This Week In Science

.lenconMan that nebula stuff is crazy. It's funny how everyone is freaking about global warming (it is a real problem) but in reality what we do on this earth probably affects nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Where are the aliens at tho!?

mirozProbably? More like definitely. Alien civilizations have risen and fallen long before we came to be, haven't you seen Star Wars?

.lenconMan that nebula stuff is crazy. It's funny how everyone is freaking about global warming (it is a real problem) but in reality what we do on this earth probably affects nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Where are the aliens at tho!?

crotchventI got in an argument the other night with a friend about global warming who compared it existing to santa existing.

crotchventI got in an argument the other night with a friend about global warming who compared it existing to santa existing.

Alvarowhat do you think about the electric universe theory and the thunderbolts project? (check them out on youtube if you dont know what im talking about)

crotchventI got in an argument the other night with a friend about global warming who compared it existing to santa existing.

JGWIWhat I got from that video is that they are basically dismissing gravity as playing any significant role in the universe which is a direct contradiction to relativity, and of Newton's ideas, Kepler's, ect...

When Einstein came along and screwed everything in physics up with this new wild idea of relativity, yes people denied it as is going on here, however, the difference is relativity was a well motivated theory and had subsequent evidence to back it up. Yes rationally this stuff makes sense to people who know little to nothing about the field, but to people who do they are basically making the claim that pretty much everything people thought they knew about physics is wrong and their new theory which zero credible evidence to support it is right.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Alvarothe geocentric theory was dismissed mainly because it failed to explain the trajectories of planets, the modern theory is currently failing to explain a huge amount of stuff (like the aceleration of solar wind, the form of galaxies, pulsars and a lot more) and thats when they start coming up with concepts like "dark matter", "black holes", "strange matter" which have no real evidence and are a way to try to keep gravity as the only force that plays any role at the universe.
im not trying to say that the e.u. has all the answers to this stuff but its healthy for science to be open to new explanations and not get too close minded.

JGWITaken by Voyager 1 nearly 20 years ago and 6 billion kilometers away (near the orbit of Pluto).

skiermanWhat's so impressive about a picture taken 500 miles away?

JGWICame across a video a couple days ago of a rendering of what Betelgeuse would look like going supernova from Earth.

https://www.newschoolers.com/videos/watch/820135/Betelgeuse-explosion-footage-as-seen-from-Earth
now keep in mind, we wouldn't see this as it happened but rather some 600 years after the fact due to the distance between us and it. Which means perhaps it has already exploded.

If you've looked up in the sky you've probably seen Betelgeuse. It is rather bright and has a distinct reddish orange glow to it as it is a type M star.

Relatively young(10 million years old) and nearing the end of its life in the next million years or so. At the moment Betelgeuse is a red supergiant which means it has nearly exhausted it's fuel. (Fused elements to the highest it can based on it's mass). Once fusion stops the star will explode leaving only a neutron star behind around 20km in diameter. The remarkable thing about this is all the mass that was present in the star before the explosion now is contained in the neutron star. Which when you consider that Betelgeuse is somewhere around 5-30 times larger than our sun, it is mindboggling to think about. A teaspoon of neutron star material would weigh about 10 million tons!

So the next time you look at Orion's Belt just think that there is a chance however small that one of those stars no longer exist.

Bodhisattva_Pretty cool that it's Montana State was involved with proving the existence of gravitational waves, and now China is working on related projects. Love my school :)

fuckmekevinGravity is merely an element of electro-magnetism in disguise.

WillgumIt's kind of odd if you think about it. In today's day & age, humans pour immense, IMMENSE amounts of money, time and energy into the constant state of conflict which makes up foreign ( and domestic) affairs. From wars, to lobbying, to inefficient spending through bureaucracy, and everything in between. We've come a long ways, but on a scale of 1-10 on the maximum efficiency and utility scale, we're only at like a 3.

Imagine the era where the world operates near peak efficiency. Technology combined with education will( hopefully) lead to very little conflict & waste; spending money will yield investments, not expenses.

If the day ever comes, imagine how much progress humans would make when we focus our energy outwards to the stars, and continue building our technology. Right now the budget allocates 0.5% towads Nasa. imagine if that number was 25%, with a huge army of educated minds armed with latest technology.

Hopefully we don't blow ourselves up before we reach that point

WillgumIt's kind of odd if you think about it. In today's day & age, humans pour immense, IMMENSE amounts of money, time and energy into the constant state of conflict which makes up foreign ( and domestic) affairs. From wars, to lobbying, to inefficient spending through bureaucracy, and everything in between. We've come a long ways, but on a scale of 1-10 on the maximum efficiency and utility scale, we're only at like a 3.

Imagine the era where the world operates near peak efficiency. Technology combined with education will( hopefully) lead to very little conflict & waste; spending money will yield investments, not expenses.

If the day ever comes, imagine how much progress humans would make when we focus our energy outwards to the stars, and continue building our technology. Right now the budget allocates 0.5% towads Nasa. imagine if that number was 25%, with a huge army of educated minds armed with latest technology.

Hopefully we don't blow ourselves up before we reach that point

WillgumIt's kind of odd if you think about it. In today's day & age, humans pour immense, IMMENSE amounts of money, time and energy into the constant state of conflict which makes up foreign ( and domestic) affairs. From wars, to lobbying, to inefficient spending through bureaucracy, and everything in between. We've come a long ways, but on a scale of 1-10 on the maximum efficiency and utility scale, we're only at like a 3.

Imagine the era where the world operates near peak efficiency. Technology combined with education will( hopefully) lead to very little conflict & waste; spending money will yield investments, not expenses.

If the day ever comes, imagine how much progress humans would make when we focus our energy outwards to the stars, and continue building our technology. Right now the budget allocates 0.5% towads Nasa. imagine if that number was 25%, with a huge army of educated minds armed with latest technology.

Hopefully we don't blow ourselves up before we reach that point

e.litttJust imagine if every country swapped their military budgets with their space/science budget.. we would probably be on Mars already. Its a major leap for our global society to transfer from where it is now, to realizing that in our current state of affairs: we are going to be torn a new one real soon.

e.litttJust imagine if every country swapped their military budgets with their space/science budget.. we would probably be on Mars already. Its a major leap for our global society to transfer from where it is now, to realizing that in our current state of affairs: we are going to be torn a new one real soon.

DrZoidbergSort of. A lot of the technology that came out of the space race was also destined for military glory, should it have came to that. I'm pretty sure all the rockets/boosters were ICBM stuff that they were able to call spaceship parts as an aside. Trying to kill somebody seems to be a great motivator for new tech though.

Although I do agree that it's dumb that we fund ways to kill each other more than other scientific stuff, save for when the two are mutual outcomes, like with nuclear science.