planet was a big moment in my career. high on coffee right now.

you guys are gonna go far off this- have you though of a manager/agent?

are you offering?

earlier today by the little telescope we will be using tomorrow night

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/hs488.ash1/26696_10150220656075305_673235304_12898372_1925929_n.jpg

if you can convince me that there's a commercial future for saturn exploitation then i'll take youse on, sure

caek, imo, has the life

failing to take a photo of myself on the side of the mountain

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f325/caek/IMG_3374.jpg

(not shown in this picture: terrible, terrible sunburnt bald spot from all day drinking england/usa match the day before)

fuuuck you get bald and sunburnt from drinking?

too late to quit now, but at least i know what happened to me.

yeah, drinking and watching football:baldness::morbid obesity:diabetes : (

caek's corner is a depressing place lately, we should party and fun times up in here

http://www.theme-party-palace.com/images/space-party-invite.jpg

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f325/caek/lhs-scout-parade-band-1.jpg

thesis time. wish me luck.

-- caek out.

luck.

courage!

upwards

per aspera ad astra

audere est facere

Carthago delenda est

mi casa su casa

go n-eiri and bothar leat

Rock on.

ou sont les neiges autrefois?

yo caek what's the fuckin craic where's the warnings of all these asteroids that are nearly hitting us man? what we payin you for?

(caek can't check ilx as he's beeing steering the entire planet on manual control the past two days)

yah phd been pretty much under control for a month so i've been moonlighting by steering asteroids and posting on ilx. it's been pretty chill.

still in germany? what are your living plans for the foreseeable?

in munich until the end of the year. submit in december, viva in jan, after that is tbc. i'm finishing out of sync with the academic year (which is how the job market works too), so worst case scenario is back in with the 'rents until the summer, although that wouldn't be so bad. dad + wife have kids who are 4 and 1. best case scenario is a ~6 month contract in one of a couple of places in the US, which i have been supposed to get news about "later this week" for the last two months.

what about you? i thought you dropped out of your masters and then you were all like "i have an exam tomorrow". i guess you have finished now?

where is gbx does anyone know? i miss him so.

ah nice - well I hope you teach the kids the value of playing to the whistle, if you do end up shacked with 'em - godspeed the American applications though

I have finished now, yes, although I only find out later this month whether I've passed my resits! I have it on my CV that I spent a year working on the Masters, and obviously while I'd really like to have passed, if one piffling module fails me I'll still have completed a large and comprehensive course of work. Pretty confident though. I came very close to tapping out a few times but I ain't a quitter - finish their MA and get out of there tbh

gbx is *coming to London* pretty soon - his sister is studying here! I am so so psyched to meet the guy, all-time ILX dude

yeah, worth getting the letters after yr name if at all possible. good work.

letters after ur name- ILX (All time)

Master of ILX (or MILX) should be a thing.

milx vs toast

M.ILX, maj. Football threads.

Originally signed up for Zing degree, transferred after dept shut down ;_;

♪♫ love u space ♪♫

that is cute.

coooooooooooooooooooooool

srsly, nice mnml ryoji ikeda soundtrack too

fucking love the space IDM XPOST

that darn nakhchivan

there is always above air by CoH, a 'concept album' abt a pilot floating in and out of consciousness in the upper atmosphere

caek do you know that this is all about (apologies if posted elsewhere)

is it aliens?

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/nov/HQ_M10-167_Astrobiology.html

judging by the people involved giving the conference, it's something in the solar system (so not another exoplanet discovery). a "finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life" suggests it may even be a discovery on earth, which would also make sense given people involved.

findings on earth that would impact the search for evidence of ET life include some new form of life that can survive in very extreme conditions, or, and this would be a very very big deal: clear evidence that life started twice on earth in the form of something that does not share the common ancestor that all currently known life shares.

doesn't sound like aliens though :-(

finally, a noble gas-based lifeform

i was on holiday at the time, but i think bill clinton gave the 1997 one on life on mars, so this is clearly not _that_ big

blast from the past http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/snc/clinton.html

>finally, a noble gas-based lifeform

I, for one, welcome our Argonian overlords and their lilac glow.

caek otm: http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/11/mediablogger-ex.html

this would be a very very big deal: clear evidence that life started twice on earth in the form of something that does not share the common ancestor that all currently known life shares.

good call. this would be dope.

if life has started once on earth it doesn't prove much about whether it started elsewhere, especially since, as far as we can tell, the odds against it are overwhelming. if it's started twice on earth than that doesn't just double the number of times we know it started. it also proves there's something wrong with our calculation of the odds, and they're not actually that remote. and that all but guarantees there is life elsewhere.

thinking about it, that would be the kind of news that would be so big they might get the president involved, so maybe it's just arsenic stuff.

someone on this thread has access to the paper.

ne way, i started a phd in this stuff in australia (with the first author on that paper before he moved to AZ, as it happens), so it is relevant to my interests.

although i'm handing my own phd thesis in on friday (conclusion: there is more magnesium in the middle bit of this one galaxy than in the outside bit), so i'm pretty annoyed this is going to blow my stuff off the front page.

WHO HAS IT

Your phd thesis needs some tie-in between magnesium and the prevelance of cute, naked women. Pics helpful. It wouldn't have to be a very strong tie to get yoiu back onto the front page, imo.

caek if u feed me the angle ill sensationalize it on gawker for u

only if the dentonator gives me double what the iphone 4 guy got

caek what is this nonsense about rings in the background microwave radiation proving the universe has started over and over again? is penrose high as usual?

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/11/recycled-universe/

i'm not an expert on CMB analysis, which is something people spend careers on. neither is penrose for that matter. that is utter nonsense imo.

always wondered what happened him after dangermouse got cancelled

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/12/epic-discovery-nasa-discovers-new-non-dna-based-life-form-to-be-annouced-at-2-pm-est.html

whoa

rad!

so cool

here we go!

trending right now #gävlegoat #arsenic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57PENuNVapc&feature=related

so fucking cool

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_4Oy_7FFvAeg/Sun71WaOgWI/AAAAAAAAFuE/MSgPNQt8O3A/s400/Arsenic+mouth+stuff+www.amazingribs.com+cary_grant.jpg

hey caek do you think this is a cool graphic why or why not thx love yr stuff

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2445/4002050596_0c2b6c4dd2_o.jpg

it's amazing data, but the graphic itself is (1) kind of confusing imo (2) loses the opportunity to lay down some serious multi-dimensionality (see VDQI by tufte for details)

the voyager mission is probably my favourite thing re: human space exploration.

via this discussion:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jan/09/giant-magellan-telescope-robin-mckie

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2011-06-a-large_web.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/2K5rH.gif

via

Cox's Wonders Of The Universe (4 parts, first part was on BBC HD yesterday and is on BBC 2 in England tomorrow) : C/D ?
(I'll probably just order the blu-ray if they make one)

if you can deal with the brian cox and the top gear test report style "CINEMATOGRAPHY" then everything he says is pretty solid, i think.

Although he got to it eventually he got my back up by saying there was no physical law that prevented a glacier from reconstituting itself. Nothing in classical mechanics says it can't happen by thermodynamics certainly has something to say on the matter. Are these not physical laws or are they devalued because us engineers came up with them?

hey caek i cant find your email--do you want to give an official comment on this

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/22/us-venezuela-chavez-mars-idUSTRE72L61D20110322?

"chavez otm"

haha that is an amazing article

"Careful! Here on planet Earth where hundreds of years ago or less there were great forests, now there are deserts. Where there were rivers, there are deserts," Chavez said, sipping from a glass of water.

haha i wish you had been around last night, i wanted to quote you in my post on the subject

"Chavez OTM," said an astrophysicist familiar with the history of class struggle on Mars.

the best part about the article is the reuters editor going "hmm, this isnt long enough... can we bring in a couple paragraphs about mars missions?"

haha if you can do a follow up i would be literally thrilled to be quoted on this! seriously, my parents would be so happy.

next time i have a good article about economics on other planets ill solicit a quote

i actually read the article last night and tried to think of a comment, but i was really drunk on 241 beer and couldn't make any sense of it. i missed my chance! THANKS jjj and goole.

your one shot at fame

i added you on facebook so you can reach me quickly for future leftists/planetary issues

wait did you dudes go to the t rock?

yes! our server had a face tattoo and i drunk surly! it was a magical mpls adventure.

saw the tat face lady at 241s last night. forgot how crowded that place gets when the weather's nice.

caek,

what was your favorite part about mpls? when are you moving here? what neighborhood will you live in? rent in NE is v cheap iirc, but it as almost as isolated and barren as w st paul.

-gbx

(j/k jj wsp is dope as heck)

my favourite thing about mpls was mpls. i really liked it! some highlights were the birchwood cafe (fell in love with pretty much every waitress there) and also the fancy pants bar bit of "cafe and bar lurcat". the airport had a good vibe too, which is a useful litmus test for a town too ime.

re: when am i moving there? "it's complicated". i will know either way in a couple of weeks!

whoa

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/texasfire042011/s_t01_00000001.jpg

The Texas Forest Service undertook controlled burns on Sunday, April 17, 2011 to get rid of fuel on the mountains around McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains of West Texas. Here, Black Mountain is burning. The Hobby-Eberly Telescope dome is at right. (Frank Cianciolo/McDonald Observatory)

ey up caek, this sounds important and impressive and so on? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13462926

yeah that's good work

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljgouzxixQ1qidrloo1_500.png

the smaller photo here is ngc891, which is the archetypal example of the kind of galaxy i did my phd on: edge-on galaxies with central bulges that are kind of boxy. these dude's know what's up.

caek is this what it looks like when you're on the grind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFpeM3fxJoQ

pretty much, but my observing gets done mostly in way less extreme locations, e.g. west texas

http://i.min.us/iwGYU.jpg

excelsior

^^ pictures of people who seem to have figured out how to live imo

nice vid too dayo

all hail west texas :D

that observatory is the only place on UT land where you are allowed to drink alcohol without campus police present

all hail west texas :D

beat me to it

http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/fun-with-fysiks

aw yeah

In the United States, the job market for people with doctorates in physics collapsed around 1970, as the huge post-Sputnik expansion of American university hiring and military spending came to an abrupt halt. By the mid-1980s, things hadn’t improved much, and it seemed likely that my recent Ph.D. in theoretical physics would be of little use in finding conventional permanent academic employment. One possible career path that came to mind was to try to follow the example of a sizable group of physicists who lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1970s. They appeared to have managed to pursue scientific research by dropping out of academia and adopting a countercultural lifestyle that included soaking in hot tubs at Big Sur, engaging in Tantric sex, hanging out at North Beach cafes and taking psychedelic drugs. Some of them had gotten rich writing books that mixed physics with various kinds of mysticism. I wasn’t very interested in the mysticism part, but I figured I could handle the rest.

For better or worse, I did end up moving to the Bay Area for a year, but as a respectable post-doc in mathematics I saw little or no evidence of the continued existence of these countercultural physicists, and I wondered what had happened to them. David Kaiser’s entertaining new book, How the Hippies Saved Physics, does a wonderful job of recounting the twists and turns of the story of how the members of this group came together, interacted with one another and with the more conventional physics community, and then dispersed to various fates.

my observing run in australia started a couple of hours ago.

weather looks doooope

http://i.min.us/idHbYm.jpg

Wait... you're IN aus? or just controlling a 'scope, or?

my colleagues are there driving the telescope and i am chiming in via email for the first night. i would love to have gone but it is only four nights. bit of a trek.

♥ clear skies ♥

Technology is so cool <3

which is your favorite star

betelgeuse because of the movie they made about it

but seriously, it's this beauty http://snfactory.lbl.gov/snf/spstds/EG131

oh nice http://appropriations.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=250023

> >This is not the last word.  The House Appropriations Subcommittee
> >will consider this bill tomorrow.  And the Senate will also have a
> >separate bill on NASA funding. However, in the present climate this
> >step puts the centerpiece of astronomy's future at great risk.
> >
> >JWST and Astrophysics has entered a very dangerous zone.
> >
> >The impacts are numerous if JWST is terminated:
> >
> >1)  termination is very damaging for future astronomy and
> >astrophysics scientific productivity and for the pre-eminence of US
> >science;
> >
> >2)  termination would result in no observatory-class mission to carry
> >out broadly-based research when the current Great Observatories reach
> >end-of-life;
> >
> >3)  termination undercuts the Decadal Survey process since it was the
> >top ranked program in the prior 2000 Decadal Survey, and it is
> >identified numerous times in the 2010 Decadal Survey as a
> >foundational program for future astrophysics research;
> >
> >4)  termination of JWST, as the natural successor to Hubble, would
> >result in the loss, once Hubble fails, of a very large part of the
> >remarkable public interest that astronomy has enjoyed;
> >
> >5)  termination would eliminate a major source of inspirational
> >science education and outreach results, particularly for the interest
> >in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) that comes from
> >the high profile HST and JWST science results;
> >
> >6)  termination would reduce the strength and visibility world-wide
> >of the US science program, not just astrophysics;
> >
> >7)  termination would reduce US credibility as an international
> >partner given the Canadian and European partnership on JWST and their
> >substantial contributions to the program;
> >
> >8)  termination of JWST, following on from the termination of the SSC
> >(Superconducting Super Collider), would send the message that the US
> >is relinquishing leadership in major science projects -- it will be
> >very difficult to start any other major science project or mission;
> >
> >9)  termination would eliminate the broadly-based research funding
> >for the community that results from the Great Observatory-class
> >missions if none are operating, and greatly reduces opportunities for
> >undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate education;
> >
> >It is essential that we make our voices heard.

sorry this belongs here: NASA: "We're going back to the moon!"

Yeah the Cyclotron here in Melb has also been hit with "sorry no money guys" govy issues recently that threatens to close it. Sucks.

http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/images/blog/Mrkos.jpg

oh yeah, I saw this last month and thought of this thread but then forgot to post it. This is one of those small innocent discoveries that could just as well have massive implications for our understanding of everything:

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2011/06/x-ray-penetration-of-earliest-galaxies-reveals-massive-black-holes-in-existence.html

yeah i know those guys. not necessarily a surprising discovery, but a very impressive observation!

http://i.min.us/ibKx5O.jpeg

behold the face of god!

http://i51.tinypic.com/153a045.jpg

looll

gah i'm going nuts, using vim for the first time in ages and can't remember the keystroke that reformats wrapping text to a fixed width that respects "words"

if that makes sense. not an easy thing to google

in .vimrc:

set tw=80 (or whatever)

to manually rewrap a paragraph, gqap. (gq is rewrap and then ap is a motion, so can be replaced with, e.g. j)

or you can have this happen automatically:

set fo=tcqa (or whatever) (a is the crucial bit)

gq was what i was looking for, thx

f/u q: how do go back to wrapping? (i'm moving between editing something for a colleague in vim and email, where the breaks are irritating to manage)

n/m

not that you care, but: i only just figured out answers to my hugest frustrations with vim

-- i'd paste something in and it would wrap and break words (set linebreak)
-- i'd want to jump down a line of text and it would skip to the next carriage return instead of what i saw on the screen (hit 'g' before the navigational key you want to use, which will switch from actual lines to 'screen lines')

i've wasted a lot of time futzing around with 'gq' and then, when moving to a non-vim environment, having to go back manually and fix all the linebreaks that got inserted.

thx internet

pro tips:

":set paste" before a paste and it will disable the rewrapping of text (I have this bound to something handy that toggles paste mode on and off)

there is a setting that makes movement keys correspond to displayed lines rather than actual lines in the file. i don't use this so i can't remember what it is, but it might suit you better.

i undo rewrapped text (i.e. put a long paragraph on a single line) by doing :set tw=100000000000 and then gqap or whatever. i am sure there must be a better way, but i do this about once every 6 months, so i haven't looked into it.

http://vimcasts.org/episodes/soft-wrapping-text/

command+j(et al) will move thru displayed tex

man my vimrc got ~pimped~ today (tho it's still way basic). snipmate + latex is a friggin godsend. i weep for the hours i spent diligently banging out slash commands and trying to type in texshop.

this has inspired me to look into making my own Epic templates and dot commands (Epic is the EMR used throughout the twin cities)

don't forget supertab too

so i guess what i really want is the breakindent patch but there's no way i'm messing with that

how do supertab and snipmate get along?

v well. they are kind of the default second and third packages people add to a vim install these days (after pathogen, which doesn't solve a problem i have, but a lot of people seem to find useful), so they get tested together.

saw really good shooting star

http://i.min.us/ilM44g.png

saw the moon

http://i.min.us/ijuDle.jpeg

:D :D

nice shooting star grab!

saw the moonset, now i'm gonna observe some stuff

http://i.min.us/ilB6BY.jpeg

i'm hoping to go camping up in the mountains this weekend and get a really good look at some shooting stars

heck yes

i am standing right where this photo was taken

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/texasfire042011/s_t01_00000001.jpg

awes

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

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110730.html

you can see the two most prominent naked eye galaxies in the southern hemisphere here about 3/4 of the way across.

which is the best planet

earth or jupiter in my opinion

do aliens exist

yes

http://i.min.us/ijhUYM.jpeg

:-(

caek does this truck make you feel excited. do you feel the need for 440 HP in your blood.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/cryogenic-service-truck-climbs-mountain-so-te

i know alma people from my old job. when i joined i just got the normal "welcome to health insurance" medical. those guys get a this really intense fitness/heart/psych thing every six months because of the conditions they work in. but they are otherwise normal nerds (with special lorries).

oh i thought of something while i was camping.

is it possible within the laws of physics as we understand them for a "shadow Earth" as used in various SF stories to exist? i.e. a planet of equal size and mass exactly opposite to Earth's orbit and therefore undetected cos it's always on the other side of the Sun? i figure it would've been observed somehow but is that right? and if so how do we know? sums of gravitational pull or something?

lol were u think the shadow cabinet are from bruv

Oxbridge

lol they really are

i think a shadow earth would be massive enough to be detectable via its gravitational pull on other planets (incl. earth). that's how neptune (and pluto i think) were discovered.

shadow earth would be cool from an "heir and a spare" point of view. e.g. i broke the leg on an ikea cupboard this weekend. would be great to go to shadow earth and pick of a spare. instead i've got to drive all the way to ikea.

would be the wrong colour

Many worlds theory ftw from a handy spare alternate reality tho

did anyone see this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Earth

haven't seen that.

i understood that Neptune and Pluto were predicted before observed because of their gravitational effects, yeah. which means everybody who's ever used the "far side of the Sun" story shd have known better tbh

i did not see it either. it won the science prize at sundance, but films that do that are all reliably terrible ime.

i thought it was p good although idk what kinda 'science' its supposed to be showcasing

unless you get the award just for being the type of movie nerds wld like

i think that's how the sloan works tbh

love this dude's accent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cRmbwczTC6E

http://www.space.com/13401-cosmic-star-dust-complex-organic-compounds.html

caek, where we born from the stars?

totes mcgotes. space is full of ppl.

elt (mentioned upthread) got funding green light couple of weeks ago

here it is with a train (both at 1:120 scale). lol.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7092/6989303730_52292642b8_b.jpg

the god particle

ha i assumed that would be a proper hardcore acronym rather than EXTREMELY LARGE TELESCOPE

people are excited about the higgs! although tomorrow's result is kind of an open secret like anderson cooper.

there used to be OWL http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overwhelmingly_Large_Telescope

nannte man das neue Projekt etwas selbstironisch Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (Überwältigend Großes Teleskop)

yes they are a droll bunch

do you have a "take" on it

it sounds like they are going to announce a "4-5 sigma" result (which is i guess "beyond reasonable doubt" for almost everyone except particle physicists and probably the people who do aircraft safety).

if i'm honest though, this kind of science doesn't really blow my hair back. partly that's the nature of high energy physics: you need a lot of data, and after a year you have a rough idea of where things are heading. the nature of your fuding quite rightly obliges you to release your early data, so you you release a result that is a "2-sigma" hint. and it's pretty much an open secret that a stronger statement is coming the next year (see e.g. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/07/best-physics-gossips-you-should-be-reading/54123/). so you lose the eureka moment of "tabletop physics", which is a shame. but really that's just an issue of presentation. some people will do what you mentioned yesterday:

The moments after the CNN anchor officially came out of the closet this morning were like an "over-it" contest on Twitter — a chance to see who could be the least surprised by the news.

but that is fronting. this is a legitimately big deal: the first really significant discovery in particle physics in maybe 20 years. the last piece of the puzzle in some sense. it would have been lots more exciting if they were like, "we can't find it. we have no clue." but they had to be sure, and being sure cost $10bn and a generation of particle physicists.

good article: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/may/10/crisis-big-science/?pagination=false

the og LHC

http://assets.nybooks.com/media/photo/2012/04/17/weinberg_2-051012_jpg_230x918_q85.jpg

Hey Caek!

Have you by any chance seen these Haribo Fruchtgummi Mopse?

http://www.worldofsweets.de/out/pictures/z1/Haribo-Gert-Kaefer-s-Fruchtgummi-Moepse.jpg

They have sour ones too!

http://www.worldofsweets.de/out/pictures/z1/haribo-gerd-kaefer--039--s-fruchtgummi-moepse-scharf-ingwer_z1.jpg

Apparently they are the work of this famous celebrity chef http://www.gerdkaefer.de/. I actaully ate with my parents in one of his restaurants many years ago. I believe it was this one: http://kurhaus-gastronomie.de/bistro.htm

Anyway this guy has a pug who is supposedly the most famous pug in all of Germany. His name is Sir Henry!

So, I need some of these gummis but can't get them online easily. :/ Are they readily available there?

ps - "mops" is pug in german

thanks for nybooks article link! great!

ha i will have a look in the gummi section of my supermarket next time e! (there is a gummi section. it is next to the ritter sport section.)

:D

where are you going to be working now again?

so many bores complaining about comic sans in the higgs slides

i am in munich for the next couple of years i think xp

that's a nice city, i have some cousins there. one is a foxy tv presenter, i'll send you her facebook.

i like foxy people

ugh i hate this shit

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/523589_444526022235081_226372658_n.jpg

there was an article on cnn headlined "what you need to know about the higgs boson" and i was hoping it would just "what everyone already thought was true is true, move along"

xp

you would hope that people who pride themselves on knowing about science might have some understanding of the way popular journalism works but hey ho

dear christians

it is called the god particle because it is the final piece of matter required to build the altar upon which we summon mighty cthulhu

aka "the where-is-your-god-now particle"

i feel like it's kid of a a mixture of solipsism and total fucking ignorance about everything

xp

kid = kind

also ungratefulness re: the $10bn particle physics got from european taxpayers (although tbf most of the people posting stuff like that are dawkins-type dilletantes seeking to align themselves with "science")

yeah that's why i said "knowing about science" rather than being actually in the field or anything.

yep. that kind of person is not a minority in science, but scientists are a minority of that kind of person.

Hi dere caek, refereeing question for u -- when determining stoppage time, what factors would make a referee initially call for 5 minutes and then increase that time to over 8 minutes?

stoppages within stoppage time

Otm. If not that then was this a game with a 4th official?

yes

does the 4th official set a suggested minimum that the ref can over-rule? i cdn't remember

basically shakes out like this

5 min stoppage time announced
~3 minutes in, player commits second yellow card foul, is sent off, but does not leave field of play immediately
player's coach protests, is also ejected & leaves slowly
once play resumes, play continues up into 8th minute of stoppage when 10-man team scores goal, game immediately ends

(and yes this means the team I support was denied a win but I am trying to understand this from an objective point of view)

time can and is added during extra time

e.g. i think there's an explicit directive to add at least 30s for ever substitution during extra time

so sounds like the ref added some time for the nonsense

i'm not actually sure if the ref can overrule the 4th off. he can certainly overrule the linesmen.

that's what I figured, thx!

'ello caek. The bbc reckons (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20249753) that 42 light-years away is "not too far away". it bloody is, isn't it?

probably wdn't get mobile reception but in galactic terms 42 light years is knack all iirc

we are not galactic we are humantic.

speak for yourself i am made of star stuff iirc

we should invade now while they're still in the early 1970's. hippies'll never know what hit'em.

the second nearest star to us (i.e. after the sun) is 4 ly away. Our galaxy is about 50,000 ly across. so 42 ly is "the solar neighborhood".

i guess it's like saying, compared to the entire plant earth, woking is not too far away from london. obviously if you can't move then woking is effectively very far away. in this metaphor, we are shut-ins in woking.

so where is Hull then? is there a part of the galaxy that looks forlornly outwards idly waiting to be slowly engulfed?

how has the world of physics reacted to

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-denise-milani-conspiracy-honey-trap-professor-gets-five-years-in-argentina-jail-8340525.html

One observation: A physicist I know posted it on his Facebook not one hour ago.

Professor Frampton, described by his 71-year-old ex-wife as a “naive fool”, said he had been lured into travelling to South America by criminals posing as the amply-proportioned fitness trainer...

ex-wife otm

Ha, yeah. It's kind of ridiculous, right. He's a particle physicist so I never met him, but I know ppl who have. Tbh it kind of surprises me that this sort of thing doesn't happen more often. Many male physicists (especially toward the maths/high energy theory end) are a little, ahem, wet behind the ears. I mean even the person who told me this story struck me as the kind if person to whom it could happen.

He sounds like he is safer in prison than in the real world.

I like that he has published papers with the prison as his affiliation: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2012/nov/22/paul-frampton-hit-by-56-month-drugs-sentence

hay caek is "exotic matter" in this any more than subtle handwaving? What are my chances of actually getting to alpha centauri in my lifetime? And does FTL always and irrevocably imply time travel (which is problematic obviously) or is there any kind of loophole there?

http://io9.com/5963263/how-nasa-will-build-its-very-first-warp-drive?post=54599539

"exotic" is a term of art in particle physics, so it's a weird choice, but they don't give any indication they are actually talking about exotic matter. i think here they just mean regular mass that is converted into energy by nuclear fission or whatever, yielding e=mc2.

the point with this thing, afaict, is that it does not involve faster than light travel. imagine spacetime is a living room rug. you can't walk across the rug at FTL, but given preposterously contrived circumstances, someone else can stretch the rug in such a way just that your location changes in a way that is equivalent to moving (and perhaps a very long way very quickly).

key quote: "Mathematically, the field equations predict that this is possible, but it remains to be seen if we could ever reduce this to practice."

also i have no idea if the field equations even predict this is possible. i skipped gen rel (via not being clever enough).

the point with this thing, afaict, is that it does not involve faster than light travel.

but it still effectively means a signal could propagate faster than light. no?

ha, i guess. god i never understood this stuff.

is anything faster than aaron lennon over five yards tho

where is layman's maths-free guide to GR. anyway i guess this is mostly bullshit, no trips to stars near or far in my or maybe anyone's lifetime, sadface. what a senseless waste.

cheer up, maybe the onset of catastrophic climate change will focus minds on ways to get out of this solar system pronto

dreaming of a railgun that can shoot us at alpha centauri

c'mon get real, even ignoring acceleration the stars are out of reach without ftl. intra solar system railgun might be a winner, first we need space elevators to circumvent enormous expense of getting into orbit only by riding giant exploding tanks of propellant.

i'd settle for a railway that got me to galway tbph

now let's be realistic

*joke about galway being behind the times like light from distant stars*

it's not behind the times but it is beyond the pale

someone else can stretch the rug in such a way just that your location changes

Mrs. Whatsit?

a signal could propagate faster than light. no?

my understanding is that theory allows and experiments have supported the idea that certain kinds of state information can be exchanged between atoms that are indefinitely remote from one another, and this exchange may occur more quickly than a photon could travel between the two atoms. nb: i am not a phycisist.

If yr talking about epr paradox/aspect experiment then yeah there is some kind of weird action at a distance, but no information is propagated, just the same random outcome occurs at the two remote locations. Like rolling two dice light years apart and they always come up the same, spooky but you can't communicate anything.

makes me feel better to know that every time I lose at craps some space alien dooder also just like a quadrillion zeeprix a billion light years away

乒乓 quantum entangled with a space alien dooder!

I'd do it again too

quantum entanglement is a like a special std where you both get whammies at the same time

our maths are inadequate as yet

I've got another space question inspired by this gif that Dayo posted:
http://i.imgur.com/Z7FpC.gif

At first I thought it was wildly out of proportion because I thought the sun was waaaaay bigger than Jupiter but I internet-sleuthed and it looks like the sun's diameter is only ten times bigger than Jupiter's?
So gravity's gotta be both pretty intense and delicate, huh? Like, if I were in space and I opened a bag of peas, would my gravitational pull force them to orbit me? Or do all the nuclear reactions going on in the sun make it denser than the planets in order of insane magnitudes?

Jupiter is way less dense than the other planets in our galaxy iirc

Jupiter's mass = 0.0009546 Solar mass

most of that mass concentrated at the center, which is holding all those gases in

just like uranus

lol

there should be more songs about gas giants

Is there any rule of thumb for figuring out what's the biggest thing I could get to orbit around me in space?

you mean space, far enough away from any other objects that their gravometric pull doesn't overwhelm your own, right? I am thinking that even at a far distance, the sun is going to exert a greater pull than your own mass

the average density of the sun and jupiter are actually about the same, just a little be denser than water. the earth is 4ish times denser than either. that's on average. and "on average" is all that matters for gravity. the earth doesn't notice that the middle is denser than the outside. all it cares about is the average value, i.e. the total mass of the sun. (although it's true that at its centre the density of the sun is much higher than basically anywhere else in the solar system.)

so anyway, jupiter and the sun are the same density, for gravitational purposes. and you're right that you're right that jupiter is only ten times smaller than the sun. but if something is ten times smaller then, for a given density, it weighs 1000 times less. that's because mass = density x volume, and volume = size^3. indeed as crut says, jupiter is 0.00095 suns, i.e. ~ 1/1000), and the sun dominates the gravitational forces planets experience to an almost overwhelming degree. (but not completely, see, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_Neptune)

that animation is not to scale, no. the relative size of jupiter and the sun look about right, but all the other planets are way off (they should basically be invisible, e.g. the earth is ~1/10 the size of jupiter, i.e. 1/100 the size of the sun). also obviously the distances between the planets and the sun are wrong, e.g. the distance between the earth and the sun is 200+ times the size of the sun.

Like, if I were in space and I opened a bag of peas, would my gravitational pull force them to orbit me?

if you open them in such a way as to give them zero velocity relative to you (i.e. with a very steady hand), yes. but realistically you wouldn't have a steady enough hand, and you would impart enough energy for them to escape your orbit. assuming your arm is 1m long and you weigh 80kg, they'd need to be going at less than sqrt((2 * G * (80 kg)) / (1 m)) = 0.000231156472 mph (2 ten thousandth of a mile per hour) to be trapped in orbit around you.

Is there any rule of thumb for figuring out what's the biggest thing I could get to orbit around me in space?

― Fetchboy, Friday, March 1, 2013 7:21 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you mean space, far enough away from any other objects that their gravometric pull doesn't overwhelm your own, right? I am thinking that even at a far distance, the sun is going to exert a greater pull than your own mass

― ☠ ☃ ☠ (mh), Friday, March 1, 2013 7:33 PM (59 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah the question is different depending on whether you're in the solar system or "deep space". in the solar system, you're basically asking, what's the biggest moon i could keep in orbit around planet fetchboy, without the sun pinching it and turning it into a planet. that would depend on how far you were from the sun, earth, etc.

in deep space, the only limit is the escape velocity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity. as long as your "moon" is moving slower than that away from you, it will orbit you.

there's a complication though: one body doesn't orbit another. they _both_ orbit their _shared_ centre of mass. in the case of the sun and the earth, that centre of mass is basically the centre of the sun, because the sun is so massive. it's a little bit further from the centre of the sun for the jupiter-sun system, and in fact the sun visibly wobbles in response to jupiter. observing exactly this effect in other stars is how most exoplanets get discovered (500+ of the 800+ we know about, according to http://exoplanet.eu/catalog/). the centre of mass of the earth-moon system is inside the earth, but only just.

that gif is blowing my mind

we're traveling in like a "solar up" direction?? where are we even going? this is madness.

the sun isn't moving exactly in the plane of the galaxy, but approximately so. and yeah apparently the plane of the solar system happens to be about 60° to the plane of the galaxy. who knew.

oh great so we're cockeyed too

iphone people: i recommend the app "exoplanets"

you can explore the MW, throw it around, pinch in out, etc.

and you can make neat graphs like size of planet against discovery year (notice we're getting good at finding smaller and smaller planets, i.e. closer and closer to earth mass)

we're traveling in like a "solar up" direction?? where are we even going? this is madness.

― goole, Friday, March 1, 2013 2:51 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

http://i.imgur.com/CXIjIEr.jpg

Thought the Sun was moving at about the same velocity as nearby parts of the galaxy. There's nowhere to put the camera to capture this. The only way to get this effect given movement of nearby bodies would be to have the camera moving away from solar system at Ludicrous Speed, in which case the experience will be of the observer moving, not the solar system. No?

figuring out what's going on in the solar neighbourhood is very, very tricky and it's very difficult to visualize how they do it. but they do it by observing nearby stars.

on average they're all going round the sun at about the same speed in the same direction, 200-odd km/s. there's some scatter though. some are on perfectly circular orbits in the plane of the galaxy, some wobble up and down, some are on "radial" orbits, i.e. plunging toward the middle and out the other side, and only happy to be passing through the solar neighbourhood right now.

the upshot of that scatter in velocity/direction is that the stars that are close to us right now, will not be our nearest neighbours forever

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Near-stars-past-future-en.svg/749px-Near-stars-past-future-en.svg.png

Right, but those changes are glacial for any observer in a human time scale. There is literally nowhere to put a camera to visualize that gif. Even if the "camera" moved that fast away from the S.S. it wouldn't see the Sun translating so dramatically against the backdrop of near space, which is also moving at similar speeds in similar directions.

well that gif is just showing what voyager II is beaming back .... dunno what to tell ya man

afaict the camera is orbiting the centre of the MW faster than the sun, which is why the stars in the b/g are seen in parallax

apart from the scale issues, it looks basically plausible

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C4V-ooITrws

Quite a bit clearer. In the youtube description he lists the duration of precession cycle as 25,000 years, with over 8000 cycles in one 226 million year revolution of the galactic center.

Of course if the planets complete hundreds or thousands of revolutions around the Sun while the Sun makes one cycle around the vortex, the planetary orbits themselves aren't especially helical, as was shown in the first video.

The visualization also highlights the movement of the solar system against a static haze, without showing the (I guess similarly helical?) movements of other stars nearby, which would show the galactic arm rotating more or less in unison, as is suggested by the wider views at the beginning of the new video.

yes the original anim exaggerates the pitch of the helices formed by the orbits of the planets too, good point

spiral arms is a complicated one

good grief what a bore http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/03/04/vortex_motion_viral_video_showing_sun_s_motion_through_galaxy_is_wrong.html

dude it's important to stop the hoi polloi taking any interest in SCIENCE

i mean you know you're in for a fun old time, and some excellent, concise writing, when you come across passages like

However, there’s a problem with it: It’s wrong. And not just superficially; it’s deeply wrong, based on a very wrong premise.

his specific valid criticisms of the animation, beyond that it is apparently accompanied by some crank's nonsense idea of the universe, and that crank doesn't know the difference between a vortex and a helix, basically boil down to the fact that the ecliptic (solar plane) is at 60° not 90° to the galactic plane.

this criticism in particular is totally unfair/wrong:

That is apparently what Sadhu is representing in his video. But that wobble does not affect the Sun at all. It’s just something the Earth does. But Sadhu adds that to the Sun’s motion around the Milky Way, which makes no sense. His video shows the Sun corkscrewing around the galaxy, sometimes closer to the galactic center and sometimes farther away over and over again. To go back to the carousel analogy, its like the horse is circling the center, moving up and down, and also left-to right. But that's not what the Sun really does. There is no left to right motion (toward and away from the galactic center multiple times per orbit). That corkscrew pattern Sadhu shows is wrong.

well, it is an it isn't. seen from above the galaxy, the sun isn't on a circular orbit. it is sometimes closer and sometimes further away. it goes on these excursions in and out at its epicyclic frequency. this is undergrad stuff. tbf it's obvious that's what not the animator has in mind with his crazy theory (he calls it a "precession", which is, at best, a pretty fundamental misunderstanding), but the to say simply and clearly that "the corkscrew pattern is wrong" is wrong.

Have to love when a fan of a nutty theory likes to make animations

South Park for example

that's a nice city, i have some cousins there. one is a foxy tv presenter, i'll send you her facebook.

― the late great, Wednesday, July 4, 2012 10:00 AM (8 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you never her

Caek

whats it all about, really

caek have you ever met this guy: http://www.cv.nrao.edu/~jmangum/

I work w/ him on the journal he edits & I like how he has a link on his page for "not THAT J3ff M@ngum"

i have not met him, probably due to the weird schism between radio and optical astronomy (i am optical)

xp, i know right?

http://images.gizmag.com/hero/esa-planck-cmb.jpg

this is a decayed map of the world someone found in the back of an old shed, who are they trying to fool

gah

http://images.gizmag.com/hero/esa-planck-cmb.jpg

i think a lot of people are kind of disappointed there wasn't definitive evidence of significant non-standard "anomalies" in those results, although it seems like there is probably something slightly weird going on. otherwise they've measured a bunch of numbers we already know to greater precision.

some good summary coverage from one of the uk-based cosmologists working on it

http://www.andrewjaffe.net/blog/science/000553.html
http://www.andrewjaffe.net/blog/news/000554.html

caek I just want you to know that I am going to read all of this thread (missed it somehow until now) in preparation for MCDONALD OBSERVATORY SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE time!

cool! this is still a can do go situation!

Caek

how can a person be said to exist at all, were one to use a galactic scale? How does yr answer to this question inform yr pickup technique?

Cos i see it having ultimate neg potential tbrfr

I think that might fail as a neg. True, space is mostly empty, but the earth is not. I am in torquay marks and Spencer's right now so I can say this with some certainty.

-_- *perspective*

Dear caek,

1) Which telescope will you be using at McDonald?
2) Whatcha gonna do with the telescope?
3) I seem to recall reading somewhere that the color of the universe is kinda muddy olive. T/F?
4) What kind of beer do you like to drink in West Texas?
5) What is you favorite kind of taco?

Blue taupe iirc

i will be on the 107" aka the harlan j smith. i will be measuring the mass of the most massive black holes (i.e. this stuff http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20528137)

the universe is as black as midnight on a moonless night in my experience.

the west texas beer situation is improving thanks to the big bend brewing co in alpine, and i am really looking forward to drinking a vulgar amount of this on my forthcoming trup. but apparently they have struggled with licensing, and i have not had a chance to try it. so i usually drink alamo golden ale or shiner or whatever is on happy hour, i.e. bud/miller light.

i don't eat meat so my favourite taco is the fish taco. i love fish tacos!

In the optical telescope world, does bigger always equal "better" or do different size telescopes do different things better/worse?

Also: what is your all-time favorite telescope?

And: how does one go about booking time on a major telescope? Do you have to pay for it, or drink beers with the right people, or????

yes, basically.

bigger telescopes have technical difficulties. e.g. you can't machine a single piece of glass for the mirror much bigger than about 8m, so to get above that you have to build segmented mirrors like keck in hawaii. and segmentation requires active optics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_optics, which is complicated and therefore expensive and unreliable. and if you put exactly the same instrument configuration/optical set up on a bigger telescope as on a smaller telescope then you'll have problems with a tiny field of view (think like the zoom lens on a camera). and small field of view is generally not a good thing, especially if you are observing "extended objects", i.e. galaxies, blobby things, etc. but you would never do that. so in practice, bigger is better, cost and robustness notwithstanding.

my all time favourite telescope is the 200" hale telescope at mt palomar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hale_telescope. it was the biggest telescope in the world for most of the 20th century. the dome is beautiful (and because of old school mount, still the biggest dome in the world, i think). if anyone is in socal ever then i highly recommend a visit. it's a great site, maybe even prettier than the mcdonald.

you get telescope time by applying in a competitive process. they put out a call for proposals every 3-6 months, you say what you want to do, how many nights you need to do it etc. and then an anonymous committee ranks the proposals and a scheduler tries to fit all the highly ranked proposals in. once you get awarded time, it's free, except you might need to pay for bed and board on site (e.g. i have to pay like 100$/night to stay in the lodge at the mcdonald). you can't really stay off site, even at a place like the mcdonald, which has towns relatively nearby.

http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/images/blog/EscondidoBrochureCover.jpg

Somehow read that as "One of California's Greatest Booty and Recreation Spots"

hey caek gimme a holler when you're in san diego

i thought you were in new york? but yeah, definitely!

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/

I don't know if this is your thing Caek, but could you recommend any good docs about the Cambrian Extinction? I watched an old beeb one recently and thought maybe they have new data since that one.

I don't know anything about that stuff. It is very cool though. I do remember thinking evolution by Carl zimmer was great by that's not what you're looking for. Too general.

Thanks anyway. The doc was an episode of Horizon called The Day The Earth Nearly Died (2002) and it was very interesting. Previously they thought the Permian Extinction was some extremely rapid event that took out 96% of life on the planet and in this they found new data. It was multiple events and it took hundreds of thousands of years to nearly take us all out of the game.

imminent detection of dark matter in the news a lot at the end of last week. here's why most of those articles were nonsense. http://profmattstrassler.com/2013/04/03/ams-presents-some-first-results/

some more planck stuff. pity the people who staked their careers on non-gaussianity: http://telescoper.wordpress.com/2013/04/07/has-planck-closed-the-window-on-the-early-universe/

also max i enjoyed your article about black hole death.

The issue of our time

A Good Story

Dear caek's Corner,

I strongly suggest that you stop everything you are doing, quit your job, pack all necessities into your car (if you have no car, insert step of *procure car*), and find a way--any way--go get your ass to wherever caek is, ever, but particularly at the McDonald Observatory in the Middle of Nowhere Texas (ostensibly Ft. Davis).

Pictures and commentary to follow.

Suffice it to say that you, YOU, need to do this.

Wanted to belatedly thank caek for answering my rube questions. Particularly interesting was the two-bodies-orbiting-their-shared-center-of-mass. Looking forward to quincie's pics and commentary.

i'm selling my macbook pro! and i can't be bothered with ebay!

if you're in europe i can post it to you. if you're in london i can give it to you in person. please pass this on to anyone you know is in the market/is not a dick.

http://pentangle.net/macbookpro/

my internal monologue for 2013 may 14 and excellent video accompaniment for the daft punk lp:

http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~ghezgroup/gc/pictures/ncsa_3dmovie.shtml

http://scienceblogs.com/universe/files/2013/01/LOLA1.jpg

Before the invention of computer flight simulators, engineers at NASA needed a way to help astronauts visualize landing on the moon.

So they built LOLA, or Lunar Orbit and Landing Approach, at Langley Space Center: a system of massive glowing murals and scale model-orbs criss-crossed with ribbons of track. In total darkness, pilots would ride in carts along the tracks, poised at relevant angles from the ersatz moons, and practice translunar approach and orbit establishment in a field of simulated stars, front-projected onto screens by a four-axis “star ball” mounted over the cabin.

http://scienceblogs.com/universe/2013/01/22/l-o-l-a-lola/

Awes

Caek are you back in the States yet???