# Ten Strangest Things



## j d worthington (Apr 22, 2007)

Well, here's a quick little slideshow that might prove of interest... and it's certainly got some beautiful things. But that picture of galaxies cannibalizing each other... that's a bit disturbing.....

SPACE.com -- Top 10 Strangest Things in Space

And, just to add to the fun:

SPACE.com: Video: Interplayer: Black Holes


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## chrispenycate (Apr 22, 2007)

Nothing very new there; and they even allow mutally  contradictory theories (if you've got vaccuum energy, you can't have micro black holes – however, since we don't know which is right…)
But nice to find out I'm not completely out of touch (and for the galaxies, what was the start of the "Lensman" series?)


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## HoopyFrood (Apr 22, 2007)

Can I ask a question (and as such, derail the thread...apologies!)? My physics teacher once told me that humans produce a little bit of gravity, so that if two people were floating in space (you know, if it were possible without their dying, and away from all the larger stuff that would suck them in!) they would eventually be dragged towards each other. Is this true? Not that I doubt my teacher or anything (well, apparently I do ) but if I get a certain answer, then this will lead me to ask something else...


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## chrispenycate (Apr 22, 2007)

Theoretically, yes, they would be drawn towards each other (unless that possible vaccuum energy was stronger than the attraction) The force, however, would be minute, and the slightest external influence would mask it (well, perhaps not tidal forces from a distant galaxy, but photon pressure, cosmic rays, anything. It would take a fair portion of eternity for this to be a practical form of propulsion.


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## HoopyFrood (Apr 23, 2007)

Yes, my teacher said it would be small...

But then I asked a question that he couldn't answer: What, inside humans, _makes_ this gravity, even this small amount? Where does it come from, what is it inside people that creates the force?


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## chrispenycate (Apr 23, 2007)

Mass, I fear; nothing special to human beings. According to the latest theories I've read, the presenceof matter, any matter, distorts spacetime an eetsie bit, and the more of it there is, and the more concentrated it is, the more it squeezes the universe out of shape.
A hoopy-sized lump is almost indetectable, a planet sized lump is a lot more, an ordinary star, then a neutron star distorting it enough that even light makes a detour. 
Then yu get black holes, and they're serious.
But since you're made of matter (it would work out the same if you were made of energy, but you wouldn't be around long enough to find out) you attract the Earth exactly as much as it attracts you.


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## HoopyFrood (Apr 23, 2007)

Ah! Thank you. That's been annoying me ever since my year 10 science lesson when I didn't get an answer! I didn't think it would be anything particularly unique in humans, but I just wanted to know _why_ it happened. Thank you! (I could've probably found the answer if I looked hard enough, but seeing as I haven't done physics in quite a long time, I had a feeling that I wouldn't be able to tell if I was looking at the right stuff! )


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## tangaloomababe (Apr 24, 2007)

The gravity waves are pretty cool looking.  Kind of glad I won't be around in 3 billion years when galaxies collide, but then again we may not even be around in 300 years the way things are going.


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## j d worthington (Apr 24, 2007)

tangaloomababe said:


> The gravity waves are pretty cool looking. Kind of glad I won't be around in 3 billion years when galaxies collide, but then again we may not even be around in 300 years the way things are going.


 
Even at best, I have severe doubts that we will have anywhere near the run that the dinosaurs did. Still, it that "colliding galaxies" has always been an awe-inspiring concept....


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## Hilarious Joke (Apr 24, 2007)

j. d. worthington said:


> Even at best, I have severe doubts that we will have anywhere near the run that the dinosaurs did. Still, it that "colliding galaxies" has always been an awe-inspiring concept....


 
Out of curiousity, what do you personally think will finally finish off the human race, j.d? Also, how come the expanding universe won't just push galaxies further apart?


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## j d worthington (Apr 24, 2007)

Hilarious Joke said:


> Out of curiousity, what do you personally think will finally finish off the human race, j.d? Also, how come the expanding universe won't just push galaxies further apart?


 
As for what I personally think will do us in -- bluntly (albeit vaguely) our own stupidity... or, rather, our lack of motivation to overcome such. That's the damnable thing, to me... so many of the things we face that could mean our extinction we could overcome if we'd just learn to stop thinking in the same fashion we have for the past 10,000 or so years... While surface thoughts are somewhat altered (though the change is more apparent than substantive), our basic ways of looking at things (especially our interactions with each other) really haven't changed since the earliest civilizations arose. Unless we do, we are likely to not resolve the problems of: pollution; global warming; overpopulation (and scarcity of resources); collisions with roaming celestial bodies; or the supervolcanoes, for a start.

And as for why the expanding universe doesn't push them further apart: because they're not all moving in the same direction. Whether or not the universe began with a single big bang (and it may have been from several), other factors have altered the orientation of the matter moving within it, from supermassive black holes, to gravitational attraction between galaxies that were close enough for that to overcome the initial impetus of the Big Bang, to dark matter (or dark energy), etc. If it was more than one, of course, it could be because the initial matter was already being propelled toward a collision. Those are still questions where we're gathering lots of information -- and more is coming in all the time -- to refine our understanding of the origins of the universe, as well as being able to predict more accurately its future development.

One of the most exciting aspects of this is the recent idea of multi-dimensional space (for example, the universe may indeed be an eleven- (or even higher) dimensional one, but our part of it may be a three-dimensional pocket within that higher-dimensional frame... therefore, there is much we would not be able to observe directly, because we simply never developed the sensory equipment to do so; we can only observe indirectly, by the effects on that which we can observe. Some of this may be resolved within the next few years through the new supercollider that should be operational soon. (And as for the above concept... Shades of Lovecraft!  )

I highly recommend Lisa Randall's *Warped Passages* for a good introduction to some of these concepts, their bases, and the possibility that we may soon be actually able to verify (or falsify) at least some of them empirically.


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## HoopyFrood (Apr 24, 2007)

j. d. worthington said:


> Even at best, I have severe doubts that we will have anywhere near the run that the dinosaurs did.



That's because dinosaurs are (were) just plain cool! If they were still alive today, they'd be running this world. I'm not basing this on any scientific fact...purely because they're just so damn' cool.


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## j d worthington (Apr 24, 2007)

Sorry about the double post here: It occurs to me how ironic it is that intelligence plays such a double role in our survival (or lack of same). On the one hand, if we had not developed the intellectual abilities we have, we wouldn't have created so many things that now threaten that survival -- pollution, greenhouse gases, nuclear weapons, biological weaponry, etc. On the other hand, if we hadn't developed such, we wouldn't have even the slender chance of learning to overcome our asininity and finding solutions to the problems before we encounter another global event causing mass extinctions... us quite likely among them. Again, it becomes our choice: Learn and grow, or continue following the same patterns and become one of the footnotes in the history of the planet. (We would be such because of the relatively short time we've even existed as a species, period... let alone had civilization....)


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## chrispenycate (Apr 24, 2007)

Without speaking _ex cathedra_ I suspect one big bang; not only by Occam's razor, but the fact that we're not observing any significant blue shifted energy, which we would expect.
Chaos theory guarantees some colliding galaxies (some butterfly!) without requiring colliding spacetime continua.

And we might be waiting quite a bit longer for the results if you're trusting CERN – they ordered their BIG superconducting electromagnets from the Fermi organisation in the States, and the first time they ran one up, it collapsed. Ooops. Fermi insists it wasn't deliberate sabotage, but they were ingredibly difficult to get into place, and if they have to dig them all out again…
We just have to hope they can beef up the mechanical structure _in situ_; more gaffa tape (you can mend anything with gaffa)


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## tangaloomababe (Apr 25, 2007)

Slightly off the thread but in relation to JD's comments 



> As for what I personally think will do us in -- bluntly (albeit vaguely) our own stupidity... or, rather, our lack of motivation to overcome such. That's the damnable thing, to me... so many of the things we face that could mean our extinction we could overcome if we'd just learn to stop thinking in the same fashion we have for the past 10,000 or so years...


 
I was watching a program on SBS last night about China as a developing nation and its increased usage of fuels.  The fuel usage in China grew by 20% in 2005 alone.  As a country competing for oil with other western country this puts increased demand on oil resources.  I thought toi myself though that oil must be in the ground for a reason and to continue to rape the earth of natural materials can in the long run or it could be short term at this rate lead to irrevocable damage.  
many parts of Australia are dealing with extreme drought at the moment and what bothers me is poeple sinking bores in their quest to water their lawns and gardens by tapping into the earth's natural water basins.  One would think they are there for a reason and by using them up can only be the wrong thing to do.  
The way to continue to live on this earth is to change our way of thinking and persuade big business and governments to encourage new ideas.
Sorry I could waffle on here and its more based on emotion than fact but we have to remember what we are doing may not affect us in our lifetime but it WILL affect our children.


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## Interference (Aug 27, 2007)

Dinosaurs had 120,000,000 years to make something of the place.  We've had 3,000,000.  Is this evidence that Intelligence need not necessarily evolve naturally, or that traces of dinosaur casinos just haven't been found yet??


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