Strife Posted May 28, 2012 Report Share Posted May 28, 2012 Ever wonder just how small (or huge) we really are compared to other things in the universe? This little doodad should give you a good idea: http://htwins.net/scale2/ Once I got to the nebulas, it dawned on me just how insignificant we are and how much mindbendingly impossible work we have to do to get to the level of space travel of all of those science fiction shows. My eyes almost watered up, actually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TailsSena Posted May 28, 2012 Report Share Posted May 28, 2012 http://scaleofuniverse.com/ I found this one to be funnier on when you go to the far right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serephim Posted May 28, 2012 Report Share Posted May 28, 2012 Someone posted this here not too long ago. It's a really, really amazing app. Pretty eye opening. Almost unnerving lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goshi68 Posted May 28, 2012 Report Share Posted May 28, 2012 Ah, space, the final frontier. It's vast beauty has no comparison, but also no means of viewing it all. It would presumably take years, many many years, to build a rocket with enough fuel capacity to travel to even 1/4 the distance of the universe, and even then, the many other necessities such as water, food, air, and warmth would have went dry far before that point. Plus there's also life itself: we would need someone who is immortal to even hope to accomplish that task, but as we all know, that's also well past impossible. It's quite the puzzling aspect, but it is one we have longed to taste for our own. It is quite ironic how we aspire to fly high, but a lack of resources and life keeps us rooted to our own planet. But we can always look to the future, ya'know? It may be inaccessible now, but maybe one day the generations to come will be able to do what we hadn't been able to in our time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nemox Posted May 28, 2012 Report Share Posted May 28, 2012 Billions of years from now, all other galaxies will be so far away, and moving away so quickly, that civilizations will only be able to this galaxy and not even the cosmic microwave background. All the science can be perfect, but it will reach the wrong conclusion; that this galaxy is the only one out there. But... what if we live in a time that's also got an inherently inaccurate picture? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strife Posted May 28, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 28, 2012 True, very true. And that also leaves another question: Was there, at some point, multiple observable universes as well, but they've traveled so far apart from each other that we can only realistically prove the existence of this one? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TailsSena Posted May 28, 2012 Report Share Posted May 28, 2012 And let's not forget that by the time we can't see other galaxies, Humanity will be long gone, along with the Solar System. (Fuck you, Red Giant phase, fuck you.) I doubt we'll even last to see the Milky Way pass through Andromeda. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nemox Posted May 28, 2012 Report Share Posted May 28, 2012 And let's not forget that by the time we can't see other galaxies, Humanity will be long gone, along with the Solar System.(Fuck you, Red Giant phase, fuck you.) I doubt we'll even last to see the Milky Way pass through Andromeda. Earth would be gone, but there's always the chance that a galactic civilization could continue onward. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TailsSena Posted May 28, 2012 Report Share Posted May 28, 2012 I'll likely study that next year in Astronomy... But for now I say... 'While it's certainly possible, what are the odds?" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nemox Posted May 28, 2012 Report Share Posted May 28, 2012 Depends on the probability of developing safe wormholes. Distance is the only major obstacle I see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ila Posted May 28, 2012 Report Share Posted May 28, 2012 Nerds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TailsSena Posted May 28, 2012 Report Share Posted May 28, 2012 Nerds. Well aware. How about a hug. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ila Posted May 28, 2012 Report Share Posted May 28, 2012 No, I don't want a hug from you. too silly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serephim Posted May 28, 2012 Report Share Posted May 28, 2012 The amount of distance that humans could travel could indeed be vastly increased if we are to get closer to luminal speed. Time dilation would make it possible for passengers in a fast-moving vehicle to travel further into the future while aging very little, in that their great speed slows down the rate of passage of on-board time. That is, the ship's clock (and according to relativity, any human travelling with it) shows less elapsed time than the clocks of observers on Earth. For sufficiently high speeds the effect is dramatic. For example, one year of travel might correspond to ten years at home. Indeed, a constant 1 g acceleration would permit humans to travel through the entire known Universe in one human lifetime.[16] The space travellers could return to Earth billions of years in the future. A scenario based on this idea was presented in the novel Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle.A more likely use of this effect would be to enable humans to travel to nearby stars without spending their entire lives aboard the ship. However, any such application of time dilation during interstellar travel would require the use of some new, advanced method of propulsion. The Orion Project has been the only major attempt toward this idea. Current space flight technology has fundamental theoretical limits based on the practical problem that an increasing amount of energy is required for propulsion as a craft approaches the speed of light. The likelihood of collision with small space debris and other particulate material is another practical limitation. At the velocities presently attained, however, time dilation is not a factor in space travel. Travel to regions of space-time where gravitational time dilation is taking place, such as within the gravitational field of a black hole but outside the event horizon (perhaps on a hyperbolic trajectory exiting the field), could also yield results consistent with present theory. Apparently after a certain point, an object approaching the speed of light gets increased effects of time dilation due to special relativity. So a human could definitely travel much farther than their age in lightyears. In fact, in the currently highly unlikely event that we ARE able to travel close to the speed of light we probably could probably jump galaxies well within a human lifetime. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TailsSena Posted May 29, 2012 Report Share Posted May 29, 2012 We got a brief summary of that last year in General Science 9... Oh my god it was confusing, but I think I get it this year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duckboy Posted May 29, 2012 Report Share Posted May 29, 2012 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TailsSena Posted May 29, 2012 Report Share Posted May 29, 2012 No. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serephim Posted May 30, 2012 Report Share Posted May 30, 2012 yes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TailsSena Posted May 30, 2012 Report Share Posted May 30, 2012 Isn't it anatomically impossible though...? (The heart can't pump that much blood.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shadow_Striker Posted May 30, 2012 Report Share Posted May 30, 2012 I did see that scale some time ago. Man, it always remembers me of how insignificant we are in the universe. There are lots of things out there we'll probably never know about, considering how vast the universe is. All we can do is imagine about it... Who knows, in the future, our descendants will be able to know what we don't know right now. But we'll never know absolutely everything, of that I'm pretty sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TailsSena Posted May 30, 2012 Report Share Posted May 30, 2012 Ahh, I love sciencey threads like this... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Serephim Posted May 30, 2012 Report Share Posted May 30, 2012 wikipedia made me a scientist Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duckboy Posted May 30, 2012 Report Share Posted May 30, 2012 Isn't it anatomically impossible though...?(The heart can't pump that much blood.) maybe your weak-ass heart can't Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TailsSena Posted May 30, 2012 Report Share Posted May 30, 2012 wikipedia made me a scientist Science classes made me a Biologist, mom made me an Astronomer. maybe your weak-ass heart can't You bet it can't, I'm only human! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GiriX Posted May 31, 2012 Report Share Posted May 31, 2012 That was very interesting, only someone who would want to know obvious stuff would zoom out of the universe. Instead I zoomed in, and now I'd like to look up the string theory! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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