After seeing this, SETI@Home doesn't seem like a waste of electricity anymore ...

absolutely awesome.

cool the giant metal fleshlight that floats around our planet actually does something useful...



srsly tho thats a cool movie mind=blown

Extremely high awesomeness level!

last edited by Hogfather at 21:30:50 04/Dec/06

Yep, love this stuff. Its good to see it packaged in such a way that just about anyone can grasp the scale of things.

Given the types of folkes who will be attracted to this thread, I have a question. Is there a known limit to the effect of Gravity?

Is there a known limit to the effect of Gravity?

What do you mean by that?

thats pretty damn cool

hubble rox. i'll say seti rox when it finds something ;]

Ok...I'm sick of this s***, so my internet connection is mega s*** and youtube videos never finish loading, they time out or some s***, is there anything i can do so i can actually watch vids properly from youtube.

get the videodownloader plugin for firefox

Watching that makes me want to go back to the planetarium or whatever it's called at the Botanic Gardens. I wonder when the last time they updated their show was? Anyone know how much it costs?

Is there a known limit to the effect of Gravity?


What do you mean by that?

I mean, is there a point in distance where one object feels no effect of the gravity of another object. For example, our galaxy is being drawn toward an area known as "The Great Attractor" which lies some where in Virgo. Is there any distance we could be from all other objects where we would not feel the effects of gravity.

78 billion light years was kinda disappointing, altho its always disappointing when they limit the infinite (its like putting a size on your mums ass). American billions are pissweak too.




Also, comedy "In the universe, the one thing you absolutely cannot afford to have, is a sense of perspective" option

Total
Perspective
Vortex

get the videodownloader plugin for firefox

That is cool... thanks neff

I mean, is there a point in distance where one object feels no effect of the gravity of another object. For example, our galaxy is being drawn toward an area known as "The Great Attractor" which lies some where in Virgo. Is there any distance we could be from all other objects where we would not feel the effects of gravity.

More than likely, its effect is as infinite as our analogue universe allows.
You can bet your gravity is pulling an alien in another galaxy towards you right now…

Ok...I'm sick of this s***, so my internet connection is mega s*** and youtube videos never finish loading, they time out or some s***, is there anything i can do so i can actually watch vids properly from youtube.

try Democracy

Hardball I'm pretty sure the planeh-arium closed down years back now.

really?

s*** yeah, awesome thread

More than likely, its effect is as infinite as our analogue universe allows.
You can bet your gravity is pulling an alien in another galaxy towards you right now…

That's right.

The effect is so small that it's insignificant, but it's still > 0

try Democracy

In that program is there any way to open up a stream (via copy and paste) without having to search for videos manually?

I mean, is there a point in distance where one object feels no effect of the gravity of another object. For example, our galaxy is being drawn toward an area known as "The Great Attractor" which lies some where in Virgo. Is there any distance we could be from all other objects where we would not feel the effects of gravity.

Well of course Newton's laws are still roughly accurate so it follows the inverse square law. The distance a gravitational pull is felt at is limited only by the size of things that can do the pulling. For normal sized objects, after a certain distance, it would become undetectable and you would fall victim to the uncertainty principle etc. To answer the question properly though, we'd need a theory of quantum gravity which would give you the minimum threshold for a gravitational effect.

Also another thing which you may not be aware of, gravitational effects travel at the speed of light according to Einstein's theories, so this limits the impact of distant objects to an extent as well.

use this site, it can download videos from pretty much all these embedded flash and other movie sites

http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php

Awesome video. Pity I'll be dead before I see anyone get off this rock.

Is there any distance we could be from all other objects where we would not feel the effects of gravity.

Your face is 3 feet from your monitor and you can't FEEL the gravity of that. That aside, suppose 2 objects existed in an empty universe a 100 light years appart (or any distance, doesn't matter) their gravity should still reach each other AFAIK. No matter how far you are from another object, you can never escape it's gravity. Parabol put it best. It is so infinitesimal and tiny, but it would never be 0.

i love being reminded of our insignificance :]

RIP carl sagan

Some incredible images there.

Now I want to go to the planetarium too. Might do that for something new and exciting on the weekend.

Nifty, but darn that guy was patronising.

The Simpsons know where it's at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNV9FEKi9FQ

Religion or nihilism, yippee!

Such big numbers and big issues...

last edited by Predator at 11:50:36 05/Dec/06

Your face is 3 feet from your monitor and you can't FEEL the gravity of that. That aside, suppose 2 objects existed in an empty universe a 100 light years appart (or any distance, doesn't matter) their gravity should still reach each other AFAIK. No matter how far you are from another object, you can never escape it's gravity. Parabol put it best. It is so infinitesimal and tiny, but it would never be 0.

yeah eventually they would come together, might take a while though

Nifty, but darn that guy was patronising.

Really, I didn't think so. Most people are blissfully unaware of anything outside of their own backyard, I thought this was a great introduction to how big The Real Universe is out there.

That aside, suppose 2 objects existed in an empty universe a 100 light years appart (or any distance, doesn't matter) their gravity should still reach each other AFAIK. No matter how far you are from another object, you can never escape it's gravity. Parabol put it best. It is so infinitesimal and tiny, but it would never be 0.

You pretty much hit one of the big bang theories.

Whereby the universe started out as one 'whole'... De-Stabilised and Shattered (I can't remember all the scientificy explanation) into an incredible number of particles, each particle then attracted another particle.
So now you have two particles, their combined gravitational effect pulls in another particle, now there is three and as a denser object, now has an even larger gravitational effect...

Of course, this is happening everywhere, Matter pulling each other in and creating a denser piece of matter until eventually no matter nearby can be 'consumed' or stolen from one another...
I guess this is where they now assume that Suns/Planets got their orbits.

Of course, the other part of this theory is, that the universe is in fact infinately expanding, whilst also infinately collapsing in on itself.
It is infantely expanding as more and more matter is drawn together to create more planets/stars etc at the farthest reaches.
While dense matter (black holes) are pulling everything in around them and getting larger and denser with a bigger gravitational pull as it goes (the universe piecing itself back together).


It's just a theory, I can't remember where I read it and my memory of it is probably pretty flawed, but I thought it was a pretty cool theory nonetheless.

I thought I was going to see aliens.

you morons deserve to be patronised hahahaha. (if you think that guy was patronising)

thing is, i knew this already, known it for years, still doesnt knock my socks off

cant wait for that big f*** off telescope, the europeans are making.

Of course, the other part of this theory is, that the universe is in fact infinately expanding, whilst also infinately collapsing in on itself.
It is infantely expanding as more and more matter is drawn together to create more planets/stars etc at the farthest reaches.
While dense matter (black holes) are pulling everything in around them and getting larger and denser with a bigger gravitational pull as it goes (the universe piecing itself back together).

i think dr karl said that the rate that the universe is expanding, is actually increasing too. something like that that makes your head hurt without beer.

no, what it is, is that there are 2 possibilities, and they haven't yet been able to determine which one is going to occure.

1. that the universe is expanding but will reach a critical stage where it will begin to collapse upon itself due to the gravitational forces acting upon the entire universe.

2. that the universe's expansion rate exedes that of the forces pulling it inwards, thus it will keep expanding

no, what it is, is that there are 2 possibilities, and they haven't yet been able to determine which one is going to occure.

Ever heard of Hubble's Law? It helped determine that the universe is not only expanding but accelerating in that direction too. Something is pushing the universe apart, going against the instinctive idea that gravity will bring everything back together.

Now that's not to say this might not change due to some unknown physical law, but the argument is relatively strong given what we have to play with (telescopes).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law

last edited by parabol at 09:40:42 07/Dec/06

:D

I saw it in a gif on the internet, it must be true.

Anyway, if it is expanding, what exactly is it expanding into?

thats a swf not a gif fella... has sound n wotnot & everyone knows that makes it a truer experience.

i rekn it's expanding into empty space... as opposed to our 'not-so-empty space'... not sure though... maybe someone should explore & check it out ;]

its expanding into meta-space, the thing that all universes are part of

all universes? wanna back the existence of other universes up there fella ;)

i'm with demon on this one, expanding into empty space

i was being a dick, i wasnt actually serious

okay lets try something else

the universe represents the limits of 3 or even 4 dimensional space

so how about expanding along the 5th dimension? im sure string theory would cover that somewhere, right?

hah yeah i wasn't sure if you were being a dick, there are some people who state that sort of stuff as fact

ummm didn't string theory cover 10 dimensions or whatever? i think it was posted on this forum a while back "understanding the 10th dimension" or something

i personally believe it's bs and think they're just fantasizing things that could make sense but don't actually exist. same deal as time travel and all that really

basically every theory is made to try and wrap up the physics of the universe, and more specifically, the stuff that happened in the very first nanoseconds of the universe. string theory has come closer than any other theory, but thats not to say its true.

Its expanding into "The Void", if it had something in it, that something would already by deemed part of the universe.

Having said that, I believe it's possible that other universes could exist in the void that are so far away that they can’t be detected. Given that "The Void" is endless in all directions, a long way could mean, a really long, long, long way.

This point is relevant to my earlier question about the limitations of gravity. Where I get confused is, if gravity exists in The Void, (which it must) does it qualify as void? Perhaps it still qualifies as long as elemental matter doesn’t exists there.

Perhaps some day, we'll be able to detect a bulge in some corner of the universe which has been created becasue of gravitational forces beyond our universe. That would be cool.

A void shouldn't have gravity if there's no mass.
There could be lots of universes, lots of big bangs happening....

But, at some point, The Void is just beyond the last objects in the universe. The gravity of those last things in the universe dont just project back into the universe. The gravity of those objects should be able to be felt out in The Void, if your where to go there.

Imagine being on a planet at the very edge of the Universe, on one side you would see lots and lots of lights lokking back into the Universe and on the other side, you wouldnt see anyting at all, weird.

if gravity exists in The Void, (which it must)

Why must it?
Also this "the void" sounds like something you just pulled out of your arse.

And who says there is an edge of the universe?

last edited by Bah at 23:17:51 07/Dec/06

considering that the universe is expanding at the speed of light, and gravity travles at the speed of light (if i recall) then there wouldn't be any gravity at the edge of "the void"

likewise, if gravity travles at the speed of light, if 2 objects are traviling towards eachother, they feel more of eachothers gravity than objects that are traviling away from eachother?

can't seem to find the answer in the bible strangly enough? isn't that strange?

Imagine being on a planet at the very edge of the Universe

That's good and all, but try it with relativity in the equation. It's easy making simple logical guesses as to how the edge of the universe might look, but we're talking about very large objects, very high speeds and very large distances.

Things become much more complicated with these factors, so all this talk of 'Void', edges and such is nothing more than uneducated guess-work, bordering more on philosophy/logic than applied science.

I'm not pretending to know any better but leaving it up to the hardcore theoretical physicists to keep working on :)

if gravity exists in The Void, (which it must)

Why must it?

Would the gravity from objects near the edge of the universe hit an imaginary force field or something? Explain yourself.

Also this "the void" sounds like something you just pulled out of your arse.

Really, have you checked to see what the place beyond the universe is commonly known as?

considering that the universe is expanding at the speed of light, and gravity travles at the speed of light (if i recall) then there wouldn't be any gravity at the edge of "the void"

No, I dont think it is expanding at the speed of light, otherwise, the image this thread is about would be nothing but black. Wouldnt it??

Really, have you checked to see what the place beyond the universe

Well thats a pretty f***ing huge assumption right there

Its expanding into the forbidden zone and if we aren't careful the Romulans are going to be pissed.

Its expanding into the forbidden zone and if we aren't careful the Romulans are going to be pissed.

Ahaha!

The universe is most likely spherical like planets.
When it expands, it is expanding much like a balloon full of gas being warmed up.

Even in the Vacuum of "Space" consists very light gases, and those gases are made of up molecules/atoms/electrons yada yada which all have a gravitational effect on each other.

What is 'containing' the universe, who knows, I don't think we're capable of figuring that out with our relatively primitive understanding of physics from here on earth.

speaking of

Video link: http://www.nso.edu/staff/dooling/tsunami/tsunami_ospan.mov

Tsunami-like blast wave rips across the Sun

A blast wave swept across the face of the Sun on Wednesday, rippling outward from the site of a large solar flare. Blast waves that spread all the way across the Sun like this one did are rare, especially when the Sun is in the quiet phase of its 11-year cycle, as it is right now.

edit: oh sorry, forgot the actual link to the site: New Scientist

there we go

and also from that page:

The expanding blast wave also caused two dark filaments to disappear as it passed by, one at upper left and the other at lower middle. The filaments are arches of relatively cool material clinging to magnetic field lines above the Sun.

Video Link: http://www.nso.edu/staff/dooling/tsunami/tsunami-hlmovie.mpg

last edited by dice at 03:12:08 10/Dec/06

Apparently 78 billion light years is the diameter of the universe (assuming its spherical).

How the fruck did they figure that out??

The Void is the complete absence of matter or particles beyond the edges of the universe. There is an infinite space for the universe to exist in, but the universe (assuming that means the part of space with matter) itself only has a finite amount of matter. Besides, how could an infinitely sized glob of matter expand if its already infinitely large?

I assume this "void" would also have to be devoid of electromagnetism. If the universe's age can be roughly determined then the wavefront of electromagnetism from the Big Bang would be the outer fringe of the universe at all points, yeah? (Speed of light multiplied by time elapsed since big bang?)

And I guess that if the speed of light has always been a constant (I'm not so sure that's felt to be the case anymore) then the universe should be spherical though I guess matter can be unevenly distributed throughout it.

The universe is most likely spherical like planets.
When it expands, it is expanding much like a balloon full of gas being warmed up.

That's the wrong way to think about it - unlike a balloon or sphere, the universe doesn't have a centre (at least not in 3-d space).

Apparently 78 billion light years is the diameter of the universe (assuming its spherical).

Well the age of the universe is only about 14 billion years so I think that's unlikely. And again, it's not spherical - it just seems that way since the more distant light is older.

but a book I have here says the world and universe and everything is 5000 years old

The devil put demon here to trick you into doubting God.

what we really need to get a better understanding of the universe is twin ion engines and hyperdrives.

what we really need to get a better understanding of the universe is twin ion engines and hyperdrives.

...with those really cool plasma injectors. Then again and infinite improbability engine would be the s***.

am I right in thinking those juicy hubble pics are actually snapshots of what was there a long time ago?

Yeppo. The further away the longer ago.

i think what jim is saying is "OLD"