The Astronomy Thread
- Thread starter Araxen
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
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Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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That part always made the asteroid from the bugs seem BS, unless that ass plasma could shoot rocks into warp speed
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Malakriss
Golden Baronet of the Realm
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In the book there was no asteroid, the bugs are hi-tech with a foothold in our solar system and one of their raids nuked Buenos Aires.
The movie dumbed the bugs down so the plot point was the government doing a false flag, the asteroid hit Carmen's ship near Jupiter and was not going FTL. When Earth detected it they decided to let it impact and generate a war.
The movie dumbed the bugs down so the plot point was the government doing a false flag, the asteroid hit Carmen's ship near Jupiter and was not going FTL. When Earth detected it they decided to let it impact and generate a war.
Mudcrush Durtfeet
Hungry Ogre
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Lol, imagine all the bugs but also with guns and such. Yikes!
The movie really dumbed down tech usage. No fighting suits. I also noticed a distinct lack of armored vehicles or well, anything but infantry (on the side of the humans). Kind of dumb.
Big Phoenix
Pronouns: zie/zhem/zer
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The movie had next to nothing to do with the book aside from humans fighting bugs.
Book was more or less the Pacific theater of WW2 set in space.
Book was more or less the Pacific theater of WW2 set in space.
Edaw
Parody
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Paddington Bear on Mars? NASA images from the red planet capture the internet’s imagination
Is it a bear? A wolf? A “doge?” The internet has mixed opinions on an image released by NASA showing what looks like a bear’s face on Mars.
nypost.com
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Mudcrush Durtfeet
Hungry Ogre
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Dark matter permeates the entire galaxy.
That means we are all immersed in dark matter. Can you feel it? (No, you cannot).
That means we are all immersed in dark matter. Can you feel it? (No, you cannot).
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meStevo
I think your wife's a bigfoot gus.
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Latest meteorite found on Mars.
They find them all the time, that one is about a foot across, the below one from back in 2014 is 7 feet across. The outlines are higher resolution images taken by another instrument overlaid onto the photo.
Via this thread.
mars.nasa.gov
They find them all the time, that one is about a foot across, the below one from back in 2014 is 7 feet across. The outlines are higher resolution images taken by another instrument overlaid onto the photo.
Via this thread.
Curiosity Finds Iron Meteorite on Mars - NASA Science
This rock encountered by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover is an iron meteorite called “Lebanon,” similar in shape and luster to iron meteorites found on Mars by the previous generation of rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.
mars.nasa.gov
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Mudcrush Durtfeet
Hungry Ogre
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I suspect that being closer to the asteroid belt also gives you more meteorites. But the atmosphere of Mars, being so thin, makes it so that much smaller ones can reach the surface than on Earth, which probably is the greater effect by far of the two.
Tuco
I got Tuco'd!
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Always hard for me to not to get lost in thought about how likely intelligent life is in each of these galaxies and how many there are.
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inside a galaxy, in my opinion, probably 1 "life form" viable planet per 10000 cubic light years in our galaxy
there is in the neighborhood of 8 trillion cubic light years in our galaxy, with ~300 billon stars or about 1 star per 26 cubic light years or about 380 stars per 10000 cubic light year. so about 800 million viable planets in OUR galaxy. or about 1 viable planet per ~375 stars.
there is in the neighborhood of 8 trillion cubic light years in our galaxy, with ~300 billon stars or about 1 star per 26 cubic light years or about 380 stars per 10000 cubic light year. so about 800 million viable planets in OUR galaxy. or about 1 viable planet per ~375 stars.
pharmakos
soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
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One of my favorite solutions to the Fermi paradox is just the good old "someone had to be the first lifeforms to form / first life forms to (send radio signals) to space." Yeah the universe is ancient, but it's also filled with radiation. How common is SURFACE life going to actually be versus underground / underwater life? And then, even just humans looking at our own rate of change of advancement, we feel as if we are advancing technologically very very fast. What if that isn't just an assumption -- what if we really are an exceptionally species when it comes to technological advancement? Perhaps most life in the universe is of the sort that dominated the past even in our own species -- the sort of life that is mostly content to just exist, with very few members of the species actually interested in exploration of any sort. The human spirit as far as the desire to even understand let alone go to outer space might be exceedingly rare for all we know. Yes, sure, sample size of one so it's hard to say, of course. But "where is everybody?" is still a damn good question that only has so many explanations if the majority of life in the universe tends towards technological advancement in the same way that we do.
Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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The problem with the Fermi Paradox is it is extremely human centric and thus subject to human biases. We make assumptions that we, in our current state of technology, should have observed signs of intelligent life by now and by virtue of not seeing anything, we jump to conclusions like Fermi/Great Filter/Dark Forest.
While humans may no longer view Earth as the physical center of the universe, they still view themselves as the center of the universe in terms of importance. So the fact that we cannot observe something, or nothing has decided to reach out to us in a way we would recognize, we jump to the conclusion that we are either the most advanced life in the local galaxy, or only life.
Ignoring the technology biases (we assume other civilizations are using the exact communication mediums we are), we could also just have an intelligence bias. We have trouble even recognizing it on our own planet, since we judge everything by the bar we ourselves set
While humans may no longer view Earth as the physical center of the universe, they still view themselves as the center of the universe in terms of importance. So the fact that we cannot observe something, or nothing has decided to reach out to us in a way we would recognize, we jump to the conclusion that we are either the most advanced life in the local galaxy, or only life.
Ignoring the technology biases (we assume other civilizations are using the exact communication mediums we are), we could also just have an intelligence bias. We have trouble even recognizing it on our own planet, since we judge everything by the bar we ourselves set
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My personal guess is that the laws of physics are insurmountably hostile to travel across large distances on biological timescales. Technological life either dies or rather quickly solves problems of biology (aging) and/or becomes digital consciousnesses, stops reproducing exponentially, and thus doesn't have need for large-scale pysical expansion or energy footprints.
That, or the Real Physics is some crazy shit we have no clue about yet and we are the equivalent of ants smelling the dirt expecting to find radio signals.
That, or the Real Physics is some crazy shit we have no clue about yet and we are the equivalent of ants smelling the dirt expecting to find radio signals.
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pharmakos
soʞɐɯɹɐɥd
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This is a huge part of it if we aren't first. Outer space likely isn't even a true "vacuum."
An Alternative to Dark Matter and Dark Energy: Scale-Dependent Gravity in Superfluid Vacuum Theory
We derive an effective gravitational potential, induced by the quantum wavefunction of a physical vacuum of a self-gravitating configuration, while the vacuum itself is viewed as the superfluid described by the logarithmic quantum wave equation. We determine that gravity has a multiple-scale...
www.mdpi.com