*Absolute Brilliance*

MiamiMermaid

MiamiMermaid

Experienced Member
Joined
7 March 2005
Messages
1,222
Location
*Sunshine* State ~
Someone shared this with me and it took my breath away.
I thought I had an idea of the relative size of the planets and sun, but never have seen it presented this way.

Sort of puts many things into perspective. A humbling experience.

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I thought this was enlightening. I never realized the size of the sun in proportion to Earth.

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It's a big universe.

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Antares is the 15th brightest star in the sky.
It is more than 1000 light years away.

Absolute Brilliance!!
 
Cool picture!! Makes us feel small in big universe and I'm a space nerd (but get paid to be).

There's a town somewhere in the USA that has a scale model of the spacing of the solar system too. Its miles long and the sun is huge in the center of town and pluto is at the city limits. Have to look that up later.
 
Aero said:
Cool picture!! Makes us feel small in big universe and I'm a space nerd (but get paid to be).

There's a town somewhere in the USA that has a scale model of the spacing of the solar system too. Its miles long and the sun is huge in the center of town and pluto is at the city limits. Have to look that up later.
Click to expand...

Wow! That's would be amazing to see.... If you find out where, lemme know, please :smile:
 
cool... did anyone check out the skies this past week? i forgot what day, but astronomers were saying you could see venus, mars, and jupiter in the sky without a telescope... :confused:
 
Ooooooh. Very nice. Man, those suns are big!:eek:
 
Not to sound too geeky... but the concept of light years is mind boggling too. On Earth light appears to travel instantaneously, however in the large distances of space even light takes long times to reach us. So 1000 light years means that the light is 1000years old that is hitting our eyes. That star could have gone super nova 800 years ago and we still wouldn't know for another 200 years. In comparison I believe the sun is 8 light minutes away from Earth.
 
All this talk of lightspeed is making me feel very very heavy....

I get the concept of light speed, but what I dont get is that before it all began, everything in the above picture, all the planets, stars, galaxys and universei', everywhere, could be contained in one infinantely heavy spec of dust.

Now that's freakin' me out.
 
Aero said:
Cool picture!! Makes us feel small in big universe and I'm a space nerd (but get paid to be).

There's a town somewhere in the USA that has a scale model of the spacing of the solar system too. Its miles long and the sun is huge in the center of town and pluto is at the city limits. Have to look that up later.
Click to expand...

Mermi - That was very cool. Definitelyputs things into perspective.

Gainesville FL has one...but the scale is not miles long, more like a 1/2 mile.
 
What about gravity? Does gravity travel faster then light? If the sun were to dissapear (by magic, whatever) completely; would we still see the sun for 8 minutes, but be launched into space instantly and not know what happened?
 
Ojas said:
I remember reading the speed of gravity was measured pretty recently. It's believed to travel at the same speed as light.

BioBanker, you might be interested in this: Before the Big Bang. :)

On the topic of the scale of things, an old favorite: Secret Worlds: The Universe Within.
Click to expand...

It doesn't seem that there is a consensus on this. It looks like there are many theories that gravity is faster then light. What is interesting is that light is a wave and gravity is a force.

I find this very interesting, I never thought about the speed of gravity.
 
Scin said:
What about gravity? Does gravity travel faster then light? If the sun were to dissapear (by magic, whatever) completely; would we still see the sun for 8 minutes, but be launched into space instantly and not know what happened?
Click to expand...

According to Einstein, gravity also travels at the speed of light. So if the Sun were to magically vanish, the Earth would continue happily in its orbit for eight more minutes as if nothing was wrong.

Then, things would begin to suck...
 
flaminio said:
According to Einstein, gravity also travels at the speed of light. So if the Sun were to magically vanish, the Earth would continue happily in its orbit for eight more minutes as if nothing was wrong.

Then, things would begin to suck...
Click to expand...
Agreed, relativity indicates that there is "gravitational damping" which means that the force of gravity propogates at the speed of light. Thereby ensuring that we don't instantaneously experience all the gravitational forces of the universe. Which I assue is a good thing. However, it is also calculated that gravity can bend and even trap light (black holes). Creating the concept of a "gravity lens" which means that the locations of stars (as we see them) may not actually be what they appear to be as the light may be bent in different directions as it passes objects with very high gravity.

Thinking about the concepts of infinity and the universe are quite fascinating and mind bending. I've been particularly fond of the "Infinite replication paradox" - to quote one of my favorite authors (John Barrow): "In a universe of infinite size, anything that has a non-zero probability of occurring must occur infinitely often. Thus at any instant of time, for example the present moment, there must be an infinite number of identical copies of each of us doing precisely what each of us is now doing."

Whoa! Trippy.
 
SaberX said:
"In a universe of infinite size, anything that has a non-zero probability of occurring must occur infinitely often. Thus at any instant of time, for example the present moment, there must be an infinite number of identical copies of each of us doing precisely what each of us is now doing."
Click to expand...

It gives me great comfort to think that somewhere in the Universe, I'm currently banging Scarlett Johannson.
 
95EagleAWD said:
Since the speed of light can be altered as well, why can't we go faster than it?
Click to expand...
The speed of light can be slowed down but not increased. Einstein's Relativity indicates that going faster than light is not possible. The cornerstone of our understanding of light and the speed of light is illustrated by his famous E=mc^2 equation. Which has stood the test of time as valid. This equation says this about exceeding the speed of light(stolen from wikipedia):
-Matter becomes more massive as it accelerates, and at the speed of light, an object would have infinite mass.
-To accelerate an object of non-zero rest mass to c would require infinite time with any finite acceleration, or infinite acceleration for a finite amount of time
-Either way, such acceleration requires infinite energy. Going beyond the speed of light in a homogeneous space would hence require more than infinite energy, which is not a sensible notion.

There's lots of debate about this topic, but if we could travel faster than light, it would imply time travel would be possible. And if time travel were possible I think we would be innudated from the future by "time tourists" coming back to see important events. So I'm gonna say even if faster than light travel and time travel is possible, we destroy all of humanity before we are able to attain it.
 
Scin said:
It doesn't seem that there is a consensus on this. It looks like there are many theories that gravity is faster then light. What is interesting is that light is a wave and gravity is a force.

I find this very interesting, I never thought about the speed of gravity.
Click to expand...
So there are 4 fundamental forces: Strong, Weak, Electro-magnetic, Gravity. Light, being an electromagnetic wave, consists of photons, or if you like to put them in packages, solitons. The forces between these photons, where Quantum mechanics comes in, are called electromagnetic forces.

Now in terms of Gravity, what delivers them? Not particles, not photons, what is it? This is when the Superstring Theory, sometimes referred to as just String Theory, comes in. And... you probably don't want to go beyond this point. :smile: otherwise you'd be :confused:
 

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