Putting things in perspective

[Goose]

Mindblowing video to put us in the perspective of things...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udAL48P5NJU&x-yt-cl=84359240&x-yt-ts=1421782837

Have you seen the largest picture ever taken? For the record, it's a mammoth 1.5 billion pixel image (69, 536 x 22, 230) and requires about 4.3 GB disk space. Oh, and it'll take your breath away.
On January 5, NASA released an image of the Andromeda galaxy, our closest galactic neighbour, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The full image is made up of 411 Hubble images, takes you through a 100 million stars and travels over more than 40,000 light years. Well, a section of it anyway.

 

[Airgead]

Oldie but goodie - Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Every spot of light on the image is a galaxy as large or larger than Andromeda.

Full Hi-res here - http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0409/hudfobjects_hst_big.jpg

 

[Dave70]

Check it out while you can, cos in 4 billion years its going to collide with our own galaxy.
Pfft..Nice design God..

 

[Dave70]

Bit of an Hourglass nebula man myself.
Thats right, its naturally occurring, not designed by Adam Jones.

 

[jyo]

I love this kind of stuff. Completely mindblowing.

If you like scale, and feeling infinitesimal, have a play with this-

http://htwins.net/scale2/

 

[manticle]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk

 

[Camo6]

I just think it's neat that God has provided us with such an inspiring panorama for us to appreciate. While I love to watch a movie from a central seat, being off to the side and way up the back suits me just fine.

 

[VP Brewing]

I love Carl Sagans 'Pale Blue Dot'. Check it out on YouTube

 

[AHB_Admin]

I love Carl Sagans 'Pale Blue Dot'. Check it out on YouTube

"The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.".

Mr.X is one of the reasons I look up into the stars and say "How?" but never say "Why?".

 

[Dave70]

I just think it's neat that God has provided us with such an inspiring panorama for us to appreciate. While I love to watch a movie from a central seat, being off to the side and way up the back suits me just fine.

Smart move. Seeing as the even brief exposure to Gods universe without the benefit of a space suit will see one's eyes boil out of their skull and leave you floating around looking like Wonkas Veruca Salt due from cyanosis, hypoxia and your blood vaporizing.
God reminds me of a benevolent overseer with a splatter film director bent at times..

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk

If I were il duce, The Meaning Of Life, The Life Of Brian and Orwells Animal Farm would be cornerstones in every primary school curriculum. Would nip many a bad idea in the bud I reckon.

 

[Dave70]

Which reminds me.
Einsteins idea that the ball and the feathers aren't actually falling at all is kind of mind blowing when you think about it.

http://youtu.be/E43-CfukEgs

 

[Airgead]

Which reminds me.
Einsteins idea that the ball and the feathers aren't actually falling at all is kind of mind blowing when you think about it.

Well... it all depends on your frame of reference...

And actually, I'm not sure that's correct (or there was an abrupt end to the piece before Mr Cox could finish)... From your own internal reference frame you can't tell whether you are moving or stationary, but you can tell whether you are accelerating, and both the feathers and the ball were accelerating due to gravity (or due to moving from a higher to lower energy state by moving along a straight line path in curved space-time for the relativists among us).

 

[mr_wibble]

Einsteins idea that the ball and the feathers aren't actually falling at all is kind of mind blowing when you think about it.

Nah, I don't buy that. It's a similiar argument about the sound of a tree falling if no-one is there to hear it.

It smacks too much of that joke about ...
Q: How does <can't remember> change a light-bulb -
A: She just holds it and the world rotates about her.

No, it doesn't. The lack of an observer doesn't change the process, nor outcome.
I think Einstein was having a joke, at his observers' expense.

-kt

 

[wide eyed and legless]

If I were il duce, The Meaning Of Life, The Life Of Brian and Orwells Animal Farm would be cornerstones in every primary school curriculum. Would nip many a bad idea in the bud I reckon.
You can't leave out Lord of the flies from that list.
​According to Cox'y there are infinitesimal Universes beyond our own, did they all start at the same time?

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Under Newton’s theory, though, it was thought that changes in gravitational force would be instantaneous - clearly breaking the laws of physics.
But Einstein proposed that the objects were not falling at all. Rather, if you were to replace one of the objects with, say, a person in a box, it would be impossible for the person to know they were falling.
And this is what Cox meant with his final statement. From the frame of reference from one of the falling objects in the vacuum it would be impossible to know what forces are acting.
This became known as the ‘Principle of Equivalence’ and, in essence, it showed that mass was independent from other forces like gravity.
Long story short? Cox’s experiment proved the theory of gravity that Einstein called "the happiest thought of my life”.

 

[Airgead]

Under Newton’s theory, though, it was thought that changes in gravitational force would be instantaneous - clearly breaking the laws of physics.
But Einstein proposed that the objects were not falling at all. Rather, if you were to replace one of the objects with, say, a person in a box, it would be impossible for the person to know they were falling.
And this is what Cox meant with his final statement. From the frame of reference from one of the falling objects in the vacuum it would be impossible to know what forces are acting.
This became known as the ‘Principle of Equivalence’ and, in essence, it showed that mass was independent from other forces like gravity.
Long story short? Cox’s experiment proved the theory of gravity that Einstein called "the happiest thought of my life”.

Falling at constant velocity yes, accelerating....no.

A moving reference frame is indistinguishable from inside from a stationary one. But an accelerating reference frame isn't. That was also part of Einstein's happiest thought.

So Mr Cox was kind of correct (in a close enough for TV way) but in his experiment, the objects weren't moving at a constant velocity, they were accelerating. So the equivalence principle doesn't apply in this particular case.

Edit: well... actually it does... but its the other half of the principle... that an object falling under gravity can't tell the difference between that and being in any other inertial (accelerating) reference frame. So falling is the equivalent of accelerating.

 

[mr_wibble]

Cox should have been talking about Galileo Galilei, who originally conducted this experiement in Piza, 1589.
Before this time, the teachings of Aristotle said that objects fell with acceleration relative to their mass.
Galileo must have been a formidable thinker to question beliefs held as scientific fact for centuries (and be correct).

He was eventually placed under house arrest by the church for daring to suggest the planets revolved around the sun.

I'd warrant Cox only mentioned Einstein because some executive entertainment producer somewhere described it as "more trippy".

 

[Dave70]

Nah, I don't buy that. It's a similiar argument about the sound of a tree falling if no-one is there to hear it.

It smacks too much of that joke about ...
Q: How does <can't remember> change a light-bulb -
A: She just holds it and the world rotates about her.

No, it doesn't. The lack of an observer doesn't change the process, nor outcome.
I think Einstein was having a joke, at his observer's expense.

-kt

Look up the double slit experiment.

Well... it all depends on your frame of reference...

And actually, I'm not sure that's correct (or there was an abrupt end to the piece before Mr Cox could finish)... From your own internal reference frame you can't tell whether you are moving or stationary, but you can tell whether you are accelerating, and both the feathers and the ball were accelerating due to gravity (or due to moving from a higher to lower energy state by moving along a straight line path in curved space-time for the relativists among us).

I dunno. I imagined the idea was in the vein of we're constantly moving through space, we're never actually stationary. Perhaps the floor is rising to meet the ball / feathers?
I'm not much of a theoretical physicists I'm afraid. Still cant get my head around the fact that though I stand here apparently upright, I'm actually varying between 120 and 300 deg over a 24 hour period on a sphere rotating at give or take 450 meters per second. And the yet the blood rushes not to my head.
Whats up with that??

If I were il duce, The Meaning Of Life, The Life Of Brian and Orwells Animal Farm would be cornerstones in every primary school curriculum. Would nip many a bad idea in the bud I reckon.
You can't leave out Lord of the flies from that list.
​According to Cox'y there are infinitesimal Universes beyond our own, did they all start at the same time?

Ah yes - Pigds head on a stick!

 

[Airgead]

Look up the double slit experiment.

Yep. In relativity, the presence (or absence) of an observer doesn't make much difference (although the chosen reference frame does). When you get to quantum mechanics though, things get very weird indeed and you do get different results for questions like "if a quantum tree fell in the forest" depending on whether the event was, or wasn't observed.

Schrodinger's cat is the classic observer experiment. Until observed, the cat is neither alive or dead but completely pissed off because its stuck in a dark box.

 

[Dave70]

Yep. In relativity, the presence (or absence) of an observer doesn't make much difference (although the chosen reference frame does). When you get to quantum mechanics though, things get very weird indeed and you do get different results for questions like "if a quantum tree fell in the forest" depending on whether the event was, or wasn't observed.

Schrodinger's cat is the classic observer experiment. Until observed, the cat is neither alive or dead but completely pissed off because its stuck in a dark box.

And it fall in two different places simultaneously before disappearing and popping up somewhere else.

One of the irony's of all this the most enlightened thinkers in this astonishingly complex field most likely live modest lives and struggle for research grants whilst the likes Deepac Chopra rake in millions by peddling his quantum mechanical woo and asserting gems such as the aging process is 'learned behavior'.
Probably not that ironic. That guy still shits me though.