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Double Pulsar Discovered
jabberjaw writes "Nature is reporting that a set of two pulsars could be emitting gravitational waves. Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in his general theory of relativity, but a gravitational wave has yet to be detected. Find out more about gravitational waves and pulsars at Eric Weisstein's World of Physics."
John Goodman's ass has been emitting gravity waves for years.
- I am made of meat.
Does someone know if these waves travel at the speed of light? Of course, as predicted by the theory.
:)
I suppose so... otherwise we could eventually devise faster-than-light communications, and I don't think the Universe is that nice
Is like 2 sumo wrestles jumpin in to a pool in slight diferent time?
I wonder how many times these two neutron stars could bounce if they were to hit the water at an angle of 20 degrees.
I would be very suprised if they could actually "prove" the existance of such waves. Gravity is such a weak force compared to the other three (strong, weak, and electromagnetic) that pulsars light-years upon light-years away would be washed out by the gravitational effects of, well, the rest of the universe! There's been conjecture about this for years, and entire theories to try and resolve this problem of no detection (several string theories have been developed around this problem) We've even built miles long observation "tools" (like this one in Livingston, LA). However, if we can solve the background noise radiation, and the pulsars are close enough to earth, and have a large enough gravity, they just might do it! Einstein's theory of general relativity states that two orbiting stars (two orbiting anythings, but stars have a lot of mass and therefore gravity, so it would be pronounced) will 'shed' some of their momentum through gravity waves. The detection of these waves could revolutionize physics! It would allow us to determine the existance of the graviton, and if we ever did that, the world as we know it would change. Because once we pin it down, we can start converting energy to it, and probably start research on a feasible "anti-graviton" of sorts. Warp Drives, here we come! (well, not likely, but a guy can hope)
Just on an intuitive level, at least. Gravity is a lot like electro-magnetism, in that it produces it's effects invisibly. That, to me at least, implies some method of energy transfer. Waves seem a reasonable enough explanation. I wonder though, if the same wave/particle duality will be observed as we see in photons. Cool stuff.
Gravitational waves have always been notoriously difficult to detect (infact near nigh impossible) because of their weak nature. This looks like a good opportunity to do that.
How fast is gravity?
If the sun went poof, how long would it take for Earth to go off into space? 8 minutes or as soon as it happened?
Article
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I think you might be confused: Moore's Law applies to the speed of computers, not their size.
True story.
Better than hearing about SCO and Lindows all the time.
No, the computers were several AU long. Simple physics, it takes a while for signals to travel those kinds of distances.
stuff
'Graviton' is not just a star trek word...
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it would be useful in a computer of today. Clock rates are high enough now it is impossible to send a signal across the core in a single tick.
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What I'M waiting for is some strong nuclear force waves. Now THOSE would be cool.
Ah, I see you have already had your sense of humor removed. Sorry to waste your time.
True story.
Maybe they can prove existence of waves without having to observe a graviton (although that would be better). In the same way that you can test gravity by throwing an apple in the air, maybe there are some remnants of the impacts of the gravity waves... allowing for indirect observation of the phenomenom. Would this be possible here?
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Actually, Moore's Law originally refered to the number of transistors that could be packed onto an integrated circuit - it didn't directly refer to speed or size at all.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
I remember one time I was trippin and threw a ball into the air and it never came down... could this have caused the ball to hover over my head for 20 minutes? This probably wouldn't explain how the ball was laughing at me though....
My ex-wife's ass cheeks emit an double gravitational wave..
What's so great about this??
And the government coverup of potatobugs on mars!m l
h test_star_0 40106-1.html
http://www.potatobugs.com/articles/mars.ht
Hmm...if anyone reads space.com daily there was a story a few days ago about a star found that defied many of the theories about the mass of stars. 40 million times brighter than our sun, and supposedly should have destroyed itself rather than igniting.
http://space.com/scienceastronomy/brig
No, the point here is to observe the waves, and then find the graviton (if it even exists). The graviton should exist, much in the same way that the photon exists, in a strange particle/wave form. However, we barely know anything about gravity. We know it bends space-time and that the amount is directly related to the mass of the objec...and that's about it.
Thanks for the correction. As you can plainly tell, I did no research on the topic and just used the meaning I thought I heard in numerous articles (articles that clearly did little research as well). The joys of popular misconception.
True story.
Do they have anything specific in orbit to study this phenomenon further? I haven't kept track of all our science satellites.
--"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
As an aside, with a system this unique, and not to sound too much like a loon, but perhaps we should look for an ET presence. Not as the creators, but there maybe unique physical process than can be exploited in such a system, and doing so may give off a detectable technological signature.
Letter To Iran
I don't know, you married her.
stuff
Or perhaps the effect is merely due to the endless rise of trailers for this film
"And that solves the mystery of the missing ring" - Bender
Probably we could say that gravitons exists by definition. They are "the unit of whatever makes gravity work". Gravity works, ergo, gravitons exist. :-)
Now the problem still is how to measure them, as that would probably yield all kinds of interesting things. If I'm not mistaken M theory even predicts that gravitons travel accross dimensions, so they could be used to communicate with somebody out there... pretty crazy.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
Here's a cool kid's site that has some animations
It's for the LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna). Space.com did a story on it a little while back, and it was in a Scientific American, but I'm not sure which, I have too many lying around. Unfortunantly, it doesn't launch until 2009.
Your ex-wife is John Goodman?
I've always belived that our concept of gravity is wrong. I think the reason our universe is expanding is not because of "dark energy", but because space is trying to displace a minority substance called matter.
Imagine if you will that the earth is a bubble in water. The more dense a planet is (or the higher the air pressure is in a bubble), the more effort it takes for space to want to displace that matter. But, what if we could control the "pressure". In other words, what if we could spoof a matter in the form of energy in front of a space craft? Rather then the ship propelling itself through space, you could instead have space push the craft much like the difference in water pressure wants to push an air bubble to the surface.
Life is not for the lazy.
BUT, assume the Sun winked out while it was night for you.
You wouldn't feel a thing.
No massive, "Oh, MY GOD we're lurching into space!" That's the whole point of space curved by gravity, you can't tell that you're not traveling a straight line. The weather would goto hell in a handbasket fast from no incoming heat after a few minutes or hours, and of course dawn wouldn't come. There might be some tectonic activity, some isolated magnitude seven and eights here and there, but most likely not immediately.
No you wouldn't even notice at first as the night hung on forever, and Earth continued on a straight line into the blackness...
Letter To Iran
No, the graviton can very well have an anti-graviton and a photon an anti-photon. The argument against it would be that both things don't have a charge...well neutrinos don't have charges either, but they have anti-particles. If particle A has a charge of 0, then Anti-A has a charge of 0 as well. However, the graviton is special...it produces 'gravity waves'. Photons and gravitons are more dissimilar though, gravitons cause gravity waves. If an anti-graviton were to exist, and we could convert photons to gravitons/anti-gravitons (though with some energy loss) you could cancel out the effects of gravity..hence warp travel. Gravitons in the back, anti-gravitons in the front, and then you have faster than light travel. That would be a great big leap in technology, don'cha think? NASA thinks it might exist (along with negative energy)
Question. Why would decreasing Slashdot's signal-to-noise ratio cause the editors to admit anything?
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
Anybody know why Jocelyn Bell received no credit for actually discovering pulsars, yet her thesis advisor, who actually seemed to do nothing, did?
Are they breaking, like, left, or right. Gnarly.
It seems that Hewish and Ryle got the Nobel for their role in radio astronomy, not pulsars.
It's actually worse than that. When you get down to a low enough level, the difference between particle and waves seems to disappear. So you could potentially produce photons/anti-photons gravitons/anti-gravitons as required.
I don't follow your leap from no-gravity == warp travel. I don't think your theory would work though, because you're essentially creating a big ol' chunk of gravity in front - you may pull your craft into it, but you'll pull everything else into it too. Or to put it another way, squish.
This article in Nature got a more charitable reception than the global warming story.
I'm laughing at clouds.
I did, but I like these topics.
If the system is emitting gravity waves then it's losing energy by doing so, and the orbit will gradually decay.
s es//astro201/psr1913.htm and read about 3/4 of the way down.
You can measure the orbit precisely when there's a pulsar in the system, which is a good timing source. Then you can check whether the orbit's decaying at the rate predicted by the math of gravity wave radiation.
That measurement's been done for another binary system. See http://astrosun2.astro.cornell.edu/academics/cour
Observation agrees with Einstein in this case.
I'm assuming it's linked to the mass, m, in F=ma.
That's the simple Newtonian version, the version taking into account relativity is more complex and I cannot remember it offhand.
Suffice it to say that the faster you go and the closer to the speed of light, the larger the force has to be to give the mass an increase in acceleration.
That means that end up being unable to push hard enough to get the mass travelling faster than the speed of light.
By removing m from the equation a tiny push would make the object move faster than light and I think that this was the poster's idea.
BUT, Of couse mass is not weight, which is observed when gravity has an effect on mass. Gravity would have no effect on the mass in the equation, so I the removal of gravity would not cause any benefit to faster than light travel.
Article 1, Article 2.
Some scientists that have inspected the calculations believe the experiment is flawed and that they instead measured the speed of light itself (ie: they probably measured the speed of the light they were using to make their observations with, not the speed of the Jupiter distortion).
Correct answer: The speed of gravity is not (yet) a scientifically proved and universally accepted fact. Saying anything else is bad science.
The Standard Model of particles says there's no graviton, that's who! :)
:] )since we've never actually observed one and there are hints that the Standard Model may break soon (though it must be noted that it is the most sucessful theory at describing our universe ever devised). Then who knows what the superseding theory (supersymmetry? strings?) will say about quanta of gravity.
You said:
"No, the graviton can very well have an anti-graviton and a photon an anti-photon. The argument against it would be that both things don't have a charge...well neutrinos don't have charges either, but they have anti-particles."
You're misunderstanding why Photons Gluons and presumably Gravitons, if they exist, do not have anti-photons, anti-gravitons etc. and are actually THEIR OWN ANTIPARTICLES. It is not because they have no charge, that's irrelevant, it's because they are Bosons which are particles with integer spin. The chargeless Neutrino and anti-Neutrino are Fermions which have non-integer spin. I would suggest a look at CERN's The Particle Adventure site if you want to learn a bit more about subatomic particles, it's a great site.
However, this being said, there is a very tiny chance you may still be partially right about gravitons (though it's not your fault
Disclaimer: IANAP but I do know a thing or two about physics (if there is a physicist here and I've made a mistake in my post please feel free to correct me, though I'm fairly certain the contents are accurate).
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Of course in the first line of my post I meant to say:
:)"
"The Standard Model of particles says there's no ANTI-graviton, that's who!
-sorry 'bout that.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
The first binary pulsar discovered was PSR1913+16, by Hulse and Taylor. They won the Nobel in 1993. Their measurements of the decay of the binary orbit fitted with GR's prediction of energy loss due to gravitational wave emmission, which caused great excitement. 20-30 years ago.
Finding another binary pulsar (I dont even think this is the second) is interesting, as measurements can be made and more curve fitting and happiness can result, and perhaps a better estimate of how many of these double systems exist can be made. But its not like we can point LIGO to it, or expect it to help our search for gravitational waves in any way.
The reporting in this article is pretty bad
Yes IAAP
I'm no physicist but I read "the elegant universe" and watched the series on PBS.. How does this affect string theory that says gravity is lose strings that travel through different parallel universes.. would this disprove that or prove it or have no affect at all?
Sorry if I sound retarded
Pulsars. What is that all about? Is it good or is it whack?
Whats the point with that tub-girl thing? I was unfocusing and didnt even watch straight at the screen (previous experience) and I got a shock. Is it really nescessery or is my feeling that I should protect the welfare of others from you something to pursue?
Teasing the nobles, and rightfully so!
Well, seeing as how in college I was taught that the standard model was wrong, and that the anti-graviton does in fact exist, then I'm still okay.
disclaimer: I'm an aerospace engineer, not a particle physicist.
...Or, would the air work it's way out of the sphere of water?
Life is not for the lazy.
"Well, seeing as how in college I was taught that the standard model was wrong, and that the anti-graviton does in fact exist, then I'm still okay."
wow those 'special interest' colleges are churning out the engineers these days!
Does anyone know if understanding these types of phenomena is in the field of quantum mechanics or Newtonian mechanics?
I'm an aerospace engineer, so I know just a little bit about physics, but what we're talking about here is metaphysics. It's the unknown, we really don't know how everything works, but it's fun to dream about it. It's what makes it exciting. Do gravity waves even exist? We don't know! How do they react to things, are there negative gravity waves, are they this "dark energy" causing the universe to expand at a faster rate? Does negative energy exist? Can you have less than nothing? We don't know the answers! There are theories, but do we really know how everything works? Absolutely not! Metaphysics allows us to dream of warp drive and faster than light travel, inertial dampeners and flux capacitors (back to the future reference)...that our future is full of gigantic possibilities. So don't mod me down for some off the cuff remark about the wonderous possibilities ahead of us because you can't prove that I'm wrong. Some parts of modern theory may disagree with me, and I could have stated my ideas better, but in the end, we will be long dead before either of us are vindicated...
And my universe "OS" is a string theory, of which there are dozens and I've chosed parts of many of them for my own theory. On my computer, I run Windows XP Professional.
Is it possible to download the elegant universe series? I hate having to watching things in QuickTime or RealPlayer -- they are quite easily the worst two media players ever devised.
This is hardly new stuff; binary pulsar systems have been discovered and used in the past to help corroborate general relativity's prediction of gravitational waves. The classic example is the Taylor-Hulse binary pulsar (PSR 1913+16). Theory and Experiment in Gravitational Physics (Will, 1981) even has an entire section (Chapter 12, "Binary Pulsar") devoted to the topic, and the sci.physics.relativity FAQ certainly has plenty to say on the subject.
If the sun's gravity were to disappear, after about 8 minutes, earth would go hurtling through space tangent to it's orbit, we would probably be fine...that is until we freeze to death from the lack of the suns heat.
I have a +1 set for suscribers and a +1 Karma bonus, so the +1 given shouldn't be revoked IMO.
The news has been welcomed by gravitational wave hunters, since it boosts their hopes for detecting the gravitational waves [...] General relativity predicts that the two stars will slowly wobble like spinning tops allowing new tests of the theory.
Alternative theories to general relativity usually also predict such effects, including gravitational waves. So, these results, even if confirmed, don't actually tell you a whole lot. What they do tell you is that Newtonian mechanics isn't quite right, but, then, we already knew that.
In the university press release:
The stars will coalesce in only approximately 85 million years, sending a ripple of gravity waves across the Universe
So...wait, 85 million years from when? Now? Or is it 85 million years from what we currently observe, which is probably several million years in the past (neither link provides the distance of the pulsars from earth)?
In other words, will we observe the coalescing in 85 million years, or 85 million + time of transit?
Sheesh, it never occurred to me how dicey verb tense is in astronomy...Talking about the future of distant objects that exist in the past which we are observing presently.. Reminds me of Dr. Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations from Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
parent is science troll posting WRONG information
there are things out there in space with radii of 10-20 km completing approximately 45 rotations per second?
that's simply amazing. or, as the dude would say, "far out. far fucking out!"
I think this is a good time to mention that your local PBS station needs your support. I know my station in Seattle had serious debt problems and was in danger of being closed. Most pay television, with channels like "the history channel" and "the learning channel" provide less than half of the useful content that PBS provides every single day. And while I'm at it, I think it would do everyone on this entire planet a lot of good to check out The Journey of Man which is also an excellent piece of work you can watch for free on PBS.
Well no, but there is one Neutron Star in Freelancer, so pretty soon Microsoft will say they invented them.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
3y3 k1\10\/\/ 1t'z u
The Taylor-Hulse "Binary Pulsar" is a pulsar which probably has a neutron star companion. Only one of them is a pulsar. This new system is composed of two pulsars, which makes it unique.
What is the inverse of the Matrix?
Animations of the evolution and current state of the pulsar system are available.
What is the inverse of the Matrix?
...have already occurred to others
That sounds a lot like the shielding theory,which IIRC is a load of crap.
- The first is to photograph the upper atmosphere with an incredibly sensitive camera during night time, the reason is that gravity waves (that have a period of a few hours) cause the upper atmosphere to strech and compress causing the atoms that cause air glow to seporate into layers. this shows up on the image as bands. these gravity waves are emitted from the center of the earth.
- the second is to use an incredibly precise receiver tuned to a reliable transmitter in the HF bands, to a frequency that gets reflected by the ionosphere. since gravity waves will cause the ionosphere to expand and contract the change in velocity will cause the HF signal to be doppler shifted, meaning the gravity wave will be shown up in a slight variation of the incomming frequency.
the second option can be done by ham radio operators (if they really know there stuff), the first option is for universities since only they have the budget to buy the expensive equipment.simon
Now, now...
imagine a beowulf cluster of these!
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
See http://www.nobel.se/physics/laureates/1993/press.h tml, paragraph headed "Demonstration of gravitational waves ".
Come on, there are some guys out there who dislike me and have some spare moderation points. I don't worry. Karma: 49.
I've got to thinking about this more tonight. I think this idea holds more water then I thought. Let me further explain. Because matter is the minority substance in space, it will be space that is trying to displace matter. Hence forth, gravity is a push and not a pull. But, what happens when you have two solid objects floating in space? Eventually, they will move toward each other because now the amount of space between the two objects is superseded by the increase in combined proportional mass relative to the two objects (however, the space on other side of both objects is now the majority). So the closer two objects in space are, an exponential increase in attraction (rather, being pushed together) will occur.
But, what if the space between these two objects supersedes the over all proportional mass relative to each other? If this model is correct, they will now be pushed AWAY from each other. Maybe, this is why galaxies are moving farther away from each other. You see, the space between galaxies far supersedes the proportion of displacement of space due to the mass of the galaxies in relation to each other.
I really don't have any better way to word this. I'm sure this is a very confusing to read at first, so you might have to read it a few time.
Life is not for the lazy.
On one side scientists are determined to find a theory that unifies all the forces (so far the Stochastical ElectroDynamics theory unifies electromagnetism with gravity and inertia, while the Superstring theory has trouble unifying gravity with the other unified three electromagnetic force and weak / strong interactions).
And on the other side they'd want to find gravitational waves ? If the forces are really one and only interaction then it all comes down somehow to electromagnetic waves (whatever name we give them) ? Sounds a bit contradictory to me, after all we've not yet found Higgs bosons. But then, I'm probably an idiot, so feel free to tell me why.
In any case I still think gravity and inertia (and mass) are just consequences (long-range Van der Waals and Lorentz type of forces) of quantum fluctuations in the vacuum (think Casimir effect). It may be wrong, but damn that would really be a shame, 'cause it's one of the most simple and elegant unification theories I've seen yet.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
This is exactly the model proposed by Haisch, Rueda, Puthoff, Ibison, Cole and Little in the Stochastics ElectroDynamics (SED) theory. They show that gravity is a long-range Van der Waals sort of force caused by repulsion by the vacuum because of quantum fluctuations. For example, that's the kind of repulsion shown in the Casimir effect, if you cut off part of the quantum fluctuations with conductive plates, or mask them partly with matter, you get a force because of the rest of the Universe around, in the same way that removing the air in a closed tube plunged in water makes the water rise inside it because of the air pressure around. The papers can be found here (careful, there are also some, err, rather dubious documents by Tom Bearden).
The theory also shows that inertia is a Lorentz magnetic force caused by quantum fluctuations in the vacuum, and that mass is a purely abstract concept (Mach's Principle). It's consistent with General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
perhaps it is a negation of energy... a lack of energy that spawns gravity? i mean, perhaps something else uses the energy that gravity pulls in?
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
i read that as ''double penetration''... still, i guess it's almost as hot.
it must have discrete sub atomic particles as light does...no?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Man, all this over one flippant joke....
Fodder for your rants page then, eh?
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
When I said you wouldn't even notice, I only meant in the short term from the lack of gravitational influence. In fact I stated this in a couple of ways, and yet some have responded as if I think we don't need a Sun. Bihma had an interesting eventual outcome response but lets clear some things up about losing the influence of the Sun's gravity.
Suppose you where weightless aboard the ISS and the Earth disappeared. Would you suddenly say "HEY! We were weightless before, but now we're even more weightless!" No. Weightless is weightless. The same would be true of the relationship between the Earth and Sun. We feel the Earth's gravity because we are on it with it's surface preventing us from traveling some weightless trajectory. We don't feels the Sun's gravity because we are in orbit around it, following an unimpeded trajectory, which just happens to follow the curve our medium size star leaves in space. There is a small tidal force from the Sun, but it is much smaller than the tidal force from the Moon. Ah, ha you say, the Moon and Sun are pulling on the oceans! Wrong. Lets just consider the Earth-Moon system first, since this is the strongest tidal component. The Moon orbits Earth, and the Earth orbits the Moon. They both orbit a mutual center of gravity, located much closer to the Earth than the Moon because the Earth is Bigger. Imagine twirling a baton that had a one pound weight on one end and a ten pound weight on the other. When spun it would spin around some point close to the ten pound weight, but not the ten pound weight itself. Now because the Earth is orbiting this common center of gravity the closer side wants to follow a closer arc, and the farther side a wider arc, because their orbital distances are different by the diameter of the Earth. Because the oceans are fluid they try to follow these two different arcs, resulting in tides, but it is not the pull of the Moon directly. If it were, then the tide would only occur on the side facing the Moon. BUT NO! An equal tide occurs on the side facing away from the moon! Since the Sun is much farther away, its tidal force is much less, the two sides of the planet following very similar arcs.
Losing this week tidal force from the Sun is the only difference you would notice on the night-side, it wouldn't likely cause much immediate tectonic change. You might see the Moon go dark, if you were looking at it when it happened, but all in all it would be a non event until the catastrophic cooling began to kick in. I never said you wouldn't eventually notice. Brrrrrr.
P.S. Though now dark, the moon would continue to orbit the Earth with no change noticed on its part (other than no sunlight) as the Earth-Moon pair follow a slightly less complicated dance without their partner the Sun.
P.S.S. We don't just orbit the Sun, the Sun orbits the Earth as well, though because of its huge mass, the mutual center of gravity falls within the boundaries of its surface, but significantly removed from the actual center, though probably swamped by the jitter and confusion of all the mutual gravitational interactions from all the other, and some much larger, planets. And this jittering dance is just what scientists are using to detect planets around other stars.
Letter To Iran
Not much on topic, but notice who found it: Parkes in Australia - and the final paragraph says they're major pulsar discoverers down there.
After recently catching "The Dish" on a movie channel, it's nice to see the successors of the guys that brought a 10-year-old me the Apollo 11 TV signal are still in there on the frontiers of science.
these astronomers are evil and should be considered pariahs for believing that such things exist.
next thing you know they'll be saying the earth is round. bah.
That's one damned fine simulation video they have. For those who can't get to it ( or simply to relieve the load on the CSIRO server ), I've mirrored the big one at: http://enthalpy.homelinux.org/cool_stuff/PulsarsEv olutionPAL.mpg
They will never discover Gravity Waves because Gravity is not a force. It is an illusion of geometry caused by mass moving in space. It's kind of like an optical illusion - it looks like gravity exists, but it really doesn't. It's just how objects move through space/time.
Next?
HW
the glass isn't half full or empty - it's just too big.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Yes, but just because Slashdot is discredited doesn't mean the editors are going to decide to suddenly exclaim: "Oh gee. We're sorry for abusing our powers. We were dicks." That's not how it works. All you're doing is making Slashdot go from bad to worse, and bothering plenty of members in the proccess.
"The Dish" is currently very busy tracking and communicating with the Mars spacecraft, but it is primarily a science instruments, one of the world's great radio telescopes.
What is the inverse of the Matrix?
When physicists speak of unifying the fundamental forces of nature, they (we) don't mean that nuclear physics is the same thing as electromagnetism, really, or that gravity waves are the same as light waves. It's more like saying that all of the fundamental forces we know of are facets of one "superforce", or that the various physical laws we've learned all make sense as consequences of a set of simpler, over-arching laws. Physicists would say that at very high energies, the differences between the various forces melt away and the overall "superforce" behavior can be seen. It's a little like the old story about blind men - we've spent our time understanding the seemingly unrelated behaviors of parts (trunks, tails, ears, and feet), and then begin to realize that we should really be studying the behavior of a previously unknown whole (an elephant). This doesn't mean we've explained the trunk in terms of the ears, but both as small facets of the whole.
It's not matter that produces gravity, it's the void...the empty space between matter.
It is the only logical explanation of why the universe not only is not collapsing under its own gravity but it keeps expanding with acceleration.
It can also explain why matter takes spherical form.
Before you flame at me, consider this view as something worthy to be investigated. I think that it would fit all observations and experiments.
What we see, is the reverse of what there actually is.
Even since I started dating my current GF I've been especially observant of the moons phase as well as it position in the sky, so I, and many others, would notice pretty quick.
As for the planets, not the stars, I think you're right that the speed probably wouldn't be fast enough to notice.
A blog about stuff.
wtf was i smoking
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Will everyone quit wasting their moderation points on this??? I just got an email with 27 moderation results!
Please. Stop the madness!!!
- I am made of meat.
Really, astronomical grammer is pretty simple. Some counter-intuitive examples:
Mostly, you hear people give answers to these three questions as "about 1.5 second", "about 8.5 minutes" and "about 30000 years" respectively. But guess what the correct answer is:
We see all these events in our definition of NOW, or "now" from our reference frame.: what you should keep in mind is that there is no "now", there are many many "nows" from many many different reference frames.
Let me explain: when (when from our reference frame) we see sunlight, then (assuming interplanetary space is vacuum), nothing could have reached us earlier than that light. Indeed, not a single piece of information could have reached us earlier. Moreover, because no information could have reached us earlier, no event in our world could have been caused by "something earlier" from the sun, because of causality.
So really, it is of no use to talk about seeing the sun "as it was 8.5 minutes ago", since nothing in those "8.5 minutes" could possibly have affected anything here on earth.
We see the sun as it is "our-now".
And to answer your question: the collision will happen 85 million years from "our-now".
Support a Europe-related section on Slashdot!
gravity waves? Maybe everyone who drives a Pulsar should stop doing so, Nissan may need to recall them.
I couldn't think of a sig.
>>I think you might be confused: Moore's Law applies to the speed of computers, not their size.
o oreslaw.ht m
I think a lot of people might be confused
http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/m
I reccomend reading Moore's original paper (the PDF is linked to from the above URL). On page 2, you will find "Moore's Law" which is to say, you will find the following statement:
"The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year..."
He suggests that the trend is likely to continue for about ten years (Which at the time meant, 'into the seventies.'
Now, all of this means that Moore's law has absolutely fucking nothing whatsoever to do with speed. It was just an observation about the density of integrated circuits over the course of 1960 to 1965 or so, and a muse about how it would most likely be most cost effective to build ever increasingly dense circuits for the next few years.
I read it too, good novel, but I was disappointed to find it was the first part of a trilogy and I couldn't find the second book and the third does not appear to have been ever published. Real shame, as it was a good concept.