Space, Astrophysics and Cosmology

[Gan_HOPE326]

The whole "differing laws of physics on different length scales" is interesting.

It's gonna be called the "Yibis Quantum-Relative-Pirate-Dynamics". And it's going to pillage and plunder the world of physics .

[chrislongden3]

Fuck Yeah! Pirate Dynamics! Instead of all matter being made of tiny strings, all matter is actually made up of tiny pirates. Except black holes. They are made of Kubo's shit and just generally ruin everything.

Also, I wonder if you can apply the principles of Entropy to how so many threads go off-topic? 

I just got back from a talk on Galaxy Formation, but it ended up being a discussion of Dark Matter in the Question-and-answer session afterwards - after all, Dark Matter is far more interesting.

[peanut]

you really know how many threads go off-topic?

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and

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the

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answer

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is

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...

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[chrislongden3]

"Random Spouting of Crap" is always on topic 

[peanut]

unless of course the spam threads they don't count 

[chrislongden3]

That sounds like a plothole. Are you Kubo?

---

Here is another video from my unversity about this kind of stuff

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8RfvwwdPZQ" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8RfvwwdPZQ</a>

The Alpha-Beta-Gamma Paper. One of the best running jokes in Physics 

[melin]

Chris, thanks for the comments on the gravity subject back when we were hijacking delusion, could you tell me if this thought process is correct?  If the gravity were to increase the object then falls toward the center of the gravity well at increasing speeds until it is going fast enough to (usually) sustain a new orbit?

Also if string theory is proven wrong, does someone get to kick Brian Greene in the nuts?

[chrislongden3]

Yes, that kind of thought process is the right sort of way of thinking about gravity .

If I feel like it tomorrow I will program something in flash where something orbits something, and you can press a button to suddenly double gravity and see what happens 

To expand a little bit on what I was saying, there are other things to consider like the eccentricity of orbit and the exact point of orbit the planet is at when the gravity suddenly changes, but these are all consequences of elliptic orbits. The stuff I was saying is a special case of a perfectly circular orbit. But in general yeah, the same sort of thing will usually happen outside of extreme cases, like really oval-shaped orbits where the speed changes dramatically between the minima and maxima of the orbit's position relative to the sun.

Another way of thinking about it is that since Mercury is closer to the sun than us, it feels more gravity from the sun. Because of this it orbits closer, and faster, than we do.

If String Theory is somehow ruled out, I think at least one of it's supporters should be kicked in the balls, yeah. It's only fair to be honest. 


EDIT : I wrote a program where you have an object in orbit of another. The blue circle is like the Sun, the green circle is like the Earth. To make things interesting, the orbit is slightly elliptic. The Green line is where "Earth" moved before gravity doubled, the red line is the path "Earth" took after gravity was doubled



If you press the button to double gravity in a different place then you can get different orbits. Feel free to experiment with it here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6934906/Gravitation.swf

I was lazy and didn't make any functionality to restart the program so you'll have to reload it every time you want to try a different thing 

[Decimator]

If you press the button to double gravity in a different place then you can get different orbits. Feel free to experiment with it here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6934906/Gravitation.swf

I was lazy and didn't make any functionality to restart the program so you'll have to reload it every time you want to try a different thing 

If you're making a v2, then maybe rather just make an option to increase and decrease the gravity any way you want?

[chrislongden3]

As requested:

This version has a slider bar which sets gravity between 0X and 5X

You'll find that changing it too much will usually throw the thing out of orbit. This is partly because gravity being too high will pull the planet in really close and make the effect of the gravity much stronger. In situations where the planet suddenly starts moving really fast and flies off the screen it's safe to assume it has collided with the thing it orbited, and hence destroyed anyway. I really can't be bothered coding in hit detection so deal with it 

Also comes with a reset button now:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6934906/Gravitation%20%282%29.swf

[Decimator]

What did you use to make those, bu the way? The Adobe's software?

[chrislongden3]

Adobe Flash CS3. Coded in Actionscript 2.0 

[chrislongden3]

OH SHI...

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20110407/tsc-us-atom-smasher-may-have-found-new-f-e123fef.html
http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/55233-tevatron-data-indicates-unknown-new-particle

Scientific Paper : http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1104/1104.0699v1.pdf

Basically though the particle accelerator has found a signal that looks like a new, unknown, type of particle.



The small blue peak on the right graph is the signal that is raising interest. It has a statistical significance of 3.2 sigma according to the paper

Google calculator says 3.2 sigma = 0.998625724 = 99.86% accuracy - so a 0.14% chance of being a random error due to statistical fluctuations.

There is also a chance that there was an error in the modelling of the system or some kind of mistake in our understanding of particle physics, but the scientists at the Tevatron have said they are certain it is not an equipment glitch apparently.

There will be a few more months of analysis, to see if this anomaly is the result of a flawed model or a misunderstanding (and that the anomaly is not an anomaly at all) but if not, then the basic system of particle physics, the standard model, is about to be turned on it's head.

[Gan_HOPE326]

OH SHI...

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20110407/tsc-us-atom-smasher-may-have-found-new-f-e123fef.html
http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/55233-tevatron-data-indicates-unknown-new-particle

Scientific Paper : http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1104/1104.0699v1.pdf

Basically though the particle accelerator has found a signal that looks like a new, unknown, type of particle.



The small blue peak on the right graph is the signal that is raising interest. It has a statistical significance of 3.2 sigma according to the paper

Google calculator says 3.2 sigma = 0.998625724 = 99.86% accuracy - so a 0.14 chance of being a random error due to statistical fluctuations.

There is also a chance that there was an error in the modelling of the system or some kind of mistake in our understanding of particle physics, but the scientists at the Tevatron have said they are certain it is not an equipment glitch apparently.

There will be a few more months of analysis, to see if this anomaly is the result of a flawed model or a misunderstanding (and that the anomaly is not an anomaly at all) but if not, then the basic system of particle physics, the standard model, is about to be turned on it's head.

And the particle said...

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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1PBptSDIh8" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1PBptSDIh8</a>

[chrislongden3]

There is that possibility as well