The Ye Science Thread

[quadz]

Greetings, Salutations, and Benificent Quantum Entanglements!

My wife forwarded me these illustrations this evening.  I thought they were too awesome not to post...
_{(I don't know where these originated, but I'm happy to credit the original author if anyone knows?)}

On a related note, here's a link to the badass 1977 Powers of Ten movie by Ray and Charles Eames:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBsOeLcUARw


Also, this is one of the most freakishly fractally awesome things I've seen...

"One is only micrometers wide. The other is billions of light-years across. One shows neurons in a mouse brain. The other is a simulated image of the universe...."





. . .

Feel free to post and discuss random and awesome science-y stuff!   

[metaL]

HOLY SHIT, AN ACTUAL PICTURE OF THE UNIVERSE... how the fuck did they zoom out that far?!?!

[quadz]

HOLY SHIT, AN ACTUAL PICTURE OF THE UNIVERSE... how the fuck did they zoom out that far?!?!

How indeed?

http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/millennium/

The cold dark matter model has become the leading theoretical paradigm for the formation of structure in the Universe. Together with the theory of cosmic inflation, this model makes a clear prediction for the initial conditions for structure formation and predicts that structures grow hierarchically through gravitational instability. Testing this model requires that the precise measurements delivered by galaxy surveys can be compared to robust and equally precise theoretical calculations. Here we present a novel framework for the quantitative physical interpretation of such surveys. This combines the largest simulation of the growth of dark matter structure ever carried out with new techniques for following the formation and evolution of the visible components.

...the largest N-body simulation carried out thus far (more than 10¹⁰ particles).

http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/virgo/millennium/

The Millennium Run used more than 10 billion particles to trace the evolution of the matter distribution in a cubic region of the Universe over 2 billion light-years on a side. It kept busy the principal supercomputer at the Max Planck Society's Supercomputing Centre in Garching, Germany for more than a month. By applying sophisticated modelling techniques to the 25 Tbytes of stored output, Virgo scientists have been able to recreate evolutionary histories both for the 20 million or so galaxies which populate this enormous volume and for the supermassive black holes which occasionally power quasars at their hearts. By comparing such simulated data to large observational surveys, one can clarify the physical processes underlying the buildup of real galaxies and black holes.

... badass enough?

[DaHanG]

Mind blowing pictures.

 

[PANTONE 7717C]

I found a related video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ptdbNUtpx4&feature=related
 
Those illustrations made me think of the classic film called Powers of Ten, which was made in '77 by Charles and Ray Eames. "Eventually, everything connects."— Charles Eames

"The ultimate Eamesian expression of systems and connections, Powers of Ten explores the relative size of things from the microscopic to the cosmic. The 1977 film travels from an aerial view of a man in a Chicago park to the outer limits of the universe directly above him and back down into the microscopic world contained in the man’s hand. Powers of Ten illustrates the universe as an arena of both continuity and change, of everyday picnics and cosmic mystery."

You'll see some weird stuff if you search for 'fractals'. It's more art than science but there's a probably some connection to the vastness of the univese:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATWrMlIKRBk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuyRCfhCZT0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj9pbs-jjis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9uYEM2osYQ&feature=related ("LSD" trip experiment:P)

[The Happy Friar]

I always found this wildly fascinating: http://qntm.org/?destroy



and this: 13 things that do not make sense.  It's a year old so some things may have changed slightly, but still very very fun to read.

[quadz]

Freaky, freaky, relativistic equivalency: gravity <=> acceleration.


I'm currently reading: The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics -- by Leonard Susskind


Here's the thing that is freaking me out.

I always thought the weirdest question concerned what happened to matter and energy after it crossed over the Schwarzschild radius and fell in toward the black hole.

But apparently, because of the relativistic equivalency between gravity and acceleration, the time dilation between observers and objects just-about-to-cross-over-the-event-horizon, is such that from the POV of an observer, the doomed object never reaches the event horizon.  (Even though, from its own relativistic perspective, it falls right on past/thru the event horizon!!)


That is, from a relativistic perspective, the closer we observe an object to get to the event horizion, the slower it moves.


I hope to learn more about this in further chapters, but it's freakishly mind-bending stuff so far.   

(One example given was how a time machine could be constructed--i.e. exists in nature--by way of a spaceship in orbit around the event horizon of a black hole with a galactic-sized Schwarzschild radius (so that astronauts wouldn't be ripped apart by the tidal forces) -- and lowering an astronaut down near the event horizon from the orbiting spaceship, such that a year for the astronaut is 1000 years for the occupants of the spaceship...)


Anyway.........

[[BTF]Sigma]

My brain = 

[|iR|Focalor]

such that a year for the astronaut is 1000 years for the occupants of the spaceship...)

Does he get bathroom breaks?

[Chocobo Joe]

I don't remember where exactly I got this, but I once heard some weird hypothesis, which I clearly remember was named "God's heartbeat." Basically, it adds on to Hawking's theory of how the universe will end, but has a rather ironic idea, that a cycle exists between dark energy and matter, in which one destroys the other, thus interchanging like blood in a heartbeat. Strange isn't it

[Pr0c3550r]

Excellent Thread !!

Cool sheeeeeeet


 

[Chocobo Joe]

Let's go away from the end of the world scenarios and on to a much smaller problem: the longevity of Earth. Before I say anything, I'd like to point out that our involvement in global warming has been exaggerated over the years, because:
1. In one million years, the Earth can completely restore its gas and temperature levels to that moderation we see nowadays (not really that much in a planet's life)
2. It's a natural process that the Earth gone through multiple times

Also, I found it interesting that plate tectonics is NOT an endless, and in several billion years, the Earth will join the other planets as the lifeless rock and gas masses that they are. It will go through global warming and cooling many times over, and will form another super continent called Pangaea Omega during its life span. It's hard to image how life can survive in a drastically changing planet like Earth, and that's what's cool about it. Well, that's pretty much all I have to say right now, keep on discussing

[quadz]

Let's go away from the end of the world scenarios and on to a much smaller problem: the longevity of Earth. [...]
Also, I found it interesting that plate tectonics is NOT an endless, and in several billion years, the Earth will join the other planets as the lifeless rock and gas masses that they are.

Longevity of Earth?  Or of life on earth?

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/33056

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

Earth's fate is unclear. As a red giant, the Sun will have a maximum radius beyond the Earth's current orbit, 1 AU (1.5×1011 m), 250 times the present radius of the Sun. However, by the time it is an asymptotic giant branch star, the Sun will have lost roughly 30% of its present mass due to a stellar wind, so the orbits of the planets will move outward. If it were only for this, Earth would probably be spared, but new research suggests that Earth will be swallowed by the Sun owing to tidal interactions. Even if Earth escapes incineration in the Sun, its water will be boiled away and most of its atmosphere would escape into space. In fact, even during its life in the main sequence, the Sun is gradually becoming more luminous (about 10% every 1 billion years), and its surface temperature is slowly rising. The increase in solar temperatures is such that in about a billion years, the surface of the Earth will become too hot for liquid water to exist, ending all terrestrial life.

Doesn't sound like we'll be around to witness the Pangaea Omega supercontinent. 


(Unless we start colonizing other solar systems...)


Regards,

[Chocobo Joe]

It's strictly about Earth itself not us

[DaHanG]

Just thought this thread needed a 

Not going to post any particular article or area of science, just some cool facts. It's a bit lengthy, but I pasted the ones I thought were most interesting.

- There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body.
- Humans have 46 chromosomes, peas have 14 and crayfish have 200.
- Without its lining of mucus your stomach would digest itself.
- At 15 inches the eyes of giant squids are the largest on the planet.
- The call of the humpback whale is louder than Concorde and can be heard from 500 miles away.
- A quarter of the world's plants are threatened with extinction by the year 2010. [:<]
- Each person sheds 40lbs of skin in his or her lifetime.
- The largest galaxies contain up to 400 billion stars.
- The Universe contains over 100 billion galaxies.
- If every star in the Milky Way was a grain of salt they would fill an Olympic sized swimming pool.
- A healthy person has 6,000 million, million, million hemoglobin molecules.
- A thimbleful of a neutron star would weigh over 100 million tons.
- The risk of being struck by a falling meteorite for a human is one occurrence every 9,300 years.
- A dog's sense of smell is 1,000 times more sensitive than a humans.
- 90% of those who die from hurricanes die from drowning.
- Microbial life can survive on the cooling rods of a nuclear reactor.
- Micro-organisms have been brought back to life after being frozen in permafrost for three million years.
- Our oldest radio broadcasts of the 1930s have already traveled past 100,000 stars.
- Each domestic cow emits about 105 pounds of methane a year. [:<]
- Hummingbirds consume half of their body weight in food every day.
- Blood sucking hookworms inhabit 700 million people worldwide. []
- 65 million years ago the impact of an asteroid is estimated to have had the power of 10 million H-Bombs.
- The temperature at the center of the Earth is estimated to be 5500 degrees Celsius.
- There is clear geological evidence that there has been water on Mars.
- We can produce laser light a million times brighter than sunshine.
- Volcanoes on Io eject material at speeds of 2000 mph.
- The Sun takes about 220 million years to make one revolution of the Milky Way.
- A cockroach can live for nine days without its head.
- We share 98.4% of our DNA with a chimp - and 70% with a slug.
- 65% of those suffering autism are left handed.
- Apart from humans the only land animal that cries is the elephant.
- On average women say 7,000 words per day. Men manage just over 2000.
- Traveling at the speed of light it would take a spaceship just 1.2822 seconds to reach the Moon
- The silkworm moth has eleven brains.
- 70% of the molecular structure in a tree is also human.
- 60-65 million years ago dolphins and humans shared a common ancestor - the Mesonycid.
- The biggest star has a diameter of 1800 million miles, making it 2000 times bigger than the Sun.
- The average person accidentally eats 430 bugs each year of their life.
- There are more than 1000 chemicals in every cup of coffee
- A single rye plant can spread up to 400 miles of roots underground.
- When a giraffe's baby is born it falls from a height of six feet, normally without being hurt.

http://www.redorbit.com/science/facts_figures/science_facts/