♪♫ 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?

Hey trinities are ok

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8lRKCw2_Pk

The past and the present and the future

Big daddy, son, and spook

Peter, Paul, and Mary

RGB

Etc.

Etc

betelgeuse has now gone from the night sky (i.e. it's in the direction of the sun) for the next six months, so if it's still getting brighter we have no way of knowing.

this did happen tho https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_2023ixf

when come back bring superpie

Good thread https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2023-December/033318.html

good galaxies https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/Webb_reveals_structure_in_19_spiral_galaxies

What does this mean? this doesn't make sense

Skyscraper-sized asteroid to pass within 1.7m miles of Earth on Friday

An asteroid as big as a skyscraper will pass within 1.7m miles (2.7mkm) of Earth on Friday.

Don’t worry: there’s no chance of it hitting us since it will miss our planet by seven times the distance from the Earth to the moon.

what doesn't make sense about it?

presumably the m in 1.7m is for million

(I skimmed at first and thought it said "1.7 miles" so maybe Andy did too)

it's 1.7 millimiles, i.e. about 8 feet.

well that seems a little too close

Yeah, I thought it was less than two miles... I was hoping to go out and watch it pass over the neighborhood

In terms of interplanetary space 1.7 million miles is just a skip and a jump away.

the James Webb telescope spotted a drunk riding on it, so it might swerve closer

https://www.blog.lepetitprince.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/buveur.jpg

Dessin-moi un mouton

gbx!

hey whats up

good to see you! hope you are well!

thanks man! likewise!

any new space facts i should know

nah it's pretty much over

whew!

my new dentist looks and sounds like andrew wk.

And the cover of _I Get Wet_ is how you look when you leave his office?

one of the few times I've ever asked for an autograph was Andrew WK, backstage at the Reading or Leeds festival, twenty years ago... I still have it

Never really listened to his songs but always admired his PMA

my favorite fact about him is that when he moved to New York City in the mid 2000s, instead of moving to Williamsburg or the LES, he chose to live in midtown east.

good stuff https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/apples-have-never-tasted-so-delicious-heres-why/

Still reading the article, but Honeycrisp apples are overrated. Their texture is their only attribute - I sometimes find them bland, overly juicy, almost watery. Many of the subsequent innovations are far superior. I just had a Lucy Rose apple, which has a mottled red flesh, is more crisp than a Honeycrisp, and the flavor is perhaps better than any other apple I've ever had.

Those dwarf rootstocks are really wild.

Friends of mine make cider using heirloom apples they harvest all over Long Island, including from abandoned orchards that once covered the area. These ciders are like elegant white wines. They do their own grafting, etc.

Fun article!

yeah, that's a cool fact about Johnny Appleseed... he was planting for hard cider, not pies

Back in olden times, a simple method to distill brandy was to leave a barrel of cider outside during the winter... ice crystals would form which you scoop out every morning with a strainer, thus removing water and raising the alcohol level. When no (or little) ice is forming, you've got yourself some applejack

That's the same principle behind icewine.

Back in the day when there were only root cellars and most people had no access to ice apart from mid-winter, the only time there was such a thing as fresh cider was within a couple of days of pressing it. The fermented stuff was probably safer to drink than a lot of the surface water and tasted a lot better than most well water. Plus, that pleasant buzz!

yeah, I think most people back then were pretty buzzed all the time... same thing with beer, safer than water and it had some much-needed calories

I would ruin my life for a Kissabel apple

The Lucy Rose look very similar to the Kissabel.

I love Honeycrisp apples but Snapdragon, Ruby Frost and Evercrisp are even better. I got one called a Ludacrisp at my local farmer's market Thursday, it's supposed to taste like juicy fruit gum but I have not tried it yet. Never seen an apple with "mottled red flesh"!! WANT

I really do love pink ladies. Reliably delicious. The limited local apple varieties is one of the few things that bums me out about California.

We just went apple picking on Thursday and actually loaded up on Ludacrisp! Mostly for the name, but they're great! Not anything like Juicy fruit gum, though, iirc

The early Michael Pollan book The Botany of Desire has a great section on apples and the history of their cultivation, including lots of great Johnny Appleseed content iirc. Basically a novella length version of the first section of that article. It is kinda wild that so much has happened since though, it was written in the late 90s/early 2000s.

Honeycrisp are almost too crisp for me, I do like them but they taste somehow watered down. Living in New England it is really an embarrassment of riches though, I have lots of favorites but enjoy sampling the unfamiliar even more. At the peak of the season our local food coop usually has a set price mix-and-match for several weeks with ~20 unfamiliar varieties from local farms

i like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_Crisp

I like Swiss Gourmet apples, had em for the first time this year

this is all fine but when will someone fix bananas

Purple Sugar Apple (Sweetsop)

https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/01/a-nasa-astronaut-may-have-just-taken-the-best-photo-from-space-ever/

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/pettit-nasa.jpg

it’s good!

Is that the Enterprise in the orange blur?

I think there's supposed to be a comet coming around this week... probably better viewed in the Southern Hemisphere

I wanna see it since it won't be back around for another 160,000 years

extremely good telescope

https://rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-first-look/cosmic-treasure-chest

The images it takes are automatically encrypted, sent to an agency and new objects are deleted to ensure that secret military stuff isn't revealed.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/12/vera-rubin-telescope-spy-satellite/680814/

crazy that Vera Rubin has already discovered 2000+ new asteroids. It won't be long until a new batch of potential Earth killers has been identified.